Digging Deep #2: Flight to JFK
what's YOUR least favorite airport?
In the interest of full transparency, let me begin by telling you how much I despise JFK (the airport, not John Fitzgerald Kennedy, our 35th president). It seems like every time they try to improve the airport they create more problems. Oh, the Uber/Lyft pickup area is too crowded? Let’s move it so far that it might as well be in a different borough. I hope you dumb idiot didn’t think of checking a bag, because you now have to walk a mile from baggage claim. Wait – it’s not over – choo choo! All aboard the “AirTrain!” That being said, if you’re reading this, JFK Airport, I’m still open to a sponsorship from you guys.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business. I have brought you here to discuss the making of “Flight to JFK,” which seems to be everyone’s favorite song of mine (according to the data, at least). Good! I like the song a lot too. It brings me a lot of joy to see so many people connecting with it in their own lives. I even saw a father-son duo cover it on TikTok: tears!
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Writing the Song
The “Flight to JFK” journey began on September 21st, 2022. A bright, lovely morning in Los Angeles. I was sitting on the porch, noodling around one of my guitars (a 1966 Gibson LG-1 – not in great condition, but it’s got a boxy, intimate sound that works well for some fingerpicking. I love the late 60s Gibsons with their thinner necks). One of my roommates (Graham) came out and asked me how I write songs. I probably gave him some pretentious, nebulous answer, like “It’s always different, man, I really just feel it out. Maybe something like…” And I played a little C shape walkdown.
Before we get any further, let me clear something up. I know that the guitar part in “Flight to JFK” sounds like “These Days” by Jackson Browne (but really more like the Nico version). A few days earlier, I had been listening to “Part Of The Band” by The 1975, in which the chorus does a fingerpicked walkdown. I remember thinking, Hmm, there are so many walkdowns in so many songs – Jackson Browne does it in “These Days,” Billy Joel does it in “Piano Man,” Fleetwood Mac does it in “Landslide.” I really should get me one of these walkdown songs. That chord progression had been rattling around in my head. I’ve seen your comments on TikTok, furious that my song should share the same chords as another. It’s not a big deal, babes. To quote one of my favorite movies, Inside Llewyn Davis, “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” Or let me go a step further – Pablo Picasso famously said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” I’m a thief! Sue me!
At any rate (one of my Grandpa’s favorite phrases), I began messing around with that walkdown, mumbling ideas as I went. “So you see, Graham, I can just mutter and hum until I find something I like.” And find something I like I did! Here’s a voice memo from that day, where you can clearly hear me sounding it out.
walkdown noodling/mumbling 9/21/2022
Rough as hell, but that’s the way it always starts. I let that puppy sit for a day, and when I picked up my guitar again, the words flowed like Guinness from a tap at an Irish pub on St. Patty’s Day. Apologies for that simile – not a good one.
half verse with lyrics 9/22/2022
full verse with lyrics 9/22/2022
Up until I wrote “Flight to JFK,” I’d never really written a happy love song. It’s harder to do than you would think, unless you’re a songwriter, in which case you probably already know. If I had a Theo’s Guide to Songwriting (not yet!), I would say that you have to keep the right balance between cheesy and specific (the two extremes of the love song axis). Too cheesy, and it becomes too general for anyone to latch onto. Too specific, and no one cares – why would they? One song I always turn to for detailed lyric writing is “America” by Simon & Garfunkel. There are some insane lines:
"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh/"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy/I said "Be careful his bowtie is really a camera"
"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"/"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
That’s my lyrical base camp. You can see bits and pieces of it poking through in JFK. Let’s keep that in mind as we continue on. I wrote a little chorus that bounced around a similar chord progression, and while I was stoked about it at first, I ended up ditching it. Here are a few passes of that:
initial chorus idea 9/22/2022
initial chorus full 9/25/2022
Listening back now, it’s clearly not the vibe. Who am I, some stomp clap buffoon wearing suspenders in the 2010s?? And yet, there is always something to be gleaned from the process itself, if not the result. The final line of the initial chorus, “I’m coming home for the weekend,” hit on something a bit more transitory. Every love song has to have a bit of tension for it to remain interesting, and in this case, it took the form of my sporadic trips back to New York City to see Grace. It was never quite enough time, but it was always worth it. There are no direct flights from Los Angeles to Laguardia Airport, and I would rather die than fly into Newark (rah, rah New York, boo Jersey), so every time I flew, I’d fly into JFK. Aha!
