The “Thank You” song feels quite appropriate for this week's track of the week being that it's Thanksgiving and the Thank You song is a song of thanks. I co-wrote this song with Cody LePow, the same writer I wrote Lay Me Down with. I'd recently picked up a Dobro, a Regal tri-cone from the local music store, Grayson’s Tune Town. I put it in open D tuning, capo on II and used an E blues harp, and a slide. I can barely remember the actual writing of the song...it happened so quickly, one of those jam sessions where the song came out front to back.
Since the album had been tracked at this point, I'd originally thought "Thank You" would make my second album with a full band rendition. However, something special happened on Halloween eve. I was messing around with my Tascam 4 track cassette recorder and recorded "Thank You" in the back room of my mom's house. The back room has a brick floor, good build in reverb. I used an old Sure 565D Unisphere 1 Dynamic mic that a friend gave me, recorded the Dobro, lead vocal, and harmonica on the 1st track, background vocals on the 2nd track, and then percussion which consisted of hitting my shoe and car keys on the floor. When the recording was done, I fell in love with the old timey back porch feel it had.
While we were mixing the album, I brought my 4 track into the studio with Guy and said, what about adding this to the record? We imported the 4 track recording to pro-tools, added the claps and there it was. Then I thought, what a perfect last song on the record, it ties it up with giving thanks, and I had so much to be thankful for at that point, just the opportunity to finally record my debut album. On the label release of Everything You Need, Red Parlor decided to open the album with a snippet of "Thank You" named "Intro" to set a thematic opening scene before "Lay Me Down" comes on.
Below is a live version of Thank You performed at The DNA Lounge in San Francisco, filmed by Gail Epps, accompanied by Ido Sasson, Alex Balderston, and Mike Medeiros.
Enjoy "Thank You”!
