For the March show with The Bushwick Book Club Seattle, we wrote music inspired by “The Watchmen”. It was a fantastic book, and I had an idea for a song about a superhero who is getting too old to fight. The music was mostly there, but the lyrics were giving me trouble, and I felt like I needed another perspective on it. So, I got in touch with Tai Shan, and asked her if she was interested in working together on this song. She agreed, and we spent some time in the studio together writing.
Tai brought so many ideas to the table, it was unbelievable. Her approach to songwriting is much different than mine, and I must say that I learned a thing or two working with her. We approached the subject of the song from a lot of different directions, and were able to bounce ideas off of each other fairly quickly. In the end, the song became much more than it ever could have been had I gone at it alone.
When recording it, I wanted to make it a huge rock song, with an ending that had tons of electric guitar and heavy drums. That’s what I recorded, and it just never gelled (or, as my wife said, “You took a pretty song and bunked it up with all that rock stuff”. So, I went back to how the song was originally written (just acoustic guitar and vocals), and then added some lighter elements to enhance the harmony and emotion. Rhodes and piano, and a string quartet were added in, along with a few extra vocal layers. The end result is a nice hybrid of the songwriter sound and the Broadway musical sound that I love. While I will release the rock version at some point, I think the more acoustic arrangement fits the song much better.
[audio:http://markblasco.com/media/evilmachine/tests/HandsOfTime20120714B.mp3|titles=Hands of Time Cover|artists=Mark Blasco & Tai Shan]