coastal alt/indie rock

 

you're there

​​Field Notes​​

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“You’re There” started with a keyboard patch on a new software instrument. I found a sound I liked, built an intro chord progression around a piano arpeggio, and then carried that little musical idea around in my head for a couple of days. It was one of those riffs that wouldn’t leave.

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At the time, Angie was away visiting her parents, so I was home alone, taking walks and looking for places to have dinner. One evening I was walking over to Santana Row, a restaurant and shopping area near where we live. I turned a corner, and a hummingbird flew up out of the bushes, stopped right in front of my face for a second, fluttering there, and then took off.

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My first thought was: Angie.

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We love hummingbirds. We see them a lot, and they’ve become something of a talisman for us over the years. So when that hummingbird appeared, she immediately jumped into my mind.

 

My second thought was: you’re gone, but you’re still here.

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And my third thought was: that’s a pretty good opening line for a song.

 

So I pulled out my phone and started dictating as I walked. I was still about a quarter mile from the restaurant, and in that quarter mile the song started to form. “You’re gone, but you’re still here…” Then I started listing the things that make me think of her: this mountain range, that mighty oak, this cactus bloom, that fire smoke, this granite rock, that redwood tree. All these things speak to me.

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By the time I reached the restaurant, I had the emotional center of the song: that in everything beautiful, I find her heartbeat, I find her soul. She’s there.

 

I put my phone away, ate dinner, walked home, picked up my guitar, and that keyboard progression was still fresh in my head. The lyric laid over it perfectly. The song was suddenly there.

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What I didn’t have was the bridge.

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At the time, I was in a songwriting cohort where you work on a song over a short period of time, piece by piece. The section that became the intro was originally going to be the bridge. But a colleauge in the class listened to it and said, “No, no, no. That’s not your bridge. That’s your intro.”

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She was right. I moved it to the beginning, and it became a great intro. But that left me without a bridge.

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For a few days, I couldn’t figure out what needed to happen after the second chorus. I liked the intro. I liked the verses. I liked the chorus. But the song still needed something. Then one night, in the middle of the night, I woke up with the entire bridge in my head.

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That has only happened to me a handful of times in my life.

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I got up, went into my music room, and recorded it. Lyrically, it was almost nothing — just the repeated phrase “you’re there” — but the chord progression and orchestration arrived fully formed. It was as if some part of my brain had kept working on the song while I was asleep, and then handed me the answer.

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I’ve noticed that happens sometimes when I’m working intensely on one song. If I’m writing ten songs at once, my brain doesn’t seem to grab any of them that deeply. But if I’m focused on one song for several days, it occupies my waking life and my dream life. It keeps working in the background.

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Although the immediate spark for “You’re There” came from that walk through Santa Clara and that hummingbird near Santana Row, the landscape inside the lyric comes from somewhere else. The mountain range, the oak, the cactus bloom, the granite rock, the redwood tree, the soaring bird, the butterfly, the roaring creek, the cloudless sky — those images come from the Santa Lucia Mountains and the trails behind Carmel Valley, where Angie and I have spent so much time hiking.

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So this is another one of those songs where the landscape wasn’t necessarily in front of me when I wrote it. The landscape was already inside me.

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When I made the video for the song, I used footage from that property we hiked on. You see the oak trees, the mountains, and eventually the Carmel River. That’s the landscape that inspired the details of the song, even if the song itself was sparked by Angie’s absence.

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The interesting thing is that when I shared “You’re There” with the cohort, people heard very different things in it. Some thought it was about God. Some thought it was about someone who had died. Some thought it was simply a love song.

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And none of them were wrong.

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I know what inspired it, but that doesn’t have to be what it’s about. I remember the writer-producer of The X-Filessaying that once your work ends up in the hands of the audience, it isn’t really yours anymore. They make it theirs. I like that idea. I don’t feel like I have to tell people what a song means. I can tell them what inspired it, but after that, they get to take it and make it their own.

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With “You’re There,” people have come up to me after hearing the song or watching the video, clearly moved by it, and each of them seemed to be hearing a slightly different song. For one person it was spiritual. For someone else it was grief. For someone else it was love.

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That’s a pretty beautiful thing.

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The song began with a keyboard patch, a hummingbird, and missing Angie. But somewhere along the way, it became something larger — a song about how the people we love can remain present in the world around us, in the landscapes we carry, and in the beautiful things that keep speaking to us long after the moment has passed.

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Lyrics

 

SPOKEN INTRO:

you’re gone, but you’re still here

in all the things that made us smile

you’re gone, but when i’m here

i’m with you for awhile

 

VERSE 1:

this mountain range, that mighty oak

this cactus bloom, that fire’s smoke

this granite rock, that redwood tree

all these things they speak to me

 

PRE-CHORUS:

in everything that is beautiful

i feel your heartbeat, i find your soul

 

CHORUS:

YOU'RE THERE (you’re there; you’re there)

YOU'RE THERE (you’re there; you’re there)

somewhere (somewhere; somewhere)

out there (out there; out there) 

i know YOU'RE THERE

 

VERSE 2:

this soaring bird, that butterfly

this roaring creek, that cloudless sky

this rising sun, that falling leaf

through these things you speak to me

 

PRECHORUS:

CHORUS:

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BRIDGE:

YOU'RE THERE 

YOU'RE THERE

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CHORUS: