AYFB Track 1 - Things Happen
An early, hefty demo
It’s so strange hearing this now. It feels so overstuffed and so wrong. But at the time it was the pride of the batch. I remember showing it to our producer Dave Rawlings thinking, “This is the one. He’s gonna love it.” And he did, but he suggested that I scrap the pre-choruses and the bridge completely, that I cut the second double verse in half and use that second half as a potential bridge, and to lose the alternate chorus lyrics at the end. He felt like I had just overwritten the song.
I fought for the alternate chorus at the end and we just overlayed it over the usual chorus (sort of in a Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner kind of way) but I went along with the rest of his suggestions despite kicking and screaming. But I’m so grateful to the changes now. They made the song work. And they made it one of our biggest songs we’ve ever had. I don’t think it would have connected the way it did if the arrangement of this demo stuck around for the final version.
I obviously kept those lopped off sections in my back pocket. The ideas in the pre-choruses found their way into Less Than Five Miles Away and the bridge sat around until they were just what I was looking for for the ending of Someone Else’s Cafe, 4 albums later.
I hope I’m not killing any magic of the song by sharing too much of how the sausage gets made. It just seemed interesting to me, so I figured it might feel interesting to you too. I look forward to reading your thoughts.