“You’re the carnival that came through town, now it’s time to shut it down”
Inspiration:
As the title says, the song was inspired by the Black Label beer commercials of the early 90s. I wanted to write a song that gogo dancers could shake it to.
History:
For years this un-titled song, languished with only the D F G F riff and the line “I got a 7 year itch, it’s been only two with this bitch”. Many, many ideas came and went in order to try and get this song up off the ground. For several years I simply sang gibberish words that no one ever once questioned to what they were. It was destined to just be a live or jamming song as it was a fun song to play especially for me to have what would be a rhythm guitar solo. While driving back from Sarnia, a good chunk of the words finally came to me and I needed to pull over at the Guelph Line exit to write them down before they would be forgotten. The chorus structure, words and melody were changed around countless times. I don’t recall how it was that Rob threw in the homage to Led Zepplin in the outro, but it seemed to stick and would be a good schtick for the "he’s just a black dog” tag line.
Producer’s Note:
“Really?, the rhythm guitar solo of course, it’s like chain sawing though a maple tree. That and the bass solo is absolutely perfect”
Recording Notes:
The drums, bass and a scratch guitar/vocal was all that existed for months as the song lay dormant. For whatever reason, one day I tried a super fast acoustic guitar ala Guy Ritchie films and suddenly there was life. Guitars and vocals were recorded and the song was mixed and left.
I knew the song could be more and it was frustrating the life out of me, I would practice the acoustic down at the beach and worked on different vocal arrangements and then a new chorus idea came to me and then I knew I was getting somewhere. It seemed that every band rehearsal I was asking the band to try a different arrangement for the song.
I really pushed Rob to create an invigorating bass line, and it would be one of my favourites and the bass solo is simply the best.
I double tracked the lead vocal which wasn’t terribly difficult as I has sang it so many times trying to come up with something.
It is the only song that has this wide sweeping pan of the opening guitars from hard right to hard left and back again in time to start the song. The guitars sound like a single guitar track with a stereo effect, but it is actually two performances on two tracks that were too hard to choose from that I went with both. The rhythm guitar solo, I am very proud of it as it was a one take performance with no punch ins. The acoustic guitar, I wished it was much more prominent in the mix, but as I have a habit of slapping the pick board with my hand it had to be lower.
The Black Label Song was done and mixed in April 2016, but would be remixed in Dec 2016, and in that time, I decided to try another go at recording hand claps in the solo and outro. The acoustic guitar recording, you could hear my hand hitting the pick board of the guitar and it was almost like hand claps that I decided best to have actual hand claps. Also at this time, I added a guitar riff before the rhythm guitar solo. I also muted all the drums except the kick and allowed them to crash back in for effect. The click track was deleted and the kick drum was cloned to this track. Black Label went from being off the album to one of my favourite songs. It still isn’t quite where I envisioned the song to go, but pleased with all the production ideas. There were many mixes and I let Noah pick a version to master and so it happened to have a laugh at the end, and it just needed to stay.