The Story Behind The Song, pt. 13: O Little Town Of Bethlehem

Posted in: The Story Behind The Song by Paul Jacobsen on January 9, 2012 at 4:17 pm

TRACK THIRTEEN // O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM

The thirteenth installment of TSBTS, wherein we give a little glimpse behind  the recording of our new album Come Let Us Adore Him. Let’s put a fork in this blog series and call it lucky 13, shall we? Yes, we shall.

Look. We’re all the way to 13 of these. Christmas was weeks ago. The stores are already full of Valentine’s Day crap. I’m gonna take a cue from the essentially Spartan version of this song and (try to) keep it simple.

Part of the beauty of this version* is that it’s just one person**. Yes, in the Lower Lights, we lean a lot on collaboration and combination and (sorry, Ayn Rand) group dynamics. But sometimes it’s nice to hear one person’s unique take on a song from start to finish, untouched by anyone or anything else.

So, here, we get solely Dylan Schorer, an electric guitar, an amp, maybe a pick, maybe a couple pedals (none of which are looping pedals). The single-minded, singly-played sound of that goes into a mic, which goes through a magical bunch of studio thingies that I would tell you about if only I had any idea at all what they actually did or how they worked (compressors? filters? jigawatts?), and eventually get recorded by Scott.

Simple.

Speaking of Scott, he pointed out something that has become one of my favorite things on the album. Right near the end of the song (around 1:52), Dylan strums out the song’s final chord. As it rings out (at 1:54), he does a little string pull-off (more like a gentle sweep-off) that is precisely the kind of touch that makes Dylan Dylan. It’s not pyrotechnics and showy stuff. It’s subtlety and taste and creativity. That’s Dylan.

And that’s a wrap. A fitting way to end the album. And a nice way to end these blogs. Thanks for reading and, more importantly, for listening. We loved making this record for you and are really excited to share the next chapter this spring.

Oh, and if you want to know more about the song itself, I found a nice resource on “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that says it better and more comprehensively than I ever could. GO HERE.

 

 

* I could call it “ours” but, really, it’s Dylan’s. And he was generous enough to let the rest of us slap our name on it.

** A superhuman of a person, but, still, one superhuman of a person.