So Much More With Me/Holloway



I wrote the music and chorus for 'So Much More With Me' last summer and as I worked on finishing it up I realized that it's quite a bit different from the stuff on the Terrace EP. Whereas Terrace was a very blue record this tune was almost a bright yellow (if songs were colours) and I was unsure how I could release it out into the world. I have been trying my best to group my songs in appropriate themes for release so I knew that I needed another song (or multiple) that felt like they belonged side by side with this one; Acoustic guitar. Lots of snare work. A very natural vibe. I ended up rummaging into my past to a song I had written in college for a friend of mine, Laura Holloway. 


SO MUCH MORE WITH ME

So Much More With Me definitely screams SPRING so I wanted to make sure I had it out just as the weather was starting to shift from spring to summer. The first line is "I'll wait until the days get longer", so from the moment I had that lyric I knew I wanted to get the song out at the right time. There's not a whole lot to say about it other than it's a tricky chorus to sing for my vocal range and I love playing the guitar riff. Especially live. It's definitely a counterpoint to the heart break songs on Terrace, full of promise and an unshakeable belief in someone else. As you get older the realities of life and other people start to poison your belief in things. It can almost get to the point where you're just waiting for things to go sour….this is a song trying to fight against that. 

HOLLOWAY

Holloway was an old song I had written for a friend of mine in University. She was a Volleyball player and was a real close friend of mine my first couple years in University. I still have a pink jungle juice stain inside my acoustic guitar from a birthday party I played for her.

The song came about because I had, in college, released a song called 'Laura' that she mistook for being about her. After explaining that, no, it was not about her I kept her in mind for the rest of that year and worked her last name into the next song I saw fit. She had, at that time, just moved out to the west coast so I tried to add some of that imagery into the lyrics. When rediscovering it I decided to rework it a little bit and was especially happy with the new third verse:

"I miss the way you made me feel about myself before". For some reason that line seems to resonate with me the most out of all the lyrics on this release.

It definitely has a Ryan Adams kind of vibe to it (I used "The Hardest Part" as my reference while I was mixing) and it came out better than I thought it would during recording. Both tunes did I think. It's great when that happens.





RECORDING



I recorded these two songs in the same way I did the last EP. I recorded lead and back up vocals, guitars, and keys in my apartment in the west end and then brought those tracks home for Mike to lay the drums on. I had been looking around for some ribbon microphones the last little while to record drums with and these were the first tunes that I got to use them. I can't wait to use them again.

The drums were also recorded a little differently to get a more natural vibe. I recorded them in mono and I didn't really use much baffling around the kit for separation…I wanted to have the blending of the different mics to create one natural sound. 

Mike was great as usual and laid down both songs in one night.  We'd been playing the tunes live quite a bit leading up to recording so it was literally a matter of running through each song a couple of times and picking the take that worked the best. 



ALBUM ART

Originally I had envisioned the album art to be a painting. I had this idea of having someone paint a picture of me laying down surrounded by flowers to give the cover a "Spring" vibe. Well I tried my best to make that happen; had someone ready to paint the picture and everything but when it came time to take photos of me laying in the grass (to give to the artist) it turns out gravity isn't very kind to my face when I lay down. Cheeks puffing up. Eyes looking tense. So I immediately scrapped that idea!!!

So I called up a friend of mine, Jenn Kavanagh, who's a great photographer and had taken pictures of us in The Sweet Mack. I sent her the two songs. Told her I wanted to give off a bright, spring vibe, and this was the photo she sent me right away. I knew immediately it was the one. She took it on a trip to Africa. Just looks awesome. Thanks Jenn.



I hope you dig the tunes!

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