Calling Out To You

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"a tiny heartbreak" -Justin C.M. Brown, 9.15.2021

it's a feeling that everyone knows.

calling someone to check in

hoping they pick up

but they never do.

a tiny heartbreak

the coin toss of the day 

didn't land your way

a tiny heartbreak

maybe if they knew 

what you were going to say

they might answer

a tiny heartbreak

it wasn't important anyway

....

i usually try to be ambiguous about the titles of my songs 

to allow the listener to project their own meaning onto the melody or structure

but this song really presented itself complete with its own mood, melody, structure, everything.

also, i almost always name my session files something absurd or funny or clever

so i'll be interested in it when i browse the idea folder later.

this is one of the only two songs where the session file is also the final title

("the floor is baklava" is the other one.)

so that should give a reasonable picture of how clear this song was to me during the writing process.

another thing i was thinking about was back at BrownTown 

(hollywood party house and home of the BrownsBrothers)

 my buddy jeff used to jam the organ on the song Nightcall by Kavinsky

and everybody in the house would sing the chorus HARD AF...

(this was 2011, drive had just come out)

and i think it's got a touch of that like... wistful but cool hahaha

i also particularly love the solo and when writing it

i could visualize like...

how excited the person is when they get called back

and how the story they thought they weren't going to get to tell just like... 

spills out because they were rehashing all the details in their head anyway.

BUT THEN THEY REALIZE

THE PHONE DIDN'T RING

AND YOU'RE TELLING THE STORY TO NOBODY

and it's time to put the phone in the other room for a while.

So for those of you who haven't seen the ERA Virtual Gallery

this is not the original art I designed for this song. 

you can see the first version in the Session Artifacts slideshow.

originally i had wanted to do something with a landline phone as the image

but i didn't have one

so i kinda decided a cell phone would be more relatable because...cell phone.

but the week before this song is released i saw this dang clock phone

sitting on the giveaway table at my apartment complex.

and it kind of made me mad, because i knew i was going to end up

changing the art to this song. and here we are. 

i think it looks way cooler. so that's why i decided to use it instead.

thanks, unexplainable artistic compulsions!