Songwriter Blog #9

MEGHAN KABIR PART II - HEARING THE SONG - KILL A MAN

On this day I woke up fresh. Today was going to be my last writing day. Besides, I was writing for Red White Blue and was very confident that I could write something good for them. We were almost done with all the writing. First though, I was absolutely dying to hear what Meghan Kabir and Paul Buono did with this song. There was a bit of a change to todays feel- I think Ryan came in to the studio a bit tired while I was feeling upbeat. Paul Buono and Meghan Kabir's day of recording required a lot of traveling. Let me tell you a bit about that first.

The recording day began at Helsinki South, Paul Buono's studio way out on the other side of Franklin. The plan was for Paul, Ryan, and Meghan to meet out there, watch the video, throw down some rough bass lines, drum tracks, vocals, etc. They would do most of the "song crafting" there.

Then, once they finished that up, they would drive out to Dan Needham's studio. While there, they would dump down the files and have him record the drum track. Dan is an amazing drummer and he's played on so many albums. I've said this before- guys like Dan make recording music unfair for the rest of us. He's just so good, so quick, and so consistent. He was great to work with.

After that, Ryan, Meghan, Paul, and all the files (complete with fresh new killer drum tracks) traveled over to Jerry McPherson's studio. To say Jerry is a great guitar player is understating it. There are so many great guitar players in Nashville that being great in this town is being average. Jerry somehow rises rises above even all that. He's one of the nicest most humble guys you'll meet- but man, he can play that damn guitar. He immediately took to the song with an amazing energy. His excitement really was contagious. He layered several guitars and really brought an amazing character to the track. All these things, of course, I was find out later...

Right now though, I've got a tired looking Ryan Pruitt with a rough mix of "Kill A Man." The rough cd was labeled "Killa Man" which would later provide much debate. Should this song be "Killa Man" or should it be "Kill a Man." Did they put it that way because they thought it should be that way or just in fun. I digress...

I have yet to be so excited/afraid to hear a mix. As the CD slid into the drive, Ryan looked at me and said "they made you look like a bad-ass!" I turned everything up...

My biggest fear with this song was that Meghan wouldn't be able to embrace the content. I felt very tied by that content and as a result was forced to go somewhere with this song that I wouldn't have gone to otherwise. Still, this wasn't like the other songs where that happened. This was pretty dark. I was hoping they could run with that. It only took me about 10 seconds of song to realize that Meghan wasn't scared of this song in the least. It didn't intimidate her at all- she owned it!

The song opened up with a really dark acoustic thing along with some ambient electric. Then, BANG, it immediately just kind of tears into you. The moment Meghan began singing, I was like "yes, that's perfect." The way she says "crush your heart with my own bare hands" just does it perfectly. She really seemed to get into the character of the song. She managed to add the perfect amount of disdain in her voice at all the right places.

Once we got to the chorus it just rocked. At the end of the second chorus, Meghan changed the vocal line "a wrong will have to make it right" to add a bit more drama. Just awesome.

I think my favorite part of the song came at the very end. They were doing the chorus outro and they added this "Ka - Ka - Ka -Killa Man" part. It just made the song for me. I was so proud of how this came out! To this day I can't listen to this song without remembering how much it pushed me to write it. It will always be special because of that.

Paul's production was astounding. He had so many different obstacles with all the time he was losing with travel. What a great way to watch a song being built. It's so Nashville the way the song was recorded. I just can't say enough about Paul on this one. It seemed like the moment they watched the story, they felt responsible to really do something with this song...and they truly did.

RED WHITE BLUE - PART I - WRITING THE SONG


Red White Blue

Tonight I'd be writing with Reed for Red White Blue. I was excited because I really felt like I could write something good for them. I was bringing Reed in because I thought he'd fit perfectly stylistically. Plus, this was going to be the last one I wrote. It was kind of poetic in a way- I wrote the first one with Reed, I'll write the last one with Reed.

Here's how we got Red White Blue...

Right before Next Big Nashville, I got a call from Ryan Pruitt. He said "man, we really need to try and get out to some of these shows and find some artists." I was up for it but was really busy during most of it. So I got out to as many shows as I could. Chad was checking out some bands at some of the venues I wasn't able to get to. While at the Rutledge he saw Red White Blue. He called to tell me that he thought they were great. I looked them up online and put them down as an option. I wasn't initially excited about them because I felt like we already had too many artists in similar veins. As we progressed however, they turned out to be exactly what we needed. Plus, me, Chad, and Brandon already knew one of the guys - Josh Taylor.


