Songwriter Notes: What If I

Songwriter Notes: What If I

Songs come from different places every time. Some easily appear and others are more like a puzzle, and sometimes you have to turn the puzzle upside down to complete the vision.

“What If I” was a puzzle for sure.

The song was originally written with the Chorus music as the verse and the verse music and melody as the Chorus, so it was completely backwards. The song had lived this way for a long, long time and that seemed to complicate things even more making me used to “one way” of hearing the song.

The song was incomplete and put on the back burner while the album was worked towards completion.

Close to the end of the record a brilliant producer, John Shanks, was brought in to co-produce the record and guide it to the finish line. It was John who discovered the Verse as being the Chorus and the switch began the final steps of the song being written to it’s final state. John had heard the chorus as being a reaching for an unobtainable something, like the stars or the sky or something that sounded like a quest or search.

I did have the first few lyrics written for the song, “Standing out on over the ocean, when you look out to the sea. Could I find to my amazement what if I, what if you were meant to be.” That first line felt like a train rail permanently nailed to the ground and the subject could not vary too far from that subject.

So after much deliberation with John Shanks we came to the conclusion that I just needed to leave the studio and wait for the words to hit me. As it ended up, it got to the point that Jesse Nason had to drive around with me with a pen and scraps of paper in his hand and we would just spit out lines as we played the instrumental thru the car stereo. The final lyrics of the chorus were written on the back of a blank CD label and just in time for the studio session the next day.

In the end the subject matter of the song became what it is now, a story about someone wondering what life would have been without someone or living a completely different life with different people. There is a realization at one point in the song where the character is just saying “I would not change a thing” even if it is bitter sweet. This song, like many on the record, is again about my relationship with my father who is now in a better place and I would not change a thing about our time together and what I experienced and learned.

I have my co-writers John Shanks and Jesse Nason to thank for bringing this song to life and giving me the one best co-writing experience I have ever had!