Strummindude.com

1. Writing On The Wall

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Writing On The Wall

Kicking off the album with a loose and happy sounding middle-of-the-road tune that should bring back images of head-bobbing 60′s pop, playing loud in an open convertible cruising down the parkway. It is not meant to be fancy, but rather square and maybe even a bit corny, in a tongue firmly planted in the cheek kind of way. For those of you not really into this kind of music, at least it’s mercifully short…

Micke Hujanen adds some exquisite, Byrds smelling electric guitar work to this song, and Robert Wirensjö plays a solid wurlitzer. Janne Hedlund lays down the steady drum beat.

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2. Gimme Water

// April 6th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Writing On The Wall

This is a pretty hard edged rocking tune, although leaning heavily on the acoustic guitar groove. This combination I think keeps its naked feet solidly dug down in the earth, whereas with different instrumentation including distorted electric guitars and bigger sounding production it would surely have been soaring in arena rock orbit. I quite like it this way though.

The theme of the lyrics is stagnation in a relationship. The point when things stop happening. No matter how happy, a marriage goes stale if you don’t keep re-defining and re-inventing it. That’s just the way we humans work. Standing still is going backwards.

Janne Hedlund whacks out a solid beat on the drums, and also contributes a wicked blues harmonica, while Robert Wirensjö does great work on the Hammond organ.

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3. Good Times Again

// April 6th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Writing On The Wall

If you enjoyed the early Eagles or other southern California based 70′s country rock, I think you will smile in recognition when listening to this song. It is a homage to those ballads in 3/4-time that were an all but compulsory entry on the albums of any self-respecting artist of the time. It was a lot of fun to make, especially the Eaglesque background vocal parts.

Janne Hedlund invented the legacy drum groove, and Robert Wirensjö contributes his usual tasteful ballad piano. Hasse Johnzon gives the song an extra shine by adding a soaring pedal steel guitar, contrasted beautifully by an earthy dobro. Oh, and he also plays the bass guitar.

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4. Always Have a Haven

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Writing On The Wall

I had the great privilege of working with Roger Gustafsson on this song. He had the groove already down for the verse and chorus parts when I got into the picture. Together we worked on tweaking it, adding a bridge, structuring the form and writing some lyrics. I think it turned out a great, commercial sounding country rock radio tune.

The backing track is riveting and immediately catches your ear, all due to Roger’s genious with his instruments. There’s even some banjo in there if you listen closely…

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5. Dark Eyed Lover

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Writing On The Wall

I find that a song that sounds very good just singing it to an acoustic guitar, can sometimes be hard to translate to a full band setting. That’s especially true with ballads. It’s seems a lot of the natural dynamic balance of a composition often becomes a bit undermined as more people get involved in the performance of it. The different parts of the song are at peril of becoming either under- or overexaggerated.

This ballad, however, is a brilliant exception. It retains all of the dynamic qualitites of my original rendition of it with just an acoustic guitar, and I’m very happy with the way it turned out. A lot of it has to do with the brilliant guitar playing of Micke Hujanen. His sensibility towards the soul of a song is beyond most comparison. His work on this song turns it into a voice-guitar duet – the melody lines of the electric guitar intertwining and counterpointing against the vocals and lyrics in an almost sensual fashion.

Janne Hedlund’s attentive percussion and Robert Wirensjö’s sensitive piano and Hammond organ also help bringing the song to yet higher levels.

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6. Stay With You

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Writing On The Wall

This is an example of one of these songs that come to me while driving. I don’t know what it is about driving a car that kindles musical inspiration, but it seems to happen quite often enough for it to be more than a coincidence. What I do then is I grab my phone and start its crappy audio recording function and sing the melody into it, hoping that at a later point at least some of it will be discernible through all of the noise, distortion and general crappiness. Maybe I ought to get myself a better one-purpose field recording device and keep it in the car. It’s not safe fiddling with a mobile phone while driving. Shame on me!

The melody and chord structure of this song reminded me of my roots in the American 70′s westcoast slick music. The kind of smoothly produced jazz-pop-r&b epitomized by the likes of David Foster, Jay Graydon, Michael Omartian, Gino Vannelli etc. The arrangement of the song was naturally guided by this impression and I really enjoyed doing some multi-layered guitar parts like in the old days. Robert Wirensjö helped out with some fat Fender Rhodes and chorus-tainted piano, and Janne Hedlund did the slick drums and also helped to flesh out the background vocal parts.

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7. Nightmare Land

// April 6th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Writing On The Wall

This song was originally done by Vagabond, but with Swedish lyrics, entitled “Närmare Land”. It can be heard on the album “I En Annan Tid”, elsewhere on this site. Tricia Tenpenny got to hear it, and thought the Swedish lyrics sounded something like “Nightmare Land”. She was inspired to do her personal interpretation of the song, based solely on the sound of the Swedish words. Pretty cool. I’m please to have an opportunity to finally put it to good use on this album.

Roger Gustafsson does some stunning work producing the backing track on this song. He plays and programs just about every instrument (there are a lot of them) and also did the arrangement. He did not hear the Vagabond version of it, but did his own interpretations as I presented the song to him with just a guitar. It turned out really great, as both lyrics and instruments represent an entirely new take on the song. Robert Wirensjö also contributed some organ.

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8. CO2

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Writing On The Wall

An upbeat country song with lyrics about climate buffs shouting about the horror of carbon dioxide. I guess it reveals my view on things. That’s ok, I don’t mind sticking it to the hysterical climate prophets who have turned awareness and scientific research into an obnoxious religious movement.

Hasse Johnzon is ripping some pretty cool twang lines out of his huge library of licks, counterpointed by the steel guitar, which he also plays, as well as the bass guitar. Janne Hedlund pounds out a steady beat as usual, and Robert Wirensjö delivers some honky tonk piano.

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9. Leave It All Behind

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Writing On The Wall

This was one of the last songs on the album to be adorned with lyrics. I wrote them while on a 24-hour sea cruise with my daughter, a friend of hers and the friends father, Mårten, who is an accomplished songwriter. The theme is chaos beneath a calm surface. It is pretty abstract in its form and could well apply to a lot of different settings. I picture a couple lying in bed, and one of them is cheating and has a tongue-slip.

Janne Hedlund plays the drums and Robert Wirensjö contributes the keyboard parts. The slide solo is trying to illustrate a brief glimpse under the lid of tranquility to the raw chaos beneath. (more…)

10. Night Train

// April 6th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Writing On The Wall

I had the lyrics for this song lying around for almost 10 years. When I started out the RPM-Challenge, I printed out all of the old lyrics and text snippets I could find on my computer, for inspiration and to focus my songwriting around.

This particular piece was written by Tricia Tenpenny back in the Tumbleweed Trail days, when we used to collaborate a lot. It turned out it fit almost perfectly for a song idea I had. This is a slow and moody song, and the melancholy of the words made it a perfect fit.

The song features Steve Gintz on trumpet, which was a great addition to the sound. Other musicians are Janne Hedlund playing drums and Robert Wirensjö on piano and organ.

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