Healing Hands Hold Up

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Album, Music, Spiro

Looking forward to finally mastering this album. There’ll be unforeseen tweaks to be made, of course, but I’ve narrowed much of the to-do list for this thing down to finishing the song “Healing Hands.” I think I’ve agonized over this tune more than any other. I wrote parts of it over the course of about four years, until I finally settled on a version with the help of my friend, Mark Spiro, who added some lyrics and all of the music for the verses. Brilliant decisions on those chord changes, Mark! If you dig some music theory, those changes in the verse are sure to impress. At least, I think they’re really clever. I wanted to include Spiro in this song’s creation because he had recently recovered Hodgkin’s Disease (sp?), (and aside form being a prolific and spectacular songwriter himself), therefore, getting his perspective on my half-finished song was a great opportunity and a no-brainer.

I got the idea from a furniture commercial in Eugene, OR, which had this nice build up (similar chords to the pre-chorus of Healing Hands) but didn’t deliver the next chord and subsequent melody I was hearing in my head. I think I was studying Tchaikowsky’s Romeo and Juliet at the time. Not kidding. So, instead of the chords G – A – G – A  into D Major (like the furniture commercial), I wrote Healing Hands G – A – G – A into B Major Suspended 4th. It was a less-obvious choice and it sounds bigger. I thought the listener would be pleasantly surprised.

We recorded it a few years ago at Spiro’s studio in Carlsbad, CA, but I never felt like the music was filled out properly. We probably could’ve used some live drums back then. This newer version, for the album Automaticity, utilizes more modern sounds and I’m pretty happy with the instrumentation, but I’m totally hung up on the vocal takes. It’s the only tune that really comes off as a ballad, but the sound profile we used for it was meant to match that of the other songs.

As soon as “Healing Hands” is sorted out, we’ll get this thing mastered, printed and available on our website.