This series of blogs (1-14) chronicle my thoughts, whims and history of every song on my newest album “Can’t Get Enough” which took six years to make. I was thrilled to work closely with musical geniuses to make this album a reality. Super producer/engineer/mix artist Vitamin D masterfully led us and was in charge of the overall sonic quality, production and mixing of the album. Music superman and multi-instrumentalist Donyea Goodman’s production skills are featured on over half the tracks on the album. Jake One and Malay contributed as well.
Hold On To You – Donyea’s
I did the first version of this on REASON. Real simple, just keys, bass and drums. I think in trio a lot. The rest of the details come later or are the job of a producer. Funny he did the album version on REASON as well. Donyea Goodman has an uncanny knack for the little details instrumentally and arrangement wise. That’s why he is my go to guy for making my songs into productions. He was trying to stay true to what I gave him and fill in a gang of blanks I left. His version is not a radical departure from what I gave him. It is a radical building on what I gave him. He never ceases to amaze. There is an instrumental break in both versions on the album. I think we meant for there to be a piano solo in each or one of them. We opted for adding more vocals for sake of moving into the mix phase faster given we had a mix date booked and no way to get a hold of a great recording opportunity for a real piano in 24hrs. Lyrically this is one of my most favorite songs to date. The music came first years ago. I wonder if I have my notes to this one but I know the “Without you my heart would be broken so I’ll Hold On To You” was the break that got the whole rest of the song written. I remember it was a period when some of my best writing was happening between 2pm and 4pm. It was a short period of time but I definitely noticed. The idea for “Can’t Get Enough” got finalized in that same period. Hmm. Weird how things work sometime. There are no other songs I’ve ever written that I can pinpoint to a time of day.
It was Vitamin D’s idea to record vocals in the break and I believe Choklate edited the vocals. FUN!! This song is about how hard it is to stay together. People go through stuff and don’t have words, are afraid to talk it out or are reluctant to face the truth. Upon hindsight when I wrote this song it was me not wanting to face the truth regarding the relationship I was in. Since then this song has come to mean more than what I originally was writing about. I like that about my songs. (even art in general) What it means to you changes over time and over your changing perceptions about your life and life in general. Here is the version of “Hold On To You” that I gave Donyea. I struggled with titling the song “Broken”. Some were disappointed that I went with “Hold On To You”. It was just repeated too much in the song for me not to call it that. The underlying truth though may have lent itself to having the song being called “Broken”. Lyrics like that only come with the perception that something is broken that you would like to fix. Ah fixing things….
Hold On To You
