I first heard this song sometime this year after searching Phil Leadbetter who was wailing dobro on another song I was researching covers. Phil and Steve Gulley formed the band Grasstowne in 2007, and this was one of their songs on their CD, but other than that I can't find anything else about it! It turns out that this could be the most well crafted relatively new song that I've heard, so I wouldn't be surprised if its a remake of an old old folk song maybe from the British Isles since it talks about a son going off to join the navy in Aberdeen [Scotland].
This one was tough because I've only known it for a little while and didn't even know all the lyrics - memorizing lyrics is super annoying! The chords are more interesting than most, and the strumming pattern is consistent throughout. The range of the vocals is challenging and gets a little high - and Steve throws in a high A for fun which I also try to do too... Thanks to all the time I spent on the last song Landslide, recording the chords and vocals took a relatively short amount of time - maybe because I was confident I could eventually internalize the words, notes, and strumming patterns. However the accompanying guitar solo and fills took a really long time, because I'd never done it before - it was tough remembering what licks go where in order to mirror Phil as closely as possible but ultimately my timing and memory greatly improved when compared to when I first started rehearsing it. I've heard that the way to become better at soloing on guitar is to learn "licks" and build a sort of vocabulary and then it becomes a game of linking them together seamlessly and creating phrases in real time without overusing certain things while being guided by a sense of direction. Anyway, I really like Phil's dobro playing and after figuring out maybe 70% of his accompanying part its really freaking awesome (and humbling) that he can just whip out his style in the live performance from which I copied him. Bonus fun fact - in April 2011, Phil was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and underwent 15 months of very intense chemotherapy. In late August 2012, Phil entered a stem cell program and as of Dec. 20 2012 was deemed cancer free. He returned to performing in February 2013
Whats Hard
- Learning a guitar solo
- Learning lyrics
- Over dubbing an existing recording
- Wide ranging melody
- Resisting the urge to just cut and paste flubs that don't fit precisely - I wanted both tracks to be live straight thru
Whats new
- Learned to "eliminate noise" thru Audacity and then export modified tracks to shitty GarageBand
- Accompanying an existing track really needs spot on timing, but I guess I already knew that..
- Mixing 5 tracks to take advantage of the panoramic space and also to avoid overlapping since both tracks include the same guitar notes
Ishida