Singled Out: 3 Pairs of Boots' Reno

3 Pairs of Boots, the San Francisco-based Americana duo comprised of husband and wife Andrew Stern and Laura Arias, are gearing up to release their new album "Boot Scootin'" this Friday and to celebrate we asked them to tell us about the song "Reno". Here is the story:

Laura Arias, re the lyrics: I accidentally wrote an allegory about the hazards of compromising one's own principles. It's not an original topic, but it sure is timely, or maybe it's just a topic that never goes out of style with human nature being what it is. In the song I ponder: is Life a game? Is the world run like a giant casino? How do we navigate in a world like that? If we're living on a giant game board maybe just seeing or acknowledging the board changes our odds.

Originally, I think I had a bridge in there that took a little bypass, or very brief digression into a playful exultation about if we could only soar high enough over the clouds where birds fly & storms don't matter, maybe we could win. But Andrew changed the music and made the song more of an unrelenting dirge right down the line. I think that was a genius, out of the blue move.

Andrew Stern, re the music: I took a look back at some older songs that Laura had written, was drawn to the lyrics for Reno, and decided to write music to it using the relentless feel of Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve as inspiration. So I wrote and produced the song so it has one continuous non-stop motion, verse and chorus over the same chord changes, changing the feel between the two in subtle ways, verses with spare bass line, the first few verses have that edgy guitar, switching to a more ethereal melodic guitar melody feel in the last 2 verses, all the time rotating the keyboard ear candy ambient parts to create different atmospheres, then the chorus switches to a pumping bass line, with mandolin driving the rhythm, keyboard melody that sounds like it was recorded using a shofar, finally the outro crunches into heavy metal territory, leading to the "down, down, down' punches of the band finally stopping the momentum, and ending with the last words of the singer singing softly over acoustic guitars, summing up the song ... "...in Reno ..." ending the journey.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

Singled Out: 3 Pairs of Boots' Just Call Him Love

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