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It All Comes Down To Love

from Deep Water by Allan Thomas

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about

The Song: Besides singing and playing guitar on my regular bread and butter solo gigs, I get to play a fair amount of instrumental music. Oftentimes if the mood strikes, improvising happens, and out of these wanderings come the birth of new songs. In this case, while gigging at the Mediterranean Gourmet restaurant out in Haena, in 2008, I stumbled upon the sequence of chords for what was to become 'It All Comes Down To Love'. I knew something was up after I stopped playing and realized I had just been noodling for more than 50 minutes! The gig was cool too. Not only could you see the waves breaking a couple of hundred yards directly past the north facing windows, but Imad - the owner - would feed you right after your set, and just as you tucked into the fresh ahi and mashed potatoes, belly dancers would appear with their boom boxes and middle eastern music and proceed to prance around the tables. Yeah I know, one of those tough gigs no one looks forward too!!

Well as I said in another post, the A minor bug bit me pretty good around this point in time, and this song was one of the ones that surfaced in what I might jokingly refer to as my A minor period. As for the subject matter, the bottom line is love can be many things to many people depending if you are in it and basking in its glow, or are searching for it and not having any luck at all. Different perspectives of the same thing, but regardless, it's presence in our lives runs deeper than anything I can think of…and it's weight is worth the wait if and when it comes. Both Paul Simon and Citizen Cope had recently released songs which focused on the word "love" in the chorus' in a pretty refreshing and moving way, and I thought I'd like to try that sometime. Well that sometime had arrived when the music for this song appeared. When it was time to write a bridge I decided it needed no lyrics, just some cool chord changes that went somewhere and found it's way back to the opening re-intro lick, in, you guessed it, A minor. Once again skirting that Brazilian bossa nova territory I love so well, I wound up devising a bridge that contained a taste of both jazz and classical music. This wasn't intentional, it was just seemed to be where the music wanted to go. I had no idea what instruments would be playing these changes later, with only the sound of my guitar as the foundation of the tune, but I knew there was massive possibility for some major dynamics at the end of said bridge.

The Recording: While on my west coast 'Making Up For Lost Time' US mainland tour I made sure to stop in San Francisco and visit with my longtime buddy and mentor in many things, Stephen Barncard. This was in the summer of 2008. The last time we worked together was in 2006 when he mixed two Hawaiian artists records that I had produced, and we had a non-stop 12 day marathon mixing extravaganza. Since I had a brand new tune, and my acoustic guitar with me, Steve asked if I wanted to record anything? Answering before his echo had even faded, I replied "yesssss!"

The tune was still wet behind the ears, as tunes go, and I hadn't yet performed it a whole bunch, so I wasn't absolutely sure of it's arrangement. That made for a fair amount of experimenting with the arrangement as we recorded. We used a Pro Tools stock click track for me to record to, as I had none of my library of drum or percussion loops with me to choose from. No big deal. Steve busted out a pair of Sony 500's and set me up in the spare bedroom, where I was already encamped for my three day stay at the House Of Cubes. The makeshift recording booth was just ten or so feet from his studio separated by a door to either room. I thought I'd just record as many takes as I could until I knew I had the gist of it, and edit the parts and decipher the arrangement later at home after the tour. But I could tell Steve really wanted to get it down in the old style way, which is to say, do a few inspired takes, pick the best parts and move on, not spending all night doing it! But I prevailed on him to go along with my usual style of solo recording which asks that you record a part way more times than you think necessary so you have COVERAGE later. Great guy that Steve is, he went along with the flow and we did end up spending half the night laying it down. I remember finishing at dawn with the view of the Golden Gate bridge from Steve's kitchen, and the lonely sound of it's foghorn quietly moaning in the close distance.

That House Of Cubes session was the beginning of what would become the 'Deep Water' album, and here was Barncard being involved with recording my music some 35 years after first working together. His recordings of acoustic guitars are legend: David Crosby, Graham Nash, Grateful Dead, the list goes on. So it felt great knowing my Collings was in the hands of a master.

