The sun’s finally out in Paris, which means it’s time to share a melody.
I’ve been writing this song “The Train” for about 10 months now—“writing” (the continuous present) because even if the lyrics and the vocal melody are almost there, each time I play this tune, a new aspect of the melody reveals itself to me, especially when I play it instrumentally.
I don’t really believe in a song ever being finished, only more and more lived in.
After many years recording with my former band Slim and The Beast, I’ve spent the past 1.5 years distancing myself from this idea that a song is meant to be played, recorded, and ultimately “finished.” I’m working on an album of piano and vocals, but until I play each of the 7 songs hundreds of times, I know they won’t be anywhere close to something resembling “finished.”
For me, the process of songwriting is continuous, because from a very literal perspective, every time we play a song, we play it differently.
Sometimes my throat is dry. Sometime’s I’m sick. Sometimes a finger gets stuck trying to reach for an octave, and sometimes a chord is off, or I fumble with the notes, or I played a note I didn’t think would work but it did … I never play a song exactly the same, ever, which is why I like to share this ongoing process with my paying subscribers, whether it be songs-in-progress recorded in my favorite cocktail bar in Paris or improvisational pieces that come to me (and float away once I’ve played them) as if in a dream.
In January, I shared a version of “The Train”
for paying subscribers (which included vocals), but this version is particularly special to me because it’s an instrumental version recorded with a friend.
Augusto Britto is a Brazilian novelist / musician who I met in the same Parisian dive bar where I met my wife. My twin brother, the illustrator / singer songwriter
, had seen Augusto play in Barcelona and learned that Augusto was pursuing a master’s degree in literature in Paris.The rest was history. Last year, while I was finishing The Requisitions, me and Augusto would often sit side by side at the café and work on our respective novels, inevitably ending the day with a glass of Ricard and a literary conversation.
Et voila quoi. Free subscribers can listen to the first 2 minutes of the song, which we recorded in me and the photographer
’s Parisian apartment (she also happens to be my wife).A future version of this song will surely include my vocals (and maybe some layered harmonies), but for this week, it’s all about the instruments—me on the piano (a Nord Electro 6D for my music heads out there) and Augusto on the bandolin, whose melody consistently makes me want to sigh gratefully and all-but burst out into tears with melancholic joy, dreaming of sunshine and rolling hills that exist elsewhere—perhaps in Augusto’s homeland of Brazil, a place I’ve never been, or perhaps in Italy, which in my memory always looks like this:
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to if not, Paris to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
