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
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
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