(antiMusic) Welcome to Singled Out! where we ask artists to tell us the inside story of their latest single. Today Lori Friday from Super 400 tells us about "Thorn Tree" from their new album "Sweet Fist". We now turn it over to Lori for the story:Some songs start with a title, or a verse, and then we try to follow that thread to the end. Thorn Tree started with the chorus. Kenny came up with it on his Martin acoustic guitar, strumming and singing, 'I'm farming a thorn tree in the green fields of my own mind', over and over.
I still use my Tascam cassette 4-track when I write. I don't always reuse the cassettes, so my tape collection spans most of the work we've done over the past 14 years. Songs I've started, discarded, forgotten, and tried to develop. In the pile are dozens of tapes of the three of us jamming and writing together. For Thorn Tree, we tried our usual method of heading down to the basement and jamming on a few verse ideas. Nothing fit or felt right, and we were totally stuck on lyrics. The image of a thorn tree, growing in the mind, was Kenny's expression of some trust issues the band had been going through with people we had been working with. We felt frustrated after some doors were slammed in our face, promises were smashed. Every band experiences this, it never gets easier to take.
We were on the road. We had spent a night in Brooklyn, in an apartment with no curtains in the very radiant summertime. I got up early, and sat in the kitchen with kenny's guitar and a little recorder. 'Hey brother man, where did you go? You planted seeds but nothing around here's grown. My heart is aching, my bones are shaking' was the first thing I wrote down, and it felt right as a melody and lyric. Kenny and Joe were both into it. I sang it over a droning E major to minor chord, but we still needed a riff for the part. At least things were coming together, and that made me excited to continue.
The next week, we played our twice-monthly residency at a club in Troy, NY, where we are able to stretch out and jam a little. A heavy, cyclic pattern began, I grabbed my recorder, got about 30 seconds of it, and hoped it sounded like something. Although completely distorted, the idea was there and it fit the verse Brooklyn-born verse melody somehow.
For the bridge, Joe and I got together over the idea of trying to get the truth out of someone. They're up on the roof, looking down on you without the guts to face you. We're calling them out in the song. 'Come down from the roof so I know what you're after.' That part of the song drops down to a whisper, with the chime-like vibes ringing over that beautiful melody. Kenny really sings the snot out of this song.
We've played Thorn Tree a hundred times, and that riff never gets tired, it's always fun, a come-together moment for the band. The song is a good set starter because of that unison riff, we can get our heads in the same space, prepare for what's next. It's like a huddle. We hope you like the sound!
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album - right here!
