My roommate, BJ Suter, and I wrote a little rock & roll boogie about getting past those nasty people who talk about you behind your back. It took only about 2 and a half hours to write, but another hour and a half to practice and record. In addition to my song-a-day project, this was also part of BJ's song-a-week project for the year.
Boring Details: We had talked about starting around 4:00, but I took a nap and overslept, so we started at 5:00 and I was a bit groggy. I interviewed BJ a bit about her week and she had led a tour group of kids at the Denver Art Museum with a theme of perception, so I wanted to song to have something to do about perception. The snake got thrown in there by accident.
BJ insisted that we write a rock & roll song, because she's never written one before (she's more of a folk-bluegrass sort). I came up with a simple two-chord rock & roll groove, but BJ probably wrote all the other chord changes. We both went back and forth on the lyrics quite a bit. BJ normally writes her lyrics before ever writing the music, so we were doing it in a way less familiar to her. The melody and phrasing is a little bit different depending on which one of us is singing.
BJ's a little camera shy, so I had to egg her on to get her in the video. We were going to have her sing the bridge, but balancing the sound was hard with one microphone (the built-in iPhone mic); The banjo is too loud to be close to the mic, but her voice is too soft to be far away. We finally decided that I'd sing the whole thing. If we ever do a proper recording, though, you'll get to hear BJ's glorious voice.
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