Lore Drop (Garden of Secrets and Goodbyes edition)
Hi friends :)
Garden of Secrets and Goodbyes has been out in the world for nearly a week now, wahoooo! Get ready for SUCH an unnecessarily long email, cause this one has some cute stories behind it.
But first, a side note——opening for Tessa Violet in Boston last Friday was SO lovely. I think the coolest part was how chill and friendly it all felt. People say you shouldn’t meet your idols, but sometimes you meet your idols and they just act like your friends. Playing for a packed room like that was certainly a first, and I really hope I can do that all the time one day. The energy is so lovely.
Anywho, Garden of Secrets and Goodbyes. I present to you 5 pieces of lore:
1.) “Today I went to the square to find flowers that hatched from an egg”
One of my strangest sounding lyrics ever, but actually pretty literal! I once buried a plastic easter egg in a window box with someone, and when I noticed a few months later that the flowers had grown in, it sort of seemed like they had hatched from the egg. I was no longer in contact with the person whose idea it had been to bury it, so it felt steeped in metaphor in that way things do when you miss somebody.
2.) “I wonder where that penny went, that whispered of adventures and fate”
Have you ever seen that post about flipping a coin a bunch of times and letting it decide where you end up (heads=right turn, tails=left turn)? I was in the car with someone and we wanted to go to this hiking spot, but neither of us had service and we didn’t remember how to get there. So instead, we decided to flip a penny a bunch of times and play that game. Well guess where the game lead us? DIRECTLY into the parking lot of the place we’d wanted to go. Immediate lyric fodder.
3.) “The quarters I saved for the rainbow arcade”
There’s a bakery in my hometown called Rainbow Bakery, and it has a Ms. Pac-Man machine in it that I used to save quarters for. :-)
4.) The sound of this song was super inspired by the Life Is Strange soundtrack. I was absolutely OBSESSED with that game and its soundtrack in 2016/2017, which was when I wrote this song (yeah, it’s OLD). Nothing had ever made me feel quite like that game felt and I wanted to replicate it so badly. “Obstacles” by Syd Matters was a particular inspiration, especially for the guitar sound.
5.) At the veeerryy end of the song, you can hear a little kitty chirp! The kitty’s name is Rodeo, and he’s one of two very sweet studio cats who live at my friend and producer Jonathan Beard’s place.
Speaking of which, Jonny recorded this track so wonderfully. I met Jonny at a little porch show in Nashville last year, and I’m so glad I did—I highly recommend working with him to anyone in the Nashville area. I’m very attached to calling us co-producers on this track because I’m really proud of all my production decisions for it, but it never would have come together like it did without Jonny’s extremely keen ear. He’s recorded and produced beautifully for several friends of mine too: Rylee Dawn, Nic, Laken Campo, and Skyler Mayes—all of whom you should DEFINITELY check out.
Hmmmmm, do you think this newsletter is excessively long enough yet? Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate you very much. :-)
xoxo,
Copeland James