There were a few songs on this album I’ve been really nervous about recording because for various reasons they were really hard for me. This was one, and I’m breathing easier as I write this listening to a playback that, I think anyhow, sounds pretty good.

I had a feeling more than a title for this one for a while – it feels very low-slung, fast, and locked in, sort of like ripping down a mountain on a road bike, which if you’ve ever done, when you’re carrying real speed, it’s like no matter how epic the things around you are, your whole perspective collapses down to a single point, the road immediately in front of you. Trying to find a title that fit this, I went through a few iterations and kept coming back to a weekend in Bormio in 2024 where I rode Stelvio Pass and Gavia Pass shortly before my daughter was born (and I considered just calling it “Bormio” or “Stelvio” and I suppose I still might but neither really quite fit), and for a while it was saved as ‘Switchback Song” in my demos on my phone. But, it occurred to me after finishing tracking this, that one of the names I’d considered for the album opener, “Above The Clouds” also fit pretty well, and I think – barring a late resurgence for “Stelvio” – that that’s probably where I’m going to land.

Anyway, this was a very Andy Timmons inspired song, something I originally wrote the chorus of on my Strat in a “position 4 through gain” sort of sound, with “Deliver Us” as a clear influence buut with a way happier, more major key feel (and a bunch of chiming open strings). It took a LONG time to figure out how the rest of the song would go, and this was the one where I really switched over to demoing using DI tracks and amp VSTs so I could come back to the melody line after listening to a couple days and punch in one or two different notes, and have it still sound cohesive. It was a pretty eye opening change of process for me, and while I originally hadn’t planned on recording this with DIs I’d later reamp, it certainly opened the door to that process as well.

This was one of the first solos I wrote for this album, as well, possibly THE first (after I’m done I’ll go back and check timestamps on the demos). It’s interesting because this happened during a couple months where I was experimenting a lot with chromatic passing tones, which was something I ultimately never really stuck with, but happened to write a solo for a song I really liked during that period so now it’s going to be a pretty core part of this album. With the chromatics in the opening and the very tongue-in-cheek blues-rock shuffle rhythm section, plus a few key changes it’s got a big Joe Satriani “Summer Song” feel to it, which for better or worse he’s my biggest influence and while I usually try to not let that show TOO much, sometimes it’s just going to come out.

Anyway, there were two main challenges for me on this song. One, I’ve always tended to be a very loose “feel” sort of player, and accordingly gravitated to writing slower, moodier, more flowing songs. This clocks in at 140bpm and is a very on-the-beat piece, so my timing had to be flawless. And two, while there were plenty of other things here that were a challenge here, the final legato run of the solo is 16th note triplets with some position shifts, which comes otu at the equivalent of straight 16ths at 210. That’s fast for me – I can do it when my hand is relaxed, but if it’s not it becomes a trainwreck quickly and if god forbid I ever play any of this stuff live this is one of the runs I’m really going to have to practice.

Anyway, as I really had to practice it to record it in the first place, here’s one of the rehearsal performances, reamped through my Wall of Mesas:

Back to using the SM57/MD421 pairing here and that’s probably going to be the amp tone I go with on the album, but I do have a Warm Audio WA87 I just grabbed that, while I don’t know how I’d feel about putting a real-deal Neumann in front of a 4×12, for the price I’m far less worried here.

The chromatic run isn’t 100% in the pocket here – getting that right involved slowing it way down and paying very careful attention to my pick strokes and really internalizing which notes were picked vs slurred, and then speeding it up and using those pickstrokes as kind of a “road map” to make sure my tempo wasn’t drifting.

This was another song, much like “At The Top of My Lungs,” where originally I’d written it with a melody being an exact reprise of the first iteration after the solo, but then felt like I needed to add some sort of change. Here it’s not much, mostly just a few chimed open string notes a la the chorus, though there’s a 4th fret B-string Eb tossed in at one point that sort of echoes the harmonics in the intro and after the solo. It’s all pretty subtle and hopefully isn’t the sort of thing that even really jumps out at a casual listener, but it does change the feel a little the second time around.

Now, I just have one more song with half the solo written and the other half currently improvised to track, and then the song I added at the last minute where I still want to tweak the writing a little and still haven’t written a solo, but I’m at least comfortable with the arrangement so I threw it into the mix. After that, I can move on to reamping and mixing.