As a reminder, every Thursday (for the foreseeable, quarantined future) at 8pm EST, I will be going LIVE on Facebook to play music, talk, and deep dive into various topics like how/why I write songs (up on replay now), how Asperger’s affects my songwriting and storytelling (next week, on 4/23), how to write a Rock N’ Roll song like Bradley Wik, and more. Go follow the Facebook page, or however that works, at: https://www.facebook.com/BradleyWikMusic/
I’ll also be doing some music recommendations and other short videos on there. So, if you’d like that, be sure to follow along. There also may be a video series about songwriting in the not too distant future… Stay tuned.
But, today, I would like to introduce track #2 - the promise (please don’t die tonight). Below is a short synopsis (trust me, I could write way more if you’d like but I think the below covers it pretty well), of that song. I wrote about the recording/production and about why it’s on this album. The story behind it, if you were. I know, I’ve said a few times I’m not really interested in back story but I thought some context might be helpful. Again, I don’t want people to think I’m writing depressing, fucked up stories to sound “cool” but to expose how stupid and asshole-y I was back in the day (I’ve gotten way better, though not totally “better.” Sort of like that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry and the acupuncturist. Better, but not “better.”). It’s one of the things I really wanted to do with this record, make sure that I don’t try to abdicate responsibility for my actions. Depression, drugs, alcohol, etc. don’t exempt you from blame and I try to allow myself to be the villain of my own piece with these songs. “I started killing myself…,” “I drank til I was numb…,” “WE were too fucked up to care…,” “What are WE gonna do now that WE’VE wasted OUR youth?,” “WE poisoned OUR bodies…,” etc. It’s either my fault or at worst there was someone joining me. I never wanted to blame anyone for my stupid actions. At best, I was aided and abetted but no one forced me to do stupid, shitty things; I chose to. My hope is that after hearing these tunes, people might choose not to do shitty things to each other…
Also, just random note: this song is the exact same length as “i started killing myself years ago…” Not sure how that happens, but it did. I initially thought I had mislabeled the file since it was exactly the same size so I panicked after I uploaded it to BANDCAMP. But, just another weird thing that happened with this album.
Anyways, enough of my blathering. On to the song!
“the promise (please don’t die tonight)”
“i might love you” she said, with tears in her eyes
“so, promise me that you won’t die tonight”
Music Notes:
This song is so basic in both structure and story that I really wanted to keep it that way so nothing would overpower the simple yet powerful message. Everything in this song is super repetitive (that’s the Asperger’s in me) and I love it. I wanted to make it sort of trance-y to really let you live in the world for a bit. It’s a very full, rich sounding song. There’s very few gaps in the frequencies on the instrumentation so that the song will fully envelope your senses. I always try to break my songs down into highs, mids and lows and see what’s filling out those spaces. Normally, that was lead guitar in the highs, snare/toms and rhythm guitars in the mids, kick drum and bass in the lows. It’s so different for this type of music and it was fun to play around with a totally different sound palette. Adding in highs, like the harmonica, make the song feel like it’s opening up into something grander. Taking away bass makes it feel less intense. Removing some mid frequency parts make it feel more naked and like it’s missing something if you’d like to build anticipation. There’s so much more I can do in this realm, which was very overwhelming at first but eventually helped me get to where I wanted to be with these songs.
I tried to make this song fairly driving in the rhythms and production to simulate how it would sound to hear these words while being under the influence. You know, that sort of tunnel-vision, fuzzy-sounding thing that happens after a few too many where sounds sort of overwhelm your senses. And there was probably more to the story and more words that were spoken but the only ones to cut through the din were those two, simple lines. The rest drowned out in your drunkenness, exemplifying the immediacy of those words.
I actually considered making this song just the one verse which was like a minute and a half long and just leaving it at that, but that didn’t feel as impactful somehow. Made it feel more like a vignette than a story. It felt unfinished, which sort of makes sense given the context, but I wasn’t sold. It’s almost as if I was too drunk to understand the words the first time so I needed them repeated so I’d remember them. So, you get second verse same as the first.
