As a way to introduce the new records, I am writing blog posts going song by song to give you some insight into the writing, recording, production and story of each of the songs. Here is the next installment from Family Man.
Song By Song – 2+1=3
When I met Mary, she was a math major at Virginia Tech. Around that time, I think, she decided that she wanted to become a math teacher. She had done some tutoring for the athletic department, specifically some guys on the football team. She was struck by how many of them had missed the fundamentals to algebra and calculus. So, she went even crazier and decided to become a middle school math teacher, catching kids at that critical moment for the foundations of more advanced math later on in school. She was crazy enough to go out with me, so it made sense that she would be crazy enough to become a middle school math teacher.
With a math teacher mom and an engineer dad, it is no surprise that Elijah has been good at math since starting school 3 years ago. He comes by it honestly. Thus, the idea came to me to describe having a kid in terms of the simple equation 2+1=3. So simple, yet so profound. And that is certainly a way to describe Elijah’s arrival. The logic is seemingly sound. I’m a human being. Mary is a human being. How hard can it be to take care of another human being? The Lord truly has a sense of humor.
By most accounts, we really did have it easy with Elijah. He was a very chill baby. He started sleeping through the night early on, and he has been a good sleeper pretty much his entire life. He is very mild mannered most of the time. He was never aggressive when dealing with other kids. It may be conflict avoidance, but he is generally passive and just goes with the flow, not one to make waves so to speak. Like every toddler, he had his moments pushing boundaries and testing the limits. But we have been really blessed with a good kid – certainly more a result of God’s grace than my gifted parenting.
But having a kid does turn the world upside down. I tried to capture that feeling in this song. I had the idea when he was born, but I didn’t flesh it out until the summer he was 3 years old. I actually finished writing this song in the house we rented with Mary’s family in Maine. It was a really great vacation, fairly remote and removed from the hustle and bustle of life. In that space, I wrote a few songs that week, and this was one of them. I’ve always really liked the bridge where I get into mathematics. The irony is that I had to take some pretty advanced math in high school and college to get my engineering degree. However, I’ve never used much of the advanced stuff in my working career. So, I use this song to put Mary on notice that she’ll be responsible for helping with all of that homework when the time comes!
I believe this was the first song that John Ray sent his upright bass string parts. If it wasn’t, I just remember being so blown away by it. This song was kind of open ended as far as production was concerned. But John’s parts completely transformed the song. I had originally envisioned some hand percussion like I did for “Ready For The Change”, but I knew I couldn’t settle for that with John’s parts. So, I sent something to Tim Roberts and Ethan to see if we could schedule another drum session at Ethan’s place to track a full drum set for this tune. Tim was great as always. Since I play this in an alternate tuning, I told Tim this was my David Wilcox tune. I think his combo of the drums and some hand percussion were perfect.
Check back in a few days as I continue to go song by song with “Son Of Adam”.
