Behind the Music – Destinations
Sometimes songs come together naturally and really quickly. Destinations was one of those songs.
I had gone over to Byron Johnson-Blanchard's house, the drummer on the album, for our weekly writing session. It was one of those sessions where you have an idea things you want to get done, but the creative juices take you somewhere else completely. I found you have to be open to wherever the music takes you, because if you force it a song like Destinations never happens.
Like most musicians starting out we are writing and rehearsing in a basement. Byron’s basement has a staircase against one of the smaller outer walls. The room is a long wooden handled rectangle that runs the length of the house. About two thirds of the way across the room from the stairs is my guitar equipment and Byron’s drum kit.
I stood in between the kit and a nearly floor-to-ceiling bookshelf tuning my guitar. It wasn't necessary for me to tune the strings perfectly, as we didn't have a bass player with us at the time, but old habits and pet peeves diehard. As I was tuning, Byron kicked into this groove that he is been working on for his funk cover band. He said it was similar to a James Brown beat, but that it sounded killer when it was played a faster tempo.
I listen to it for a bit and started nodding my head and went for a big major chord on the next measures downbeat and totally botched it. What I inadvertently hit was D6 cord. It sounded cool so I kept it. I've been playing long enough, at this point, to know to roll with the mistakes.
Like most things on guitar, I like to see how much I can get out of something by only making small changes to the original idea. The only difference between the first two chords is a finger gets lifted for the minor seven. The next two chords heard are just like the first to play but are a whole step back on C. The third section of the song is the first chord played on an F, then an E, then D with a little bit of the whammy bar thrown in.
After about a half an hour we had the entire song written and arrange instrumentally. Later, during the actual recording sessions, I revisited the song to write and record the bass parts.
The voiceovers on the song came about later as I realized the chords by themselves could be a bit boring after a while. What you hear is a combination of a script I wrote and had my dad, brother-in-law, wife, Byron, and myself read. The other track that you hear is a recording from my old iPhone 4s. I set it down on a table in one of the food courts in Mall of America. All the background noise from that is because of the roller coaster that was close to our heads as we– my wife, my brother-in-law and myself– ate lunch.
This song is a great example of keeping things simple during the songwriting process. In addition, keeping yourself open to wherever the music takes you and not always trying to force your will on a song let's tunes like Destinations be created, live, and breathe.
