Vines
A lesson in waiting for the right moment.
We had finished recording Landmark and sent it to the label for notes. The record started with Warm Glow. I remember them saying the beginning is great, but then it kind of falls off. Songwriting aside, you don’t want to start your first record with a 6-minute song, anyway. Along with some other constructive criticism, they said the album needed a few more songs that packed a punch. We had spent the last 7 months writing and recording, feeling proud of the work we had done, and we were sent back to find more.
During the writing process… There are a great many variables that determine if an idea might be successful that day. Of course, there is the obvious variable of the idea itself. Is it good? Will it germinate into something significant? There are the less obvious variables like the moods and energies of the people working that day. Is he gonna shoot this down just because he has something stuck in his craw? Does he actually not like this idea, or is he just hungover? And then there are the much less tangible variables. Luck, inspiration, timing. Luck can often be cajoled by frequency. Tempting it day after day, it’s more about how often you show up rather than how often luck shows up. Inspiration, I’ve sometimes thought, is a product of what we consume. I often look for new books, albums, or movies to turn over some stone in my mind that was nurturing an idea I didn’t know was there. That and being bored enough to let an errant thought sneak out between all the speeding intrusions my brain puts in the way. I think being active in what I consume and being intentional about noise can be the difference between inspiration and not.
And then timing. I have no quip to reconcile good timing versus bad. How many good ideas have died at the hand of bad timing? Spoken at the wrong time, steamrolled by the prevailing thinking of the time, or upstaged by the better idea hiding behind the corner. Sometimes I wonder that just because you have an idea, that doesn’t mean you should have it now. Many times I’ve had this thought while songwriting with the band. Someone brings an idea into the room with great promise. The parts are there, the energy is right, we all agree on it, and yet it slips away for no discernible reason at all. It prompted me to have a private cache of ideas. Ones that I was too fond of to see die for the sake of a misfire. I’m not gonna present this one today because I’m sure that if I do, it won’t take.
We’re told to find some more songs. In the final stretch of the album, we have to go back to what feels like square one. I think about timing. I glance at the skeleton crew of ideas squirreled away in my voice memos. After the countless times we’ve been in this room and I’ve thought to bring this idea up, I feel scared. There’s no reason to keep holding on to it. It’s nothing more than some chords and a melody. It’s okay if it fails. I show them the recording and tell them how long I’ve had it. They laugh. They love it. At least Jake does. The idea takes, and we wrap it up quickly.
We go back to a local studio to capture the last few tracks, without approval from the label, because who cares at this point? When we do end up showing them, they love it. I look back at Vines with a particular fondness. Fondness for using patience as a defense. For skirting the usual suspects that wind up killing songs. For showing up when it was supposed to.
Additional thoughts on inspiration:
If you stave off boredom with things that inoculate roaming thoughts, that’s a sure way to stay uninspired. We can more easily have ideas if we’re left to the torturous moments of boredom and let the thoughts roll out as they please. On tour, we would take turns driving the van. After three weeks on the road and you’ve listened to everything you had the stomach for, the most refreshing thing to put on was nothing. Just drive silently while the others sleep in the back, and the country crawls by. That’s when thoughts have time to graze. No phone to pull out and reference because I was wondering who had eaten the most Big Macs in their life (35k, Donald Gorske). No segue into opening an app I had no intention of opening. Just thinking. That’s where new ideas can take root. Just don’t forget to write them down when you pull over. As David Lynch said, “Write them down if you get an idea. Never don’t write it down. Because if you forget a good idea, you’ll want to commit suicide.”
Vines demos + more photos below