Leave Slowly

Leave Slowly (Both Versions)
Written, Recorded, and Arranged in 2011

These songs are an awesome example of how much my music changed within an extremely short period of time. The first "Leave Slowly" you hear is a song I wrote for a band that I wanted to start with my good friend Tim. Though Kristen and I were still in Baraboo, we knew we were headed down to the good land soon. Originally, the band was just a duo of bass and keyboards. But I quickly realized that my keyboard skills were nowhere close to where they needed to be and that I wanted more to work with in terms of a sound palette. So I added some guitar parts, recruited my old neighbor Kevin, and the Miss Misery Trio was born. The name comes from one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs, who I consider a big inspiration. There really is a mishmash of influences going on at this time.

Once we moved back to Milwaukee, Miss Misery Trio practices started up pretty quick. This was another band situation where I essentially wanted people to come with their parts memorized. There was not a lot of room for collaboration and I ran the group pretty poorly. Hindsight is 20/20. So we all did our best to replicate the recordings, but it just didn't come together. I also had problems playing parts I had written. So this first version was never played live.

After we all realized that the demos I made for Miss Misery Trio just weren't going to work, songs started to change and develop into what became Of the North. We took more of a folk approach, adjusted the instrumentation, and I went to work making new demos. This second version of "Leave Slowly" is a simple demo I made in Garageband to fit our "new direction."

• Bass was the first fretted instrument that I learned and am probably the most proficient at. After I saw the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, I was greatly inspired to bust my bass out. Throughout the movie, there are a bunch of songs where the bass is heavily distorted and somewhat of a lead instrument. I tried to emulate that a bit with these demos.
• Another huge influence throughout my life is Jack White. At this time, I remember reading some articles on how he was recording on old analog recorders as opposed to digital. A big point was that artists are getting lazy and letting ProTools fix their mistakes. He talked a lot about there being more energy in the performance because you only get one take at it, more pressure and accountability. Without access to those machines, I did my best to replicate that spirit and use only single takes. If I messed up, I did the whole thing over.
• Lyrically, this song has no real base. These are almost random sentences strung together to make a verse. And I have absolutely no idea if there is any real meaning behind the chorus. What does it mean to leave slowly? I have no clue. I think I just liked the sound of it.
• Fun fact: The line involving "the seventh seal" is a nod to a song by an amazing singer named Scott Walker (not to be confused with the political Scott Walker.) His work is bizarre and fantastic.
• Like my earlier work, the structure of the first version of the song is muddled with random interludes and variations. I believe it to be a lack of songwriting confidence, wanting to make the song as aurally interesting as possible.
• The second version is one of my first attempts at the modern folk genre. I got rid of a lot of the extra parts of the Miss Misery Trio version and stripped it down. 
• It definitely has a different energy about it. Though it was always hard to really get into the song because it has next to no meaning. About this time, I started to realize that I needed to focus a bit more on my lyrics. I knew I needed to be able to walk into the mindset of a song, and for one like this, it just didn't happen.