Tuesdays are overrated :) On this happy wednesday, another Story of the Beat.
This time it's a spooky one. Let me tell you all about the ghost of Seville...`

I've only been to Spain once (yet). It was the summer of 2012, the year I can still call one of the worst years in my life, for many reasons. My 3 andalusian weeks in Spain however were some of the best weeks of that year, although it was searing hot (sleeping in a tent at 35 degrees Celsius at night is not all it's cracked up to be...) Thank heavens for swimming pools and mediterranean beaches. 
We visited many of my 'bucketlist' places including Còrdoba - the Mezquita! -  and Granada - the Alhambra! - and slept under the stars in the Sierra Nevada.  Also on the bucketlist was (and still is) Seville. Severe car trouble prevented us from going to Sevilla. 
Because of the heat there were many forest fires in Spain that year and driving on the highway you could smell it in the air, miles before you would pass a charcoaled hillside, that was still smoking. 
So, we never made it to Sevilla -for now it remains the ghost of that trip- but somehow Spain crept under my skin and a few months after we got home, this song came to me while I was improvising on the piano. 
I guess 'the ghost of seville' can be a metaphor for anything you have on your 'bucketlist', whether it's a place you want to visit of something you want to do, a person from your past you want to get in contact with...You name it, something that keeps haunting you, like a ghost. 
I will get to Seville one day, of that I'm sure, don't know when, but until then I have to settle for the 'idea' of Seville that nested itself, hiding  in the back of my mind, haunting me from time to time... 

Musically, I wanted the song to have a hint of spanish music, but not too much, because all too soon it can be come a gimmick. So we deliberately didn't use the castanets or the handclaps, or even the spanish guitar. 
That would be too cliché. Instead the chord scheme already is very Spanish with the classic transition from the Am, to the E, to the F chord. Alex plays some subtle 'spanish' strumming, but that's it. I wanted to use a trumpet solo in the outro, a 'calexico' kind of melody, but in the very last moment decided that would also be too cliché. But still,  I felt the outro was a little too 'empty' and boring, so I dug up my old friend, the E-bow, one night, when I was doing some overdubs at home and started to put some  guitar layers on top of the outro.  That made me very happy :) Mr. E-bow always puts a smile on my face, although I hardly used him before on my records. But I'm glad he made it to this one. It really adds a little bit of 'haunting ghost', I feel...

Read lyrics here
Listen here

Credits:
Marjan Debaene: Lead and backing vocals, piano, electric guitar E-bow solos, percussion
Alex Brackx: Acoustic guitar
Bert Embrechts: Bass guitar
Eric Bosteels: Drums

I wrote the State of Absurd a few years ago. I cannot remember what exactly triggered me to write the lyric, but it must have been something I saw on the news, probably the election results in Belgium that put a right wing party in control of our country. I found it so absurd because I voted for another political party, and  I felt that my voice was not being heard. Or so it seemed. I know that my vote mattered, and that my political party as an opposition party makes sure that the government doesn't get away with everything. Or at least not without a fight. But, it made me want to write and expand about our  so called 'first world problems', in a western civilisation where everybody focuses on the 'I', their own self (whether it is in a materialistic way or in a 'mindful' way).  
People these days have the tendency to complain a lot. Vocally and verbally, on social media like facebook, twitter, etc. I wanted to shake them (and myself) up. You-are-allright! You have food! You have clothes. You have Ikea plates! You get to complain on facebook about your political party losing the election. There are people who don't have free speech. They don't get to complain. And you can love. In my case, I live in a country where any love IS love, regardless of race and gender. I get to love my wife. I get to marry her. I get to have babies with her. I get to do all of that. 
Yet so many people don't have the same privileges as me. That brings me great sadness sometimes. Especially today, where religion wars rule the world, where innocent people are being beheaded for propaganda reasons, where refugees are being welcomed one minute and clubbed down the next, where babies drown and dentists kill wildlife for fun, I feel we live in a state of absurd. It's in times like these that I turn to love. Love, for me is a safehaven, a place where you can take a breath. Where you can re-gain yourself, regain composure. Therefore I love how the song ends.  Every minute with your true love is a minute well-spent....

This song had to be a small one. This song had to be just me on the guitar, with some subtle, trickling piano notes and double bass. It just had to remain that simple. For in the town of 'Regain' there could be no room for baroque, no room for drums, no room for electric bombast. It needed to stay pure, and airy.  
Check it out for yourself! 

Listen to 'the state of absurd' here
Read lyrics here

Credits
Marjan Debaene: Lead vocals, acoustic guitar, piano
Bart Parmentier: Upright double bass

A few years ago, I bought myself a second hand accordion. I decided to learn it, by myself. It couldn't be that hard, right? Turns out, after 7 years, I already know 5 chords fluently (on the left hand buttons, the right hand is a piano keyboard).  And in theory I guess you could add 6th or a 7th, but my left hand just won't cooperate. Not that impressive. I lack the time to really practice it well.
But, to me it's enough because I wrote one beautiful (in my opinion) song, with just four of those chords, on the accordion from scratch.

The road to Wonderland is about trying to find your way. Out of the wrong place where you are in right now.  Whether you want to find your way home, or to some other place, far far away. Whatever is your wonderland.
It's not the most positive song on the record, it contains hints of despair, of not believing, of not being able to achieve your goals. Still, I believe hope sounds in the final chords of the song.

