This song was triggered by the personal situation of a friend of mine who had recently left her husband after many years of marriage. In fact their split up was a lot more civil and respectful than in this story and in fact most break ups. A.s a writer, I guess I have the freedom to over- dramatisize events at my discretion if only to make a more compelling story. What the story does have in common with the break up of my friend and with most breakups for that matter is that they tend to go through various phases. My song describes three of these phases. Firstly Hangin On which depicts denial and the subsequent effort to keep the relationship alive, secondly Time to Go depicting the realisation that there is no solution and that it's time to leave and end the relationship and finally Moving On describing the acceptance and actual act of the separation.
The song was written in Juli 2012. My songwriting partner Laurens Reij has come around for our weekly practise session. Because it was very warm and humid we decided to take the boot out on the lake in Hoorn and practise just with guitars on the water. We anchored about a mile from the shore and held our practise session there. As the evening progressed we came up with a few interesting guitar rifs, one of which I used on this song. The guitar is tuned to a major Eb chord by the following tuning E -1 A +1 D +1 G neutral B -1 E -1 Subsequently I used a capo on the first fret to get the song into E. I have dabbled with different tunings quite a few times. This one was new to me and as a result a first it is difficult to understand what notes you are playing, which I regard as a good thing. A least my experience is that it gets you out of your familiar patterns and can offen lead you to new chords and inversions of chords. The verse is quite melodic however the bridge and chorus are very repetitive and really deserve a better and more well trained voice than mine. Perhaps I will try this song out with a vocalist or someone who can actually sing to see if they can carry the chorus better. The home recording on this site is just the 2nd take of the song made directly after the lyric had been completed.