I guess I’m still not done raiding the archives for more good old stuff to throw on here. This song has a bit of history to it, actually, even if it’s not as old as some of the other stuff I’ve shared recently. I wrote it two years ago in a southern Russian winter, out in the country. I remember: strumming the guitar by candlelight, heavy blankets of white snow muffling the sounds, chopping wood and training the dog to carry logs with me to the furnace, sweating out my worries in the banya (that’s the Russian sauna, a fantastic place).

Most of the lyrics came from a kind of prayer or mantra that came to me in one of those mornings when you wake far earlier than your normal time. I was up, alert, and the world was dark. So I scribbled down the words and that was that.

The recording happened last year and was a journey in itself. At the time I was feeling pretty low, musically speaking. Not that I didn’t enjoy making music, but rather that I was unhappy with my limited abilities to record, much less share. All the stuff I was recording seemed terribly flat and uninteresting. I couldn’t imagine who would ever want to hear anything I made. At the same time, Nastja was asking me to play this song for her almost every day.

So eventually I worked up the courage and set out to record it, crossing my fingers that I wasn’t going to ruin a song I loved. But I needed help, so I drafted Nastja and KT the wonder monkey for backup vocals. It is hard to describe the joy of sitting in a living room with mics and headphones, laying down with absolute seriousness a vocal track that goes “Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo!” You should try it. It’s really hard to maintain a bad mood after that. (It also works with ‘na-na-na’ and, of course, ’sha-la-la’.)