I really love what we did with it musically. It always was a two instrument song (accordion, guitar) plus three vocal tracks. I almost asked some guest singers to record it with me, but time and budgetwise, I decided to record all vocals myself. In the studio we changed the guitar to mandola, which has a deeper, warmer and rounder sound. We also added the wonderful banging drums. They push the song forward. The way the accordion and the drums are mixed, with basses coming and going in the song structure, really give an added value here.
I really like this one.
Hope you do too :)

Listen to the song here
Read the lyrics here

Credits:
Marjan Debaene: Lead and backing vocals, accordion
Alex Brackx: Mandola
Eric Bosteels: Drums

The song 'It's about to go down' came about after I was scrolling through my Twitter-timeline one night. Somebody tweeted something like 'it's about to go down. someone should write a song about it.'
And so I did.  Cause you don't have to challenge me twice with something like that :-)

The song lyric is a spielerei, a lyric exercise, a word play. The words have a kind of hiphop-attitude,  'yo man, it's about to go down, you better take cover, it's gonna blow'... It makes sense.
Saying something is about to go down, means something big is about to happen. It's an urban 'slang' phrase. For me it means you think it will be great, awesome, mindblowing.
The song can be about anything good, great, huge anywhere for or by anybody. I always feel like it was my promise about the new album.
'It’s gonna be all the things you wished for and you hoped for'

Musically though it's everything except hiphop. I always describe the song as 'lana del rey meets mumford and sons'. I guess, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The country shuffle rhythm  keeps pushing the song forward and the banjo adds to the drive. The high guitar notes always give me a 'le vent nous portera' (Noir Désir) vibe. The song, lyric and music, was written in about 30 minutes tops. It really felt like a power exercise and ever since I wrote it, I couldn't get it out of my head (especially the 'oohs'). So it was a keeper for this record.

Allright, a penny for your thoughts... ;)

Listen here
Read lyrics here

Time to tell another story...
This one will be an easy one because the song in itself is a story. It is however based on a real place, the Tunnel Museum somewhere in the outskirts of the city of Sarajevo (BiH).
I've had the unbelievable privilege and pleasure of going on tour to Bosnia i Hercegovina two years in a row, with my good friend Bruno Deneckere.  On those tours, we went to play in the wonderful town of Sarajevo. (We also played in Travnik, Konjic, Brcko, Boracko Jezero, Mostar, Srebrenica,... - check the gigs archive for 2007 and 2008 if you want to know more. Check my old blog if you want to read and see pics of both tours).

Sarajevo, as I said, is a wonderful town. There a very few places in the world (other than my home) where I truly felt relaxed and in place. Up to date they are Iceland (the country as a whole), New York and Sarajevo.
The buzz radiating from the city that lies on the crossroads of East and West (and therefore has been through a lot, politically, throughout the centuries) is energizing, almost in a 'we survived and we're still kicking' kind of way.
In 2007 the band decided to visit the Tunnel Museum, a little place where the tunnel ends (or begins) that provided life support, guns and oil to the besieged town of Sarajevo during the war in  1992-1995. The Tunnel was dug under the airstrip and therefore was guaranteed a safe passage, as the airport area was in control of the United Nations and was not being bombed. For more info on the tunnel, visit the wikipedia page about it.
When we visited the site, it was a warm, sunny day. The Museum is located near the Sarajevo airport but there was not a single airplane lifting off that afternoon. All I remember seeing was the city of Sarajevo in the distance, snuggling against the hillsides that surround it. All I remember hearing was the wind.

When we arrived the museum wasn't open yet, but a little old lady came to the door and spoke to us. She smiled constantly, while she was standing in the doorway of her shot-to-pieces house....
The bullet holes were chilling. They gave me chills ever since we passed the border and entered Bosnia in the tourvan. But, the houses we saw there - although chilling -  remained impersonal, passing by them at speed. When we exited the car, the first time in Maglaj, it became hauntingly real. The ruins, the bullet holes, the half-rebuilt houses, the booby trap... Although  I grew up in the WOI war zone of Ypres, that war was fought 80 years ago.  The traces are almost completely erased. The bullet holes in Bosnia were from a war that just finished only 10 years before. They were practically still warm...
That's partly what gave me chills. The other thing that gave me chills, or rather goosebumps, was the intense smile, that expressed so much joy, that the old lady gave us.
It made a huge impact on me (on us), similarly to the impact playing on the town square of Srebrenica gave me.... It's almost impossible to put into words. And yet, a few months after our first Bosnian adventure the words and melody of 'The Sarajevo Tunnel' came to me.
The song tells the story of the old lady, in which I also added some fictional elements. I can't be certain that she lost her husband and one of her sons, or that she's seventy-three (since she didn't tell us). But I guess it doesn't matter if I fantasized since the story probably fits one or many old Bosnian ladies if not this one...

It saddens me enormously that there is still war based on religion in this world. It saddens me that so many people are fleeing their homes looking for safety. I saddens me that many are not surviving that journey. I know one song about survival and hope (because I guess that's what it is in a way) won't change this at all. But I do know  that it symbolises the change I went through. Before Bosnia I was more focused on what the world could bring to my music, and how it would be relevant to me. After Bosnia, I felt like it was the other way around. How could my music be relevant to the world? Even if this song only affects one person, or brings some kind of perspective to their thinking, then I am very content.

I do want to stress one point because people asked me before. The song is not about taking sides. The song is not about choosing for Bosnia and against Serbia. The situation is much too complicated. The song is mostly description of that situation and how people use coping mechanisms and try to survive during wolfish times...

Read lyrics here
Listen here

Credits

Marjan Debaene: Lead and backing vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion
Alex Brackx: Electric guitar 
Bert Embrechts: Bass guitar
Eric Bosteels: Drums