My memories about the recording process are a little fuzzy, because I've been sitting on "D&D at the Public Library" for over a year now, and I've been meaning to write the song since 2004! Thankfully, my e-mail is cluttered up with bits and pieces of the song's history. I'm sending blind carbon copies of this reply to a couple of people that are mentioned within the body of this message. I'd like to invite them to correct me where I'm wrong and/or add their own additional thoughts.
Blue Lang (of sonofsupercar and Booty Chesterfield) came up with the song title. In 2004, Blue created an album of songs in a day called "Beautiful Lunchbox" under the guidelines of the Album-a-day project. "D&D at the Public Library" was the title of one of the songs he came up with that day. Around the same time, I participated in a project called "Marathon Songs" where a group of us attempted to write a song a day for 16 days. I think there were about a dozen of us, and I was one of three people that succeded in creating something for all 16 days. Songfight taught me that a good song title can help to make the topic of the song fall into place, and that was going to be important with so many songs to write in such a short period of time. So, I decided to use the song titles from "Albumfight" for the first 12 days. I finished the first 12 days, but that left me needing 4 more song titles, so I decided to use the titles from Blue's "Beautiful Lunchbox". My intention was to write songs for all 6 of his original titles, and the result would be an 'answer-album' of sorts called "Ugly-Ass Lunchbox". I only finished the first 4. I still haven't written a song called "Angry Noob", but "D&D at the Public Library" would start taking form about 4 years later. [Side note: "OMGWTFBBQ" was another title from Blue's album, and it was the last song I wrote for Marathon songs. It's easily one of the most twisted compositions I have ever put together. Ken Mahru and Blue Lang made alternate suggestions: One suggested writing the song about not being invited to a barbecue. The other suggested I write it about a cannibal barbecue. I combined both ideas, and the result is a danceable, morbid song that's arguably my most disturbing song to date.]
On June 10th of 2008, I received an e-mail from Z of hipsterplease.com. He asked if I would be interested in throwing together a song for a project called "20-Sided Rhymes". The compilation would be 20 songs "rooted in old school, tabletop fantasy gaming and it's related media." The project was originally slated to be released in late October/early November of 2008. It looks like it's finally going to come together for late May/early June 2010. I don't have much first-hand experience with playing D&D, but I loved playing games like the Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64. I wasn't necessarily GOOD at such games, but I liked them. So, the trick was trying to come up with a song that would be faithful to Dungeons and Dragons terminology as it related to tabletop gaming. Then I remembered the "D&D at the Public Library" song title that I had been meaning to use. The beauty of the title is that it sets up the topic and location before anyone has heard a note of the composition!
On 10-1-2008 I e-mailed a riff to myself that was simply entitled "D and D riff.mp3". I've attached that mp3. You'll recognize it as the music for the verses.
By October 9th, 2008 I had thrown together a demo that had all of the elements of the song. That file is also attached as "DDDemo-100908.mp3". The keyboard solo hadn't been added at that point.
I've also attached a demo from 10-20-08. The keyboard solo is there now. In fact, I'd say that every piece of the performance is in place by now, but it has to go through one very important person to become the finished product.
MUCH credit needs to go to Adam! (a.k.a. 'Puce' on songfight) for the mixing, arranging and mastering that he did. He made some terrific choices in regards to the dynamics. The song wouldn't sound nearly as cool as it does if he hadn't worked his audio magic on the song. He really is amazing. I feel fortunate to know him, and even more fortunate that he's been willing to work with me as often as he has.
"D&D at the Public Library" is one of my proudest moments as a songwriter to date, and it probably wouldn't have come together without help from Blue Lang, Z of hipsterplease and Adam! I'm thankful to have such cool, creative online friends.