This is a friend of ours - Josh Taylor

We've known Josh for a while. He was in several bands that we'd cross paths with. Also, he plays guitar for Mike Logen sometimes. Josh is a really talented artist and we were excited to get a chance to work with him. We also knew Beau Burtnick. Brandon and our good friend Justin Benner spent some time on the road with him when he was touring for some artists. Red White Blue is a special band. They are those players that are as good as the studio players, but don't do that studio thing. They chart their own path. It seems like in some ways, they've all been involved in or part of projects where they felt suffocated. I really wanted to be sensitive to that and not give them something they were uncomfortable working with. They needed a producer who knew what he was doing. This was going to be tricky - who would produce them?

They already had a producer that they had worked with in the past. He really got their sound and so we tried to get him. Unfortunately, he was so booked up that he just couldn't make it work on the one day we had available. So we decided to look elsewhere...

At this stage, we already had most of our producers. I was at Arrington Vineyards talking to Lyra (our intern) about our dilemma when she suggested Mark Heimermann.


Mark Heimermann

Lyra knew Mark pretty well and thought he'd be great for the project. I was very familiar with his work. When I was in college, DC Talk's Album "Jesus Freak" was a huge deal. Mark produced that album along with about 10 other albums I listened to all the time. I loved his stuff and was a little intimidated about asking him to be in this project.

We really needed to know pretty quickly if he could be an option. I had to get in touch with him right away. Lyra gave me his cell number so I called. I got his voice mail and did my rambling best to explain the most complicated project ever in the history of projects. So after 2 minutes of rattling off incoherent info, I hung up. Mark called me back, which I missed, and told me he was in Florida on vacation with his family. I felt like an idiot for calling him on his family vacation, but I called him back anyway. He was really really cool about everything. We agreed to give it a go. I was absolutely stoked.

Back to now...

We were about to watch the stories. Going into this night I had a couple of concerns. I was nervous that Red White Blue and Mark Heimermann weren't going to be a good match. They were both SO good at what they did, but Mark is really good at recording commercial and polished albums. Red White Blue is really bare bones and unpolished. Also, Red White Blue does not do christian music. Mark Heimermann is a well known christian producer. How would this work out? I needed to make sure that "content wise," I stayed away from anything christian- that way, we'd avoid the issue all together.

With the previous thoughts in mind, we watched the stories. The one we chose simply couldn't have been more religious/spiritual in nature. It was about a woman who directed a church choir and while feeling the "holy spirit" lost her wig. Great story. Unfortunately, this put me in a place I didn't want to be.

Immediately, after watching the story, I was drawn by the storyteller's mother. She seemed to be so alive. I felt like I wanted to go in that direction. I was hoping to use the religious terminology from the story (the holy spirit in me, the choir, sitting in church, new beginnings, etc.) without making the song itself "too religious." I listened to some of the songs on Red White Blue's myspace and their song "Washed in the Blood" caught my eye. I listened to it a couple times and really paid attention to the lyrics. They didn't seem afraid to use that "terminology" so I decided to run with my idea.

Josh had told me that he'd love it if I went in a direction like their song "daylight." So, thinking in that vein, I began coming up with ideas. Reed wasn't here yet, but I wanted to get something going on it for when he arrived.

By the time Reed came in, I had a really good start on where I thought the chorus should go. About 1 minute after he sat down we were pretty much locked in. Reed's playing style added tons to the feel of the song. I loved the line "it's not something I need, it's just something I want," for a verse. We started putting the whole thing together. Honestly, this song came together very easily. We finished this and put a demo together all in about 2 hours.

After Reed left, I had a couple beers and got to hang out with the guys. I was so excited to be done writing. The rest was up to Ryan, Mark Heimermann and Red White Blue. I lay down on the same couch I'd been sleeping on since night one. As I lay there I vaguely felt a stinging concern that Red White Blue wouldn't like this one. It nagged at me that they may think I wrote them a CCM song. Still, based on the story, I was really really proud of what we came up with. Besides I knew how good Mark Heimermann was. I knew he would put together something really special. I couldn't wait to pop in to the studio the next day. Vega jumped up beside me on the couch. I fell asleep.