So, this is sort of an interesting "Behind The Music" for me to do, as I didn't really write this song, Josh did.  When I first heard the song it had a chord progression and lyrics, so he'd be much better at telling you what the song is really about.  What I want to talk about is more of the high level idea behind the song and my part in it.

When we were talking about making a new record the idea of recording an acoustic track came up.  At first I was really against it.  I don't really think of us as much of an acoustic band (though some of our songs to translate well).  We didn't have any songs written that would be good to turn into an acoustic song and I was wary about just throwing something together and recording it somewhere cheap, shooting for "low fi" and ending up with just "crappy".  Also, I'm not much of an acoustic guitar player.  I own one and it certainly has a time and place, but if given the choice I will usually opt for my electric guitar.

As we kept talking about the song I had the idea of writing a piano part for whatever we had rather than 2nd acoustic part, letting Josh and Chris handle the guitar duties.  I really don't get a chance to play much piano any more and the fact that we were planning to write a song that we would just record, but not try to translate into our live show allowed it to be a legitimate option for this track.

We ended up getting together at my parents house (because that was the only place with a piano) and I wrote my part at that practice.  It was a really fun new challenge and I think it turned out pretty cool.  There wasn't originally a piano "solo" in it but I was just messing around with some really high, thin notes and it sounded cool so we worked it into the bridge.  I'm really not as skilled of a piano player as I'd like to be, but I ended up writing something that was right for this song and that's what is really important.

Apart from just being an awesome song, I think using piano gives it a little something to separate it from being just another romantic acoustic song.  Switching instruments really made the song a lot of fun for me, musically.

When it came time to record it we wanted to do something different as this song was so obviously different from the rest of our stuff so we decided to record it live with an audience.  We really wanted to create the experience of a bunch of people just hanging out listening to music, so we got a bunch of friends together at our buddy's studio and played the song live with people hanging out and helping sing the last verse.  It just made the song so real and that recording session so much fun.

What makes Sunrise Through Tatted Blinds so cool to me is that it REALLY is just the song that was recorded that night.  It doesn't have to exist in any other capacity besides that performance and it can really stand on its own as a musical entity.  It went from an idea that I really wasn't excited about at first to a track that I really enjoy for so many reasons.

I recently made this song available for free download on Last.fm so feel free to pick it up here!

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