In September of 2009 I finally got around to getting back to working on 'It All Comes Down To Love'. After getting back into the session and taking a few days to create what felt like a good arrangement of the acoustic guitar track we'd recorded in San Francisco, I found some great sounding bongo, drum, and percussion loops, and dropped them into place. I followed up with my vocal tracks. It's always so much more fun to have a "real" engineer record my vocals, but being that one can't always afford such luxury, one has to use the tools at hand, and that hand translates to me plugging in my workhorse Neumann U 87 Ai mic, getting out the wireless remote control recording device and recording my own vocals. I just commit to a couple of hours of hard work, buckets of sweat, and recording the vocal all the way through the song as many times, and in as many ways, until I feel I've got it there somewhere, and call it a day. Come back a day or two later and begin finding and collecting whatever nuggets abound, and like countless artists and producers before and after me, create a comp track.

Post editing the vocal tracks it was time to figure out who and what is going to be next on this now very basic and bare vocal, guitar, and percussion track. This next stage of adding something to the pot, as it were, always provides huge dividends in the fun department. In this songs case it was my fellow Kauai resident and brother in music for twenty plus years, Michael Ruff. It's no secret, I'm a big fan of Mr. Ruff's keyboard mastery: he's played on my last four records. And this song would be no exception. As always I looked forward to the session with great anticipation. Can't think of any other place I'd rather be than sitting with Mike in his home "garage" studio, pressing "record" and waiting to see what on earth - or elsewhere for that matter - happens next. Never letting me down, always giving me plenty of COVERAGE, he's like the mad alchemist coming up with these combinations of unexpected yet awesomely cool rhythmic and melodic parts that not only fit the existing track, but wind up shaping the arrangement of the song in a big way. Watching this track morph from one level to a whole other, was such a prime example of the mystery and magic of the recording process, especially when layering one part at at a time. What makes it even more fun is that Ruff keeps things very spontaneous, and will hardly do the same thing twice, unless you ask him to, and then maybe a once or twice. After recording the piano tracks we revisited the first part of the bridge, there he found then added string section pads, and for the second part of the bridge a sweet vibraphone sound, and that was that. Next thing you know there is this new dynamic to the tune, and you're thinking not only "what's next?, but "my God, now I have to go home and edit all these monster takes into one!"

The beautiful and talented singer/songwriter Anjela Rose - who also lives here on the island - did a righteous job singing backup vocals on two songs for the previous 'Making Up For Lost Time' CD. There is something about the timbre of her voice that clicks for me in a very visceral way, and I absolutely love how that voice blends with mine. That being so, I asked her to sing on two songs on the 'Deep Water' CD, including this one. It was the chorus' that I originally wanted her to sing on, but once we got rolling Anjela found quite a few other spots that could benefit from her adornment. After we got her main backing vocal parts - I gave her a one-take "play" track, and let her just run free with it and sing whatever she feels, not worrying about harmonies or anything. Glad I did too. Later, when editing her parts, long after she'd gone, I discovered all these excellent little surprises waiting there that found their way onto the track. What else can be said? Only, how sweet it is to have not one, but two of her enchanting voices surrounding mine. Kudos to mixmasters Mike and Brian for creating the wonderful aural umbrella that these voices now sit under.

The sound of a soulful and well-played sax is one I have a profound affection for, especially in a jazz setting. Was listening to tenor dynamo John Coltrane in my early twenties, and met, recorded, and performed with alto master Julian "Cannonball" Adderley soon after. I neglected to record any sax on any of my previous records save for a brief solo on 'Hold On Tightly' from 'The Island' CD in 1989. What was I thinking? Maybe the songs just weren't calling for sax, till now that is. I made up for that on this record though. I could hear tenor sax on this song, especially the solo, but who could fit the bill? Turns out one of Stephen Barncard's roommates at The House Of Cubes is a reed man, and not just any reed man. I'd met Sylvain Carton while crashing at Barncard's in 2008, even went to a big-band gig of his up there in SF. The guy had miles of tone as far as I could tell. He was actively recording, and playing all over town in a lot of different bands and venues too. Long story short: I sent Barncard the files and he arranged a time to record Sylvain there in SF at his House Of Cubes home studio, while I timed it to catch a surf at dawn then come home in time to listen to the session in progress simultaneously here on my own studio speakers on Kauai, and make comments via cell phone or iChat after each take. Leave it to Steve to create Mixstream; a program for just such an endeavor, and it worked seamlessly. Steve set up his rare RCA 77-DX mic with his Ampex PR-10 preamp and got to work. Not only did Sylvain play a soulful and dynamic solo, but he also came up with the horn section parts on the spot, after I asked if that were possible. He would wind up doing the same thing for me on 'The Gift' later on, and with the same remarkable results. So thrilled to have Mr Carton's tenor sax represented here on my new album , and you can bet we'll be hearing more on whatever follows.

