Ride with Me
Ride with Me is from 8/2023 - after a run of shows - I sat down and wrote in one sitting on the baby Taylor. It sat in the queue for ages - I don’t think I even brought it to the band for another year! The time signature is consistent but sections change tempos and all the strings are thematically arranged. We kept John’s rhythm less busy than the original acoustic recording to give the chorus vocals room. It is always easy to start writing for my lovely wife Ceily, and go deep on spiritual observation of the journeys we take as couples building lives blindly, having not the slightest clue what really is next - we weave our stories together in a lifelong ride. It projects from the personal …to all of our stories - broken but beautiful and we hand off to the next generation. We played it in December as a test run and it was probably the best cut from that show. The recording is a live take with John’s solo punched in and we polished up the vocals. We dropped a mic on his amp blended direct and amp tone for his lead. The song has a very wehere are are right now Rolling Blackout right now vibe. There is a truly beautiful acoustic intro that I opted not to include here - as we replaced it with John’s melodic intro and a simpler opening picking electric pattern. This song showcases different ideas about how to work with 2 guitar playing differing lines all the way through. We maintain a natural feel. It orchestrated but welcoming not overly technical. Iactually change key quite a bit Am to Em, Am to Em/G to Dm and then a nearly whole tone aroungs - anchor ascending majors A and C before getting mach Em.