(Title) Follow the Sound (Sections) The Music, The Way I Play, Home Where the Highway Has No End
For background info about "Follow the Sound," see "1st Instalment, March 25, 2026 - How to Watch 'Follow the Sound'"--------------------
In this instalment -
About song #6 from the "7 Songs" collection, "Castle in the Sky"
*****Scroll down to below the Transcript to find the link to the song video "Castle in the Sky"*****
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(Transcript)
About "Castle in the Sky"
In 1993 and 1994 Lynn's songwriting spurted big time.
We were living at Canyon Lake, Texas at the time, had purchased gear for doing gigs. I'll get back to this.
I purchased a Tascam 4 track reel to reel. I recorded several of Lynn's remarkable new song creations.
Lynn had long been a great fan of Joni Mitchell and loved Joni's singing style. Lynn also had other influences at the time, like Shawn Colvin.
Also, with the new songs Lynn was making, she was experimenting with both strumming techniques and interesting uncommon chords.
As I was saying earlier, between 1990 and 1991, we were doing gigs. We did it as a trio working with Lynn's long time friend from high school who was particularly inclined to sing bluesy-style vocals. It was a good trio. But practices were difficult because we lived far from the other girl.
Stuff happens. We became not a trio anymore. The lyrics to "Castle in the Sky" are based on that.
"Castle in the Sky is without a doubt Lynn's masterpiece. Vocally she was trying to achieve a nearly/but not quite vibrato-free vocal, which was a very unusual thing for her to do as she had a most exquisite, well-trained vibrato.
The chords Lynn played on her vintage Martin D28 she came up with by sheer experimentation. She also played backing keyboard on our Ensoniq EPS.
I used the Ensoniq's drum samples to play the drum tracks but I didn't use the quantizer because to me it felt more natural to play it "live," you might say.
In terms of my lead guitar solo, it was different from the way I normally played - very restrained, to go along with the feel of the song as a whole.
Another thing about this song is that it is the only song we played that had a fade-out ending.
In every way, this song is an exercise in restraint, yet I feel it is restraint with an essence of power.
I made the video around 2010, 2011. In the video, all of the scenery images are photos from our 2007 trip to New Zealand. One thing I regret doing is, with the lyrics of the song having to do with "old friends," I regret that I used images of very old friends! That's the one thing about this video I think that Lynn didn't like.
I love this song. I hope you like it too!
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(To watch the song video, click the link below)
Collection number 2, "7 Songs,"
Song number 6 "Castle in the Sky"
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