Hell Is In The Details

Ask any creative person: some days things just don't work the way you want them to. No matter how much time, effort, skill, and energy you might put into a project, on some nights nothing sounds good; nothing looks good; nothing reads well. Its frustrating, to say the least, but we all deal with it.

Last night I was working at the studio with Jared Anderson, the guitarist for my band In The Pocket, as well as The Big Shoe and Perfect Thyroid. We were working on a song called, "The World Outside." We tried this, we tried that - this tone, that tone - this strum pattern, that strum pattern - etc. But sadly, most of the time I sat there behind the control panel thinking about how nothing we were doing was working the way I wanted it to. And this is not in any way to say that what we were working on was bad or that he was playng poorly. Quite the opposite. But sometimes nothing sounds good. Nothing sounds like it's working. Hell, it turns out, is in the details. I'm convinced it's a struggle that every creative person goes through at one time or another, and some more often than others. It's times like these when one could benefit from someone who knows what the hell they're doing! Haha.

And corny and hilarious as it may be, I'm reminded of this Meatloaf lyric:

"Some days it don't come easy
Some days it don't come hard
Some days it don't come at all
And these are the days that ever end."

(Hey, don't knock Meatloaf. Jim Steinman wrote some great songs for him.)

I'm sure this feeling is being exasperated by the fact that we've been working on this record for more than 10 months and it isn't done yet. But that's just how it is, and I've just gotta roll with it. Its more or less like everything else in life.