The New Single, 'My Land' drops July 4th!
'My Land' is the latest single by the mysterious Merry Mutineers. Following on the coat tails of their last single, 'The Ballad of Charlie Lone' the Mutineers head home to their roots. 'My Land' pays homage to 5 centuries of musical influence, from Bach to Queen. Just in time for America's Independence Day, 'My Land' ask the simple question: What does it mean to be truly patriotic?
The Inspiration for ‘My Land’:
Noel Rice carried on a long tradition of Irish music from Ireland to New York, and then to Chicago. Noel was the director of the Academy of Irish Music since he founded it in 1982. He taught and opened musical opportunities for thousands while also developing a transformation of Irish music through collaboration, fusing in modern music styles while keeping the Irish music intact. Noel passed away in 2019 leaving a rich and vibrant legacy behind.
Just recently Kevin Rice, Noel’s son, contacted my buddy Rich and asked him if he would like to go thru boxes upon boxes of Noel’s music. Rich agreed and spent the evening going thru the thousands of pages of Noel’s sheet music collection. A day or two later, unexpectedly I received a text from Rich. It was a picture of two books from Noel’s collection, he asked me if I wanted them. I told I would be honored. A few days later Rich dropped by with the books, one of them a collection of old Irish songs and, the second a book named, ‘Ireland’s Famous Songs’. The book was a collections of old lyrics and poems written throughout the centuries. Rich thought I’d like it for possibly composing songs for the lyrics.
A few weeks later I was clearing off all the crap that had been piling up on my piano. Once I opened up the key cover I started improvising for a few minutes. Then, the book Rich had given me caught my eye. I picked it up and opened it, looking inside a poem caught my attention, ‘My Land’ by Thomas Davis. I liked the meter but it was the words that wouldn’t leave me be. Immediately I began improvising a melody over a very simple chord progression, the words fit perfectly. For the next hour I worked out the melody, chord progression, and rough arrangement. The song, ‘My Land’ was born.
The next day I had a rough demo that I sent out to Rich and Dave to start working on harmonies and a flute part. As the song came together, all I kept hearing in my head was Queen. Queen is known for their larger than life anthems and lush backing vocals among other things. I told Rich and Dave to think Queen. They had a grand total of 3 to 4 days to work something up. In the mean time, I cut piano, two acoustic guitar tracks, bass, organ, drums, and two electric guitar tracks. I was shooting for an epic, over the top rock ballad/anthem.
When Rich walked in one evening to cut his flute part, he was pretty apprehensive about what he’d written for the intro. He explained that when he heard the track for the first time he heard J.S. Bach, and he didn’t know if the fanfare he’d written would work with the Queen idea. I told him as long as it didn’t sound like Pachelbel’s Canon I was up for anything. The next 2 hours we recorded the flute track and we ended up using his initial idea. Way to go Bach!
As we listened back to his flute track Rich started singing ideas for the backing vocal parts, which this time was very Queenish. Another 2 hours rolled by as we sang 12 different harmonies throughout the song. Not bad for one evenings worth of work.
A few days later Dave, Rich, and myself got together for one final evening of recording. We wanted the backing vocal parts to sound HUGE. So, we spent another 3 hours cutting an additional 18 vocal tracks...30 voices in total. As we listened back to the final product, we all had goosebumps at how amazing the choir vocals sounded. Another productive evening in the books.
Outside of some minor lead vocal fixes the track was just about done. Seeing that my lead vocal track on the demo was, from an energy and vocal performance stand point, pretty decent I decided to keep it and fix a few minor errors. The next day I cut a few more tracks of lead vocals to help make them sit nice and big in the mix. With that, the track was ready for mixing.
Thursday, June 29th - Much of the day was spent getting the session organized and cutting all the fat out of the each track. I had the time before the others showed up to help with mixing so, I began to mix the track and got it to a decent shape. Within next 2 hours the track was mixed and mastered. For the past few days I had been working on the video for the song and had that almost to completion, Dave and Rich hadn’t seen it yet. The true test of the mix and master of ‘ My Land’ would be when I put it into the video and let them hear it as they watched the video. After the song and video faded Dave turned to me and said, ‘I have goosebumps!’ That was good enough for me!
In summary, ‘My Land’ came to be by sheer chance. A song I had no intention of ever writing. A song that spans five centuries of influence. From the late 16th to early 17th century Bach inspired flute melody Rich came up with to, Thomas Osbourne Davis who wrote his poem ‘My Land’ in the early 1800’s, to the 1900‘s, Queen inspired power ballad/anthem and vocals I was shooting for, to Noel Rice finding a small book of Irish songs & poems in a music store in NYC...to his passing and the book finding it’s way into my hands, and the song being composed, recorded, and released in 2023. Divine if you ask me!
Final thought:
In the end, I believe the reason the poem ‘My Land’ struck me is that it is a national anthem for every person of every country on earth. No flags, no politics, no armies, no ‘Our country is better than your country’, no ‘Our way of life is better than your way of life’. We are all proud of our countries, our ways of life, our heritage, our families, and our land. In the beginning, this world started with one family, the family of man...this is their national anthem.
Enjoy and share,
Hutch
©2023 Shawn M. Hutchings & Rich Chiuppi
https://www.themerrymutineers.xyz/
