coastal alt/indie rock

​​Field Notes​​

 

“Everybody Wins” started with the purchase of my first baritone guitar.

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If you’re not familiar with baritone guitars, they’re regular guitars tuned down lower than standard E tuning — usually down to B. They show up a lot in heavy metal and grunge, but they can be really interesting as acoustic instruments too. In May of 2021, I picked up a Taylor baritone acoustic at a local music shop, and I knew right away it was going to have songs in it.

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I’ve always believed that every instrument has at least one song in it. When I'm in a guitar shop, I can pick up some cheap, beat-up, strange little guitar, play around for a few minutes, and sometimes a riff or a whole idea will appear before I put it back on the hanger. It doesn’t matter how expensive or impressive the instrument is. For me, every guitar is hiding something.

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Sometime between May and October of 2021, I was messing around on my new baritone and came up with the riff for “Everybody Wins.” The intro, the verse, and the chorus all seem to have emerged in one four-minute jam. That happens sometimes: a guitar, a tuning, a sound, and a mood all line up at once.

 

Once I had that ballsy acoustic baritone riff, I went back through my notebook looking for words that matched the mood. That’s a big part of how I write. Sometimes I’ll have a lyric fragment from one year and a piece of music from another, and somehow they fit together like they were always meant to meet.

 

In this case, the lyric came from a line I’d had in my notebook for years: “Everything in moderation, even moderation.” I’ve always liked the old Stoic idea of “everything in moderation,” and I’ve read a lot of Greek history and Stoicism over the years. But that twist — “even moderation” — felt much more rock and roll to me. It had a wink in it. It gave permission for a little excess.

 

Even before I had the line “Everybody Wins,” the hook was already there. In the first live version, I had already put the “oohs” in place. I knew that vocal shape was going to be the 'hook', even if the final words hadn’t fully arrived yet.

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I don' know when the iPhone memo was recorded (the date is corrupted), but I do know that by October 3rd, the lyrics were finished and I had recorded a full demo.

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The visual world of the song came almost immediately. As soon as I started singing “everything in moderation, even moderation,” I pictured a bar where angels and devils both show up after hours. Angels on the dance floor. Demonic bartenders. A band in the middle of the room, playing between heaven and hell while everyone calls a temporary truce.

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That idea connects to something I’ve always loved in Balinese religion and philosophy: the belief that humans are here to help keep the balance between heaven and hell. That image really stayed with me. Not heaven defeating hell. Not hell corrupting heaven. Just balance.

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So the song became a kind of cosmic barroom philosophy: stack up all your good deeds, rack up all your sins, and if they all break even, everybody wins.

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“Everybody Wins” is one of my favorite songs to play. It has the weight of that baritone guitar, the swagger of that line from my notebook, and this strange little world where angels and devils can share a drink, dance to the same song, and let the band keep the peace for one more night.

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