02. OUR HOLY GHOSTS

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"Our Holy Ghosts" was a immensely important song for this band in a few different respects. It came at a point in time where I was trying really hard to write songs for our band that weren't necessarily Culpa songs. The guys indulged me, and we put our hearts into a bunch of songs that were ok, but all in all we were never really happy playing them. "Ghosts" was a return back to being a loud, dark, aggressive rock band... which is what we always have been.

This song, as well as a few others on Sever Your Roots came out of some pretty intense personal situations, and the lyrics that I wrote at that time got very poignant. It was actually a difficult decision to keep them as written, since playing your life out on stage isn't really all it's cracked up to be, but I just kept thinking of the songs that I connect with and they're all wrought with personal experience. Plus there's something cathartic about putting something out, making piece with it and letting it go. In short, this song was a transition for this band and this album might not have existed at all if we hadn't have written it.

For some reason, this song turned out to be one that I could never get settled with vocally. Whereas other songs I'd knock out in a take or two, I kept needing to go back to this one and retrack the vocals. I'm pretty sure it was mostly psychological due to the immense attachment to the song. It was during one of these vocal retrack sessions that I had a bit of a breakdown and freaked out on everyone and left the session. We didn't go back to the studio for almost six months. This was one of those times where it seemed as though the album wasn't going to get finished. Conversely, when this song finally got a finished rough mix with everything completed, it was one of the things that got us reanimated.

Our good friends Mark Glatzel and Kyle Schaffer joined us in the studio to sing the "to be in love with love" section of the bridge. I also managed to sing that middle solo vocal part probably 20 different ways, with different lyrics, different mics, in different rooms of different buildings before we just had me scream at a room mic in the live room of the Exchange. All of the background vocals (as well as the bg vocals in "The Constant") were recorded in Jeffro's Milwaukee apartment. The swirly guitar noises in the beginning are from a custom built pedal that I found in a bag on the floor in a corner of the Exchange. We never figured out how to control it once we plugged it in, but it made this weird sound that was just awesome. Dustin recorded the main riff of this song with a 70's Ibanez Les Paul copy, to get that thick midrange heavy sound. He's since found and purchased one, just to have that sound available to him.

Contrary to what it actually sounds like, there is no cowbell in this song. Repeat, NO cowbell. The "hawing" that you hear is actually Joelly's ride cymbal starting to break. For whatever reason, it made that cowbell like sound which proved to be absolutely impossible to EQ out. Some people have commented that they love the "cowbell", but it will probably forever be the bane of our existence and one of the few cringe moments on the album for the band.



DEMO - Recorded by Jarod Wheat at Terror Swamp Studios, Rockford, IL. This was the last song demoed at Terror Swamp before we went in to record what would be Sever Your Roots.