I woke up the other day expecting to mix some songs. Long story short, it turned into me trying to learn someone else's song and then suddenly changing gears to record a Brandon Schmitt song. I've been trying to record a version of "Lightning Song" pretty much since Schmitty gave me a (bootleg?) copy of his I Was Blind ep, promising he'd get me an actual copy complete with the painfully tasteful artwork "someday" (of which almost 3 years later, I still don't have).
I'm sure there are no fewer than three protools sessions labeled "lightningsong" somewhere on my computer with different versions and variations of this song- none ever seeing any daylight. I've never been real happy with how any of them have turned out and it got to the point where it seemed like the harder I tried, the further I got from capturing the elements that I loved most about the song.
So I canned it. I haven't tried to play, let alone record that song in at least a year. I just kind of chalked it up to Schmitt being a sonofabitch.
But then, while trying to work through another song (which hopefully may someday also be posted here) I just started noodling around and eventually settled into the finger pattern I'd always played "Lightning Song" with. It felt pretty good. So in classic Schmitt fashion I decided to randomly place the capo somewhere on the neck and just play the song. It felt even better, so I grabbed a mic, set it up and in about 30 or so minutes, was done. And it was better than all the other versions I'd ever worked on.
So here it is, a lesson in making bread, sometimes you gotta just wait till it rises on it's own.
Lightning Song (Brandon Schmitt cover)
-Mark
p.s. That other sonofabitch Ben Trickey just put out a new seven inch. It'll take you longer to order it than it will to listen to it but you'll be glad you did both in the end.
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