maybe tomorrow (summer acoustic)
May 27, 2022 — I miss writing and recording songs from the floor of my tv-less, reflective, hardly cozy studio apartment. The vinyl floors were hard. Noise could enter via front or back window whenever a neighbor decided. And my refrigerator would wisen up and chug into gear at the perfectly worst-timed moment it could think of.
It’s where I first wrote Maybe Tomorrow with two chords and a stream of consciousness out loud. It’s where I recorded an acoustic version of another song of mine, Better When, which I decided sounded wintery enough to justify calling it a Winter Acoustic version, whatever the hell that means. I just liked that it felt wintery and so I called it that. Which led me to call Closer a Spring Acoustic version and Eve, an Autumn Acoustic version. All three felt like they fit a season, or the season fit them, and so I followed my nose in the naming of each.
Those all happened in 2020 and as the math of the earth’s rotation goes, I knew I needed a Summer Acoustic version of something to complete the calendar year. I wanted At The Beach by The Avett Brothers meets Ben Gibbard covering Complicated by Avril Lavigne and Maybe Tomorrow floated to the top as the most fluid of my options. It’s the first song I’d taken to a studio. It’s the first song I ever released. It’s the first song I made a music video for. And it felt like the right song to bring the theme of songs and seasons to a close.
As is often the case for my summertimes, I really had fun making this song. It was the lightest and flowiest I’ve felt in a studio to date. I knew all the words, knew all the chords. (There are 2 of them.) I just had to show up and play and sing. And I did that. And it felt really good.
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Technical notes: I recorded the song with Ace Enders in his new space in Ocean City, NJ. I have less to say this time about the recording process of the song because it was less in my hands. But I will say that every time I make a song with him, I learn something new. This time, it was that I can make some competent piano sounds.* Also, I learned that I need to practice to a metronome more often. I had trouble playing to click so made a strum track loop to better guide my ear. It ended earlier than I felt the song should end and I kept playing after that and the speed jump is very noticeable and funny. I liked it though and we keep the things we like in this house.
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Thank you to Angellyne De Perio for coming along and filming during the studio day. It was my first time having someone else in the studio with me. I made no mistakes in my invitation selection.
Thank you to Ace and Dillon Wray for the musical guidance and playing improv games to start the day. Also for explaining Kenny G to me.
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*This is very different than me claiming to know how to play the piano, to be clear.