NASHVILLE |MARK LANE
“GOLDEN STATE OF MIND”
TRACK-BY-TRACK
“Girl With The Clouds”
I initially sketched out this song on a four-track. Ironically enough, it’s the first song on the album and the first song I recorded in my studio when it was finished being built–I think it’s a pretty magical song. I was really quite happy with the lyrics in the sense that they really just create an impression or a mood. It seemed like a good launching pad–a good starting point for the album. It feels like you’re in store for something a little different now. I felt it would be an appropriate intro for the album, rather than your typical, “Here’s the beat!” I’m very much into the subtleties of things, and this song definitely has a sense of subtlety to it. I thought it would make for a more provocative introduction, than starting things off with some kind of assault of the senses.
“Drivin’ Braille”
A lot of times, I’ll get ideas for songs and sometimes it comes just in the form of a title–this one being a perfect example. The title actually came from a friend I had in school. I remember this one time, he had too much beer and got in the car and drove home. The next time I saw him I said, “Hey man, were you okay getting home last night?” He said, “Yeah, I was OK, I just followed the bumps on the road and I drove Braille.” At that point, I’d never heard that expression before, but it always stuck with me and I thought it was a perfect metaphor for life. Here I am doing this thing, there is no guarantee, there is no cash cow at the end of the rainbow, or whatever. It’s all a state of believing. When I wrote the music, I didn’t know what the song was going to be called yet. So there I was (humming) and when I started writing lyrics, I realized that it was really so much about where I was at that point in my life. It was, “Here I am on this journey, I don’t know where the fuck I’m going, but I have faith I’m going to get there.”
“The One You Waited For”
This was the first song recorded for the album and the track itself has a very light, kind of airy, surreal type of ambience. When examining the lyrics, I suppose one could speculate that it was written from a woman’s point of view, or that the narrator could be a woman because it does deal with an aspect of femininity. I don’t know if that was or wasn’t what I was going for in my mind… But, I guess the song is basically about overcoming dysfunctionality. So many times people say, “Oh I want something,” but it’s right in front of their face the whole time and they don’t even see it. And there’s a specific line in the song about that. It’s “You can sleep much easier if you pick yourself up off the floor/he could be here/he could be there/it’s the one you waited for.” It’s kind of another lyric that I didn’t necessarily write down and say, “This is literally what I mean,” it was more of an impression. I was more pondering or assimilating the feeling of, “Here it is! This is what you’ve been looking for. But, really, it’s been there all the time. And now that you finally recognize it, what will you do?” The last verse is kind of like “you should probably run, you know… I don’t know if you can really handle it.”
“The Chance”
It’s hard for me to say I have a favorite song on the record, but I just love this one. The basic idea behind “The Chance” is almost like when you say to somebody, “You shouldn’t do this,” but they have to do it anyway, against better judgement. You know, “You shouldn’t pursue this particular thing because it’s not lucrative, it’s not good for your health, it’s not good for your state of mind, whatever the case…” But you do it anyway, and that’s the chance you have to take, and you just have ONE chance to do it. It’s the cause and effect of human life. It’s about everything that we do on this planet. I mean, it’s like if you take it in the most extreme philosophical direction: One could say that for all the progress that we have made in our time spent on this earth–with such technological advancements as jet airliners, cable modems, and cell phones, who’s to say that we wouldn’t just be better off living in a cave somewhere? Is all of this really “progress”? Who knows??? I think that the chord changes and the melody in this song are really interesting. I’m also particularly proud of the lyrics, because I think they’re kind of unconventional in the way that they’re phrased, and also in the way that certain lines tie in to one another. Instrumentally, it’s probably the simplest arrangement on the album–it’s just guitar, bass, drums, and piano. And I love the straightforwardness of it; it just rocks!
“Name In Lights”
“Name In Lights” is more or less kind of a light-hearted song. I think that musically it’s really interesting, in that it’s kind of like a folk song. I also really like the way that it was recorded. This is one of the songs that I did with Jason (Falkner), and we kind of took this in a whole other organic direction, which is all based around what I’m playing on the acoustic guitar. I came up with this really simple drum pattern. Jason came up with the Wurlitzer part that sounds like something out of a Charlie Brown cartoon. And the lyrics are, obviously, really playful. It’s really just part of that group of songs on the album that have that theme of “Why am I doing this…? So I can be recognized for it???” The song is basically a mockery of itself. I mean, in the last verse, the narrator is, very clearly, kind of making fun of himself. It’s very cynical, but it’s kind of taking the piss out of the whole stardom dream. It’s kind of saying, “This is ridiculous.”
“Fifty Years Too Late”
“Fifty Years Too Late” is definitely another song with lyrically cynical undertones. I think these three songs (“Name In Lights,” “Fifty Years Too Late,” “Taste For Champagne”) are tied together and all kind of share a similar theme. Musically, I really like this song. It turned into this kind of weird, dark cabaret, swing thing. But the guitar lines that I played on it, or the guitar sounds that I adopted, were almost twangy and rockabilly sounding. And then, to have D.J. (Bonebrake) come in and play vibes on it–and my friend, Chris (Joyner) add the accordion, it really elevated the sonic ambience of this track. Although lyrically, there is a little bit of cynicism; it’s like saying, “Well, if I would have been doing this back when it mattered, then maybe everyone would take notice…maybe the world would be a better place.” This song is really–the more that I think about it–a lament to the lack of authenticity in the modern-age society. It’s bemoaning the fact that everything is so disposable now, so plastic, and so artificial. “Is anything real? Is there anything out there that is worth anything? Does anything have any real value???” We live in a society where the goals have just changed entirely. The whole thing is so much more built on what’s happening NOW, this very second. Things can be so easily forgotten fifteen minutes later, and that’s really what this song is lamenting. And more or less, that’s particularly what this song is getting at. I don’t necessarily think its sentiment is completely “anti” or negative… But for all of the light moments on this album, this one is a little bit of darkness in contrast.
