coastal alt/indie rock

​​Field Notes​​

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“All Alone” started with me playing around with my National Resophonic Revolver. It's a light-weight electric resonator guitar that I love. It provides a very rural, Americana sound - somewhere between a guitar and a banjo.

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I wrote the riff in 2018, not long after we bought a cabin in the Santa Lucia Mountains. We were spending a lot of time in the woods that border Los Padres National Forest. Bears, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, turkeys, etc. 

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It's literally the edge of civilization and wilderness.

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Anyway, you spend enough time there with guitars and you start to understand how evironment shapes music (unless it's just confirmation bias... which is possible). I started playing a little differently, singing a little differently, and writing a little differently. 

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The resonator guitar provided a voice for that setting.

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Interestingly, when I tried to finish the song in 2019, it strongly resisted being an Americana, roots, or country song - despite the absolutely country-ish lyrics.

Instead, it desperately wanted to be a 90s grunge song - lyrically and sonically.

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Well, I've never been one to push water uphill. So, I followed the song down this path, and - here it is - no resonator to be found.