TheVoice

The boss man says you're lazy
the doctors say you're prone
the shrinks all say the lights are on
but there's nobody home
the system has your number
you can play but you can never win
the church says that your soul is damned
way back at the original sin

Ain't I got enough problems
without turning on the evening news?
Ain't I got enough worries?
So many compromising points of view
Ain't I got enough troubles
to bury me alive in the blues?

Easy's getting harder everyday
the simple life is slipping further away
still I hear a voice inside me say
“I believe that I'll believe in myself”

Your clothes are out of fashion
Your body says you're what you eat
You can dress up any way you want
but you're still naked underneath
the promises are broken
honesty's a fatal flaw
they've taken justice
and hidden it inside the law

Ain't I got enough problems
without taking on anything new?
Ain't I got enough worries?
Everybody's beaten down
battered and bruised
Ain't I got enough troubles
to bury me alive in the blues?

Easy's getting harder everyday
the simple life is slipping further away
still I hear a voice inside me say
“I believe that I'll believe in myself”

Let the buyer beware
Nothing in this world is free
everybody wants a piece of the action
happiness is sold separately
Your loss is in denial
your victories are bittersweet
technology says in a year or two
you may be obsolete

Ain't I got enough problems
without turning on the evening news?
Ain't I got enough worries?
So many compromising points of view
Ain't I got enough troubles
to bury me alive in the blues?

It's getting harder everyday
the simple life is slipping further away
still I hear a voice inside me say
“I believe that I'll believe in myself”

Doc's Notes:

The work outside of these fragile bodies is not of our own making. We are simply born into it. Everything around us seems to be based on a plethora of faith in just about anything but ourselves.

If you really want to listen to your own unique voice they you have to rip up all the belief systems that have come before you. The ones which reinforce everything negative. Beliefs which tell you that you are the pawn of fate and genes and chromosomes, of class and race and sex. That you're damned or evil or flawed, helpless and powerless. The victim of our environment or society at large.

It doesn't necessarily mean forsaking family and friends as much as families of belief in which we have invested far too much time and effort. Those who set out to define our very existence for us. It means forsaking those individuals who would hold you down and hold you back. The ones who would have you believe that this is simply the way things are.

We have been conditioned from such an early age by our outside influences, it's hard sometimes to trust our subconscious when it talks directly to us. We seem to doubt it. Yet when we learn to open up and listen closely, it defines our very belief in ourselves.

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“The Voice” was roughly sketched out to Mark in July of 2004. It really wasn't as much as it was a conceptual idea. I had one verse and the chorus but more or less for the sole purpose of being a template for an arrangement. Whatever it might turn out to be. Nothing really came out of all that. It was just my way of saying “hey, I've got this new idea for a song” that's all it was. Mark and I were working on other songs. I really didn't know what I wanted from it at the time. That aside however, I did finish off the lyrics in the following months. The writing just sort of crystallized and my concept for the song just fell into place. Now I was ready for some music.

In August of 2006 I wrote a song on the keyboard called 'Demonesque' which got me very interested in finishing of “The Voice”. It had a really weird signature sound that kicked off the middle bridge. A single note melody riff played more like percussion than piano, almost like a bass run. I realized that's what I needed instead of something more melodic. I was looking for something just a bit more rhythmic and primal, more structured like drumming or a droning bass run.

In August of 2007 we had another recording session. This time we took all the pieces that constituted 'The Voice' and put them all together. Once we were creatively involved in working our the arrangements we found ourselves veering the song into a loose jazz signature. Which was great. I really like the vocal flourish and how we harmonized on the chorus. The song has some real unusual changes too. What is rally different about this song is how the keyboard carries the main drive of the infrastructure and frees Mark up a little to free-form on the guitar. We really got a chance to actually jam and ply off and against each other. Somewhat different for us.