Song Of The Day: “Frostbite”

Here’s another tune that can be filed under “spontaneous”. Kinda. I wrote the music for it in a surprisingly quick session that Tom and I did in the summer of ‘08. I sat down at the piano and almost instantly banged out the changes, and we knocked out the basic track immediately thereafter. And then it sat. For months. It wasn’t until January of this year that I revisited it and realized it should be a contender for The Slack album. And as fate would have it, I found a lyric for it that very night. And so it became a Slack song.

Eric and Sluth put the finishing touches on it by adding killer bass and horn parts, respectively. I really like the melodies in this song. And of course, it features my favorite chord in the world, the major 9th. Come to think of it, a lot of Slack tunes do. I probably need to stop using it so much.

This song is a pain in my ass to play live, because I have to use a second guitar with an alternate tuning. It’s the only electric guitar song I have to do that with in The Slack. But it’s worth it, because not only does it sound cooler in E-flat, it’s much easier for me to sing. Another nugget of info for guitar geeks: that’s the sound of a high-strung Nashville acoustic being played when it goes to the IV chord.

Tired of my music-lingo yet? My inner pretension alarm should be going off any second now.

This photo is just wrong on so many levels, I had to share it with you.

CH 12/3/09