MADWIND

Mar 23

If you’ve been keeping up with me at all lately, you should not be surprised that this week’s blog post is all about Madwind, my band’s latest release.

Everything about this project reflects the transitory period in which we have found ourselves as of late – just as the title of our previous album, Seedlings, reflected the infancy of our work as a band.

Even the format of releasing an EP, as opposed to an album or a collection of singles felt right. As said in my previous post, relocating a college band is a tricky thing to do, so in many ways a short, focused project seemed like the right move.

Cover art by Madden Terry
Click the cover to stream!
Our writing process for *Madwind* was very different as well. One of the main goals for the EP was for everyone to take a turn acting as the primary writer for one song each, while on *Seedlings,* most of the tunes besides “Good People” started out as one of my ideas that we all later fleshed out together. For *Madwind,* we all got together at my parents place on Madwind Creek and got to work.
There were also very welcome changes in our methods of recording. 95% of *Seedlings* was recorded in either a closet or a living room, all layered on top of each other, while *Madwind* was recorded at a professional studio on MTSU’s campus thanks to our producer and recording engineer Chandler Furr. This meant that we were able to record the album the “proper” way with all of the rhythm tracks being recorded live. This yielded a product that we all deemed much higher quality in many ways.
Special thanks to everyone involved in the making of this project, including: Madden Terry, Sam Harrison, Matthew Meyer, Chandler Furr, Nick and Liz, and Jack Kelley.

Higher Power music video

Talk to me acoustic version

The two pictures I took during the Madwind writing sessions. (sorry about your hammock, Mikey).

Madwind:

Written primarily by Dylan, it is also his debut singing in the band (and what a knockout job he did, indeed!) It was really cool to watch Dylan in action with this song because he had 90% of this song complete before ever showing it to us, down to guitar parts and everything. My favorite memory of working on this one was helping Dylan with a few lyrics in the second verse in one corner of the room, while Will and Brenner were writing the chord progression to the bridge in the other side of the room.

Higher power:

The main guitar riff of the song was accidentally written by Will while he and I were working on a different song that we didn’t end up finishing. We were stuck on a different idea, and was just riffing, absentmindedly, and happened to play the chords that became the main idea of the song. I said, “wait what’s that!” We quickly abandoned the other idea and wrote out the chord progression, and we ended up finishing the rest of the song, all four of us, at my parent’s place during our writing retreat.

How did it get this bad?

This song was written by me, and to be honest, the whole process of writing it made me feel like such a phony. You could say it’s our heaviest sounding song yet, which is what made me feel so nervous while writing it. We always talk about how our influences are kind of polar opposites to each other with Dylan and Brenner being into pretty heavy music, while my influences are usually softer than wonder bread. I didn’t feel like I had the voice, the guitar chops, the “vibe” to make the song sound like it did in my head. Either way, I’m pretty chuffed, as the Brits would say, about how it turned out.

Talk to me

This might be my favorite Silhouette song. Brenner really cooked with this one. He somehow managed to fit the time signatures of 7/8 6/8 and 4/4 into one song and make it feel so natural. Meaning, the rhythm and counting of the song is very unconventional from a music theory perspective. Brenner spent a long time perfecting the structure of the song, and it paid off. The guitar solo at the end of the song is one of the luckiest moments of my life, as it’s probably the only time I’ve ever gotten the take on a first try.