The Irving Sessions // Vol. Five: Midnight Train
06.01.09 / Nashville, TN

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And, we’re back!  Sorry for the three month delay since my last post.  In many ways it feels like it’s been a year, maybe two, and yet it also feels like I was recording just a few weeks ago.  A lot has changed since the end of February.  Most notably, I resigned from Target at the beginning of April to take an amazing opportunity with Love Everybody back in Music City, USA.  It’s great to be back in Nashville, back in my condo, and back in music.  I can’t really explain the difference in my overall well-being when I’m surrounded by creativity, entrepreneurship, and most importantly, music/film/media.  There are certain aspects to Minneapolis that I will definitely miss — living with fantastic roommates, a great group of friends, constant contact with motivated & career-driven individuals, the warehouse district, Barbette,  Metro Transit, traversing via foot, and Lake of the Isles, to name a few — and Target was a great company to work for.  Nashville, however, feels like home.  I couldn’t be happier about this chapter.  It feels right and I feel a new sense of purpose and motivation.

After only four volumes (I love how the word “volume” makes it sound like I have amassed a much larger collection than I could actually bring to the table at this point), the name The Irving Sessions is technically no longer appropriate for this project.  However, despite the fact that my studio has relocated some five states south to Fatherland St., I’m going to keep the name and keep the project moving forward.  With that said I’m happy to announce a first…

Vol. Five features a song written and recorded all on the same day — today (well, technically, last night)!  In fact, this song is so new that the lyrics have not even made their way to paper.  Perhaps it’s best to think of “Midnight Train” as a new recipe with which the chef is experimenting in front of a small number of guests or an automobile prototype much more imaginative than the production version that will be distributed in mass quantities at a later date.  What you have below is about the seventh or eighth take of this song, ever.  I recorded each version after the initial melody idea came together, and this one felt the most natural to share.  It felt the most like early morning hours.  The most like it’s lyrical intent:

I’m waitin’ on a midnight train // I’m waitin’ on the world to change // I’m waitin’ on a midnight train // to carry us home.

Version 1 / 06.01.09/ Nashville, TN / Fatherland St.

The Irving Sessions // Vol. Four: Untitled #3
02.23.2009 / Minneapolis, MN

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Untitled #3 (The Irving Sessions) from David Alan Wright on Vimeo.

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Hello, and happy Tuesday. And what a good Tuesday it is: The Cavs just beat the Grizzlies and the Buckeyes took care of Penn State a little earlier on ESPN. A good time to be a sports fan from Ohio. First, a few updates to the site…

One: I came across an awesome plugin for the blogging platform Tumblr called Streampad as I was browsing Aaron Jamison’s blog With A Shout. The plugin looks for MP3s within a site and references the links for collective playback at the bottom of the page. Thinking to myself, “how cool would it be if this were available for WordPress,” I soon discovered while reading their blog that, sure enough, a beta plugin was just released. So, I’m happy to say that you can now stream all of my music via the play button at the bottom of the screen, or, if you prefer, you can open the player – we’ll unofficially call it dWriTunes – in a new window while heading elsewhere on the Web (special thanks to Dan and Gregory for getting me all setup).

Two: You can now download MP3s of the songs for easy iPod listening here. Just right click on the links that say “MP3″, select “save link as”, and you should be good to go. Rock out to acoustic guitar-based tracks while working out! On the go! Or, while at work!

Three: I’ve added a page with some links to artists with whom I’ve either had the privilege of working or are friends of mine that you should definitely check out.

Four: I bought a new microphone and I’m pumped to see where my recordings can go as a result (recording these sessions live and trying to get together a basic mix on the same night can be a bit of a challenge, so every little step helps).

With our updates out of the way, that brings us to Vol. Four: Untitled #3, a song I wrote in late spring/early summer of 2006. It was written either shortly before or after an incredible three-week trip to Europe, and right around the time of my graduation from Belmont. Though I originally intended to add words to this composition, this song is special to me as is, as an instrumental piece. I wrote this song on a guitar that was given to me as a gift in remembrance of my grandmother (my dad’s mom), and shortly after it was written it turned into a song to celebrate the life of my grandpa (my mom’s dad) as I performed it for his Memorial on July 22nd, 2006. It’s the only performance during which I remember not being able to tell my hands what to do as they shakily made their way up and down the fretboard. It’s something I’ll never forget, and as a result, this song will always be special to me.

Two weeks later I sat down in Justin Saunders’ Nashville studio to record an acoustic version to send to my grandma (my mom’s mom; that version is below), and it hasn’t been recorded or performed live since. This song is about reconciliation to me. About paths that re-converge and the journey we take to reach that point. I also find the melody to hint at hope.

On a side note, the shirt I’m rocking in this video is from the company I helped start prior to joining Target, Speakerheart. Our invite code during our beta phase was “Orange” and you might see an artist or two sporting the same model out and about in Nashville.

Version 1 / Recorded 08.01.06, Nashville, TN

Version 2 / Recorded 02.23.09, Minneapolis, MN

The Irving Sessions // Vol. Three: Contact
02.06.2009 / Minneapolis, MN

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Contact (The Irving Sessions) from David Alan Wright on Vimeo.
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Vol. Three brings us to an interesting place complete with a new milestone.  My birthday was three days ago, and to mark a quarter century worth of living, I opted to wear a different sweatshirt (which, as it turns out, happens to be a thoughtful birthday present).  Besides being generally cleaner this time around, I also come bearing a song yet to be debuted to the world.  Though not a new composition, I couldn’t find an archived set list with this song included.  I wrote this song in September of 2005 and recorded it shortly afterward, but I’m not sure of the exact date as it was captured on my standalone Boss BR-532 and I no longer have the original session.  I know I dumped it into GarageBand in July of ’07 to get rid of an unusually long introduction, but it was recorded much earlier.

