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.

Back To You

Once again this song was first created as an instrumental on REASON. Can you say sponsorship? I love the changes. Before we ever started making the album Vitamin D dropped by the 23rd and Madison Suite. I played it for him along with some other things. He picked that one as one he wanted to help me with. Over the course of the six years it took to make the album I was doubtful if he would get to it so Donyea made some versions that I hope to share with you as soon as we figure out how to get audio up here. The album version is like a Vitamin D version on top of Donyea’s version. Done with hindsight maybe a year after. This has quite a story. Mine and Donyea’s version was going to have me sing quiet like I’m whispering in an ear. Vitamin had the idea that it was a Prince-esque song. Hence the drums as well as synth work by Mark Cardenas who played for “The Time” circa “Purple Rain”. (He’s on the cover of “Ice Cream Castles” and is awesome as a player and a person) He’s the only guy we knew that actually had the vintage keyboards to pull this off. Thaddeus Turner did some guitar work also. Who else for Prince-esque? (Is that the name of the next Prince cover band?) So when we finally got all the stuff Vitamin D was hearing on the track and got my scratch vocals on there, it became apparent that I should sing it differently. My scratch version didn’t have as much switching in and out of head voice as the album version. Once again the lovely Choklate coached and cheered me on. Hell I was recording the song and had never sang it the way it was being recorded. Needless to say the session took all night literally. 11pm to 7am. I still might make my quiet version just for my own creative ‘let’s see-ness’.

The lyrics to this tune were written during a very difficult break-up. The music had been lying around for at least a year. I had tried to write to it and I could never get anything satisfactory. I went on a week long by myself soul searching trip and found myself writing some lyrics. The longer I kept writing I began to realize that they fit over this music. I was writing the song not even with the aim to do so. It expressed what I was feeling about the break up or whatever you want to call it *whew* pretty well. It was a great release. Most of what I came up with that night made it onto the song. 25% came after I had chances to edit. I would love to do an acoustic version. Me, D’vonne Lewis, Evan Flory-Barnes and 2-3 back ground singers. Hmmm….where’s the phone?