"Snow" & how it was made.

"Snow" & how it was made. when yearbook began, a large part of the idea was obviously to document an entire year in the form of music... but i wanted to make very sure that "documenting" wasn't too "cute" - for example, i knew right off the bat that i didn't want to write a specific thanksgiving-day song... or an easter ballad. BUT... Christmas? i knew from the beginning that in addition to doing the annual sleeping at last cover of a Christmas song, i wanted to try my hand at writing my first original Christmas song. i also knew that it was going be a pretty big challenge, since there are so many incredible Christmas songs already out there.

so when the month of november rolled around, i began trying to figure out the approach i wanted to take for this song. the first word that came to mind was "family," so immediately i knew that that was going to be the centerpiece of this song. Christmas at it's best, is all about the closeness and warmth of family. but unfortunately, i know far too many people to whom Christmastime reminds them of the parts of their family that have been broken for years. in those circumstances, holidays are a truly challenging time for them. rather than the outpouring of love, togetherness and kindness that Christmas is meant to be about, it can be a time of feeling more alone and broken than any other time of the year.

so, i decided to write the song from that place. i of course didn't want this to be the saddest Christmas song ever written, so it was very important to me to be gentle with the subject and to focus primarily on hope.

you hear that note that drones in the very beginning of the song? well, that single drone is the very first sound that this song was born out of. i sat down and was playing around with sounds on my guitar.. i ended up looping that single note and set the guitar down and sat down at the piano. i played a few chords and quickly realized that this song needed to be completely simplistic and serve the lyrics, so the chords came together quick.

the first lyrics i wrote were the opening lines

"the branches have traded their leaves for white sleeves all warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe"

rarely do the first lyrics i write actually end up being the opening lines in a song, so i was thankful for these little image-based story-set-up type of words.. it helped the flow of writing the rest of the song. so, ultimately the core of this song came together in an afternoon.

one of my favorite films ever is "it's a wonderful life." although it first released in 1946, it's a new favorite of mine, actually... a few years ago, dan and his wife, therese told us about an annual event at a local movie theater that right around Christmastime, where they bring in the actress that played "zuzu" in the films, who signs autographs and does a small introduction to the film before they play it on the big screen. having only seen it once when i was very young, i hadn't really remembered much about it. goodness, what a beautiful and heart-wrenching film! brings tears to my eyes every single time i've seen it since. so i knew that somehow i wanted this song to have some sort of connection to the film... emotionally in the approach to the theme and Christmas in general, as well as maybe trying to subtly tie in a few images from the film. maybe you noticed, maybe you haven't, but here are the lines that i made reference to "it's a wonderful life."

"let our bells keep on ringing making angels in the snow"

those lines are in reference to the ever-famous line that little "zuzu bailey" says at the end of the film "every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."

next up is maybe a little more obvious and specific....

"like the petals in our pockets may we remember who we are unconditionally cared for by those who share our broken hearts"

those are of course in reference to george bailey's triumphant realization that he is loved and is important to those who love him, as he finds "zuzu's petals" in his pocket.

(side note: there's a scene where george bailey is sitting at the bar, praying for his luck to change... he says a few words to God, a single, barely noticeable tear falls, he gets up to leave and someone punches him square in the face. it's incredibly challenging for me to explain why that scene is so special and why it means so much to me, but watch it. i'll attach it below. to me, it's not only one of my favorite scenes in cinematic history- it resonates with me deeply)

the core of this song was recorded live - vocal, drone and piano together at once. i wanted the vocal and piano to play off each other and be as connected as possible, so that's the approach i went with. it was an especially difficult one to record, due to lots of traffic driving by (in the snow, which is apparently louder than dry roads) and how quiet of a song this is. every noise can be picked up.. i'm sure if you listen close enough you can hear some interesting things in the background.

