The lyrics were prompted by a severe bout of nostalgia and just grew from there.  Sometimes we feel that we haven’t lived the life we thought we would when we were young.  It would be nice if we could choose to turn around, throw down our heavy pack of years and run back.

Technical notes:

Composing the music, I made a deliberate attempt to break away from the methods and sounds I usually use: when I felt I was lapsing I forced myself to do something completely different.  This was difficult at first, but as each session went on I found it easier to recognise and reject avenues that might lead me to cliché or comfortable techniques.  I really like the result, it’s still a song only I could have come up with (!) but it sounds - to me anyway - fresher and more interesting.

I used PG Music’s Band In A Box to help make some of the parts, mainly the nice slide guitar solo at the beginning and end, and an accordion part. The drum track was made using XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums2 and its ‘Modern Soul and R&B’ kit, but using preset patterns I wouldn’t usually pick. I played in the MIDI bass, organ and synth parts using sounds from Steinberg’s Halion Sonic 3 (instead of IK Multimedia’s SampleTank 3 which I usually use).  I recorded the vocals using my usual RØDE NT2 mic, shaping things with effects in iZotope’s Nectar 2 plugin.  I added a hint of ADT (Automatic Double Tracking) using the Waves plugin Reel ADT.  The project was engineered in Sonar Platinum. Mastering was done in Sonar using iZotope’s Ozone 7 Advanced.

The video was put together in Serif’s MoviePlus X6 (now amazingly discontinued, even though it’s far superior to a lot of its competition), using clips from the Internet.