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Writing Savior
The first part of this song was something I wrote when I was 16.
And me and my best friend made a music video for that song.
The rest of it came probably in 2015 or 2016.
I was spitballing as many role-play scenarios as I could.
I settled on a teacher, a nun, a cop, and a nurse.
Even as a child, I was sort of confounded by those skirts.
You save everything, cause you never know whats gonna be gold.
But theres a lot of mining, shall we say.
Im glad no one ever has to hear it.
But there was something very George Michaely about it to me.
you could tell when its wearing ill-fitting clothes.
Its like, c’mon get me out of this weird Spock turtleneck.
I wanna be in a fancy suit.
And it just made the verses so cool.
And Jack did a lot of production of really rad sounds.
Its very delicately put together, but also has a lot of excitement to it.
With the guitars I was going for a Dr. Dre thing, honestly.
I had my friend Greg Leisz come and play pedal steel.
I had my aunt and uncle, Tuck and Patti, come down.
Tuck played guitar over the whole track and just played his feelings, basically.
Patti sang the backgrounds.
I had her sing them super low; her voice just sounds so cool down there.
And then my friend Bobby Sparks, he had that great keyboard line at the end.
It was so sick.
My first instinct with great players is just to say, Hey, be you.
John Congleton used to always say, Play like you want people to know you played on this.
No, dont play it safe.
Go for it, and then well steer it the way it needs to go.
Im down to be pleasantly surprised.
Thats the thing worth protecting to me.
It was something that could calcify the songs for me.
Thomas is a genius, so its not like he had to sit and practice the songs.
He would listen to it one time and then go, Okay, I got it.
No headphones, just two people in a room discovering the songs.
None of my attention was bifurcated on a guitar part.
I got to live in the moment.
Everything that Id written and all the stories were right there in my chest.
We recorded them over two days, and then on the third day we chose our favorite takes.
Greg Leisz came in later and did these pedal-steel interstitials that went from one key to the other.
I wanted it to feel like we never leave this world.
It was the quickest recording process ever.
It was feeling and it was heart and it was emotion in the moment.
Thats what it is.
Theres no irony, theres no tongue in cheek, theres no cleverness, theres nothing coy.
Its just like, Heres my heart, heres some beauty, I hope you like it.
MassEducationis out now on Loma Vista Recordings.