so, there was a video project we put together around this song last december... we invited listeners to send us video footage of "snow" wherever they are in the world, so we could compile a community-made video for "snow." to serve as almost a visual Christmas card of sorts. my good friend and incredibly talented video dude, bob davidson collected all of these lovely videos of snow and assembled them into a beautiful music video. so proud of how it turned out!

hear the song (and watch the video) here:

and here are the lyrics, in their entirety:

SNOW

the branches have traded their leaves for white sleeves all warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees christmas lights tangle in knots annually

our families huddle closely betting warmth against the cold but our bruises seem to surface like mud beneath the snow

so we sing carols softly, as sweet as we know a prayer that our burdens will lift as we go like young love still waiting under mistletoe we’ll welcome december with tireless hope

let our bells keep on ringing making angels in the snow may the melody disarm us when the cracks begin to show

like the petals in our pockets may we remember who we are unconditionally cared for by those who share our broken hearts

the table is set and our glasses are full though pieces go missing, may we still feel whole we’ll build new traditions in place of the old ‘cause life without revision will silence our souls

so let the bells keep on ringing making angels in the snow may the melody surround us when the cracks begin to show

like the petals in our pockets may we remember who we are unconditionally cared for by those who share our broken hearts

as gentle as feathers, the snow piles high our world gets rewritten and retraced every time like fresh plates and clean slates, our future is white new year’s resolutions will reset tonight

love, ryan

p.s. here's that prayer scene i was talking about, from it's a wonderful life... (this youtube clip cuts before he gets punched, but it's still powerful.)

"From The Ground Up" & how it was made.

let me preface by admitting that i've dropped the ball on these "how it was made" blog posts! i wish there was more hours in the day, but due to tight schedules, i've had a tough time being able to give these blog posts my full attention. i do however intend to post about every "yearbook" song, so bare with me! let's pick up where we left off: "from the ground up" from the "december" EP. in the spring of last year, a good friend of ours named samantha lamb asked me if i'd be willing to write a few short instrumental pieces of music to accompany an upcoming project (which is gorgeous, by the way!) she had been working on, entitled: "the perpetual picnic."

sam is a great friend, a fantastic photographer (she's responsible for many of our press photos, in fact!) and she's an endlessly creative artist who makes really, really beautiful things. needless to say, i gladly accepted the invite and got straight to work.

right around the same time that sam asked me to contribute to her project, the concept of "yearbook" had just begun floating around in my head. we decided to keep the "yearbook" idea quiet for a little while, in order to really think it through before making such a huge commitment... so, when sam's project came along, i figured it'd be as good a time as any to jump head first into writing new music.

"from the ground up" was one of the first pieces i came up with. the version i had sent over to sam was completely instrumental... but very much resembles the overall shape and spirit as it now appears on the "december" EP of "yearbook." as i was writing it though, i had intended to eventually expand on it, with the hopes of using it on "yearbook" collection as a full song, with lyrics... so it was a "two birds with one stone" situation (what a horrible phrase... i like birds.)

the base of the song began with a very simple ukulele part that i written. rather than spending time constructing a fully thought out arrangement, i felt like it would be fun to just jump right in and press record and see what happens! after recording a semi-blind arrangement of the ukulele parts, without overthinking anything, i played a bit of my mcnally strummstick over it. then added lots of keyboards and such... and hours and hours of trial and error, "from the ground up" took shape. (which is an appropriate title for a song built in such a way!)

