The Smoke

The Smoke
Written and Recorded 2012

I remember writing this song very vividly. I was in the early stages of working at Melk and had a few late shifts every week. One morning I woke up and felt like garbage/super groggy, but not really sick. So I stayed awake in bed for an extra hour or so. It took a while, but I got my butt out of bed and grabbed my guitar...then went back to the bed. I started noodling around and quickly came up with the opening chord progression. My voice all gravely and low, I began humming along a melody. The chord progression continued to develop and I started forming words. It's a pretty long chord progression/verse and I liked the way it sounded so much that I decided it didn't need a chorus or any other parts, just repeating the same thing over and over again, but growing with intensity. I recorded a quick demo and went off to work.

• I'm not totally sure where the lyrics come from or what "the smoke" actually refers too. I suppose it's a song about feeling guilty about letting things happen. It's a slow realization that feels worse and worse.
• When the harmonies clicked, this song sounded really great. But overall this was a hard song to pull together as a band. Of the North tried performing this one many times in varied instrumentation, but I don't think the song ever felt totally right.
• The tempo change was a huge problem, especially on the demo. The problem I ran into when I put down the acoustic guitar track is that I'm finger picking in the first half, then would switch to a real pick on the tempo change. I just never got it right (read: didn't practice) and decided to move on...a costly mistake.
• I still think I could come back to this one some day and freshen it up. I like a lot of things about it, but there are a lot of things that need fixing and adjustment.