real chorus 9/27/2022
Now, the second verse. O Paul Simon, what would you do? We’ve situated ourselves in New York, so let’s lean into it. Picking through some very specific memories, I cobbled together a cozy winter day.
second verse 10/27/2022
Mmhmm, delicious. At this point, I was really excited about the song, and when I get excited about a song that I’m working on, I play it again and again until I can’t stand it anymore. Probably shouldn’t do that, I suppose. I ended up shelving the song for a few months – I call that “Bridge Anxiety.” Self-explanatory, but it’s basically when I write a song that I like a lot but know it needs a bridge, and I’m too scared to write one that could ruin it. So the song sat, collecting dust and cobwebs, until one day I said ENOUGH! and picked it back up. That day was December 22nd, 2022, according to my voice memos.
I started off with the wrong idea. A quiet, contemplative song needs a big bridge, right? A lot of the time I seek juxtaposition in my songs – a lower melody in the verse leads to a higher melody in the chorus, specific verse lyrics lead to more general chorus lyrics, etc. It works, but sometimes you gotta let the song tell you what it wants, man. I knew I wanted to keep the song situated in New York, and a particular afternoon spent at the Guggenheim Museum seemed like the right setting. Here are a few passes – each one gets a bit closer to the correct bridge, but none of them quite hit right.
Jfk bridge idea 1 12/22/2022
Jfk bridge idea 2 12/22/2022
Jfk bridge idea 3 12/22/2022
Jfk bridge idea 4 (still wrong) 12/22/2022
The last one has the right ending (“You always find a way to sing along”), but I still felt foolish stretching my voice like that in a song that sits so sweetly within my range. I knew there was something in that A minor chromatic walkdown I kept doing, so I decided to stretch it out and sing a bit lower. “Saturday” was the word that stuck first – maybe I was thinking of “Saturday/In the park/I think it was the 4th of July” (Chicago!). Here are those mumbles:
Jfk bridge (correct idea, still working) 12/22/2022
A few weeks, a couple tweaks, and some nice chordal turnarounds later, and I did it! Wow! Finally!
Jfk bridge final! 1/8/2023
Recording the Song
The recording process is usually different for every song I write – each song requires its own treatment. Like I said before, the song usually tells you what it wants, and I think that’s the best way to do it justice. You can’t force it! “Flight to JFK” is a simple song with a simple message. After my previous EP, What if it all works out in the end? I was a bit lost in the production world. What kind of music was I trying to make? Why did I feel the need to swaddle my folk songs in layers of production? Why was I writing pop songs, when all I’ve ever wanted to be was a folk musician? There’s a balance to be struck between the songwriting and production, to be sure, but I wanted a fresh start. JFK needed nothing but a guitar and my vocals, just as I wrote it, with no ostentatious ornamentation.
In January of 2023, I headed into Studio G in Brooklyn to attempt just that. That’s how I recorded all of Somewhere Along the Trail, Vol. 1 (and a few more songs that I never ended up putting out). You know how the rest goes – check out the video below.
Flight to JFK (Alt Version) with Evan Honer
I almost forgot! That’s not the end of the story. If you’re here, hopefully you already know who Evan Honer is (singer-songwriter extraordinaire). Evan and I had traded a few DMs back and forth over the course of a couple months, and I knew he dug “Flight to JFK.” With a bunch of new music coming in 2024, I wanted to give the people something to tide them over in the meantime, so I hit him up and asked if he’d want to record a new version of JFK with me. It all came together over the course of a week: he came to LA, we headed into Jack Kleinick’s little home studio, and quickly figured out a nice arrangement for us. Again, we recorded it the way we would play it – live, one take, raw.
Wrapping Up
Well, that’s all for this one, folks. I hope you enjoyed this extremely deep dive into a song that I will cherish for the rest of my career.
Reading Comprehension Group Discussion Questions
What is it about late 1960s Gibson acoustic guitars that T. Kandel likes the most?
T. Kandel mentions a few of his favorite songs that use a C-shape walkdown. Can you name 3 other songs that use a similar chord progression?
T. Kandel claims that every good love song sits on an axis between “cheesy” and “specific.” Do you think that “Flight to JFK” strikes a good balance? Provide 3 lines to back up your point.
Is it better to live in blissful ignorance or painful reality?
love when you get heated about jfk