song notes
This was the first song that Jenny and I wrote together. She came up with a melody from the lyrics, and I put it to chords. I would never have come up with these chords just messing around on the guitar, and I like how it turned out.
One of my brother's great passions, which he did not start until late in life and was encouraged by his 2nd wife, was Karate. He eventually became a 3rd degree black belt.
You'd probably never guess meeting him, as he came off kind of nerdy and awkward. But he had the tenacity and drive to see this through. I'm sure he could have taken me out.
So the song is a contrast to his 'real' life: social difficulties, a divorce after a dishonest marriage to keep a girl from Brazil in the country.
The way I imagined it, karate became an escape from this life, a place with a single focus, no distractions. It was something he could excel at, training hard and 'getting into his groove'.
But I could only imagine that there must have been a sort of let down when Karate was over, and it was back to work, money troubles, relationship problems, etc.
A playfully teasing, sparring kind of song between Todd and his wife. I have them going back and forth, she reciting all the things she has given him, he the things she has taken.
Despite my brother being socially awkward, they went to karaoke bars, and he even sang some Who songs (he was a big fan). She encouraged him to get out and take chances.
Up-tempo, as close to a pop song as I get. Starts off as a kind of otherworldly bluegrass song, then just keeps upping the groove. Not a minor chord in sight!
After many years of marriage, Todd's wife left Chicago to live in Florida to care for her aging father. This produced an enormous amount of strain on my brother and his relationship. Financial strain too.
I think that they both became very unhappy about this time, and they started fighting over the phone.
I can only guess, but I believe that he thought that if he moved down to Florida to be with her, things would be 'back to normal,' though he probably secretly was very worried that they would not be.
In the end, he got a job in Sarasota, FL and arranged to have the Chicago house rented and he moved down to live with her and her father.
I was after a haunting, fingerpicking sound on this one. There's some things that I'd do differently, perhaps, but we certainly got the creepy down
So my brother moves to Florida to be with his wife, and things are not better, they're worse than he could have imagined.
But things are not better, they're worse. On top of his relationship issues, he now is dealing with severe financial problems. He begins to borrow money, then borrow again to pay off other loans. He borrows from multiple people, but keeps this all hidden from his wife.
I think at this time he is trying hard to keep up facade of 'everything's fine' at work and with his wife, but despair is starting to sink in.
He begins to wonder if there's any way out of his mounting problems.
I envisioned this one as jazzy, with a big sound kind of like a Sinatra song. It would sound upbeat, but with dark lyrics. It ended up sounding rather dark and more of a soulful jazz piece.
This song is a lament on the disconnect in his relationship, an acknowledgment of his failure to help his wife, whom he loves dearly, and his despair that things will never be like they used to be. It is also a sort of good-bye letter.
It's also an imagined 'argument' they had on that last night, before he decided to leave the house and 'go away' in the middle of the night.
I think that his mood of helplessness and despair had finally reached the breaking point, and without much pre-meditation, he decided to take take action and solve his problems by the only way he could imagine at that dark hour of the soul.
I envisinoed a driving, droning, guitar and drum heavy song, with feedback and techno elements. The music starts quietly and builds up in intensity to the point in the song where he jumps from the bridge. Then it crashes back down to a moody middle part, where he is floating in the water. A build up again to the end.
The final song of Act I. My brother contemplates his life and how circumstances have led him to the top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
The bridge sings a siren's song, calling him to jump. He wants to escape his problems and be free of pain, so he listens, and he follows her voice, follows it down.
A jump from a bridge, even one of 200 ft, does not instantly kill you, but causes major "blunt-force injuries." So he has time to reflect as he drowns in terrible pain.
I imagined that he had regrets about his decision, but again, it's only conjecture.
I imagined this as a mid-tempo rocker. This song we had to knock around a lot to get it into shape. I like the way it turned out. The prog-rock intro was my idea (I take full responsibility!)
Act II, the aftermath. It's amazing to me that there are people out there who's job it is to fish bodies out of the ocean, to fill out the paperwork, do autopsies, have to tell the family, etc. A tough job, to say the least.
This song is from their perspective and relates events of the following day, and Todd's widow having to be picked up by the police, to learn that he was dead, to identify the body and receive his personal effects, and then to be sent home alone. A tough day for us all.
I was a little worried that there are too many ballads on the album, but I really like the way this one turned out.
In this song, the family first learns that Todd's car was found abandoned at the foot of the Sunshine Skyway bridge. He could not be found, and wasn't answering his phone.
When I told my ex-wife, her sister, and our nephew about the car and that it may be suicide, we talked that maybe he was just walking around, needed time to think, etc. My nephew, who was quite mature even at 6, did say, "No, your brother's dead." He was very sure about this.
This song is about coming to terms with the news that came a couple hours later, that they had found his body in the ocean. The song is about trying to pick up the pieces in a family that has been shattered by tragedy.
My brothers did have to sit down and tell their children what had happened, and to try answer the unanswerable question: Why? How do they respond? What do they say to their friends at school the next day?
Lots of guilt to go around: if I had only called, if I had only listened, etc. I had loaned Todd money several times, and through a bizarre sequence of events, this ended up being one of the catalysts that led to his decision to take his own life.
A country ballad with a big female vocal (our 'Dolly' song).
This song is sung by Todd's mother. She was utterly devastated by his death, and experienced overwhelming grief and guilt. She had been talking with him on the phone regularly, and kept wondering why he didn't say anything or call that night.
I was left with the impression that being a parent is sometimes pretty rough. Our children cause us pain, yet we love them absolutely. So the phrase, "I love them 'till it hurts" came to me.
It's a bit maudlin, but that doesn't bother me too much.
I envisioned a minor key jam song with a slow groove, distorted vocals, and a big drum sound. It's a 'voices in my head' kind of song, and we wanted it to sound a little creepy.
My youngest brother became mildly obsessed in the aftermath with trying to figure out what happened and why it happened. He gathered all the documentation he could (he later gave me a copy of the police report), and interviewed friends and family.
In the end, he did not get very far, and I think it haunted him for a long time. There is a low level guilt that we all shared, and this, along with the need to make sense of what had happened, probably drove him to seek some kind of answer.
Todd left no note, told no one about his problems, and had no history of suicide attempts or talking about suicide. So we are left with only conjecture and guesswork.
A proto-punk kind of song, with an aggressive female vocal. I envisioned a riot-girl kind of sound, but it's a bit more rockabilly than that.
A couple years after his death, Todd's widow became an advocate for the suicide prevention movement. For the most part, no one wants to talk about it. She believes that these stories need to be told and shared, and the shame taken away from the survivors. We need a better way of dealing with this 'hidden' epidemic, which is the 10th leading cause of death in the US.
So she started participating in walking marathons to raise money for the cause, and has done a number of television interviews to tell Todd's story. I changed it to a running marathon to make the song more active.
I see this as a kind of lullaby, the closing song, message of hope. It's in 3/4 time.
The singer is someone close to Todd, his wife, a friend, or family, after the memorial service, searching for the right words to say about Todd's life, and wishing that he were still here.
There are a lot of 'Last Words' one could give to a loved one who has died. Who gets so sum up their life, who defines what their life meant? Todd did not live long enough to do it for himself, though we wish that he could have. The singer wonders how things would be different today, if Todd had only picked up a suicide hotline phone on the bridge that night.