The origins of this track date back a few years to a wintertime field trip that my friend Jeffrey and I took to the coast. A huge storm was thumping Northern California, and we wanted to go see the waves in Pacifica, or Princeton, where we’d heard they were sweeping small dogs and inattentive meter maids out to sea.
We made it to Princeton, where the waves were indeed impressive, pushing boldly up from the shore into the center of town, nosing into businesses and restaurants. On the way back, Jeffrey played me a song by one of his favorite up-and-coming singer/songwriters, and I was really taken by an acoustic guitar loop and repetitive mellotron chord that created a very melancholy atmosphere: I resolved to steal that trick as soon as possible.
The storm kept up for several days, and by the end I was feeling very done with winter, especially as I was crouched over the piano in my unheated music lair one night experimenting with the kind of loops and sounds I’d heard on Jeffrey’s CD. As it got later, and colder, the recurrent drone coming out of my speakers and the deepening night created kind of a trance state, and the first verse of the song came steadily into focus, with the last two lines feeling especially right.
There’s more to the story, but I have to save it until the final version of this track is finished!