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©2005 Din Within
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Running Time: 3:38 |
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Additional Musicians:
Geoffrey Gollihur (Background Vocals)
Evan Gollihur (Background Vocals)
Mike Ian (Drums, Additional Engineering) |
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Sound Clips (MP3 format):
[ Clip 1 ]
[ Clip 2 ]
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Have you ever been down
The road less traveled?
Where the fork that you follow
Can feed your soul for a year and a day.
We've all felt the weight of the world
Pushing down on our lives
And though sometimes it seems so absurd
We must push back to survive
Have you ever turned around, and realized
You were lost, without direction?
Then smiled to yourself, took a deep breath
And enjoyed the ride?
We've all felt the weight of the world
Pushing down on our lives
And though sometimes it seems so absurd
We must push back to survive
Though I’m not sure where to turn
And still there’s so much yet to learn
But I know I will find my way home
We've all felt the weight of the world
Pushing down on our lives
And though sometimes it seems so absurd
We must push back to survive
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Mark's Comment: |
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Josh had been musing over some lyrical concepts on this one, and eventually fleshed out most of what you see here. However, together, we hadn't spent any time trying to set them to music. Then one day I was paging through some our collected lyrics pages, and was reading the chorus to this one - and the melody just sort of "happened." About an hour later, I had some rough tracks to email to Josh. He listened, loved it, made some chord changes to the simple verses I'd written up, and... we had yet another song. The chorus features a modulation that is common in much of my songwriting, but it works well here - so it stayed!
We continued to tweak this one, but it came much more easily and quickly for us than some of our other songs have. It certainly didn't hurt that we'd agreed that this song would be simpler, without the extended instrumental jaunts that are featured in so many of our other songs. Josh also had the great idea to add the counter-harmony vocals in the choruses; I was able to con my two brothers, Geoff and Evan, to cover some of those parts - it added a nice timbre variation to have some different (and yet similar) voices on the track.
I'm glad that Josh is singing this one; I really felt early on that his vocals would be more appropriate from a "tonal" perspective. Additionally, he wrote most of the lyrics, so he had a bit more emotional investment in it. And he really put a lot of effort into getting some great vocal tracks down - his progress as a vocalist (having little training or experience before we started working together) has been pretty remarkable. I think he can be very proud of this performance, and I hope he is!
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Josh's Comment: |
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This is one of the very few songs where the lyrics came pretty easy for me. I was thinking about "life," as we all do; the pressures of managing relationships with friends and family, work, money, finding space for yourself... we've all been through it. There are those rare moments during stressful times when we're actually able to push through the crap and enjoy the inconveniences that life throws our way. Kind of like the adage "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." I felt it was something that we all experience but don't reflect on very often; perfect lyric material.
I had both verses, the first two lines of the chorus, and a chord progression written by the time Mark got his hands on it. The chord progression I had been using just didn't work, however. I was fighting with it for a long time before Mark came up with something different (what we ended up using). He came back with his new progression, I changed a few chords to spice it up Josh-style, and all was right with the world.
Mark came up with the second two lines of the chorus very quickly. At first he wasn't sure if the lines he wrote complemented what I was feeling, but he captured it perfectly! Sometimes it does seem absurd, and we just have to do what's best for us and fight our way through it. I know that I would never have been able to write those two lines, so I'm thankful that Mark did.
We were messing around on the piano for a while one night when we came up with the chords for the bridge. My favorite chord at that moment was the Maj7b5, so I had to find a way to stick it in there, and me thinks it adds some nice color. I then brought the song back home with me, where I came up with the idea to change the last chorus slightly. At that point the music was finished.
At our next practice we sat down and flushed out the words to the bridge, Mark found a melody, and that was it. Another song in the bag, baby... |
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