After a year writing serious songs and protest songs about our country and the politics, and experimenting around on the edge of folk and other genres, I just want to dance. And in the middle of the Pandemic, after months of quarantines and isolation, I just want to dance. I usually write songs beginning with one guitar riff and one vocal riff, and then place them together. YMMS was the vocal riff and it pretty much starts and stops there. With only 9 words in the entire dance song: "You make me xxx, so tenderly", I'm more proud that I didn't use "Baby" anywhere. ; )
I've decided that dropping singles is much easier than doing EPs, or LPs, given the Virus, so I've decided to write and release every few months, and then at the end I can bundle up the singles together. YMMS is the first one with this new approach and one of the real issues was that everyone was/is sheltering. So I supplied my singers, Chana and Mikaela, with their own microphone, and Chana built a voice box to eliminate noise in their apartment (they are sheltering too). We had Zoom sound engineering 101 and a lot of unusable files in the dropbox.
Jon Ireson, Producer, came in half way, as fixer. I recorded the rhythm guitars and vocals, with temporary percussion and bass tracks, while Chana and Mikaela sent in their parts. Jon is a wonderful producer and musician, and he filled in the bass and the guitar leads, but most difficult, he worked with a variety of sound files recorded in different places, on different equipment, recording at different levels, and he still unified it. YMMS sounds as good as it does because of Jon.
There is nothing music does better than make people dance. At one early point in the song writing process, I had "You make me scream, democracy" and the whole point was that democracy is exasperating. But the symbiosis between systems of government and funk music just didn't jive, so I went back to "so tenderly" instead of "democracy". And that's as close to serious that I got with this one.
1.
You make me Scream
You make me Scream
You Make me scream
So Tenderly
You make me cry
Throw my arms up and hollar why
you make me cry
So Tenderly
You make me moan
So slow, real progress groans
You make me moan
So Tenderly
You make me howl
Money makes it foul
You make me howl
So Tenderly
You make me Scream
So far away from the dream
You Make me scream
So Tenderly
You make me howl
Money makes it foul
You make me howl
So Tenderly
credits
from The Virtualistics,
track released June 16, 2021
Patrick Ames: rhythm guitars, vocalS
Jon Ireson: Producer, bass, lead guitars, keyboards, Mix and Master
Chana Matthews: vocals
Mikaela Matthews: vocals
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