I've always been of the mind that you can tell if a song is truly great when you strip it down to its bare core and see what's still there. Remove all the slick production, drain it of all the artificial flavoring and coloring, rob it of its fancy clothes and accoutrements and let it stand naked in front of you, in the harsh, fluorescent, sobering light of day. After all, that's how most songs are born, isn't it? An intimate portrait, sketched with the raw emotional materials that begin to seep through the skin. A weapon against the world, forged in the heat of an emotional solar flare, by hands wielding just a pen and a guitar. Maybe a tumbler of whiskey.
This song was hammered into shape by a burning desire to make myself less complicated. Feeling like the odd man out for most of my life, I saw those with the least always gaining the most. At least that was my insecure interpretation of it. Because I was always deconstructing, I developed a gangrenous envy for those who could simply carpe the damn diem. But even through just the journey of writing this song, I realized that simplicity didn't lie in subtracting from myself, becoming less, shrinking so that I appeared smaller than I was. It was in acceptance of the multicolored, multilayered, multi-flawed animal that I am and will always be.
In celebration of that discovery, I suppose, I shot this video. As an homage to that simplicity. I wanted to see if there was still greatness underneath the murky veneer of indifference that takes hold when a song has been kicked around for too long. I wanted to remember this song for what it was at the start; the opponent of complexity in the color of honesty. So, here it is. One take from multiple angles; no color, no other instruments just a t-shirt, jeans, a guitar and what's left of my voice after nearly a year on the road with the musical Memphis. There are mistakes on the guitar. There are sour notes. There are faces I didn't know I was capable of making and wish I never had. But it's the truth. And in the end, there's nothing more worth striving for.