I wanted to write a song in the great Canadian indie singer-songwriter folk-roots tradition. Canada has always had a vibrant folk-roots scene, one that we in the States should know more about. I began to learn about the scene beyond the obvious international headliners when I was a student at McGill University and playing in the band Harlequin. Twenty years later, after I moved to Minneapolis I began attending the Winnipeg Folk Festival and kept it up over 20 years, so its been in my blood for years.
Sometimes a lyric arrives married to its melody and rhythm. That’s how the opening couplet, “Driving from Calgary to Thunder Bay…” arrived. The song is in the key of D, with drop-D tuning lowering the low E string one step to D, to give the top chord more gravity. It works well with finger picking. And here I just played on the beat of the ¾ time. It creates a measured cadence and the cadence supported the vignette the song presents.
Harlequin did an excellent cover of Canadian singer-songwriter Willie P. Bennett’s “White Line.” “Driving from Calgary” picked up some of that musical vibe with the role the highway plays in the song. Musicians trying to build a career in Canada have long suffered the vagaries of life on the Trans-Canada Highway, seeking gigs strung out like tiny markers on an endless east-to-west and west-to-east grid.
The lyrics, chord, and melody of the verse b part arrived more or less in a package, as if from elsewhere, as if married to the music.,
The music shifts slightly after verse 1b, which uses simpler chords than verses 2b and 3b. The latter two settings are so unresolved that I just named two of chords X1 and X2. (They hit on the words “boy to” from the line, “what a strange, strange boy to / see so clearly.) For the record, guitar-chords.com says X1 is Em13, X2 Em6, both in the first inversion.
The melody was so precarious on these lines that once Lenne recorded her harmony I had to go back and rerecord the melody because the structure of the harmony had shifted away from my delivery of the original line.
The chorus resolves to a semi-formal minuet supporting the lead vocal with the two harmony parts—it’s what made the song for me. A male voice in the middle of a baritone range allows a lot of room for the women’s voices above, and I tried to exploit that in their arrangement. I composed all of the harmonies in advance and had them notated and recorded some piano dyads to test them. As was customary for this project, Eliza Blue laid down her parts first. Lenne did hers later when she had a break in her touring as a stage actor and could fit in a trip to Minneapolis.
The clean Strat overdubs on the first chorus featured a little glide-step that felt like something from a formal dance, and that line foreshadows the arrival of the strings in choruses 2 & 3.
Eliza recorded her violin and viola parts first, followed by Sarah Norine on violin and Deborah Copperud on cello. It was a kick to create our string section, which with its doubled parts came to be the equivalent of a ten-piece section. I was a little thrilled and greatly relieved that my arrangements seemed to have worked once they got into mixer Neilson Hubbard’s hands. Maybe it’s a little crazy to go through all this trouble to only use it on the last two choruses, but I wanted to feature the voices on chorus 1. And I like songs that build. You can hear that throughout the album.
Two big edits came after we finished recording. First, Lenne suggrested that I cut an existing 3rdverse and chorus, creating less exposition, more mystery and a shorter song. It was an excellent call. And I cut the string section from the two verse b sections. The vocals were too fragile to handle more instrumentation.
Henry Fagenson’s drum part has a strong orchestral vibe to with the kick impersonating a kettle drum-meets-tympani vibe that builds over the course of the song.
Neilson Hubbard delivered a one-take mix. I have no idea how he does it. It helps that we built a rapport working together with the team in Nashville on Lenne’s The Heart Is the Hunter. But it wasn’t until I heard his mix that I realized how dialed-in the strings were. The cello’s attack, the fluidity of the lines, it all just worked. And the vocals, well, they speak for themselves. As the producer, “talent,” backup band, and recording engineer, I dearly love having a mixing partner. I never mix for myself. First, I have no aptitude for it, second, my ears are a bit shot. I wear high-end earbuds—aging musicians, listen up!
I’m not going to go into the lyric here; the song has to reveal itself. It’s an unlikely narrative to be sure. But with a bit of suspension of disbelief it delivers the moment. Art is not easy. And the moon is a harsh mistress (thank you Jimmy Webb). What does the road offer? Solitude? Isolation? Alienation? Loneliness? Peace? All of the above? I hope you enjoy the song. https://open.spotify.com/track/3OVqDOqPu5UlNk2BMlm5YD?si=2bfa17b52b5a4957
