7. Monica
This song is probably altogether the best one on the album. I don’t know. It’s my favorite to listen to, anyway, and in my alternate capacity as the lead guitarist for a classic rock/Texas country band called Texas Riot!!, I perform this song for secular audiences, who don’t realize that it’s a prayer to a saint – they just think it’s my attempt to replicate She Talks to Angels or something. The story behind the song is the story of Saints Augustine and Monica – if you don’t know the story, there’s a brief synopsis of it here. Anyway, I once read a quote from another saint that went something like this: “In the order of nature, Augustine was the child of Monica’s womb; in the order of grace, he was the child of her tears.” I can’t seem to find that quote anywhere anymore, and I don’t know which saint said it (comment if you know), but I thought it was positively inspiring, and the second verse of this song is an expanded version of that quote. The whole song is written from Augustine’s perspective to Monica, drawing on material from his Confessions; the chorus of female singers who come in with the guitar solo represent Monica’s tears and prayers finally reaching her beloved son. Speaking of the guitar solo, this might be my best guitar work to date, and speaking of the chorus of female singers, I would love to thank Heather Gardner, Lauren Lastovica, and Cherry Whitten for their beautiful voices and their patience in recording four tracks each to make a total of 12 female voices in the chorus. This song would be so much less without them. Also, special credit is due to Cherry, who busts out a soul-wrenching blues wail in the final chorus.
8. Hearts On Fire
I’m kinda proud of this song for a few reasons. For one, I like the foot-stomping Southern Baptist/Pentecostal old gospel-y feel to it. Second, the Holy Spirit allowed me to articulate something through these lyrics that I had been trying for a long time to communicate to others: the beautiful paradoxes of Christianity, those seemingly contradictory characteristics of our faith that can only reconcile with one another through Christ: we must die to live, we must love our enemies, we must learn though we already know the truth. These are what make our faith the only one that can survive when, as the song says, churches crumble and clouds rumble. Another reason I like this song is because Cherry Whitten again graced it with her incredible voice – everybody who has heard this track immediately assumed she was a big black woman, not a five-foot little Cuban girl.
9. Sing Along (Catholic Love Song)
Affectionately known among my friends as “the Catholic pick-up line song”, this is probably destined to be the most popular thing I ever write. It’s my best and my worst song at the same time, best because it’s been a hit with everyone for whom I have played, and worst because the lyrics are so cheesy-bad. I’ve played this song for nuns, priests, brothers, married couples, single people – it doesn’t matter, everyone likes something, and everyone has their own favorite line. Backstory: I was bombing around Facebook one day and happened across a group dedicated to Catholic pick-up lines. I thought they were too good not to use in a song, so I combined some of those with some I came up with myself and out came this confection. I’ve been told that the chorus is really romantic and deep compared to the rest of the song, and that I should’ve written another song, a serious (aka not funny) one, based on it, but really, it needs to stay with this song. If I had a different, less meaningful chorus in Sing Along, I think the whole song would degenerate to a throw-away comedy antic and not really be the miniature romantic comedy that it is. However, the same people who suggested that route did have another suggestion that I followed: they told me I should have Heather Gardner lend her awesome harmony talents to the end of the song, and I really like it like that. It gives the whole song a sort of “he went for it, kept at it, and by the end he finally got the girl” kind of idea; it’s closure, which is what romantic comedies thrive on. Music theorists might be happy with this one, too: there are some minor iv chords in the verses and a bitonal chord structure (A major chord over a G major chord, with the bass underlining one, then the other) in the little groove-jam at the end.
So that’s what the album’s all about. After having made it and listened to it a few million times, to the point that it feels like I’m listening to someone else’s music when I hear it, I feel like Awakening is really a statement about love – intimate, personal, deep, affectionate love. Which is appropriate, because God is Love, and God has that kind of love for us. If you’re reading this and haven’t heard my album yet, please check it out. It’s on ReverbNation, iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, and eMusic, among other providers, or you can buy it personally from me if you see me in person anywhere. I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and more importantly, I hope you get something out of it. I hope and pray that it leads you to your own Awakening.
In and through Love,
David Casper
