Day 18: You're Gone (with Teresa Storch)

Lyrics:
I've been drivin' in the freezin' rain
Don't know if I'm gonna see you again
Came from Santa Fe up to Raton
Found you're gone

Met you backstage at the Orpheum
Your shining sequins and your bullet bun
We danced the Tango and the Pas Dedeux
And now you're gone

Just last night you were in my arms
I held you tight, now you're gone

Been a week now since I've seen your face
Left me a note on the fireplace
One pirouette and a quick jete
And now you're gone

I was your prince and you were my swan
But the spell was week and now you're gone

I've been driving in the freezin' rain
Don't know if I'm gonna see you again

Details: This turned out to be an unusual co-write. Teresa Storch is a fantastic singer-songwriter whose been on the scene for a while now, and she got a last minute gig at the Laughing Goat in Boulder. Unfortunately, this meant that our co-write would be limited to about 2 hours (I've been shooting for 3 hours for co-writes); but on the other side, Teresa invited me to join her at the show.

Anyway, we sat down and I interviewed her about how she usually writes, and she tends to like jazzy/bluesy material. So we set out to work out something in that vein-- I got to learn some new chords in the process. It started out as a fairly straight-forward  story about a guy driving through the freezing rain to try and get his baby back, but it evolved quite a bit from there.

Teresa's nephew was playing tennis in the Australian Open, and we got to talking about sports. Teresa isn't a big sports person, but she used to do ballet, and that got us inspired. At one point we had a truck driver chasing after this dancer he had an affair with after she got kidnapped by the Russian mafia and forced to join the Bolshoi Ballet. As you might imagine, this was a complicated story that we were having a hard time cracking in the limited time we had, so we were forced to go with a simpler story about two dancers who had a one night stand (or something).

It took about 2 hours to write and we took only about 10 minutes to record the song, then we rushed off to the show. Teresa and her Fiancee, Peter, are an amazing performance team! It was a wild night, but a really good one.