Joywave - Why Be Credible When You Can Be Incredible?
Entries: How Do You Feel Now? - Prologue | 01: Somebody New |
02: Carry Me | 03: Tongues | 04: Destruction | 05: Now | 06: Parade
07: In Clover
"Hello? Whatcha eatin'?"
"In Clover" is preceded by this audio clip from Disney's animated classic, Bambi. This was the final song recorded during the first chunk of sessions for How Do You Feel Now?, which ultimately became the How Do You Feel? EP. I remember Neal Pogue sending us mixes to approve at 4:30 AM when we had to wake up in a few hours to leave for our first lengthy tour. We had been playing shows as Joywave since early 2010, but this would be our first experience being gone for more than a couple weeks. Accordingly, tracking of our debut full-length album would have to wait.
Right around the time we were ready to break, everything in our studio started to fall apart. The 2013-14 Winter in Rochester was especially long and particularly bitter. Quite a few daily low temperature records were set (even by Western New York standards, it was miserable). Within a few weeks of each other, the ceiling in our bathroom collapsed and the pipe leading from the street to our building broke. There was a solid week during the recording process where we didn't have water and couldn't use the bathroom. Here is a photo of our "jugs". You may hear a whooshing "rain stick" sound around the 0:27 mark of the song. It is not rain. We ended up without heat for a night when our pilot light went out as well.
The music for "In Clover" came together initially as a demo in the summer of 2013. We get asked to write and produce for other artists quite a bit, but more often than not we become attached to what we create. It's always a shame if the artist doesn't release something you've spent time on. Shouting your art into a black hole isn't as much fun as sharing your creation with the world. In this particular instance, we were developing the song for someone else, but we fell in love with it and decided to keep it. I think it's the only song on the record that came together like that.
Lyrically, the shade of purple on the walls of our control room influenced the subject of "In Clover". We chose the paint based on both name and wishful thinking (the color is called "Success"). It's one of the more direct songs on the record, a four and a half minute conversation trying to convince myself that everything will work itself out after a decade of stagnation.
Technical Notes:
- We were able to add a lot of organic elements once we got it into the studio. The big clap in the song is a phone book dropping in our bathroom with a pair of Earthworks TC30's stereo micing the room.
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Joywave
How Do You Feel Now?
- Somebody New
- Carry Me
- Tongues (feat. KOPPS)
- Destruction
- Now
- Parade
- In Clover
- Fees Like a Lie
- Traveling at the Speed of Light
- Nice House
- Bad Dreams
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