The following story was part of the Day in Rock Report for 5/15/08 - (antiMusic) 10 Years' sophomore album, Division, hits stores this week. We spoke with drummer Brian Vodinh to get the lowdown on his favorite tracks from the album. Here he is with today's song: Proud of You: This is probably the most emotionally heavy song on the whole album. Jesse and I were in Los Angeles for a writing session when this song came about. Jesse had gone out for the evening with his late cousin Brad. I stayed back and decided to work on a song that I had been kicking around a little bit but never really took the time to finish.
Originally, this song was just going to be an instrumental, classical type song. After working on it for a while and started to hum a melody over a certain guitar riff and that part ended up becoming the chorus of this song. To make a long story short, Jesse got back from his night out with his cousin around 3 in the morning and I was still up working on this song. I could tell Jesse was a little upset and he quickly mentioned that he was upset over seeing his cousin Brad in pretty poor condition. Brad had a history of substance abuse and was really fighting an uphill battle. Something that night just clicked. The dark mood of the music combined with Jesse's somber mood after his night out with his cousin was really what made this song come to life.
The lyrics in this song were written almost from the stand-point that Brad was already gone. Lines like "don't be afraid when your fight is through, I just want you to know that I'm proud of you" seems like a possible sub-conscience foreshadowing of what Jesse thought could be inevitable. Preview the album, learn more about the band, grab tour dates and more right here