“Thomas Wolfe”
Words: LJ 
Music: Doug and LJ 
Vocals, Handclaps, Guitars: LJ and Doug 
Drums: Doug

Thomas Wolfe is the second Various Eggs song. It song started as a demo from Doug. When I first heard it, it already had the insistent rim shots and the vocal melody that became the chorus. He also had some scratch lyrics in there that mentioned a train and shooting a bb gun. It was a complete about-face from his prior demos. If I remember correctly, most of his prior demos consisted of Sigur Ros-inspired washes of ethereal guitar mixed with drawn out vocals and tribal sounding drums. I give myself some credit for this sound change for two reasons: first, I gave him a copy of Temper by Benoit Pioulard and, second, I showed him a cover of “Two Seconds” by the Volebeats which used a similar picking pattern. But to claim that these were part of the inspiration is only speculation. For pretty much every one of Doug’s demos, he would record them in their entirety without the involvement of either me or Phil. Maybe, one day, I’ll get around to asking how the riff came about. If I do, I’ll update this page accordingly.

The lyrics, if it isn’t obvious, were inspired by the writings of Thomas Wolfe. I was in the middle of Look Homeward, Angel while writing the song and thought that Wolfe’s reminiscences would blend well with what I perceived as Doug’s desire to write a song that focused on his youth. Truth be told, I don’t like Thomas Wolfe very much as a writer. To me, there are too many excesses in his writing, the grit of real life is whitewashed, and, oddly enough, his biographical novels don’t feel very personal. But, every once in a while, he does turn a nice line or two. I put a little bit of my critique of Thomas Wolfe into the song.

When we were arranging and recording the song, Doug added, as a joke, the surf beat that was ultimately used at the end of the chorus. However, instead of causing me to stop and say, “ha ha…[grumble grumble] very funny,” like I would whenever he broke out into a generic Def Leppard beat, it actually sounded good. We ended up using that beat and then emphasizing it with handclaps.

I know that, in the initial mix, I put one guitar in the left channel and the other in the right channel. This meant that you could hear Doug’s version of the guitar riff if you faded your speaker completely to one side, and my slightly different version if you faded to the opposite side. But, the final mix was done by Doug and I don’t think he kept that stereo balance in the end.

Initially, the vocals were supposed to be solely Doug’s because I didn’t think my voice would “pretty up enough” to accompany a chiming acoustic pop song. But we both did vocal takes and afterwards, Doug played the song from the mixer and manually alternated the vocals between the verses and choruses. The alternating vocals were a good instinct. Doug sung the verses in a plain adult-sounding voice that critiqued Thomas Wolfe and mulled on the idea that “you can’t go home again.” I sang the choruses about bikes, bb guns, and playing hide-and-seek with a warbling, cracking childish voice. Good counterpoint.

Initially, playing the song live proved to be a problem. Phil couldn’t play the finger-picking pattern and, for the longest time, I couldn’t cleanly play the song and sing at the same time. Our initial performance of the song left something to be desired. We put a bass line in a song that has no bass. It gave the song an almost breezy Caribbean flavor, which I hated. A lot. Thankfully, I think we’ve fixed our arrangement of the song. It is still played live on guitar and bass, but the bass line is more urgent and fits the song better. After Doug left the band, I took up singing the whole song. But, this is only temporary until Phil can play and sing it at the same time.

Anyway, hope you like the song and feel free to drop us a line with feedback.

Read  more for lyrics!

Various Eggs performs "The Inne" acoustic, live, with one microphone in the middle of the room and a handheld camera. Filmed by Jeff Rauch.

Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to drop us a line with feedback.

"Kelly Clarkson"
Words & Music: LJ
Guitar & Vocals: LJ
Guitar & Drums: Doug

“Kelly Clarkson” is the first Various Eggs song. Prior to “Kelly Clarkson,” Doug and I tried writing another song based on his guitar riff to which I put the lyrics: “I flew back home today, eight years I’ve been away, but little has changed…” yadda yadda yadda. But, we stopped working on it because it just didn’t have “it.” At its best, it sounded like a U2 power ballad, something that I don’t think either of us wanted. We also recorded another song prior to “Kelly Clarkson” called “Shake me out of the tree,” but neither of us consider that a Various Eggs song because it pre-existed the band. I.e., I wrote it years earlier. “Shake me out of the tree” is also a really folksy sounding song and I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that kind of music.

The song started with a simple sound: the dry thwacking sound a guitar makes when it has reverb, a little distortion, and no bottom end. I really like the violence of this sound, so, I tried to make a riff that would fit well with it. My original demo of the riff was just the sliding single-note guitar line and a shaker. It was also really really slow. I might have been listening to too much Ocean or Sunn0))) when I was working on the song and it originally wore its slo-metal influence on its sleeve.

The lyrics came from a writing exercise: I would write a line and Doug would write a line. The subject matter was supposed to involve the day’s events. Doug’s lines described a boring day at work. Mine described a nightmare I had. As a joke, when we were done, I read the lines as a spoken word piece over the slow version of the song a la William Shatner. I decided to work from the nightmare lines because they formed a narrative. Add a chorus and a break down, and there we go, a song! Doug suggested we speed it up, and presto, it looked more like a pop song. He also added the nice second guitar line in the outro.

On a side note, I don’t have anything against Kelly Clarkson or pop music for that matter. She is named in the song because she was really in my dream, which is odd because I probably only know two Kelly Clarkson songs, and the Adam Lambert season was the first time I ever watched American Idol.

So, you may say, “You…um…can’t sing.” I agree; when we started, I never intended to be the singer. The vocal take used in this song was either the first or second take, which also represents about the third time I ever tried to sing in my entire life. If I sound like I was scared to death, it’s because I was. But, that really suits a song about stage fright. So, we left it that way.

So, you might say, “You…um…really can’t play.” Yup, I hear you on that. I wasn’t a guitarist when we started Various Eggs; I simply enjoyed the noises an electric guitar could make. And Doug wasn’t really a drummer at that point, just a guy with a drum set.

So, you might say, “Dang, that recording sounds like crap.” I know, isn’t it awesome?

Anyway, hope you like the song and feel free to drop us a line with feedback.

Read  more for lyrics!