I never played this song live because it’s one of the more difficult ones to get right.  In fact, until recording this version for The Irving Sessions, I really didn’t have a good grasp of how many measures to use in certain places.  Nor could I figure out whether it was better to play with a click track or without.  I decided to go sans click for the new version and I think it turned out quite alright.

There were a few firsts for Vol. Three that I’d like to call out:

(a) I ended up keeping my first take, which definitely fits the spirit and purpose of these sessions.  My goal is to record the sessions live – audio and video – and avoid overdubs altogether.  Though I try to start and finish each volume in one night, the first two songs required a few attempts before I got them right.  Improvement on V3?  Perhaps.  Laziness overflowing?  Hard to say, but see (c) below.

(b) I had a few technical difficulties that resulted in a stop at Target on the way home from work and a trip to Guitar Center before the session was officially underway.  See, I have yet to invest in a couple of solid microphones, which makes recording live tracks a bit problematic.  For “Contact” I decided to run my guitar through a 1/4″ cable directly into the recorder but I was soon thrown off by a low humming noise to which I couldn’t quite pin down the source.  Unable to locate my spare 1/4″ cable, I decided to pick up a new one (hence the Target run heading home from the office).  Problem unsolved.  Next, after consulting my friend Justin, I decided a DI box might just do the trick.  Realizing I couldn’t make it to Guitar Center by the time they closed their doors for the night, I called ahead and they set aside a Radial ProDI for me and, believe it or not, agreed to wait a few extra minutes for me to arrive.  (They just turned me into a loyal customer and advocate).  Excited to give the new setup a whirl, I plugged everything in…and…the buzz was still there.  Next I borrowed a ground lift from downstairs – the $.99 solution rather than $99, mind you – and still, a buzz.  Baffled, I swapped guitars and sure enough, that did the trick.  So, two hours later I was ready to rock n’ roll after discovering I might need to take one of my guitars into the shop.

(c) I fell asleep on my office floor while mixing the song.  Though, as noted in (a) above, just one take was required to capture the song, I managed to wear myself out enough to fall asleep on the hardwood for almost an hour.

So, what you find here is a two-day effort, which, I believe makes it all the more special.  Below you’ll find the rough demo version I recorded sometime in 2005 for the sake of comparison.  The tempos, structure, etc. are fairly similar, but hopefully you feel the ’09 version is a bit more polished and complete.  I would love to hear your thoughts on either take.

Version 1 / Recorded 2005, Nashville, TN

Version 2 / Recorded 02.06.09, Minneapolis, MN

The Irving Sessions // Vol. One: Divin’ In
01.12.2009 / Minneapolis, MN

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Divin’ In (The Irving Sessions) from David Wright on Vimeo.

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Why “Divin’ In” first?  I don’t have a great answer other than I always felt this song was strong.  I liked the guitar melody on the intro the night I wrote it and I always felt great singing it.  I think every songwriter has a song that while playing and singing they actually transcend into the song itself, the performance.  “Divin’ In” is often that song for me.  It was also an easy place for me to start as far as polishing very rusty Pro Tools skills.

Original Notebook with lyrics dated 11/13/02 resting on my new M-Audio BX-5a Deluxe stacked on a handful of GOOD magazines.

I wrote “Divin’ In” during the late fall of my freshman year of college at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.  I arrived in Nashville with the intention of writing music for a living.  I arranged to get a business degree at Belmont partly as a backup plan should my aspirations not pan out.  It was also a way for me to surround myself with talented musicians without having to formally study music.

I remember hitting quite a dry spell as far as composing goes that fall.  I wrote and recorded a song entitled “Tomorrow” in early September of ’02, shortly after arriving in Music City, and though it had its moments, it lacked the type of hook that provides more than five seconds of a pitch in Nashville.  Next I tried my hands at writing and, gasp, singing two country songs – “Paradise” & “Nashville Lights” – both decent, but I remember thinking at the time they lacked the polish of the songs I had written for my high school band 5 Seconds Late.  Then came a creative streak of sorts which turned into a recording session on 12.03.02 at the studios on campus.  First, I wrote “Until Then”.  Ten days later I wrote “Divin’ In”, and between the two songs I thought I was slowly clearing a path toward a publishing deal, just months into my “career”.

I think I was surprised actually when those two songs didn’t receive the type of response I was anticipating.  And I don’t think I really ever understood why until I went to record the ’09 version for The Irving Sessions last night.

The pace and delivery were never right, not for the original recording and not for the live recording that followed in the summer of ’03.  So, for this rendition, six years later, I decided to take it much slower.  I told my girlfriend Jenn after hearing John Mayer sing his cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” that it was the first time I actually stopped to listen to the lyrics.  And the lyrics are fantastic.  But it took Mayer’s tempo and delivery for the song to have context.  She told me she felt the same way about “Divin’ In” post-six years vs. the youth of my performance at 18.

And though it pains the perfectionist inside of me to do this, here are the archives for comparison’s sake.  I guess this is what these sessions are all about.  I would love your feedback:

Version 1 / Recorded 12.03.02, Nashville, TN

Version 2 / Recorded 07.12.03, Canton, OH

Version 3 / Recorded 01.12.09, Minneapolis, MN