Digging Deep #8: Nothing New
... nothing what's new with you?
Before you say anything – I know! I have fallen behind on my promise of regular Substack posts. But I have not broken my oaths. ‘Tis merely a delay, a hiccup in an otherwise pristine track record. Yes, I have been busy. I’ve been on tour (which starts up again October 22nd, click here for tix) and doing my best to promote the album (which really involves making TikToks), but if I’m going to be completely honest with you, I’ve been spending most of my time 1) watching the Mets give me hope and dash my spirits on their remarkable playoff run and 2) rereading all of The Stormlight Archive to prepare for the new book coming out in December. (Check back soon for a post about my sci-fi/fantasy book recommendations.)
But enough of the preamble! You are here, I hope, to immerse yourself in my wondrous, arcane creative process, and for that, I will happily oblige you. Today, we are discussing “Nothing New,” which has quickly become a fan favorite on the album. I always hoped it would be – with the James Taylor style guitar, the sweet and sappy lyrics, and the subtle (yet intriguing) production, it was bound to reel some people in.
The Writing Process
Although “Nothing New” may sound like a quintessentially “solo-written” Theo song, it was, in fact, a cowrite. I’ve mentioned cowriting in a previous Digging Deep post, and it continues to surprise me how the writing process can change each time I do it with someone different. I guess it shouldn’t really be surprising, but whatever. I’m a sucker for the music!
I wrote “Nothing New” in LA on February 4th, 2023 with my friend Sam Varga, a talented songwriter and artist that I (think) I met in Nashville when I was living there. I’m not sure if I had started to think about the new songs I was writing as part of Eating & Drinking & Being in Love, but something was definitely ruminating in there. I go through phases of enjoying different chord shapes; at this time, I was playing around in D. You can visit my Nothing New tutorial for more details on this, but I had just learned “You Can Close Your Eyes” by James Taylor, and like so many James Taylor songs, he noodles around in D. It’s pretty versatile and fun to craft some delicious riffs with.
Sam and I talked about the classic love song trope of “everything feels so new with you/blah blah blah/the sunrise looks different/yadda yadda yadda” and how it would be nice to turn it on its head a bit. Mumbling a chorus melody brought us here:
chorus melody ish (too close to 49 Winchester) with chorus ending
I had also been listening a ton to the song “Russell County Line” by 49 Winchester, and this melody is essentially a full rip off of that. Still, there are elements of the final song in there. If you listen at 0:39, you can hear me completely write off what Sam says about what actually ends up as the hook of the song. lol.
This next voice note is really interesting (to me at least, and to those of you that like this sort of thing). Sure, it’s almost 7 minutes long, but if you listen through, you can really hear the song take shape. I’m not usually recording for this long when I write (normally after the fact), so it’s a nice taste of the actual mumble ––> melody ––> lyrics process. I’ll include some time stamps so you can skip around.
figuring out verse melody, lyrics, chorus melody, lyrics
(0:00 - 0:56) - verse melody mumbling, with a few of the right words/phrasing
(0:56 - 1:10) - chorus melody mumbling (too close to 49 Winchester still)
(1:10 - 2:57) - lightbulb moment for Theo! unfortunately nothing good just rumination
(2:57 - 6:43) - figuring out chorus lyrics + melody, still rough. highlight at 3:46 where we come up with the first line of the chorus
chorus melody rough
This one is just ironing out chorus melody with lyrics. Things are still a bit shaky here, but they’re taking shape.
prechorus mumbling & rambling
It’s all about the mumbles, baby! When people ask me if I write the lyrics or melody first, I tell ‘em that often I just mumble until something falls into place. This is one such instance, and you can hear hints of John Denver in here. One of my favorite John Denver songs is “Poems, Prayers & Promises,” and this song is certainly chock full of Denver idiosyncrasies as well.
By the end of the day we had the song. Here’s the rough full take we did that day. A few things to note: the second verse has a prechorus that ends up being a bridge of sorts in the final version, and the riff isn’t ironed out yet.
rough full before switching prechorus
A few weeks later, I continued to smooth out the song. The first riff iteration I came up with is cool, but I realized it sounded way too much like Allison Ponthier’s “Faking My Own Death” (which is a super awesome song). If you don’t know Allison’s music, then go check it out – her songs are great, and her visuals are insane. Sometimes my strokes of inspiration are just me unconsciously copying someone else.
riff that sounds too much like faking my own death
The next day, I fixed the riff, which, as we all know, is gorgeous and beautiful and totally unique.
phone demo when it was all done
The Recording Process
Recording such a pure, fingerpicking song can be a daunting task if you decide to forego the easy path of doing it live acoustic. How do you produce it tastefully? How do you retain the dynamic quality of the song while beefing it up in the right places? These are questions that Jack Kleinick (producer) and I grappled with when we were figuring this one out.
We started by recording the fingerpicked guitar at Grand Street Recording on a Gibson J-45 that they have there. We ended up scrapping that guitar take. It’s definitely a sweet acoustic guitar, but it didn’t have the clarity in the higher frequencies that we wanted to really highlight the fingerpicking. A few months later, we re-recorded it in Jack’s home studio in LA on my friend Sam’s Gibson Hummingbird. Way better diction on that guitar.
Back to the November recording sessions, though. When we were at the old Hit Factory studio (long story I can’t remember if I’ve told you before), Michael (Andrew) started noodling around on his vintage Yamaha CP70. It’s basically an electric piano that they developed in the 70s to emulate the sound and feel of a real piano while being small enough to bring on tour (although it’s not that small). Michael laid down some Bruce Hornsby (ish) parts, and that’s when I started to feel the real meat of the song.
Michael (the noodler) Andrew tickling those keys
We let the song sit for a few months, and in that time, I experimented a bit with some layered guitar parts for a postchorus riff. These ideas ended up becoming the riff that you hear in the song itself! There was still something missing, though. I wanted a mandolin-type texture on that riff, but my mandolin is shit and sounded awful when I tried to record it. Jack’s girlfriend, Madeline (a great artist herself) has this cool South American(?) stringed instrument that worked perfectly. I can’t remember what it’s called, but I think it’s something like a cittern. It looks kinda like this:
All in all, the final effort was mainly about balancing each element we added to the song without compromising the songwriting. I think we did a pretty good job.
Finally, I just wanted to include in here a funny little recap video I took after I got home from the final night of recording the album in November. Enjoy!
Reading Comprehension Questions/Things to Think About
What are some of T. Kandel’s main songwriting influences for this song?
Should T. Kandel diversify his reading to include more than just sci-fi/fantasy? Do YOU have any recommendations?
What is your favorite song on the album?