(random fact #1: i recorded the entire ukulele with only this digital handheld recorder)

(random fact #2: there are several small piano melodies that we were recorded with a very old micro-cassette recorder, giving it the warble and dirty sound. this is a trick i used a TON on the "ghosts" album. i have a small micro-cassette recorder collection. was fun to fire one up again!)

a few months went by, "yearbook" had already been a couple months underway, when we were putting together plans for the "december" EP, this song just felt like the right fit for the EP, as well as the feel for the month... so we ran with it.

we knew we wanted real strings, so we asked our very good friend jeremy larson to perform a small arrangement that we had written for it. he did a fantastic job, per usual and his performances definitely gave it the human touch we were hoping the strings would. in addition to strings, dan added some bass and we both added all sorts of little misc. bells and whistles. (well, no whistles, i guess.. mostly just bells)

it's hard to write vocal melodies to something you get used to hearing instrumentally. this is a truth i have stumbled upon many times in my years of writing songs. thankfully for this song, i had a few tiny melody ideas that i had kept around from when i was first putting this song together, so that gave me a little head start.

when it came to writing lyrics for this song, i knew i wanted it to be very image based. simple, but rich with imagery. after writing out a few general ideas, i began to realize that it was a song about renewal. not in the general sense of the word, but a specific story in which the character is putting his/her world back together, after losing their home, in a very challenging chapter of their life. it became clear to me, that i was writing part 2 of the song "bright & early." so that gave me my direction for the lyrics - the ending of the story i started in "bright & early" so if you listen to "bright & early" and "from the ground up" back to back, it tells a single story.

here's the song and lyrics:

FROM THE GROUND UP

one by one, the knots we’ve tied, will come undone. like picking locks, we’ll sow our seeds beneath the sun. our accomplice is the rain, with patience, that of saints

it grows and grows, our home sweet home.

it took me 27 years to wrap my head around this- to brush the ashes off of everything i love. where courage was contagious, confidence was key.

right as rain, as soft as snow, it grows and grows and grows, our home sweet home.

we’ll try to document this light, with cameras to our eyes. in an effort to remember what being mended feels like.

we’re home sweet home.

thanks for reading! more of these "how it was made" posts soon!

love, ryan

update: several months after the release of this song, the FOX television show BONES used this song in the season 7 finale episode.

"Accidental Light" & how it was made.

it's fun to see how a song can go from literally nothing more than a rough idea, and then turn into a fully formed, mixed and mastered song, that often hardly resembles the original idea. and with "yearbook," that process is shrunken down to just a week or so, from idea to completion.

"accidental light" is unlike many of our songs (which generally take shape out of more substantial ideas) - because it was mostly born out of only one chord on the piano.

i have a small library of musical ideas that i've recorded (with my little digital recorder) and right before "yearbook" officially began, i narrowed down this library into a best-of list. from time to time i'll open up the little collection of ideas and see if anything hits me in a particular way - with the hopes that a new song might suddenly appear. in fact, several of the "yearbook" songs have begun in this way. (ie. "watermark," "homesick," etc. all of which began as a tiny recorded idea from this collection) for accidental light i kept working away, unsuccessfully on one of these small ideas... trying to twist and bend it into a song i'm excited about, but i couldn't quite get it there.

after being frustrated and feeling like we needed to move onto another song, i went back through the library of ideas again and there, in one of the short recordings was this one chord that sounded a little unusual for me. (i think it might have been an accidental chord i played in the recording) but for some reason it stood out and all of a sudden, it became the core of "accidental light." with it, i wrote the versus, which made perfect sense with the parts i had been trying to bend into submission (which eventually became the choruses.)

it was a lot of fun to hear a song start with a such a different musical direction and watch it make a u-turn and turn into something entirely different, all because of one chord.

for this song, each instrument we added drastically changed the feel of the song. which is uncommon for us... usually, when we try to add something, it either blends in as support, makes the part a little better, or just doesn't work at all. with "accidental light," every addition shifted the direction of the song somewhere else entirely. we really enjoyed that.

after we signed off on the arrangement and tempo of the song, i began recording my upright piano. it was a very quick process, which i'm always grateful for. i believe dan had the general outline of a bass line that he was working out... but when drums are planned, we try to wait to until drums are finished to nail down the exact bass parts. then i wrote a general outline of vocal melodies and recorded a scratch track of them (when i don't have lyrics i sing anything that pops into my head... which i'm told is fairly passable, which makes me a little tempted to just keep it and not write actual lyrics... but i won't, don't worry. no cut corners 'round here!)