Story Notes:
So, after the first song (“i started killing myself years ago…”), this felt like the most logical continuation of the story. The songs weren’t written too far apart, maybe a week or so, and the same characters and thoughts were likely occupying my mind. In the first song, the characters were “too fucked up to care,” but here is the introduction of the female character which would reappear in “what are we supposed to do now that we’ve wasted our youth?” She did care (at least a little), though I still did not. And, by not caring about myself, it meant I didn’t care about her since she was invested enough in me to at least care whether I lived or died. Wow, what a great couple. That’s true romance...
But, these are words I’ve heard before, in various forms, over the years. I feel like such an asshole that someone had to say these words to me. Back then, I thought “why do you care? I don’t even care…” But now I realize how selfish that was. I made them care because I couldn’t muster up the courage to care at least a little bit about myself. I had grown used to others doing that for me. I’m sure part of it was the extra attention. I’ve always loved attention, whether I was playing sports, trying to get the best scores/grades in school and now in performing my music. Luckily, however, I’ve never become dependent on the attention. I love it, but it’s one of the few addictions I’ve never had...
I thought a lot about those words a couple years later when I started writing this record. As I mentioned, this song was written second for the record (would’ve been cool to write them all in order… But, not sure if you noticed the tracks are in alphabetical order on the record, which was actually just a happy accident. I didn’t plan it that way, it just felt the best in this order.) and I wanted to go back in time (Back to the Future Huey Lewis style) to before when “what are we supposed to do now that we’ve wasted our youth?” took place. Did these people have any sort of real connection? Did they truly not care at all like in “i started killing myself years ago…?” Was there a time they weren’t just wasting away their days/months/years together?
And, the answer is: kind of, but not really. Key word in the song (all two lines of it) is “might.” “‘i might love you’ she said, with tears in her eyes.” Turns out she probably didn’t actually care that much. And I probably would have said the same thing had the roles been reversed. Maybe I had at some point and just forgotten, whether by drink, drug or just the passage of time. So, I guess we both cared, at least a little, but, likely, only a little.
Which brings me to another tenet of my songwriting: I try to never write how I “feel” and never try to speculate on how someone else might “feel.” I try to just tell the story. I can’t even pretend to understand how I actually feel most of the time (thank you, Asperger’s) so I wouldn’t try to pretend what someone else is feeling. So, I try to stick to the facts and let other people fill in the blanks. If there are feelings or emotions involved in a song they’re always ones that were explicitly told to me. One of the (Asperger’s?) triggers I have is being blamed for something I didn’t do or told that I meant or felt something I did not (just ask my wife, Brianne...). So, I would hate to characterize someone or assume they were thinking/feeling/etc. something they were not. It would drive me crazy and I try to respect that in others.
After I wrote those two lines, I struggled with what else to go with it. The lines were so powerful and painted such a story that everything I tried to add paled in comparison and didn’t really add much, if anything, to the story. But, surely the song couldn’t be just two lines? This is Bradley Wik we’re talking about. Writer of epics like “Just Like Jon Fickes.” The same man whose words are more important than singing the same vocal melody for each line, who sings over all his bridges to get more story in, and whose favorite songwriting trick (crutch?) for fitting in more lyrics is the double verse/double chorus. Eventually though, I gave up trying and just left the song as is. It said everything I wanted it to. Those simple words were all I needed and all this song did too.
But, again, like I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t sit down thinking all that and then poop out a song. All that was milling around in my subconscious until it came out on paper. It feels like magic when it happens, but that probably also shows you how out of touch with my thoughts/emotions/etc. I am due to the Asperger’s. No, this is me trying to reverse engineer all these tunes and hopefully put them in context on the record.
So, if what you’ve read about above has interested you and you’d like to purchase/donate to the cause, there are a few options:
Go to https://bradleywik.bandcamp.com/. You can stream for free or purchase (hint: you can also donate a little extra past the $4, if you like)
As I know these are trying times and people could use some entertainment, you can also download the record for FREE (CLICK HERE to access the google drive link with mp3’s of the record) with optional donation to: https://www.paypal.me/bradleywik
Thanks for reading and listening. I’ll be back soon with more info on track #3 - “we are not alone”
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