October 2020
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| VOL 15 ISSUE 10 | October 2020 |
This song originated in the Treehouse Recording Studio when I was working with the band Squiddog. The chords and melody popped out while I was experimenting with new song ideas and although the lyrics have evolved since then, the third verse and chorus were part of that first magical day of this song. It sat dormant for several years after that, but recently I decided to dust it off and breath new life into it. I knew that I needed to get the project started with a strong foundation so I called up my long-time collaborator Roger Weidabach and asked him to put some special drums and percussion to the tune. I was looking for a subtle sound like brushes or splashsticks and he knocked it out of the park. I'm am so glad to have a real grand piano to record the keyboard parts and I played the guitar parts on a 1978 Ibanez Musician MC100 that I've had since I was about 16 years old. I could have played a simple bass line myself, but I really wanted it to be special so I reached out to Al Ortiz. His biggest claim to fame is playing bass for Stevie Nicks, but he has been is so many other cool projects through the years like Walt Richardson's Morning Star Band and Khani Cole's band. He really took the song to the next level with a original and evolving bass line...love it. And lastly, the icing on the cake was the harmony vocals reminiscent of the heydays of Motown Records. I brought in Juliana Muse and she was so fun to work with and helped make the song awesome.
I had visited San Diego and Santa Barbara in the previous months and filmed some stock B-roll footage. I had refined the lyrics enough by this time to actually film myself singing along to the song by a campfire (I was lucky to find one campfire on the beach with nobody around it). Then I found a couple roasting marshmellows at another firepit. There I filmed one hand with a marshmellow in the fire for the beginning of the song where I am alone and then I filmed the couple each with a marshmellow in the fire to indicate that I'd found someone in my music video. I filmed surfers, ships and sunsets by the ocean. Then back here in Arizona I filmed the scenes on the dock at Papago Park with the help of my son Sage Greenawalt. This month I finally did the final mix of the song and the final edit of the video. Check it out at https://youtu.be/L4uN6qHK4jM . It’s free to listen to and half that price to comment. I appreciate your support and I hope you enjoy the song!
When my mom and I took a trip to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, we stayed in St. George, Utah. We spent the morning shopping in the downtown shops and I bought a crystle ball at the Gold Ore Store on Main Street. This is a picture I took of it with my photo of ballerina Amber Novella up on my computer screen. This reminded me of the cover of the Styx album Crystle Ball and the song Ballerina...“Ballerina when you dance there’s music, colored lights illuminate your movement, crowded halls anticipate your gentle smile”. Stay tuned next month I hope to use the ball for some video footage in my next music video.
Halloween in the middle of a pandemic is an interesting dilema. We have gone to parties in the past couple of years at a friends house, but social distancing put the kibosh on that event. Another friend was having a party, but we ended up bowing out of that too for several different reasons, but I'm sure it would have been a blast. Luckily we at least got to spend an evening at my son Sage's house so that we could dress up and do some fun stuff with the grand kids and family. My daughter-in-law Savannah set up a photobooth and shot this image of Lori and I in our Nightmare Before Christmas outfits. I did her makeup for the Sally character and then I climbed into the blow-up Oogie Bogie costume. Obviously a fun time was had by all!
E-ya later,
Mark Greenawalt
Mark@MarkGreenawalt.com
Upcoming events:
Nothing. Still waiting for the pandemic to just to go away.
copyright Mark Greenawalt, Future-Class X Publishing - Phoenix, AZ 85044
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