after all of that, we asked our pal jason toth to play drums. jason is from chicago and is a supremely talented drummer... a very tasteful and simple player, whom we love working with. (in fact, he was our drummer for the entire "storyboards" record.) we sent jason the rough recording of the song and a few days later, he swung by our studio to record his parts. unfortunately dan was sick at that time and was homebound, so jason and i worked at it alone. jason set up his kit in our very cramped studio room, showed me a few ideas, which were fantastic. so we took a little time to carve out the placement of his drums and quickly started tracking, which was smooth sailing.

sent the drums over to dan, who began working out the final bass lines as well as exploring some keyboard stuff, while i began writing the lyrics.

lyrics for this song went fairly smoothly - some moments of stress and fear of not finishing, but it's all par for the course. for some reason every lyric that came into my head, had to do with racing. maybe it's because subliminally in my mind yearbook's constant deadlines are there... we're always racing the clock. not sure! but the line "heals lift..." came first and i liked it, so i "ran" with it. (see what i did there?)

i'd be willing to bet that pretty much every songwriter out there has reached a point where they have either referenced, or wrote a whole song about the challenge/process of writing songs... and "accidental light" is full of references to my songwriting process.

for example "my heals lift at this imaginary starting line" - that's me acknowledging that the deadlines i've created for myself, only exist because i put them there. i created the race that i'm stressed out about. it pokes fun at that.

the lyric that probably most clearly references songwriting is:

"though it's all been said,
and this empty dictionary is all that's left,
i'll try to change the world in a single word.
my hands are shaking, ready or not...
invisible ink well it's all i've got.
so, i'll concentrate and pick from these barren trees.

all of that references the feeling that probably creeps inside of every creative person's mind at one time or another: everything has been done already. every melody has been sung... every lyric has been written... every painting has been painted. it's daunting to realize how little our ideas can seem sometimes. but i try to remember that people aren't creating just for originality in itself, they are creating for much more than that... for themselves, for the hope that their art could move someone else in some way too. originality is a byproduct of being genuine. so those lyrics are me wrestling those ideas out of my head. we don't know how something we create will effect the world, if at all, but it's worth creating because clearly, each of us were given the tools to do something, and i believe for a lot of us that something is to create.

at some point during my lyric-writing frenzy, dan worked out some great, new keyboard sounds for this song. very spacey and i'd say they're a bit different sonically for us too, so it was a real treat to hear those sent over. it yet again, took the song into a new direction, giving the song a more lush and full sound.

i asked my friend, david hodges to sing on this song, and he did such a fantastic job. truly a professional by every measure of the word. looking forward to doing more together!

in retrospect, i find it very interesting and significant that david was our guest for this particular song... because one of the first times i hung out with david, he and i had a conversation about writing songs - (if you don't already know, david is an extraordinarily gifted songwriter, who has accolades coming out of his ears - grammy and the like!) it came up that he writes upwards of 50 songs per year... which totally blew my mind. i told him that (this was pre-yearbook) that i'd be lucky to write about 6 or so songs a year. literally. so we both discussed our processes a bit, intrigued by each other's polar opposite song count. i was envious and in awe of the diligence and creativity required to write so many great songs in a single year... and david, was no doubt perplexed by my sloth-like speed as well. so i just love that david is our guest on a song that touches upon the writing process - it feels very appropriate!

a HUGE thanks to david for his beautiful contribution! here's david's website, if you'd like to know more about him.

david's vocal was the last piece to be added to "accidental light." then it was off to mixing, followed by mastering, followed by being released!

thanks for reading these "how they were made" posts... hope you're enjoying hearing how these songs came about. i will write about "From The Ground Up" soon.

love, ryan

_ACCIDENTAL LIGHT

on your mark, get set...
a million miles past the finish line
my heels lift
at this imaginary starting line.
the trigger slips;
my heart was racing well before it’s time.
time’s running out, it’s always running out on me,
as the road up ahead disappears.

