The new single Think A Little Louder is probably the song with the most unusual recording history in the DownTown Mystic catalog. I came up with the music back in the 80s and kind of shelved it since I had no lyrics for it. It wasn’t until I met a NYC singer/songwriter named Eddie Walker that I would bring the music out again.

I met Eddie at the old New Music Seminar that took place every summer in NYC. We struck up a friendship and eventually began working together. Eddie had a band and was looking to do some recording. I told Eddie that I would help him out with the producing and began to go to band rehearsals to work on the songs. After listening to the material that Eddie had, I suggested that he needed to have something a bit more up-tempo and commercial.

He asked me if I had anything and I played him the music for the song that needed lyrics. I told him that if he liked the song to write lyrics for it and we’d record it. Eddie liked what he heard and I told him I’d get him a tape with the music and melody so he could work on it. A week or so later at rehearsal Eddie said he had finished the song and wanted us to hear it.

We all knew that Eddie was looking to take his relationship with his girlfriend Ann to the next level and that things were not going as smoothly as he would like. Now Eddie was on mike strumming his electric guitar, playing at a slower tempo than the song should be played, but the slower tempo somehow made it more intimate as Eddie began to sing “well my heart isn’t bound by tradition”.

The other members of the band and I stood there in rapt attention listening to Eddie as he continued to sing the new song called Think A Little Louder. When he finished we were all blown away. To this day I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better version of the song, stripped down bare like that. Eddie sang it from his heart. We recorded the new song a few weeks later and it came out really good. Unfortunately for Eddie, his relationship with Ann did not turn out as well. They would break up and Eddie would leave NYC and go down to Austin, TX.

I kept in touch with Eddie down in Austin. He was becoming part of the music scene down there and seemed to be getting along nicely. It was around this time that I would go into the studio to cut 6 tracks with members of a band I was managing. Little did I know that this session would be the start of what would become DownTown Mystic.

One of the 6 tracks we cut that day was Think A Little Louder. As far as I was concerned, it was the worst of the bunch. It just didn’t seem to gel. Whether it was the key or the arrangement, something just wasn’t working for me. I put it aside while I worked on the other tracks. 3 years later I decided to go back in the studio and finish work on it. When it came to Think A Little Louder I made a somewhat drastic decision.

The first thing was that I didn’t like the key it was in. After listening to the original track I decided that I wanted the rhythm guitars to be played on acoustics. The original track was in B but the acoustics would sound better in A. So I made the decision to do something I had never done before—erase all the guitars, bass and vocals, keeping only the drums. Tommy Mastro who played the drums on the track had locked in and played a really solid track, so I felt I could keep his track and recut new parts to it.

Having had 3 years to listen to the track, I was determined to make it work better. Besides changing the key to the song I was also going to change the arrangement. Part of the problem for me was that it was too long. Eddie had written 3 verses to the song and there was also a guitar solo that I just wasn’t feeling. Getting from the solo to the 3^rd verse had always felt and sounded awkward to me. The solution was to eliminate both.

I came up with the idea to replace the solo with a bridge that would get me back into the chorus which I could fade out on. For those of you not familiar with a “bridge”, it’s an old-school songwriting device that allows you to “bridge” one part of a song to another part of the song. If you’re really old-school you might call it “the middle eight”. The tricky part was coming up with a bridge that would time out exactly to the length of the guitar solo, then edit out the 3^rd verse and splice in the chorus. In theory, it should work. 🙂

At this time I was managing a band that included 2 of the founding members of the band Trixter. I brought in PJ Farley to record a new bass line and Steve Brown to add guitar. But first I had to record the acoustic rhythm guitars in the new key and with the new bridge. Then we made the edits eliminating the 3^rd verse so now the song flowed from the bridge to the final chorus just as planned. Then PJ laid down a great new bass part and Steve recorded these hard-sounding power chords throughout the song that really gave it some muscle.

I sent a tape of the song to Eddie with the new bridge and he really liked it. Eventually, for the Rock’n’Roll Romantic album, I got Bruce Engler to sing harmonies and he added a guitar part on top of Steve’s power chords on the intro part that plays throughout the song. We mixed it and this is the final version of Think A Little Louder that you now hear. I’m not sure if Eddie has ever heard this current version because I lost contact with him years ago. Wherever he is, I hope he’s rockin’ and I’m glad our paths crossed long enough to write this song together. 🙂