Two Steps Behind

Robert James

Something about this song. I think I might really, really like this song.

This is the reason why I allowed myself to use music written prior to February 1st this year. I bought a new guitar back in May and at some point during the early summer I was sitting on my bed with my new guitar and my iPad, playing through an amp simulator that has a bunch of old tweed Fender amps modeled. I would pick an amp and then noodle out some riffs or changes into GarageBand, then changed the amp and noodled into a new GarageBand file. I was having some fun with my bad self and liking most of what I was coming up with. Then I used the Bassman sim and came up with this. Woah, that’s a cool little take on an D/F# thing, and having it follow a big fat Eminor… woah.

Unfortunately, I never got around to using any of those GarageBand files. Then last December I was getting the RPM Challenge bug after having failed miserably in both 50/90 and NaSoAlMo in 2018 and I brought up those tweed sim riffs. This one leapt out at me. I had to make this idea happen. Nothing I’ve ever worked on has felt so compulsive to me. I needed to finish this song. With RPM on the horizon I decided to break my personal rule of not using anything that originated outside of February and put this on the to-do list. When the starting gun went off all I had was the various sections’ guitar parts and a drummer track. I changed the drummer, added a bass, sketched out a song form and added a couple of short transitions and then re-recorded the guitars. It was the second song I put in the pipeline, only because I wanted the first song to be a FAWM worthy, February only idea.

Am I happy with the end result? Maybe? The rhythm guitars work for me. The bass guitar midi patch works for me. The GarageBand drummer works for me. The lead guitar mostly sort of works for me. I like that I did a fair amount of strumming in the solos. That seems appropriate somehow. The lyrics aren’t the worst thing I’ve ever done. The melody is okay. The vocals have some serious mush mouth going on, especially in the first verse, but when the harmony kicks in at the chorus it feels pretty good.

I have to say that working on this song was literally scary and that’s never happened before. Writing the lyrics, adding the lead guitar, singing it, mixing it was actually nerve wracking. Why? Because I didn’t want to screw up something that might actually be good. That explains why it’s the last song finished this year, and why it’s the only song that I am already thinking about re-recording. In all the years of RPM Challenges and FAWMS and other internet songwriting goofiness, I have never once felt that way about a song. Does that mean this one might actually be pretty good?

Damn, I hope so.

As with all of the previous 19 songs that I’ve uploaded for the RPM Challenge, the guitars are all Gibson SG through a Fender Deluxe Reverb.

It never seems like enough
I’m Always two steps behind
and when things start to get rough
It feels like I’m going blind

A little forward
a little backward
a little out of control
Out of the middle
from every angle
how will the center ever hold

I cannot help it
I cannot stop it
I cannot fight my way through
It’s not a failure
It’s not defeatist
what else is there left to do

Nothing good can come of this
Nothing but a tragedy
nothing positive
nothing for the best
nothing good can come of this