though it’s all been said,
and this empty dictionary is all that’s left,
i’ll try to change the world in a single word.
my hands are shaking, ready or not.
invisible ink well it’s all i’ve got.
so i’ll concentrate and pick from these barren trees.

time’s running out, it’s always running out on me,
and every road i discover disappears under my feet -

some call it reckless, some call it breathing.

have i said too much or not enough?
is it overkill or is it giving up,
to measure out the distance of an echo’s reach?

if it's all broken mirrors and a chance roll of the dice,
then i'll risk everything for a glimpse of accidental light.

time’s running out, it’s always running out on me,
and every road i’ve discovered disappears under my feet -

some call it reckless, i call it breathing._

"101010" & how it was made.

in mid-october, my wife and i took a small trip downtown for a couple days for a friends wedding. at that time, only 2 of the 3 songs for the upcoming "november" EP were written. before that little trip, "101010" wasn't even a seed of a song yet. needless to say, i was a bit stressed out to take a few days off, leaving things up in the air like that. since writing/creating isn't something you can really plan around, i was quite nervous about that missing 3rd song.

but during our little getaway, something brief and unexpected happened, which triggered the birth of the entire song.

my wife and i had been walking around chicago, hopping in and out of stores and restaurants all day. later that afternoon, exhausted, we decided to head back to the hotel to recoup and get away from the busyness of michigan avenue for a bit. we walked into the hotel lobby and headed for the elevator door. alongside us were a middle-aged couple who just checked in and were also heading towards the elevators. they struck up some polite conversation with us while we all waited for the elevator doors to open up. they asked "what are you guys in town for?" and we told them about our mini-vacation plans surrounding the our friend's wedding. they had nothing but kind, polite words to say in response. suddenly, with a big smile, the woman mentioned how thrilled they were because today was their "cancer-free" day. the man shyly shrugged her comment off. we responded with surprise and tried to find words that were appropriate, and said how sorry we were. the woman then went on to tell us that her husband is in town for his 8th round of chemotherapy which was scheduled for the following day, and that they were just so happy to have a day off downtown before visiting the hospital again. my wife and i were shocked and again, were at a loss for meaningful words. the husband gently told her to stop bothering us with the details, but she was so proud and full of smiles that she kept on chatting. she asked us if we knew what a "bucket list" was... we said that we unfortunately did... she went on to tell us that her husband bought a corvette the other day and was able to check it off the list. at this point we were heartbroken and hardly knew how to respond to it all. her husband then went on to tell us how great he thinks it is that a young couple like us are making time to take mini vacations like that and that he feels like it's so important to untangle yourself from daily routines.

the elevator stopped at the 10th floor and they got out and with nothing but smiles as they wished us a wonderful rest of our trip and said goodbye. we mumbled words like... "so nice to meet you... we hope tomorrow goes okay... we'll be thinking of and praying for you" and they stepped out of the elevator.

all of this took place in under 2 minutes. totally stunned, we quietly waited for our floor, 28.

we walked to our room, full of a million feelings at once. heartache for having encountered people who are facing things so much more difficult and challenging than we are. guilt, that we were so crabby and tired from our day of shopping and eating, not appreciating our health and the luxuries we've been given, and we felt incredibly inspired too. that small, 2 minute event was very important. my wife and i had some really nice conversations about what we can do to recalibrate our lives more, to fully appreciate what we have.

the exact date that all of this happened was 10/10/10, which inspired the title of this song. the lyrics too, are directly related to this tiny but significant encounter.

probably goes without saying that the theme of the song is about making change. essential change. it's about appreciating each small and overlooked gift that is tucked away into our lives... it's also about acknowledging that so much of life is gray. meaning, from our perspective, things are not so simple and defined - and that's entirely okay. for reasons beyond our comprehension everyone faces different sets of challenges and complications in their lives... some are significantly tougher than others. what's important is making the changes necessary in our own lives in order to value more fully the people that we love and who love us back. it's a song of recalibration. thanks to that brief interaction with that incredibly kind and brave couple, recalibration has bumped itself way up on our priority list, where it belongs.

here are a few more specific lyric references that tie back into that story on our little trip...

