{"id":28407,"date":"2024-11-08T05:30:15","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T10:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28407"},"modified":"2024-10-23T09:26:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T13:26:46","slug":"fastball-the-way-to-create-a-classic-tune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/08\/fastball-the-way-to-create-a-classic-tune\/","title":{"rendered":"Fastball: ‘The Way’ to Create a Classic Tune"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This story appeared previously in SPIN<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Fastball\u2019s Tony Scalzo recalls the making of \u201cThe Way,\u201d the band\u2019s biggest hit<\/b><\/p>\n

When Austin, Texas trio Fastball released \u201cThe Way,\u201d the first single from their second album, 1998\u2019s All the Pain Money Can Buy<\/i>, they hoped it would be successful. They had no idea: the song went to the #1 spot on U.S. and Canadian alternative singles charts, Top 40 on six other charts, and earned the band a Gold record. The album went Platinum, catapulting the unsuspecting trio into the big leagues.<\/p>\n

Subsequent albums wouldn\u2019t repeat the commercial success of All the Pain Money Can Buy<\/i>, but Fastball\u2019s music has continued to earn critical acclaim. The band\u2019s mix of classic songwriting values, sharp hooks and always-thoughtful lyrics has served it well through seven studio albums, four live sets, an EP and a best-of covering their early years. More than three decades after they began, the trio of Tony Scalzo, Miles Zuniga and Joey Shuffield is still together; Fastball\u2019s most recent release is Sonic Ranch<\/i>, released in June.<\/p>\n

I spoke with songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tony Scalzo about \u201cThe Way,\u201d an impossibly catchy and upbeat tune, one that paradoxically has its lyrical roots in a terrible, true-life tragedy.<\/p>\n

Tell me about the lyrical inspiration for \u201cThe Way.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

I love to write lyrics, but I hate to attempt<\/i> to write lyrics. You feel like, \u201cThis song is almost finished; I\u2019ve just got to come up with some better \u2013 or any<\/i> \u2013 words.\u201d Sometimes that\u2019s the most challenging thing; I could be a composer and write music and never have to worry about words, but I have to write these words that are in English!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was dry. I didn\u2019t have any ideas of what to write about. At the time, Rob Seidenberg was our A&R guy at Hollywood Records; today he\u2019s my friend. And I called him and asked, \u201cWhat do I write about?\u201d I just threw it out there. And he said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you do what the Beatles did? Look at a newspaper and see if anything strikes your fancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And right away, I found this story in the regional news section of the paper. This family was looking for their matriarch and patriarch, who hadn\u2019t been around in maybe four or five days. It was like, \u201cIf anybody\u2019s seen these people anywhere, let us know.\u201d So I jumped on [the idea] when I saw it.<\/p>\n

This was before there was any resolution to the news story. It\u2019s a speculative outcome that I dreamed up myself. I just thought, \u201cThese people are gone, and their kids are all adults. It\u2019s their lives; they\u2019re probably just trying to get back that flavor of young love and adventure: \u201cLet\u2019s go! We don\u2019t have to tell anybody where we\u2019re going; what business is that of theirs?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where \u201cThe Way\u201d really comes from, and that\u2019s why it has this sort of optimistic arrow that points through it. I wasn\u2019t trying to say that they\u2019re dead, that they\u2019re ghosts or any of that stuff. I was just trying to say that they were trying to be free. And I think, without knowing it, those are some of the best lyrics I\u2019ve ever written.<\/p>\n

At what stage in the writing process did the actual story come out about what happened to the elderly couple, Lela and Raymond Howard?<\/b><\/p>\n

The song was already written \u2013 and probably demoed \u2013 before they were found. I think it was less than two weeks after [the initial story broke] that they had been found at the bottom of a ravine; they had veered off and crashed.<\/p>\n

The demo recording of \u201cThe Way\u201d was included as a bonus track on the 25<\/b>th<\/b><\/sup> Anniversary Edition of <\/b>All the Pain Money Can Buy<\/b><\/i>. It\u2019s all you, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Yes. I was so excited about the music part of it that I called my friend Mickey Williams. We had been working in his little home studio in Austin, and we put it together on his synthesizer that had all these patches and a rhythm thing that you could play along to, much like an old \u201cFun Machine\u201d organ. It came together very quickly; we both really liked it.<\/p>\n

The demo version is in a completely different key than the finished recording. Why the change?<\/b><\/p>\n

Probably just to exploit my range a little more. For \u201cOut of My Head\u201d and \u201cThe Way\u201d I was in a mood to sing as low as I could, to get really close to the mic. I really wanted to sound more mature; I wanted to pretend that I was a bigger, older man. At the time I was really into Elvis Costello\u2019s mid period, especially Imperial Bedroom<\/i>. It was almost this weird, disembodied croon.<\/p>\n

And I think it worked. Whenever Elvis Costello\u2019s music would come on in random play at home, my kids always thought it was me!<\/p>\n

When you brought it to the band, what did Miles and Joey think of the song?<\/b><\/p>\n

There was not a huge reaction, because we were [already] trying to come up with all these other songs for an album. This was our second album. We were on a major label, and they had already spent loads of dough on the first record, which sold maybe 400 copies [actually 6,500 \u2013 ed.].<\/p>\n

The pressure was on to come up with stuff that was really good. But frankly, I don\u2019t feel like we felt it very much, because our writing had already matured really quickly. With the first album, I think we were paying lip service to the trend of being a pop-punk kind of melodic, hard and fast band. For the second album, we ran away from that. We wanted ballads; we wanted some sort of late-period Beatles progressiveness to it.<\/p>\n

And what resulted was this sort of sleeper track, because we were trying to come up with a single after the rest of the album had been recorded.<\/p>\n

How did the record execs react when they heard the finished track?<\/b><\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t know that it was going to be the single until our manager called us from an office with all the record dudes \u2013 and yes, they were all<\/i> dudes at that time \u2013 telling us that we should go with \u201cThe Way.\u201d So we did, and stuff started happening right away.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re still writing strong material today. <\/b>Sonic Ranch<\/b><\/i> is filled with songs that hold up against any of the tracks on your second album.<\/p>\n

Thank you. When we played an in-store recently, we only played songs off that record, and it was remarkable.<\/p>\n

…So you don\u2019t play \u201cThe Way,\u201d \u201cOut of My Head\u201d and \u201cYou\u2019re an Ocean\u201d in your sets these days?!?<\/b><\/p>\n

Of course we do; I like<\/i> playing them! We can\u2019t go out to, say, Augusta, Georgia, and not play those songs! Who do we think we are!?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story appeared previously in SPIN. Fastball\u2019s Tony Scalzo recalls the making of \u201cThe Way,\u201d the band\u2019s biggest hit When Austin, Texas trio Fastball released \u201cThe Way,\u201d the first single […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[814,5542],"class_list":["post-28407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-fastball","tag-tony-scalzo","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28409,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28407\/revisions\/28409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}