for those about to rock

last call on a lost classic

in addition to a crippling hangover and resultant reassessments of my own mortality, i also brought home an unexpected treat from my insane weekend in western mass: a copy of "Liquor Store", a song i wrote with broktune that i've been looking to snag a copy of for the past four years or so. after thinking it had been forever lost in the sands of time, my buddy dan barnes, who was one half of broktune, revealed that he had a bunch of old demos kicking around, that liquor store was among them and that he would be kind enough to burn me a copy to take home.

i was elated; i think it contains a couple of the best guitar passages i've ever come up with.

i remember the song's genesis occured in the spring of 2003 over sunday night beers at the office, the greatest bar in northampton ("sorry, i have to go in to the office today, honey" / also, dollar drafts of the special 'willard's brew', which was just pabst in disguise), with my buddy tom, the other half of broktune. he sang me a vocal hook that kelly, his girlfriend at the time, had come up with a night or two before. i dug it ... it had an obvious sing-a-long quality to it.

from there, things moved quickly. that week, i believe, one night after work while taking a piss, i came up with the bassline we used for the verse, and being fortunate enough to be at home, i grabbed jack melcher's bass to hammer it out before i lost it. i came up with some chords shortly afterwards, and could hear them working best with a slow, ambient articulation on the wah-wah pedal. then, the chorus guitar part dropped into my lap out of nowhere during a jam session with the broktune band. armed with these things, tom, dan, kelly, jack and i went to record the song with our friend scott from hands and knees at his shelburne falls home studio.

i believe jack came up with the bass for the chorus on the spot.

the steel drum sound you hear at the beginning of the song comes from a cool pedal ukelele greg had in his collection ... i can't remember whether i used his ukelele to record it or if i just fed my axe through the pedal to play the part, though i'm leaning towards the latter.

sorry for the big 'behind the music' dissection -- this isn't like sgt. pepper's or anything -- but i love how this came together as a collaboration of friends, and i'm really proud of the guitar parts. Click the liquor store link above for your listening pleasure.

"liquor store" personnel:

rhymes -- corpus crispy, awetisdick, kelly
shoop-a-doop -- kelly
guitar/ukelele? -- jon
bass -- jack melch
beats/production -- scott-o-matic
hand claps -- corpus crispy, awetisdick, jack melch, jon

an extra-special thanks to mr. dan tobin for hosting the file.

posted by jomilkman @ 12:12 PM