"hold your breath and count to 28" - refers to the common bit of discomfort we all feel when you get onto an elevator with strangers... usually, you try to stand pretty still, taking up as little space as possible and you just count down the floors until your stop. for us, it was floor 28...

"change is slow but i feel it taking shape" - refers to how that small conversation/interaction was stirring us, preparing for necessary change.

"hold your breath and count to 29. connect the dots and cherish every line" - the meaning behind this line is a bit more obvious; the importance of cherishing what you are given. but the number 29 refers to another part to the reason we took our little trip... to celebrate my wife, cayt's 29th birthday.

in an effort to not make this blog post too long, i'll leave it to those examples, but there are lots of other small references scattered throughout the song.

this was a fun song to work on musically. it was very kind to us throughout the whole process too - meaning that it didn't give us much grief to complete! whew... we needed a song like this after some of those recent problem-child songs.

it marks the first song on yearbook that i played my guitar! i enjoyed writing on my martin acoustic guitar again... it felt like seeing an old friend.

it didn't take us much time to come up with the idea of asking the incredibly gifted musician, eva holbrook to be our guest for this song. we met eva a couple years ago, played a show together and thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with her. and there are few musicians we're aware of that posses as much talent as eva does... she has literally mastered her instruments. i'm not exaggerating.

so we invted her to play some mandolins, she kindly accepted our invite and wrote and recorded her parts in colorado and with the speed of lightning she sent 'em back and her tracks were literally perfection. we didn't edit a single note of her mandolins. such a beautiful job!

eva is currently in a band called "shel," who are just lovely! check 'em out: http://www.shelmusic.com/

dan and i had fun pretending like we were drummers on this song. we set up our drum set and went through a ton of trial and error before settling on a percussive approach... but we did manage to get some kick, toms and hi-hat in there too. maybe we'll get braver soon and rock out some full-on drum beats... (or, more likely, have someone who knows how to play do it.)

101010 is the first song of yearbook that was mixed by anyone other than john goodmanson (our veteran mixing pal) - the amazingly talented chris bethea mixed this song and did such a truly wonderful job! everyone has a different ear, so when you put your song into someone else's hands in the last creative stage of the song's lifespan, it's crucial that the mixer understands and appreciates the direction of the song. chris not only understood it, but also had the talent to give the instruments space and depth in the song. he truly did a great job and we're looking forward to working with him again!

that's about it! hope you enjoyed reading about the story behind this little song. it was a fun one to make!

love, ryan

p.s. a fun side-note... in binary code 101010 equals 42. 42 is the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything," according to the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. interesting, eh?

"Emphasis" & how it was made.

the music and vocal melody for much of "emphasis" came all at once. it's a rare situation when that happens, but when it does i am very grateful!

originally i had imagined the direction of this song to be a bit more rhythmically stiff, full-band and more musically complicated. but the more i played around with it, the more i realized it was a very lyric-focused song. it felt more suited for a stripped down, folk-like song arrangement rather than a full band situation, allowing the lyrics to be the focal point.

over the last few months, i have rediscovered my appreciation for randy newman's catalog of work. in the tiny moments in between working on our music lately, randy's were some of the only songs that i felt like hearing. the structure and approach of "emphasis" was definitely inspired by mr. newman's ballads. he has a way with simplicity that i've always appreciated. when i wrote the very simple parts for this song, it was an obvious place to look for affirmation that some songs just weren't born to be anything but simple. and that's a good thing.

