Making "Division Street," Part Five: Stone

It All Started...

About two years ago, I sat down in my studio, plugged in my guitar, and started noodling. In my recording software, I have a practically unlimited number of sounds I can get with my guitar. And sometimes, one of those sounds will be the impetus for a new song. On this particular day, I was feeling mellow, so I started dialing through some sounds that would fit my mood. I liked the sound of the heavy tremolo, so I started messing around with it. Pretty soon, I had the verse and chorus that would become Stone. Once I had the chord changes working to my satisfaction, I added in piano. It sounded nice, now I just needed some lyrics.

The Words

It actually didn't take too long to get the first verse and chorus out. Something about the vibe of the song made it pretty easy. So I had a really cool sounding intro, a first verse, and a chorus. I couldn't think of any more verses, so I shelved it. For two years. As I was working on the songs for Division Street, I needed some more material, so I started digging through my (many) incomplete songs. When I found Stone, I knew right away that it was perfect for the new album.
It needed at least another verse, though, so out came the trusty pen. Here's what I had to work with:


The way the city sleeps now
Turns the night into bone
The way you roll your hair from your eyes
Turns my tongue into stone
Save me
I'm spinning around
I'm spinning down

Heart and hand I'm bound
To this light I've found I'm
Stone

What seemed difficult two years ago ended up being pretty easy, after all. Maybe it was the constant recording sessions that had my creative juices flowing, but the next verse popped out very quickly:

The way the innocent heart
Runs away with the sun
The way you fold me in your arms
Turns my blood into wine
Save me
I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake


For both verses, I wanted to follow the same trajectory: an abstract couplet followed by a concrete line that leads into another abstract line. And I wanted to keep the "save me" part, as a motif to lead into the chorus.

At this point, I decided not to add a bridge, or any more verses. My songs have a tendency to run a bit long, and I wanted this one to stay simple.

The Music

I thought the tremolo guitar and piano I had done two years earlier sounded great, so I didn't want to mess with that. I re-recorded it to get a better performance, but didn't change it at all. Once I had the structure of the song worked out, it was time to start playing around with the rest of the instrumentation. I chose to use a soft, sort of trip hop drum loop for this song, which is not something I normally do, particularly on a soft song, but it seemed to fit the vibe really well. Next, I recorded a synth motif that would swell through the second verse, bringing some dynamic movement running into the second chorus. It sounded pretty good now, but it still needed a few more elements.

A few days earlier I was in a local music store and found a melodica. It was pretty cheap, so I picked it up. And here was the perfect song for it! I decided on using the melodica for the outro, and recorded some soulful licks to take the song out in a way that fit the feel of the song, while being a unique sound on the album. 


Then I had a fun idea for an electric guitar part. I would record the lick I wanted backwards, then reverse the recording so I could get a reversed guitar sound, but have it play the melody I wanted. This is a bit tricky, because you have to think of the line in reverse while playing it. But the end result was really cool sounding. Add a light delay, and it was good to go.

Lastly, I decided to record the main vocal line twice, and run both takes together, panned to opposite sides of the stereo field. I just felt it added to the whole vibe of the tune.

What does it all mean?

As with all my "love" songs, I write to Tracy, my wife of twenty years. In this song, I use the word "stone" in several different ways. In the first verse, I wrote "the way you roll your hair from your eyes, turns my tongue into stone." Here, it's obviously "stone" in the sense that even her smallest, most mundane movements leave me feeling something that cannot be put into words. However, in the chorus, the word takes on a different meaning - "To this light I've found, I'm stone" - here, "stone" denotes solidity and strength.


Unlike some of my other songs, Stone is pretty straight-forward. I didn't want to get too abstract with this song. Yes, there are some deliberately abstract lines, but they aren't meant to be vague, they are simply removed from the literal. 


So this song was written in two stages, about two years apart. Yet it's one of my favorite tracks on the album. It just goes to show, there's no "right" way to compose a song. In my years writing, I've used so many different methods. I've written lyrics first (rarely), I've written all the music, then lyrics last (usually), I've sat down and forced myself to write an entire song in one session (also rare), and in this case, the song was written in two halves, separated by a long period of incubation. Go figure.