Today Trevor Carl Ives of Meridene tells us about "Gone, Baby Gone" from their brand new album "Something Like Blood," which was recorded at the home-studio of Bon Iver. Here is the story:"Gone, Baby Gone" was a first for this band. We were working out which songs were going on our new album. I had a song I had written that we were working on with little success. Stuck at 8 songs for a full-length record, we decided to try something new. As a band, we had always had a bit of a formula to how songwriting worked. I would always write the music and the melody, then bring the song to the rest of the band to add their own bits to it. Stuck in a time crunch with 4 days in the studio looming, we attempted to co-write a song together on the fly, on the spot.
Everything started with the initial drumbeat. We put it all on Dave to start the thing off. He started doing this rolling tom thing. I could hear what I wanted guitar-wise in my head pretty quickly, and after making Dave loop his drum part for way to long, was able to bang out the initial guitar riff. At the time, we were between bass players, so Paul was playing bass. As the song progressed, and we came to the chorus, we hit a wall. I could feel where the chorus should go, but was afraid that it might come off a bit to pop-punk. That's when Paul came up with the idea to use the chords that I had come up with, but to have the bass line move the song along. After tweaking the verse drum part a bit, we had the music finished. I had a pretty good idea what I was doing with the melody, but no good ideas for the subject of the song itself.
At the time we were writing the song, I had started an obsession with the actress Vivian Leigh. Which lead me to watch all 4 hours of Gone with the Wind. It was an amazing movie, almost perfect (almost because it tries to get you to sympathize with the south during the civil war) . After procrastinating on writing the words for far to long, on our last day in the studio, I went up into one of the bedrooms in the studio and started to write. I had a loose theme for the album, dealing with the current economic turmoil we were all going through. So I decided to make Gone, Baby Gone about the housing crisis, run through a filter of Gone with the Wind (again, without the sympathy for the south in the civil war). The lyrics came quickly, and within 20 minutes we were recording the vocals on the song.
So this one was a first for us. The first time we co-wrote a song, in a day, right before we went into the studio. And of course it ends up the single. Things always seem to work out like that. I titled the song "Gone, Baby Gone" because I felt that if there was a modernization of Gone with the Wind, that's what they would title it. I guess this song was a big of a lightning strike. Everything came together so quickly, with a great result. And although we have started to co-write more songs together, the process has never worked as seamlessly as it did that day. I guess sometimes you get lucky, and things work out for the best.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album and grab their current tour dates - right here!
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