"A conversation between you and your mother..."

I had a chance to speak to Brendon on Friday about the progress of Ask You and I am very excited to see what he has been working on. I sent him the final take of what we did down here at the studio and he has been adding his special touches to the song for the past few days. Originally when we had played the song in front of an audience at my mom's memorial service, Brendon had a whole electric guitar arrangement throughout the song that seemed to work really well; in fact, i truly loved it! However, since it was so long ago he decided to take a fresh approach to the song. I had discussed with him my intentions for the different parts, namely the outro where it would build up in an intense and emotional way, involving all of the other key players on the album. In other words, the first part of Ask You would be mainly me and Brendon and then the last part would bring in Marcin, Cullen, Chad and whoever else had played on previous songs (Ask You is the final song on the album). In recent weeks, Dave, Brendon and myself have realized that we should really avoid cluttering this song with too much at the end. Less is more kinda thing...the vocals and lyrics really are the most important part afterall and I love that that Brendon and Dave also feel the same way and know exactly what treatment to use.

So in our conversation, Brendon and I discussed using cello, viola and violin as part of a string arrangement during the outro, as well as some light electric guitar strumming. During the second verse, he has a thought to use some ambient sounds as atmosphere to suggest something "on the other side", a sort of musical representation of my mom. He also plans on minimizing his involvement during the first part of the song because as he told me "it's a conversation between you and your mother" and that he will just leave it be just that...

Right on, man. Right on. Good to have you as a part of this.