Now the track was begging for bass, so I gave Jimmy Johnson a call. Turned out he was home between gigs with James Taylor, had fine-tuned his new home studio rig, and could get to it relatively soon. Jimmy had already done a phenomenal job on the 'Making Up For Lost Time' CD, and on several other tracks on this 'Deep Water' record. I could trust him to know exactly what to play without me having to say a word. On this track Jimmy utilized one of his Alembic fretless basses, and when I first listened to his part - after he had recorded it and sent it back to me - I was stunned… How could someone nail it so perfectly? His bass part not only added immeasurably to the track's overall feel and dynamic, but it brought the arrangement of the song a giant step closer to it's destination. I could only shake my head, and thank the God's of good fortune for the gift of Mr. Johnson's groove gracing my song. Now the tune was almost fully dressed, but the final garment would be real drums.

It's now summer 2011, the entire record is almost complete save for drums on 4 songs. I had been discussing possible drummers for the remaining songs with 'Deep Water' CD bandmates Bryan Kessler, Michael Ruff, and Jeff Richman. The record already had great drum performances by Joel Taylor and Rick Shlosser, but I was ready to entertain the idea of someone new. That someone, we all agreed should be Yellowjackets drummer William Kennedy. I've been a major fan of Will's playing forever, and it would be nothing short of another dream coming true in the creation of this album to have him play on some of my songs. Being that Jeff Richman had worked with Mr. Kennedy previously, he volunteered to see if William could do it. Long story even shorter: He could could do all four songs in about a weeks time. I was over-the-top. Jeff and I made arrangements with Paul Tavenner at Big City Recording Studios in Granada Hills CA. - a studio and engineer both Jeff and Will were familiar with - for a week hence. Since I was choosing not to fly back and forth to the mainland for each and every performance recorded on the record, I just had to trust my instincts about the player, the song, and the studio, and just let whoever was recording do their particular thing. These cats of this caliber are so well versed in the art of song enhancement that you don't need to tell them note for note what to play. That's what I was hiring them to do, so each time I learned to lean back and just see what would transpire. I had given Mr Kennedy a rough mix of the song with my RMX stereo drum and percussion loops to check out, this way he had some idea of what I thought might work regarding the groove and whether to use sticks or brushes etc. I told him he could use the percussion or not. He opted to let the bongos and percussion remain, and played with them, around them, and off them. When his parts came back from Big City I was floored. There was nothing else to say or do, the tune was complete. It did not ask for anything else, only the capable ears of the mixmasters.

lyrics

It All Comes Down To Love

words & music Allan Thomas


He searches for it high and low
Like a miner digging for gold
With a hunger fueled by just one dream
And for it he’ll do anything
It’s a puzzle and missing link
And the key that unlocks everything

Love - Love
It’s the best thing going or the worst thing that ever was
Either you can’t find it or it fits like a glove
Praise it or howl at the heavens above
But it all comes down to love
All comes down to love

She rises just before dawn
Take care of her little one
For that child she’d give her life
Make any sacrifice
She’ll do what it takes and more
Find a way to ensure

Love - Love
It’s the motivation keeping her world abuzz
It’s the reason for everything she does
In all of nature it is thus
It all comes down to love
Yes it all comes down to love

Not everyone can board that train
The one that stops in love’s domain
It chooses who and chooses when
You long for it right till the end
It makes you rich even when you’re poor
Eclipses everything that went before

Love - Love
Yes it’s the best thing going or the worst thing that ever was
It’s not in the cards or it fits like a glove
Praise it or howl at the heavens above
But it all comes down to love
Yes it all comes down to love
I believe it all comes down to love


© 2011 Black Bamboo Music - BMI

credits

from Deep Water, track released October 18, 2011
Allan Thomas- vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion, triangle
Anjela Rose - backing vocals
Sylvain Carton - tenor sax
Michael Ruff - piano, pads
Jimmy Johnson - fretless bass
William Kennedy - drums

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Allan Thomas Hanalei, Hawaii

Aloha and welcome to my Bandcamp Music Store home page. Here you can listen to full-length samples of all seven Allan Thomas albums and three singles. Also to be found are credits, photos, stories and lyrics for all songs. Dig in...

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