Bring Me Down
Writing
I wrote the chords to this song in summer 2008 in our first apartment in Prezlauer Berg in Berlin. I had no sense of the melody or words until I began working intensively for the album in spring 2009. The chords had always given me a dark and a bit demented feeling playing them. It felt like I was exploring a different emotion than I usually do in my songs.
Here is part of the demo I recorded just after I wrote the chords:
Once I started playing this song at the rehearsal space, the melody and lyric came out together and very quickly. I wrote the words in about half an hour and did very little editing afterward. I felt straight away that I had found the right melody and words for this song. As a side note, the working titles for this before the lyrics arrived were "D-minor demented" and "the angry one".
Recording
This was the first song that Fab and I recorded after Dave and Peter (my drummer and bassist) went back to Dublin. We were now on our own in the studio and spent the whole day working on this track. Although I missed having the band to work on the songs with, it was great to develop with Fab our own creative space.
We started with me singing and playing the acoustic guitar live and I focused in on getting out the anger and hurt that is in the lyrics and in the chords.
After that, we try a number of experimental ideas including taping down about 25 keys on the piano and striking the back of the upright with a rolled up "Word" music magazine getting both an eerie drone and a rhythm as well. Cool idea but in the end it didn't work. So, we settled on a few other sounds that had the desired effect of bringing out the darkest hues in the song. Fab topped it off by singing a great backing vocal on this one.
Mixing
We had mixed this song in a few different styles. The last mix we did had all the instruments separated very wide in the stereo mix. It sounded cool and I liked this style.
But like "Better Way", Fab suggested a change two days before mastering. He went back to the original rough mix he did the day we recorded this song. We were completely into the mood we had created recording this song that day and never could capture that feeling again in any further mix attempts. There are a few "imperfections" in this version but it is live and real and best captures the spirit of the song and that is what a recording should do in my book.
The final mix uses my acoustic guitar/live lead vocal track from take 2 all the way through.
Final version
Bring Me Down by Eric EckhartTrack Information
Eric:
Two Acoustic Guitars (one strummed and recorded live with the vocal and one finger picked overdubbed), Classical Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar (Washburn), Lead Vocal (live while playing guitar)
Fab:
Backing Vocals, organ
Tom Fanore:
Percussion
Lyrics
Bring Me Down
You made things hard for me for my feet to touch the ground
Wrapped up in no mistakes almost let my spirit drown
I tried so hard to please, to but a smile upon your face
Never room for the flaws and truth made me nearly suffocate
Chorus:
I fear this heartache will bring me down, down
I fear this heartache will bring me down, down
Why do the pain and tears always make you look away?
Why can’t it be ok just to show my body aches?
I wish you’d told me once that perfection don’t exist
All that time and those tender years hiding sadness such as this
Chorus:
I fear this heartache will bring me down, down
I fear this heartache will bring me down, down
I fear this heartache will bring me down, down
I fear this heartache will bring me down, down
Bring me down, Bring me down, down
Bring me down