Reach for Me
"Call for me and I will find you anywhere you are"
All lyrics, music, and related creative content Copyright © 2023 by Rick Thorne
All Rights Reserved
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"Reach for Me" was performed by Rick Thorne and Relatively Few Friends
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Song...
Come and sit beside me in glowing sun or pouring rain
Tell me anything, come cheer your joy and share your pain
If you're hurting, let me make you laugh again
All you need to do is reach for me
You can look for me, be you near or far away
In any state of mind or any time of day
You don’t need a reason for anything you say
All you need to do is reach for me
Reach for me any time you need to bare your soul
Reach for me any time you need a hand to hold
Reach for me any time your heart feels lost and cold
Reach for me any time you chose
Songwriter's Notes:
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Inspiration for new art comes in many forms and from many directions. Sometimes, it's a favorite pasttime. Sometimes, it's new love or a new friendship. Often, it's plain old life itself coming in, invited or otherwise, bringing something that resonates while we otherwise go about our day. Sometimes it's nature. Sometimes it's tragedy. Sometimes it's just a happy moment that gets the creative fires going.
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And sometimes, art itself inspires art. Some of my favorite songs were inspired by other art forms. The works of Vincent Van Gogh inspired Don McClean's lovely song "Vincent". The great existential novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus inspired "Bohemian Rhapsody" (didn't know that, did you?). "Walk This Way" was inspired by a scene from "Young Frankenstein". I can't count the number of songs written about photographs.
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Naturally, poetry inspires songs too. It's a natural alignment; songs are effecticely medolic poems. This is where the inspiration for "Reach for Me" comes from: a poem, in this case written by one of my oldest and closest friends.
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My school friend Debra (my best friend at various junctures in my own life) is a very articulate and rhythmic poet. A decade or so ago was a very productive period in her life for her poetry, and she shared many of her poems with me during that time. I liked all of them and really connected with some of them, but a poem she wrote entitled "Reach for Me" really resonated with me. As I read it, I heard music immediately (something necessary for me to convert a poem to a song). The more I read it, the more I realized I wanted to write a song called "Reach for Me" from my dear friend Debra's poem of the same name.
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She was excited and welcoming when I told her I was interested in working the poem into a song. I told her I needed artistic control at that point because I would need to modify the lyrics to make them work as a song. It wasn't hard to take her lovely poem and turn it into a wonderful song. Its yearning lyrics, with the offerer crying to encourage the flowing faith of a friend, begged for articulation through a melodic vehicle.
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It became clear the song's theme would fit really well into the multiple verse wrapping the double bridge I'm so fond of. The yearning in the all melodic verses is full of encouragement and promises of enduring friendship, but it's a different timbre between the main and bridge verses. In the main verses, the strongly major chord harmony feels promising and almost commanding; in the bridges, it's more pleading and requesting the receiver to accept and trust complete friendship.
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I have a few rules about my music, and one of those is that I really don't collaborate on song creation. I don't co-write songs or co-produce them. In spite of the fact that Debra is listed as a co-author of the lyrics, I think that's true of this song as well. Deb contributed the original poem and kept enough of her original lyrics that I felt I owed her co-authorship of that part of the process. Once I decided to write the song, however, I took complete control of all artistic aspects including the final lyrics. It's her poem, and it's my song.
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Production & Musician's Notes
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It was clear from the beginning of the development of "Reach for Me" that it was going to need to be a big percussive song and a big vocal song. In both cases, my initial vision of the song had a strongly African folk feel - lots of deep harmonies behind the lead vocal and strong hand drumming. As the song unfolded during the basic songwriting process, I started hearing metal percussion as well (triangle and tamborine). All my songs include guitars, and by now you've come to know me as a strummer, but the rhythm guitar tracks I was hearing on this song included a melodic clean electric guitar track that arpeggiated on the triad chord progression. So the rhythm section components for "Reach for Me" are highly mobile, dancing behind the vocals rather than striding with them. And the background vocals would also be part of the rhythm section, providing gentle tributaries that feed the lead vocal river.
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When I start recording a song, I usually lay down the drum kit track then the bass track and build on top of those. But there were some interesting exceptions here. First, the song clearly didn't call for a drum set. In fact, it has no use for a drum set. It screamed for single hand drums as the lead percussion instrument. I have and play and use several kinds from several different folk traditions, but after several tries with several - doumbeks, djembes, and even bodhrans - I settled with (tried and true) congas. But I realized it would be much harder for me to laydown the conga track first and follow it with the rest of the song. So I laid down a click track with the strummed chord progression as my first track and added the melodic electric guitar track. With that, I had enough foundation to play the initial conga track.
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What next? I still needed to add the bass track, but I knew the bass part would be improvisational and I needed add more depth to the percussion so I could build the bass track on it. I decided to fill out the percussions tracks. But what instruments? Decisions, decisions - and more trials. After playing several instruments, I concluded I wanted metal in my percussion track. I chose triangle and tambourine, and I added clave to add some wood to the mix. This gave me a lovely, dense dual treble guitar and percussion mix. I was ready to add the bass track.
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I had a lot of fun with the bass track. My bass chops have really been growing since I started doing these DIY full band recordings, and I was ready to ready to lay down a really tasty and improvisational bass track. The vocals needed to be the star of the show here, and the groove was more important than making the song a bass solo. But the bass track still really covers the whole fretboard throughout the song. It really thuds when it needs to (e.g., the motific inter-verse melody) and reaches into the treble when it needs to (e.g., yearning along with the vocals). It was an opportunity to nurture my bass player soul little and stay tastefully grooving in the same track.
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With the bass track done, the rhythm tracks were complete. One question remained: what to do with the middle of the song, where I usually insert an instrumental solo? Again, I tried several instrumental options, and I came to the following conclusion: I need more voices. I've always loved The Association's lovely "Never My Love" - rich harmonies and counterpoint vocals and the fun little vinyl organ solos what run between vocal lines - but I've especially loved the middle of the song where they use vocals as an instrumental rather than solo instruments. It inspired me to consider - and ultimately arrange - a purely "instrumental" vocal section that had its own melody but mirrored the yearning of the lyrical verses. It's perfect foil I'd never used before but have really fallen in love with as a producer.
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Final thought: one day, I'm gonna really run with that "river" analogy I used above. Hmmmm - maybe it'll be the subject of another self-indulgent song...
Rick Thorne: all stringed and percussive noises and continuing vocal abuse
Lyrics: co-authored by Rick Thorne and Debra Almeida
Music: written by Rick Thorne
Creative advisor: Nicole Lamm
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Link to Patreon
Reach for me anywhere you need to hold on tight
Reach for me anywhere on any lonely night
Reach for me anywhere there's no safe port in sight
Reach for me anywher e there’s nothing left to lose
Call for me and I will find you anywhere you are
Doesn’t matter time of day or if you’re near or far
And let us sing duets of life until you find your star
All you need to do is reach for me
