Song Exploder - Andrew Bird - Roma Fade

Episode Date: July 5, 2016

Andrew Bird is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, maybe known best for his violin playing and his whistling. In this episode, Andrew breaks down his song Roma Fade, from the 2016 album Are You Serious?

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Andrew Bird is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, may be best known for his violin playing and his whistling. In this episode, Andrew breaks down his song Roma Fade from the 2016 album, Are You Serious? This interview was recorded on a rainy Friday in Los Angeles. I'm Andrew Bird. Okay, so it started off like you hear in the intro, a loop that I made in my living room.

It's just me playing this loop and whistling. It's supposed to be two different instruments creating this composite melody. The first couple lines came as I was driving down I-5 from San Francisco with my family, and I was long drives like that. You got to entertain yourself. So I figure I'll work on a song. I was looking out over this sort of barren stretch of the Central Valley. And there were some rainstorms kind of in the distance and light passing through the clouds.

There was this patch of light coming down and I said, light rains. Light. It sounds like a weather report like light rains today like it is at the moment. But I was also thinking light rains as in rules. See the light, how it rains so hard on your hat. Our planes, so you take such pains that you notice you. And that sort of began a song about how seeing something can change it. You know, how it being observed changes it, and vice versa.

And the field of electricity between two people as they're regarding each other or pretending not to see them or that whole dance, sort of romantic dance of seeing someone. It's about when I first saw my wife. It was after a show I played at the Beacon Theater. It was like an after-show party in the basement, and I just saw her across the room. It seemed like I wondered all ever since then if she knew that I was watching her

because she was not with anybody and kind of gazing off in the distance as if she may have known that I was watching, you know? It was like, I'm going to be very statuesque. But she claims it. She had no idea. And then the next night I saw her from the same distance in another restaurant in Manhattan, in the similar circumstance of the delight and everything.

It was like, okay, something's going on here. Yeah. Well, the first verse is this light rains, hard on her high planes. So you take pains that she won't notice you. So you're kind of getting a sense that you might be the voyeurism. is borderline creepy. And so the next line, And your ex-rays of your paleo-male are gays,

how they rest and play, slowly corrupting you. So your x-rays of your paleo-male gaze, how they rest and play, slowly corrupting you. But then it says, I wonder what the chances you wanted to. A thousand vacant stairs don't make a chew, make it true. So, am I just this creepy voyeur or is there something going on here that's mutual? You know, I guess if this has a chorus, it's the next part, which is just if she sees you, it changes you, rearranges your molecules.

If you see her, it changes her, she'll be seeing you after school. And if she sees you, it changes you, rearranges your molecules. And if you see her, it changes her, she'll be seeing you after school. From that point on, the song starts to risk a little more romantically. It starts to shift from the third person of these ambiguous pronouns to like I and you, which I had to really encourage myself to do because it's not my tendency. I'm not like super direct or confessional. I have to push myself a bit to put a little more skin in the game, as it were.

And if you see me how it changes you. It changes you, and if I see you, it changes me, and if you see me, how it changes you, it changes you. Pre-production was my favorite part of the whole process. Tony Berg came over to my house every week for a couple months. This is the first time I've used a proper producer in that sense, like someone to really kind of get in your business in a good way. I kind of enjoy geeking out on the chord voicings, which is his big thing.

Finding the melody in a chord progression, you know, not just the outer voices, as you say, like, but the inner voices. How are they going to lead? And I went to music school. I did voice structures and leading, but I wasn't very good at it. But it was kind of cool to, like, get that detailed about how in the bridge of this song, how the chords are going to lead and how. This time we're going to substitute in A major for the voice leading,

and this time we're going to do a D7, and just to keep it kind of constantly, the tension rising. Because otherwise, that would be just three chords cycled over and over again. Dynamically, there's a really interesting moment. There's this long buildup. You can't do any symbol crashes on that chord, because that's where it wants to come crashing in here. But I was really adamant that it'd walk right through the wall there,

without any announcement. That was really important to me. That's something I kept saying, let's not all forget. It's a real emotional thing to not crash down on the downbeat. To just kind of push right through. I'm obsessed with bass lines.

That's the shit I like. The pick muted, a nice dubby sound. It's just a texture that I've always loved it. Who's playing bass? Alan Hampton. Before we started, I said, it was one of my most important notes.

to him was like practice triplets with a pig. That muted bass with the really fast triplets. Have you ever written a song about your wife before? No, I think this is the first record that has like a handful of songs about her. There is a little bit like what is she going to think of this and then once she's been hearing it in bits and pieces and sometimes she doesn't hear it all put together until it's really down and then she's you'll hear you like, oh, I see. But yeah, it's different than in the past since I know, you know, we're married. It's like this is it, you know.

So it's like maybe that kind of leads to some of the more honesty and some of the songwriting. It's just like I know there's no doubt. And now here's Roma Fade by Andrew Bird in its entirety. And you're in wonder where you're there. Tips of your fingers of a strand of hair. Someone's watching you, watching me watching you, no, there we look apart. You may not know me, but you feel my stare.

Visit songexploter.net for more on Andrew Bird, including a link to buy the song Roma Fade. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full-length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikaze Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine, rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs

are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishykesh.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Next time on song exploder, Grimes. You can find all the past and future episodes of songexploder at songexploder.net or on I'm iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm.

My name is Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.