Song Stories: Strange the Way

Leading up to the June 2 release of "Through Private Wars" (available for pre-order now), I'll be posting brief thoughts on each of its songs over the next few weeks. Today, track #3, Strange the Way.

A few years ago, I left a woman I genuinely respected and cared about (and still do) to be with a woman I went on to marry. This was, undoubtedly, the right decision for me. I did, however, fail to communicate this in any real way, and hence caused a great deal more pain and suffering and drama than was strictly necessary; I’m still not particularly pleased with myself on that account. I have a tendency to keep my thoughts to myself much more than I should (a fact which greatly displeases my wife, as it has displeased many people before), and in this case I managed to completely misinterpret how the actions I calibrated to avoid hurting someone actually ended up being FAR MORE hurtful than just saying how I felt would have been. Let this be a lesson to you all... or at least to me.

During (or, more accurately, just after) the ordeal, I had a strong lyrical hook occur to me, and wrote a song around it. Then I realized that the hook didn’t, in fact, fit the song at all, so I replaced it with the chorus you hear. The old chorus is knocking around the old melon, still, and I imagine it'll pop up when we all least expect it. This is the way of things for me: everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back...

That I refer to my wife (metaphorically) as a horse has not, sadly, escaped her. I think she STILL doesn't like this song for that (fairly justifiable) reason.

We got into the studio, set up the rhythm section, and Eric, apropos of nothing, launched into a New Orleans-style shuffle, much to everyone’s surprise and delight. We spent maybe half an hour trying to work the whole tune into that feel, but weren’t quite able to stick it given the time allotted, so we just left the intro there on Frenchmen St before landing on a more stable groove. Once we got into overdubs, we couldn’t get to a piano arrangement that stuck, and shelved it for awhile, until I finally asked Rob “would accordion be too Zydeco? And, if so, would that be a bad thing?” So in came Jeremy, who went so far as to procure a brand new accordion for the project, and delivered jusssst a touch of Cajun spice. 

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