“Taste For Champagne”
When I sequenced this album, I felt like “Taste For Champagne” was the kind of song that you could put at the front or at the end. But when I actually thought more about it, the most logical place for it was right in the middle. Lyrically speaking, it is the most literal song on the album. In “Taste For Champagne” the narrator of this song is saying, “Well, here I am living in this place and I have an appreciation for all of the finer things in life, but I can’t seem to figure out how to afford any of them.” And at the end of the song, I think you’re left with the optimism that the narrator will find the means to persevere.
“Attention Span”
After writing a couple different drafts of this lyric, it wound up being kind of an introverted examination of the narrator and all of his associates. This is a song that sort of reprises what I was describing in “Fifty Years…” We’re in this society where everything is so one-dimensional, and so “right now.” In this lyric, the narrator is kind of making fun of himself in a sense. All those things he used to spend SO much time concerning himself with don’t seem to matter now. His attention span is getting shorter. There’s a sense of irony in it. It’s like a double-edged sword: the fact that he is so riddled by “ADD.” It’s as if he’s saying, “Hey, my ability to forget is actually working to my advantage!” As in the chorus: “I remember all the good times/I remember what you meant to me/I remember, most of all, when I was trying to forget all about how careless I can be…” It’s like–there he was, trying to forget what a jackass he was when he messed everything up–and now he’s finally learned how to forget, which for him is really quite a blessing, because he doesn’t have to keep reliving his mistakes anymore. Although it may seem like a fairly light-hearted song, it still has a deeper substance to it. And I particularly like the recording. I love the sound of the piano, the electric guitar, and the horns blending together… I was kind of going for the “Lady Madonna,” “Gotta Get You Into My Life” kind of vibe.
“Lorelei”
“Lorelei” is what most people refer to as a ballad. Though, NOT a power ballad, for sure! I think it’s about as tender of a song as I will ever write. I’m not a big fan of melancholy and melodrama, but this is certainly about love and the irreconcilable sense of yearning that it can bring about. It’s about the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity that are brought about by love. There are so many conflicting emotions of not knowing whether to trust in that feeling and if trusting in that feeling is “true love”; it is, quite possibly, the most terrifying thing on this earth.
“Enough To Go Around”
This is another song that I recorded with Jason. And for me, sonically, just the sound of this song is one of the highlights on the record. I think it’s a pure sensory, auditory experience. The lyric is pretty literal in that it’s saying that there is not enough to go around, like it’s a simple fact. It was basically inspired by a phone call I got one day from somebody. And the gist of it was “Hey man, can you hook me up with this? Can you hook me up with that?” And when I hung up the phone, I was left with the feeling of… “Why the hell are all these people calling me up, when they’re not even interested in how I’m doing?” They’re just calling me up to ask me for this favor or that favor, or whatever. Anyway, I think I arrived at the title of this song maybe through that phone conversation, or some other set of similar circumstances. I’m just saying, “Hey, if I could help you out, I would…If I could help myself, I would. I’ll let you know when I figure out how…” It seems like everyone is fighting for that little piece of “something.”
“Golden State Of Mind”
This was the last song I recorded for the album and it came about very naturally. I got the idea for the album title at a very late stage in the game. Even after I had recorded a substantial amount of material for the album, I still didn’t really necessarily know what it was really about, or what I was going to call it for that matter. The title actually came to me while I was driving down the 101 freeway. It was a day much like today–a beautiful California day, when it came to me. This song also came together “recording-wise” quicker than anything else on the album. I pretty much recorded it all in a day and a half. Then I spent another day or two mixing it. I love the lyrics of this song. It kind of takes a little bit from the all the ideas of all the other songs.
“Ring My Bell”
I thought this would be an interesting song to kind of put near the end of the record. You get done hearing “Golden State Of Mind,” which is very optimistic, and then you hear “Ring My Bell,” which could be taken a couple different ways. What I like about the lyric, particularly, is that it’s one of those songs that I think–depending on your state of mind or your impression–you can interpret as condescending OR consoling. In this song, the narrator’s taking his subject to task, and clearly giving this person a hard time. But ultimately, he’s still essentially just trying to comfort this person by saying, “Even though you’ve acted like a fool, I’ll still be here for you when you’ve got no one else out there to turn to.” I guess that song leaves a bit of a question mark, which obviously leads perfectly into the last song, which asks the even bigger questions…
“If I Could Do It Over”
Here you find the author of this collection of songs, or the narrator, or whomever you want to call this guy, trying to reconcile and come to terms with his endeavors. I thought it was the perfect way to sum up and end this record. I mean, “OK, now the experience of listening to or making this record is done, depending on who you are. And if I could do it over, I wouldn’t change a thing…here it is.” There is also a bit of an irony in that because I’m such a crazy perfectionist about what I do, that the irony is that I probably could have gone back and redone the whole fucking thing. My friend had a great line–he said, “Projects are never finished, they’re only abandoned.” I think that pretty much sums it up. I wouldn’t suggest that I totally abandoned this project, but I know that you eventually get to a point where you can only keep perfecting something for so long and eventually, you just have to move on. This song has a very sincere, but yet rebellious spirit behind it. It’s the kind of the song that, in my wildest dreams, I can hear Johnny Cash singing. And for that reason, the music is very simple and very straightforward. I like the idea of ending the album on that kind of a note; simple, hopeful, optimistic, and somewhat content in the fact that it’s done.
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