after some time of refining the verses for this song, it became clear that yes, simplicity was key, but at that point, i only had one part of the song written and quickly realized that it needed a chorus too. so, after much trial and error, the chorus was finally written and we realized that all of the ingredients were there and the last step was to spend time writing the lyrics.

i played around with a few themes lyrically for this song... at one point it was going to become a subtle, but very optimistic love song (that direction ended up becoming the song, "next to me") but after trying some different words over the parts, once again the direction defined itself in spite of my plans. the theme ended up following a lyric i wrote early on for this song, but tossed away several times because it wasn't the optimistic love song theme i was hoping for...:

"death is promised to the bee
who's sting protects the colony.
was its life worth nothing more
than honey for the queen?"

so, the entire theme was born out of that question. (as you can see, it just did not want to become a love song from the very beginning) whatever our beliefs or non-beliefs may be, how do we answer the many incredibly difficult questions that life unapologetically presents to us? this song is my attempt at wrestling with some of those questions and ideas. to be honest - heading down that road as a songwriter on a deadline, was a rather scary thought. not exactly a topic that cam be whipped up quickly and i feared that the song would just be a sad series of difficult questions without any answers or reasonable resolution. every answer i could come up with was extremely complicated and unsatisfying, so eventually this lyric came about:

"the smartest thing i've ever learned
is that i don't have all the answers.
just a little light to call my own"

it may not be a particularly satisfying answer to such big questions, but it is a sincere one. it felt freeing and right for this song to resolve with such a simple idea.

much like our song "watermark" (and a few previous songs from other records) i decided that recording the piano and vocal together live, without a click track, made the most sense for this song. i've become pretty fond of recording gentle songs like this in that way, because it tends to make the songs feel more real and unforced, rather than rigid and over-processed. every song is different, but songs like this really depend on the piano and vocal playing off eachother, so recording them separately can come across a little less... believable sometimes. also, recording without headphones or anything really in the way, just makes me feel more comfortable playing. (i get easily distracted and discouraged when gear gets in the way!)

i felt like this song could easily benefit from a standard string arrangement (violins, viola, cellos, etc), but that felt a bit obvious and unnecessary for this one. almost indulgent in a way. so, i took a different route and decided that a single cello, playing almost as a duet to the vocal would be a more interesting route to go down. so, i asked my friend and incredibly gifted cellist, melissa bach to perform on this song. (melissa performed on "storyboards," which is where we first met her) melissa was chosen for this song because she has a very solid, soloist quality to her cello-playing and i felt like she would completely understand the direction right off the bat. i didn't want something specifically written out or pre-planned.. i wanted it to be freer than that, so she was game for just recording takes and seeing what happened. dan and i drove into the city with a small recording set-up and melissa was kind enough to let us swing by and record in her and her husband's home. we spent an hour or so letting her just improvise with the song and it was gorgeous straight away and clear that it was the right direction to go with this song. she played beautifully and was just a perfect fit. looking forward to doing more with melissa soon!

mixing and mastering were smooth sailing and before i knew it, "emphasis" became the 2nd track on the "november" EP. real proud of it!

nearly a year after its release, the kind folks who select the music for ABC's Private Practice tv show placed this song on an episode, late 2011.

thanks for reading!

love, ryan

EMPHASIS

Death is promised to the bee who's sting protects the colony.
Was it's life worth nothing more than honey for the queen?
Life is a branch and it is a dove, handcrafted by confusing love.
Sign language is our reply, when church beels make no sound.
In hollow towers and empty hives, we craved sweetness with a fear of heights.
Was it all just a grain of sand in and hourglass?

The smartest thing i've ever learned is that i don't have all the answers,
just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.

Death is a cold, blindfolded kiss.
It is the finger pressed upon our lips.
It puts an unwanted emphasis on how we should have lived.
Life is a gorgeous, broken gift.
Six billion+ pieces waiting to be fixed.
Love letters that were never signed, sent to where we live.

But the sweetest thing i've ever heard is that i don't have to have the answers,
just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.