The Three of Spades is a bit more ambitious than the previous two songs. This one kept me in the space until four in the morning. A move that I regretted for the rest of the week since it was a Monday night. I don’t think I fully recovered until the weekend. Regardless of my complaining, I think I came up with something cool, if not just unusual. I have been reading Team of Rivals, a book about A. Lincoln, and it’s influenced the lyrics of this song. It’s a bit about a man in that era that has to travel away from home to serve in government. The travel is slow and hard and he has to stay for several months away from his wife and family. The lyrics are contents of letters home to his wife.
What makes it a bit ambitious is the number of tracks on the song. Aside from all the percussion and the guitars and bass, I recorded eight vocal tracks. Five of them are in unison for the main part and the other three are all in unison for the harmony part. (There are some variances as far as unison is concerned: the “oohs” are not all in unison.) For one track of the percussion I banged on an electric fan with a drumstick; see if you can hear that.
It’s got an African sort of feel too it, particuarly the guitars. I was previously playing in a band called Intermissions where our inital goal was to make our take on African-styled music so I started trying out some African-ish sounds on guitar back then. Note to purists: I am not trying anything traditional here, I’m just doing my take on things.
I hope you enjoy it.
I was just about to finish reading a book when I wrote this song. I won’t say what book it was but I know that, for those who have read it, it will be pretty obvious. I did this at the practice space, which I’ll call “the space” from now on with electric guitar. I’m not sure if the author, or other readers, would agree fully with all the sentiments expressed here but I think it’s pretty close to the general idea.