coastal alt/indie rock

"The Perfect Note" may have been the first true Glenn Coast song I ever wrote. If not, it’s very close.

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I wrote it in 2019. We were spending a weekend in Carmel Valley wine country at Bernardus Lodge, and I had brought along my Yamaha travel guitar. I’d sit out on the balcony, quietly strumming and thinking about songs.

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I’ve always loved writing songs about songs—using music and songwriting itself as the language for talking about something else. And I had this idea about a relationship: Let’s hope we end this on the perfect note.

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Relationships can be wonderful while you’re in them. But what happens when they end? Is it possible for two people to recognize that something has run its course and somehow land it gracefully? Can you actually end a relationship on the perfect note?

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Once I had that idea, the musical metaphors came very quickly:

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You’ve got the rhythm, I’ve got the melody
I drive the tempo, you add the harmony
I can’t wait to sing those words we wrote
You need to dance, you need to sway
I need to strum, I need to play
Let’s hope we end this on the perfect note

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From there, almost everything about the relationship could be expressed through music.

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“We’re making waves each time we meet” worked on two levels. There were sound waves, of course, but there was also something coastal beginning to creep into the song. “Dancing to a different beat.” Singing our song “soft and slow until the chorus when we let it go.” Chasing sounds. Striking chords. Building things up and letting them go.

Even the tension between these two people became musical:

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You break it down, I take it back
You turn it around and we’re right on track

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When I wrote "The Perfect Note", it wasn’t conceived as a duet. I recorded it solo, and I liked the result.

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Then, the following year, I met an amazing singer named Evie Chang in a songwriting class. This course had people from all over the world in it, yet somehow Evie and I discovered that we lived about ten miles apart. We were in the same area, so we kept talking outside of class. I helped her a little with computer recording technology, and after COVID we eventually began meeting in person and writing together. We’ve written a bunch of songs for her since then that will eventually see the light of day.

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Not long after meeting Evie, I was listening to "The Perfect Note" and suddenly heard her voice in it.

And once I heard that, I couldn’t unhear it. It was a duet,. Her voice completely elevated the song.

What had originally been one person describing a relationship became two people inhabiting it. The harmonies weren’t just part of the arrangement anymore—they were part of the story.

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"The Perfect Note" was written in Carmel Valley. It had the California sound. It had harmonies and guitars and people making waves each time they meet. It connected a real place to an imagined relationship and used music itself to tell the story. All the pieces were already there.

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As I said, in many ways, it was the first Glenn Coast song.

I just hadn’t named the place yet.