"Roamer" ("I've Been Thinking..." THOUGHT PROCESS Series 7/12)

“I've Been Thinking...” behind the songs “THOUGHT PROCESS SERIES”
My latest full length album, “I'veBeen Thinking...” released on the Savannah based label DopeSandwich Records and Tapes May 3rd is a collection of concepts and narratives that I've written over the last few years featuring instrumental contributions from coast to coast and outside of the country as well. Looking over the collection I'd opine that it is some of my finest work to date (one would hope). What have you been thinking? Over 12 days I'll be releasing a behind-the-music sort of blurb for each track! If there are any questions or comments regarding the songs please submit them and I'll do my best to answer and fulfill them! I hope this series is of interest and that the music does something for you!

     The 7th track of the album (coincidentally one of my favorite numbers) is a sort of biography/character sketch (no pun intended) and also quite obviously an anthem for graffiti as an art form and its purveyors in general.  This is also the final Tony Mahoney instrumental on the record as well!  Roamer is one of the people in my life whom I can point to as an entirely sincere personality as well as an enigma and one of the finest examples of art saving a person from the dark depths of themselves and the dangerous choices they might be prone to making to escape that, namely addiction.

Roamer is one of a handful of songs that it took me a few years to write.  I gathered fragments of it while I had it weighing heavily on the back-burner of my mind and the guilt of my conscious.  It's said that you can't rush art, and as impatient and excited as I often am, I try my best to abide by that for the sake of the work.       For both my affinity for graffiti and this person I felt the desire to write this song.  It was initially going to be on a non-fiction narrative project I've been amassing songs for called "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" but I finished this song rather abruptly one day and decided that it belonged on this project.  I remember wanting to address this type of person (solitary, depressed, artistic, actively passionate about just their skill set and nothing else) as well as the impact such an isolating both meditative and get gritty and raw, adrenaline rush of an art form graffiti can be.  Many of the lyrics were compiled of lines/verses I had texted this person and collected, then one day I asked Roamer (with no knowledge of there being a song in the works) which of a few instrumentals he liked best or felt best represented a trip out at night, and he chose this beat, the Tony Mahoney instrumental "Sandpaper" and we mutually decided this would be the perfect mood, which set me into arranging the lyrics and finishing writing the song.  Taking the acronym approach in the chorus was one I was iffy about and then wasn't sure about how to execute and decided to go mostly an alliterative route.  More than usual, the challenge to write this song well was to balance the personal depiction with making the description and sentiments an apt tribute/representation of the art form.
     I bought my self a refurbished Zoom H2n from Sweetwater (highly recommended piece of equipment and gear site) for Christmas a year or so ago and have been doing a lot more field recording.  Aside from being a fun hobby, it adds a lot of genuine atmosphere and setting to songs and poetry, especially as I'm on the cusp of releasing a lot of new narrative material.  The spray cans, the night sounds, the train that you hear throughout the song were all captured on night strolls with the aforementioned recorder.  Due to the personal significance of this song and how it took so long to come to fruition, at times never expecting it would come out, the various experiments in new rhythm patterns and the apt feeling of what I was going for, this remains one of my favorite songs I've ever done.

I hope you all find, as I have and so many others something creative or artful or really just anything cathartic at all that takes you out of your discomfort zone and is remedying to you.  Pagliacci's tale reminds us that the keys are within us, and perhaps our bodies are the mid-wife-oracle to the muses, and the fulfillment of creating the pieces that are within us will help to quell our inner tempestuousness. 
Stay tuned for tomorrow's account of the song "Rush Hour '98" 

Bonus Blurb:  "Between The Lines" (Links to the references)
I often weave  many references to books I read, people I've learned about or films I've watched into my lyrics.  In addition to this showing the influences of mine and being a fun way to cleverly carve new meanings into the titles and authors and performers whose work I've enjoyed, it is mostly an attempt to expose those who listen to my music to media that I've been inspired by in hopes that you may pursue them and will get something out the art that I've taken in. Here are links to a few people/things I reference in this song.  Enjoy!!






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