Track #2: The Mayo Clinic

I think this song is one of the oldest on the record.  It’s taken a number of different forms and shapes over the years and stems from this old chord progression that I think John taught me that is the progression for ‘Wonderwall‘.  It’s just this little D-C-G thing.

I remember playing it and having the idea for the song years and years ago.  Maybe something like five or six years ago.  An old song that I had demo’ed in the bedroom on a four track that I later transferred over to mp3 and put on a CD for Paul when we were going through all of the tunes that we thought might make it onto the record.  In those days the song was called simply “The Clinic” and, again, the words and lyrics weren’t all finalized.

The structure also metamorphosized over the years.  It started out pretty much as it’s heard.  Essentially three different parts with the “we’re not living in our hearts tonight” being the chorus.  But then as I got my feet wet with songwriting in general, I felt like every song needed a bridge.  So I wrote one.  And because it’s all kind of a D-A-G in the chorus I could do a G-D-A bridge and, truthfully, the bridge kind of worked.  I suppose it worked in the sense that it didn’t take you out of the song and give you this jarring sensation that someone had just completely f-cked with the natural order of things.  But, although it fit in some ways, it really felt kind of bloated and unnecessary.  And when I talk about going through the songs and really trying to weed out the unnecessary parts, this is one of those examples.  It’s not that the bridge didn’t work, it’s that it didn’t really add very much besides make it a four-minute song.  Once you get cool with the idea that the song can be three minutes or less and still be fine, in fact be better, you start looking for opportunities to be really concise and articulate within the structure.  Sometimes you want a five or six minute thing but I tend to get bored kind of easily and I really like the fact that many of these tunes are in and out and only leave you wanting to hear more and go back for additional little bits and pieces.

The song details some of the circumstances with a visit to Rochester, Minnesota and is told from a different perspective than mine.  The thing with this record is that I was trying to inhabit a lot of different narrative voices, both my own, my wife’s and then, ultimately, a sort of third-person narrator.  There are bits and pieces of the lyrics in the song that relate to real life, of course.  

I had originally imagined the song as much more pulsing and throbbing and distorted.  I had been listening to a lot of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and wanted this weird distorted current of noise running throughout the tune and then have other things going on like glockenspiel, baritone guitar, Rhodes, etc.  

When we finally got into the studio to record it, of course, the song took on an entirely different feel than the one I had originally imagined.  We took a couple different passes and kind of had trouble figuring out the parts going out after the second chorus.  Originally, I had thought we’d have an instrumental verse and then close on the chorus.  But while we were in the studio, again, getting back to what’s needed and what’s not, it felt like we didn’t really have to go back and end on the chorus just out of convention.  It was okay to kind of have a jam that swirled around and then end it and do something that was a little unexpected.

After those first two days of live recording with the band, we were having difficulty wrangling the song into a sound that really felt distinctive.  Paul wasn’t quite satisfied with the sound and actually was toying with the idea of cutting it from the record altogether.  I fought hard for the song, I suppose because I felt the lyrical content was a key focal point for the story and becuase I thought there was more that we could do make it work.

He relented and we decided to keep exploring the song with some other players.  So we brought in Rob Burger.  This was one of those times where an incredible musician can come in and completely change the tenor of the song and help give it the elements it needed.  Rob has worked with many great players and is a melodic savant in many ways.  He can play any kind of instrument and make it sound beautiful.  To wit, we originally thought he was going to be doing accordion.  On the day he was in, however, he told us we should consider renting a pump organ, so we did just that.

The great thing about the pump organ is that you can fit it into the trunk of a cab and it folds up into a suitcase.  So I got to the studio wheeling in this big bulky case and we set it up.  It’s that drony thing you hear at the beginning of the song and it’s almost like a seated accordion in that you literally have to keep pumping it so that air comes in and feeds through the valves to create the sound.  So it’s a bit of a workout to play one and you look like Bela Lugosi or something, hunched over this tiny piano and working vigorously, in time, to keep it full of air and breathe with the song.  

He also played an acoustic slide guitar-y instrument that’s also in there and I’m not sure what it’s called.  And then he also played the piano in conjunction with some of what Matt had already done.

Those were important elements.  

But we still felt like we wanted something a little more.  So when Antoine and Anja came in, mainly to do ‘Dirty White Coats’, we had Antoine go over The Mayo Clinic and do those plucking pizzicato notes on his violin.  That violin over the pump organ became the distinctive sound of the song and really a very beautiful outcome generated by, again, putting great musicians in a room, giving some very basic instruction, and allowing them to develop their own ideas in an organic way.  

This song could have gone a lot of different ways and I can still hear the way I used to play it on my acoustic.  Lots of frenetic downstrokes.  A ripping rocking noised out Lou Reed kinda thing.  But this was a totally unexpected and beautiful outcome and one of the ways that these chords and these ideas can be locked down and sent out into the world for years to come.

That’s the way songs are, you know.  They’re frames of houses.  And you can paint the walls different colors and hang different pictures and there are a lot of ways to make that house beautiful and resonant and memorable, as long as it’s a good structure and the people that are doing the work care about their craft.

Here’s the chords:

Verse: D-Cadd9-G Part II/Chorus: G-A-D, G-A-D-Em7

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