My daughter put me in time out for swearing the other day. I was driving her home from school on garbage day and making good time, until I turned down a street with a garbage truck on it. “God damn it,” I muttered, and she caught me. I find myself having to answer lots of “why” questions, as well, and having to think about reasonable answers to these queries, some of which I’ve never thought about before. This song is about how raising kids causes you to change your own behaviors.

Musically, this song is pretty much all diatonic. It makes heavy use of minor III, but otherwise is fairly straightforward.

I spent some time on this one, since my cold has been making it harder to sing. It was recorded in my home studio, using Amplitube for the heavy guitars and Line 6 Helix simulation for the clean ones. Drums are Blasting Room and vocals are via my SM-7B.

Lyrics

I find myself now thinking about

Every little action I take

Trying to cover every moment

And the impression that I will make

I’m swearing less and thinking more now

Centering empathy

I’m making all of these improvements

But I’m not doing this for me

Every action done with purpose

‘Cause now I finally see

 

This is how you make me better

This is how you make me whole

This is how I learn to weather

All the things I can’t control

Every day I’m learning lessons

Every day it’s something new

I’ve learned to grow and ask big questions

And it’s all because of you

And it’s all because of you

 

So much of what I did before you

I did ‘cause it was always so

Never before did I reconsider

Exactly what I think I know

Now I’m giving my days purpose

Blazing over every rut

No matter how much weight the load is

Heedles of how deep they’re cut

Building up to something awesome

Thought it’s not quite so clear what

 

Making choices that I can live with

Has never felt quite so good