Anxiety

Robert James

I had the guitar parts for the three main sections of this one demoed out back in January so it doesn’t qualify for this year’s FAWM, but it does qualify for the RPM Challenge album. The lyrics are embarrassingly crappy, but someone I care about is having anxiety issues and I wanted to write a little encouragement, even if it does sound idiotic.

Every February when I do these projects the easiest, most enjoyable part is always the lead guitars. This year has been a little different. I’ve been struggling. It’s taken way more takes to get anything down and I’ve been feeling myself dumbing everything down and being much more simplistic than usual. The first lead part I worked on for this song was the solo at about 1:50. It was the first thing I worked on that day and I expected to have the usual problems. Nope. On the first take I ripped through it like old times. Yeah it is sloppy and the timing gets a little fruity toward the end, but it felt wicked good as I did it and I left it in place. Here’s hoping that keeps happening for the rest of the month. The guitars are all Gibson SG into a Fender Deluxe Reverb. There is a Wampler Tumnus for the overdrive, an MXR Phase 95 for the phaser at the end, and a Vox wah-wah whose model number I can’t remember. That is every piece of gear I am allowing myself to use this year (I’ve also allowed myself to use the master delay and reverb, but only in the mix, and the amp has a tremolo that I’ve used a couple of times). So far I’ve stuck to that restriction.

Enough gear talk… again.

It’s never as bad as
what you’re afraid of
Its not that bad
I know you can take it
you can get through it
you can hang on

You feel a pain in your chest
It’s pretty scary
you’ve no idea what it is
You think that it could be stress
but how do you know
what to do now
what to do

It’s creeping up again
anxiety
It’s got its hooks in you
You can never tell when
anxiety
is gonna come for you

you find it harder to breathe
don’t want to panic
but you start thinking the worst
the pain is spreading around
don’t start to panic
what to do now
what to do