{"id":7720,"date":"2019-12-05T13:38:12","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T18:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/?p=7720"},"modified":"2019-12-05T15:57:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T20:57:35","slug":"behind-the-song-no-more-tequila-for-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/behind-the-song-no-more-tequila-for-santa\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Song: &#8220;No More Tequila For Santa&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>&#8220;No More Tequila For Santa&#8221; <\/strong>is now available on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/19fLWBI7m1KWpb8nYJx8Uv?si=uDGUB7xIQJ-OohqIy1-J2g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/artist\/michael-gaither\/id178242410\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/artists\/B0016HJPT8\/CATALOG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Amazon <\/a><\/strong>and all the usual digital platforms.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/NMTFS-image-cuervo-and-lights.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-7724\" src=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/NMTFS-image-cuervo-and-lights-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>It started with a title. Christmas Night circa 2018, a friend of ours grabbed a decoration that looked like a present. I told her it was just a prop, and she said, &#8220;Oh no. No More Tequila For Santa&#8221;. Sometimes &#8211; more often than not, actually &#8211; that&#8217;s all it takes for a song. I wrangled my pal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncirillo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">John Cirillo<\/a> &#8211; who&#8217;s writing up a storm with half of Nashville these days &#8211; and we Google Doc&#8217;d and Skyped together what we decided would be our own &#8220;Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer&#8221;. However, we wanted something with more of an edge to it. John and I literally typed out almost 10 pages of lyrics and story ideas. (Yes, there was a bit of detail. But it&#8217;s easier to cut what you don&#8217;t need, rather than be stuck for song fodder.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2ywaGv3QXyY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Inside info: <\/strong>John and I have a perfect cowriting relationship. We&#8217;re good friends and we trust each other. Our approach is, &#8220;No egos. Whatever makes the song a better song is acceptable. Toss in everything you can think of. And no hard feelings if one of us edits out something the other writes.&#8221; And if one of us has a phrase that just <strong>HAS TO BE IN THE SONG<\/strong>, we make it work. For example, I was adamant that the lines &#8220;apologies for all the misdirected gifts \/ but you should see the viral photographs&#8230;hashtag drunk santa gifs&#8221; had to make it in somewhere. John liked it, too, fortunately.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-05-at-12.54.07-PM.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-7730 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-05-at-12.54.07-PM-150x150.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Cut to spring\/summer: <\/strong>Me and my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/band\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Best Friends<\/a> gathered at The Compound, a studio in Ben Lomond CA, with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/henrychadwick.bigcartel.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Henry Chadwick<\/a>\u00a0at the board. Henry&#8217;s a local singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He&#8217;s well-known as being the drummer for the Coffis Brothers and The Mountain Men for 8+ years, but he&#8217;s so much more. I interviewed Henry last year on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/songs-and-stories-181-songwriter-henry-chadwick-and-marlin-fisher\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Songs and Stories&#8221; podcast<\/a> and learned he&#8217;s also an engineer. We hit it off. I wanted to work with him.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve never recorded, this is pretty standard, and it&#8217;s and the approach that we used:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I did a scratch vocal\/guitar, playing with Jeff Baker on drums and honorary &#8220;New Best Friend&#8221; Mark Hall on bass to get the basic rhythm tracks.<\/li>\n<li>To get clean guitar and vocals, I redid my rhythm acoustic guitar on a dedicated track. I then resang the song, and we <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Double_tracking\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">double tracked the vocal<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Joe Bac, our guitar player, played his telecaster on the rhythm track, then layered in something really sweet with his Rickenbacker on an additional track.<\/li>\n<li>Eliza James, our harmony singer, came in for another session, sang her regular harmony (that she performs when we play live) and added additional harmony parts on additional tracks.<\/li>\n<li>Henry, Joe, and I edited the whole thing down to a four-minute masterpiece. Full disclosure: Henry edited it &#8211; he&#8217;s a master at Pro Tools. Joe and I listened and advised. \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>All for a four-minute ditty about a drunk Santa Claus. It was just that easy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Complete Credits (including photos and video): &#8220;No More Tequila For Santa&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Written by Michael Gaither (ASCAP\/MAryLou Tunes) and John Cirillo (ASCAP\/St Cruz Mtn Publishing) \/ All Rights Reserved<\/li>\n<li>Rhythm guitar and vocals &#8211; Michael Gaither<\/li>\n<li>Lead guitars &#8211; Joe Bac<\/li>\n<li>Harmony vocals &#8211; Eliza James<\/li>\n<li>Bass &#8211; Mark Hall<\/li>\n<li>Drums &#8211; Jeff Baker<\/li>\n<li>Video &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newmanmediaworks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Richard Newman<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Photos &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/elflandphoto.smugmug.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David L. Hays Jr.<\/a> and Richard Newman<\/li>\n<li>Produced by Michael Gaither and Joe Bac<\/li>\n<li>Engineered by Henry Chadwick<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.michaelgaither.com%2Fhome%2Fbehind-the-song-no-more-tequila-for-santa%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;&amp;width=800&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:800px;height:30px;margin-top:5px;\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;No More Tequila For Santa&#8221; is now available on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon and all the usual digital platforms. It started [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7720"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7731,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions\/7731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}