Mind Control

Recently I’ve been waking up before the birds. Not exactly by choice, mind you, but it’s always at least a little nice to be awake to watch the day come into focus. I’ve had a lot on my mind recently (always) and a little voice in the back of my head keeps saying, “uh oh, I think I feel a blog post coming on.” I’ve spent a fair bit of time ruminating about our new single, “Mind Control,” which came out two weeks ago. Having the final product in our hands feels as though we have made it to the top of a long, steep climb. I really want to share, with whoever cares to read this, why this single feels so triumphant, and also how dramatically my perspective has shifted since I wrote the tune two years ago.

I was camping with some friends the day that “Mind Control” went live. It felt great to have my pals ask me about the process, and to hear that they were excited to listen to the tune. I mentioned that it was sometime in the middle of the night when it was written, and I remembered that I actually had every single version of the song, from voice memo to demo to final master on my phone. We decided to listen through the various versions and it was such a fun experience to hear them all back to back. It was then that I noticed the original voice memo was dated “17 Jun. 2019.” Two years ago - it feels like forever. I can’t hardly believe everything that has happened between that voice memo and this moment. It makes me laugh. It breaks my heart. 

June 17th, 2019. I’m sure at that time we were nearly packed for the North Country Fair. We had a busy summer planned with our first ever tour to look forward to. We were all talking big plans for the future, and what was to come. Then it was 2020. What a gag. Hiiiiiiiilarious. Blahblahblah, we became a three piece, whateverwhateverwhatever. No one needs to be reminded of how str8 fukt the last 18 months have been and this post ain’t about that. Andi and Geoff and I spent many nights talking about what the three of us should do and how best to proceed as our new found trio. We decided to just keep making music with the knowledge that everything else will be what it is. Let’s just get a new song out and see where it takes us.

I confess, there was a lot of self doubt on my part. I know Andi felt similarly. Yes, we put out a record that we love, but could we do it again? What if we didn’t know how to sound like Bad Buddy anymore? That fear clung to me for months. It weighed me down. My motivation was at an all time low, I hated every song I wrote, I cried (a lot) in frustration and self loathing and worry. “Onward and upward,” became “onward and onward,” spoken through gritted teeth, but onward we went.  

I won’t even begin to explain how many zoom calls, emails and demos flew around the internet to make “Mind Control” happen, you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was a LOT. Feel changes, arrangement rearrangements, tone tone tone - all buffered through the world wide web. What a shit way to make music. When we actually got to tracking, the process was out of this world and like nothing any of us had ever done before. Once we actually solidified what we wanted the song to be, we recorded everything remotely. One at a time. We started with the drums. 

I need to take a moment to talk about the technical side of things here because I am absolutely blown the fuck away at what Geoffrey Hamdon-O’Brien managed to pull off with this tune. Geoff recorded the drums to nothing but a metronome. No scratch guitar, no guide vocals, nothing. Just drums and a click track. We set the tempo, and he tracked to the steady and unforgiving sounds of Marimba 2. Oh, I suppose at one point I gave him a verbal count leading into the end section of the bridge (one, two, one two three four), but that is LITERALLY IT. We ended up keeping the count-in in the tune as a reminder. I remember at one point Geoff saying “I just feel like it’s not grooving as hard as I want it to.” Grooving to what?! There is NOTHING ELSE to groove to! Yeesh. I repeat: what a shit way to make music. 

I don’t want this blog post to become too much of a novel, so I’ll be brief with the rest of the recording process, but I have to bring up the fact that “Mind Control” features Andi’s debut guitar solo, which she fully knocked out of the park. The solo you hear when you listen to the track is also her FIRST TAKE. Beautiful. Chef’s kiss. I suppose it’s also my debut as a recording bass player (which for anyone who is interested was the very last thing we recorded), but let’s move on.

A whopping SIXTY tracks later we have our baby. And even though it’s just three of us it sounds like us. It sounds like BAD BUDDY. Through all the low (low low) lows, and self doubt, and the “what’s the points?,” the grants written and grants denied, the deep sighs and tears cried, we’ve made it here and we’ve got something to show for it. Something awesome. It is everything we wanted it to be. It is a triumph.

I mentioned at the top of this post that I was also going to explain how my perspective of this song shifted dramatically since I wrote it. To recap - June 17th, 2019 I wrote the song, June 8th, 2021 we released the song, one week later on June 15th, 2021 I get diagnosed with ADHD. 

For anyone doing the mental math, that was one week ago. 

It’s been a hard while, this pandemic. Has it been one long day or a lifetime? Does it matter? I’m sure we’ve all been in talks revolving around how illuminating it is to have all the distractions of life stripped away from us overnight and to be suddenly thrown into the bottomless pit of time. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster, that’s for sure. I feel as if I have been switching between three day cycles of borderline-manic levels of productivity and being unable to get out of bed. If you’re reading this, you might recall that in our post about mental health, Geoff revealed that he was recently diagnosed with ADHD. Well, turns out birds of a feather really do flock together. It was actually Geoff, who has been stuck with me throughout all of this, who planted the seed that maybe, maaaaybe, I might have ADHD, too. 

When I started looking at my life through the lens of ADHD it made me feel as though I might be losing my mind. It felt as if I were living under a microscope - a vicious mental cycle. Was I changing my behaviour because it was suggested to me that I might have ADHD and my shitty self is now looking for an excuse for being incompetent, or do I always operate this way and I’m just now noticing how very obvious it is that I definitely have ADHD and I can clearly see the endless coping/masking mechanisms I have created to get by in daily life but also maybe the thought of that is too overwhelming to possibly be true? 

Turns out imposter syndrome is a symptom of the disorder, which I find giggle worthy.

To bring it back to the music, imagine my surprise listening to Bad Buddy’s ~HaWt NeW SiNgLe~ “Mind Control” with my shiny new diagnosis. A two year old song about how I can’t relax, can’t slow down, can’t stop my mind from racing - constantly losing arguments with myself just to try to get a bit of rest. So much noise. Chaos. I heave a heavy sigh as I write this. 

Overall, I feel the triumphant nature of this release more than I do the shock of discovering I’m neurodivergent at 32 years old. As if some part of me didn’t already know that, as if it means anything at all. Geoff says “having the knowledge of this diagnosis simply allows me to engage more authentically with my experience,” which I love. 

Anyhow. Here we are, looking out at the view from the top of a very, very steep climb indeed. I definitely wouldn’t say it’s all going to be downhill from here, but at least we bagged one peak in the range. It’s been a really nice place for a rest, and I think I can see a light coming over the horizon. We should probably get moving. 

Onward and upward.

-e.