Two Friends

Writers

Original song by Falcone, with new material by Allen, Chadwick, Dambly, Pattison, Sabatelli & Wishart

Performers

Bridget Remembers

This was originally written by Don back in the 80's and he sent me an old version to hear. I listened to it once or twice then I rewrote a few lines here and there and when recording the vocals kept the original feel but gave them new life and took them where they wanted to go. I really loved singing this song, it really seemed to suit my voice.

Rich programmed and 'played' the korg drum machine for this at our house. Martin was at the computer brain storming the mental maze of  midi, I was constantly making Rich double strength coffees. When we finally got it all working Rich knelt on the floor and mixed his rhythms live. It was such a different sound from what Don was expecting that at first he wasn't sure that it 'worked'. But once Trey's drumming was there it was obvious that the song wouldn't be without the intense rushing waves of Rich's programming.

Tom Dambly is a regular Spirits Burning contributor. When he first heard the track he didn't think it needed trumpet. I was sure it would "make" the track and added EWI for him to listen to...hoping he'd then agree to playing on the track. What happened next I'm not sure but the results are here to hear! He works at the same company as Don and when looking for photos of our musicians for the Earth Born Crew collage I googled an image of him having a work discussion however Don found me a pic of him playing the trumpet, which fits a whole lot better!

Daevid Allen (Don is in a band with him called Weird Biscuit Tea Time) plays beautiful guitar on this!

Don Remembers

The original version of Two Friends was done as a demo with my friend Rob Burns engineering and singer Susan Henning doing the vocals. In those days, Rob was the engineer for my first San Francisco bands (Kameleon and Spirits Burning) and Susan’s band The Employees.

While preparing for the new version, I was kind of studying Kate Bush’s Aerial CD. I got the idea to try a repeated piano pattern, instead of matching the original piano riff and chords. I also wanted to keep the music a bit sparse until the new techno "surprise" ending, so I didn’t reprise things like my original string parts. This left room for new elements, like trumpet, guitar, and a weave of different percussion parts. With Spirits Burning material, I definitely will sometimes do less, so that others can do more.

I was very happy with how all the percussion came together. I even got Daevid to play guitar rhythmically against the Strike 'dirty drums' helicopter-sounding part. But with Richard, Trey, and my six tracks of percussion, and all the other parts, it was a lot of tracks. In fact, this was the first piece on the CD that I had to change from a Pro Tools 48 voice session to a 68 voice one.

The most important thing for me in this piece is the vocals and lyrics. It’s a tale of one of those once-a-year special nights out. This time, it was at a San Francisco restaurant that had a heated patio. And, as the song says, it was raining. Bridget’s vocals nailed the magic of the night. And, the percussion captured the rain.

Don's Timeline