06. THE FIRST ONE TO THE SCENE OF AN ACCIDENT ALWAYS GETS BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS

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This is the oldest song that appears on Sever Your Roots. We demoed this song with Jeffro (as well as early versions of "Apologies" and "Thought Control") back in 2005 (!) and other than some of the lyrics, the song went unchanged for those 4 years. We re-wrote the ending to accommodate for the fact that we wanted it to lead into "Unwriting Our Songs", but the rest of the song structurally is the same as that initial demo.

We added the mandolin late into the recording of the song. Since this song was written before Dustin joined the band, he needed a part to play and we didn't want to have him simply following the already established guitar part. The frenetic pacing of the guitar and the key of the song lent it self nicely to an complimentary mando part, and I had just gotten one for Christmas and was anxious to use it as much as possible. We actually recorded the mandolin through a Marshall JCM 900 to give it just a little bit of drive, which allowed it to cut through the mix at points. The major chords that the mandolin plays at the beginning of the song and the way the guitar comes in over the top of it are a nod to one of our favorite bands, Mew and the song "Am I Wry? No."

The strings were the last thing added into "First One To The Scene...". We'd been wanting to work with our good friend Kara Eubanks on collaborating on some string parts for years, and this was the first song we tackled. Almost all of the parts on this song were her idea, save for the main descant melody over the "what are you waiting for" choruses, which was something I'd always heard in this song. Kara is probably one of the most gifted, talented musicians that we've ever met and it was amazing to work with her on this album.

There were three different guitars used on this song. An American Tele, my Ibanez Ghostrider, and an Ibanez Les Paul copy which got that super huge, thick fuzzy sound in the middle bridge of the song.



DEMO - Recorded by Jeffro in our practice space in Beloit, WI.