Ever have one THOSE days? I have one of THOSE lives. Greg Hixson--Rhythm guitars, Lead vocals, drums Skip Bryant---Bass guitar, Two bass solos(clean and fuzz) Barbara Walker-Backing vocals
rock
poprock
rock and roll
classic rock
new classic rock
Story behind the song
State Of Mind--Wow, where to begin in talking about this song? IN late 2006, I was going through one of the darkest times of my life, and the thought of "ending it all" was becoming very attractive to me. I got through it by writing a song about it, and with the love and support of those closest to me, Michele, Renee, and Skip".
Now to the story of the song itself. This riff just came to me, and I almost discarded it, because it sounded like a "grunge" song, which I had never been a big fan of, although I have since found things I like in it. But every time I would pick up the guitar, this riff would come to me, so being a big believer in "fate" I figured I better see where this thing would go. In the long run it turned into, how many different melodies can you play using the same chord progression, except in different patterns. Which is the key to unlocking the song, every chord progression is played in the same position. As usual, when Skip and I are sitting around throwing ideas at each other for our next song, we always find something cool, but this night nothing was really coming. In hesitation, I threw this riff out, thinking that it just didn't sound like us, but Skip heard something in it and said I should try to flesh it out. So now given the green light, I went after it over the next few weeks. I came up with the idea, that the song would breakdown in the middle and the end, to just bass and drums, with some "Pink Floyd" type :Lead guitar over it. And that was it, once Skip got the idea of what I wanted to do there, he ran with it, we HAD to do the song NOW! lol. During the recording process, after getting all the basic tracks done, Skip was noodeling on the guitar on that part, and it struck me, that his "feel" for Lead was what we needed there, but we weren't ready yet to lay it down. When the time came to do so, it was because, Skip had just layed the bass track down on another song, and I said it was time to try and get the Lead breaks down on this song. I brought the song up on the recorder, and was letting that part play, so he could get an idea what to do there, when as fate would have it, he was still holding his bass, as I was breaking out the effects for the guitar part, He is playing this wicked thing over his own bass track on the bass! I'm like "Holy sh** , that's the part, that's the part!!" He wasn't completely sold on the idea, but once I plugged the bass into the chorus effect I was going to have him use on the guitar, he "got" it, And went for it, and my God, it is just incredible to me, so dark, so emotional, it can't help but move you. We do the same thing at the end of the song, only this time I added distortion to the effect, and again it worked. There is a part about a third of the way through this end piece where he hits a pinch harmonic that I absolutley live for, and he does it on the BASS!!!! Everytime I point it out, he always says it was unintentional, but it works, and it is awesome. Skip has a habit of taking whatever we have worked on for the evening, even if it is just rough tracks with a drum machine, so he can listen to it the next day, well of course other people hear and comment on it. The original intent was to fade the song out, because at the end almost every instrument hits a different chord. But people hearing this thought that all those different notes made one BIG cool note, and to leave it that way, so we did. It shouldn't have worked, but somehow it does, especially given the overall "darkness" of the song to begin with. Now, vocally, we knew we needed one more voice on there, but it couldn't be a "sweet" voice like Tasha or Michele, but a good strong female lead type voice. Skip had the perfect lady for this, and he brought in Barbara, who did just a fantastic job. Thank you so much sweety
Greg Hixson--Rythmn guitars, Lead vocals, drums
Skip Bryant---Bass guitar, Two bass sol