Another important theme to this album, which should be clear from the title, is dreams. Part of that is a simple play on sayings like “girl of your dreams” or “dreamboat”, but more directly it stems from the fact that I have been blessed by more than a few songs coming to me in a dream.
“Both Got Lucky” played in my sleeping head as a fully formed verse, and I actually remember in the dream thinking, this sounds a lot like Steve Earle (specifically, “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied”), although the actual finished verse might be a little more akin to “Summertime Blues.” The key to capturing a dream song is to get it down as soon as you wake up, or it will disappear quickly, never to be recalled. And it helps to take it somewhere else right away, as I did here when I plowed through from the dreamed verse to a pre-chorus and then chorus that spawned the phrase “We both got lucky.” Since I wrote the chorus consciously, that is obviously the significant point of the song – any good relationship is reciprocal. The somewhat crass expression “Get lucky” (all due respect to Loverboy and Daft Punk) is expanded and enriched to include both parties as subject, not object. This is how it feels to be truly in love with someone, so lucky to have found one another and fit so well.
I had also heard the call-and-response vocals in my dream, and made that a key feature, flipping back and forth between the lead vocal and answering harmonies. The lyrics hark back to the song’s origins: “Like I was dreaming and you made it real” and one of the final lines, “Woke up and realized that I’m happy.” There is another form of reciprocity between dreams and reality – both contribute to a unified whole in life.
End of Side One (when we finally get this on vinyl later this year)! Tomorrow, another song with a previous life in another band – The Top Drawers – my ‘solo’ version of “Sweetheart” kicks off what will be Side Two. Tune in then, lovers and dreamers!