Story Behind the Song: Trouble

Trouble

 This song is sort of a mystery to me, because I don’t remember any one thing about writing it.  I know at some point, someone said to me, in a very overtly flirtatious way, “I’m in trouble with you, aren’t I?”  To which, I replied in an equally flirtatious way, “You probably are.”  The line of “I’m in trouble with you,” always stuck in my head, but I didn’t write this song about that moment or that man.

Along the same time I wrote Junk Town, I started a practice where I would write a few lines that rhymed every day, with the sole hope that in doing so, I’d get in the habit of being creative and more songs would result from it.  See, as a kid, I learned that discipline and practice brings about more skill and success, especially with regards to piano.  Not everybody knows this, but I studied French Horn in college (mostly as a way to get out of having to take piano lessons; turns out I dislike being told how or what I should play, just ask my mother).  I actually really loved going into the practice room and playing scales for half an hour; something about the repetition and the routine was very satisfying to me.  On piano, I actually loved the process of playing a passage, a measure or two, over and over until it was perfect.  I like the process of practicing, as long as I like what I’m practicing.  So I decided to practice songwriting.

 

 

So I wrote a little bit of “Trouble,” maybe the opening ideas first?  I can’t remember, and I didn’t date my songbook.  I did a few lines at a time, and kind of chipped away at it.  Another facet to my practice was to mimic songwriting styles and vocal styles.  For example, I’d listen to a song by Jill Barber (please check her out if you haven’t– she’s amazing!) and start to dissect each element of the song, from the lyrics to the harmonies to the instrumentation, feel, and how effective those individual elements were in conveying what I thought was the message of the song.  I was also listening to a lot of Norah Jones, and I really appreciated how she could be sultry and sexy, but could also be down to earth and elegant at the same time.  Once I would dissect an entire song, I would try to build a new one that was like it, but different enough to be mine. This is, essentially, how “Trouble” came about.  I was trying to mimic Jill Barber and Norah Jones, and playing with the sultrier sides of my voice and singing style, to see what kinds of boundaries existed for me on that front.  In my mind, I was writing a “Hypothetical Seduction Song,” and I think I achieved that.

I’m proud of the lyrics– they’re solid and deliver the message that this type of song is built to deliver– but the song really comes to life as a result of the production and music behind it.  Scott “Scooter” Smith of Scooter’s Place Recording Studio in Durango, once again, knocked it out of the park on this one.  The demo I brought to him was pretty lame.  It was faster, had all of these busy piano riffs, and felt devoid of actual emotion (maybe because it was a fabricated storyline and I couldn’t connect to it… dunno).  On the first day of recording, Scott had the whole band (Cyle Talley on drums, James Macklin on guitar, and Evan Suiter on bass, and yours truly on piano and vocals) in the control room, listening to other examples of songs he wanted to use as inspiration for us.  He said he wanted it to feel heavy and arduous, but also mysterious and foggy.  It took us a little bit to get the right feel, but once we did, it was obviously the right decision.  James came back in later and added multiple guitar parts, and I added more keyboard sounds.  My favorite moment is towards the end, Scott instructed me to loosen up and play around a little with the rhythm on the keyboard.  The end result reminds me of some of the mellower Ray Charles stuff, thanks to Scott’s expert direction.

Recording the vocals, however, took a little more persuasion than I could procure on my own.  It’s a really tough thing for me to sing lyrics– I’m always hyper-critical of my own voice, I don’t particularly like the way it sounds through headphones, and I’m just uncomfortable singing without playing an instrument.  Here’s a photo of what I roughly look like during a recording session:  No piano, no buffer– just me on the microphone with headphones on.

 

 

In the studio, I had, ahem, a few glasses of wine.  I had to get into character for this song, since it wasn’t about an entire experience I could piece together as a coherent story.  Me recording this is no different to me than somebody playing a part on a stage– I wrote the lines, I sang the lines, and I played the music, but that doesn’t mean it’s my story.  I’m not denying there are parts of the story that I’ve lived and breathed (hello, I’m 33 years old and unmarried, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t fallen into infatuation or been on both sides of this hypothetical song), but it isn’t about anything or anyone in particular, which is the toughest part for me to explain to my current and past loves who are just really curious about who this particular song is about.  I don’t have a good answer.  There’s another song on this album like that, but with a slightly different origin story.

 

At the end of it all, I hope this is a fun diversion from some of the heavier-hitting songs on this album.  There’s some emotional vomit coming your way in future blog posts, so I hope you take these light-hearted ones as they are, and brace yourself for the meat of it all.  I recently hired a marketing guy to help me with my sales-pitch delivery and try to book more gigs.  His advice to me when he convinced me to do this blog was to be as real as I could be, and as raw as I could be, as often as I could be.  When I winced and said, “But what about the people that were with me when these songs grew legs and learned to walk????” he advised me to start with the “easy” ones and see what happened.  I’m doing what he advised, and I’m not entirely afraid of opening up to you about the other songs to follow, it’s just that there are bigger stories to tell that aren’t as easily digestible as these first few.  I’ll just tell you right now that I’ll need a little more than liquid courage to tell you the whole story of “Brand New Car” and “Happy Birthday,” the latter of which I’ll be doing next week.  I’ll save “Brand New Car” for the end, most likely.

 

Next week, the story about the Happy Birthday song that isn’t about the Happy Birthday song you think of when you think of Happy Birthday!

 

-Lacey

 

p.s. You can hear “Trouble” on all major streaming platforms, including youtube (check it out below), but if you want to own your own copy with nine other original songs, click here.