from TEA PARTY, released October 1, 2012
Music and lyrics, all instrumentation by Mark Walker. Outro contains a segment of 'The Unanswered Question' by Charles Ives.

The making of ROME:

The verse sections, particularly "I know, I know..." and the overall feel & instrumentation of this song came to me in a dream. Details are vague, but the overall theme was a feeling of being in the aftermath of something bad that had gone down. It could have been anything from a relationship falling apart to the death of a loved one or the loss of many people. I developed more of the song's musical structure on the bass and culled more of the vocal melodies from my stock of partial ideas.

As I began arranging and recording the song, I could see it taking shape as the epic piece that it is now, although it wasn't my intention for it to be 8-minute plus in length. However, I didn't try to shorten the song for the sake of making it more commercially viable. It is what it is - a longer journey than most of what I tend to write.

This is probably the most intricate and layered song I've recorded - I've lost track of how many weeks went into the writing and recording in total. It just seemed to keep expanding as I went along, which I found a little maddening, but I consoled myself with the adage of Rome not being built in just a day. As I let that sentence sink in, the symbiotic perfection between the original sentiment of the dream and Rome's iconic symbol of greatness meeting its ultimate demise became undeniable, which gave me a boost of enthusiasm as I saw this song to it's completion. It gave me good fodder for the lyrics, too.

THE MINUTIAE:
(things only me, and maybe three other
people in the universe care about)

The bass track in this song is a combination of three bass lines run through the same amplification to achieve the effect of a 12-string bass. Using Rickenbacker basses, of course - a '79 4001V63 for the fundamental line, and a '79 4001SLH playing the unison octaves. The 3 lines were recorded direct into the board - no compression, no effects, then run line-out as one audio signal to the amp. The direct & mic'd signals were submixed. You can hear the difference between the 12-string effect and the standard 4-string sound at about the 4:33 mark when the octave lines end.

The V63 has the low-cut cap bypassed, the SLH has it in line.

Nickel round-wounds on the V63, stainless steel rounds on the SLH.