my heart bleeds silver

rejoice! new music in the land of drug country!

welcome to thee official drug country supplemental reader, like reader’s digest for people who look at what guitar pedals are on stage when seeing a band. this month’s edition is special, and probably very relieving to you that i’m not filling your inbox with “uhh i guess i want to release music” once again.

today marks the release of a brand new drug country 2 song single: heart bleeds silver. the “title track” (does that count if it’s only two songs?) was premiered last week at CVLTNATION, which is always cool when a mostly metal blog is down to write about a quiet slow song. the full two songs are up today over at the auricular, and on streamers everywhere. it feels great to have something new out in the ether, it’s been a year since the EP and “water me down.” with a project this small, i can’t ever tell if new music is connecting, but even if it just drifts down the information highway- i’m happy it’s out.

i want to give a little background on the tunes and a little bit of my process, hopefully it doesn’t reveal too much of the magic behind making pop songs. let’s go backwards order, starting with MIKE LOVE IS A SCAB. funnily enough, i’ve had that title in my notepad since early 2024, it’s kinda bizarre that it comes out the week after brian wilson passes away. mike love never misses an opportunity to claim brian’s light as his own, and of course even made brian’s death about himself.

the song was originally supposed to be a gnawing song but i never finished it beyond the line “i bet you think you wrote that song”so it sat in my dustbin folder for a while. i picked it back up in february of this year, and fleshed out the rest of the song. the only thing i had in my head was the bass part, so i recorded that first with a rat pedal cranked all the way. i added a scratch drum after that just to keep my timing right and added guitars. both guitars are direct in, no amp, pure saturation and distortion. i wanted this song to be nasty and sound crushed on people’s speakers. i went to the gnawing rehearsal space knocked out drums in a couple of takes. the super blown out reverb drums at the end of the song are from the take prior to the keeper where i missed the end hits and took out my frustration keith moon style. when it came time for vocals i still didn’t have anything written so i kinda just made shit up. there’s a couple beach boys references in there. it was a cool exercise to go in unprepared. my buddy gus from the band powertakeoff sent me a noise track to lay under the whole song and i think it really adds to the chaos.

now, onto the “title” track- HEART BLEEDS SILVER. i'm really proud of this one, and it came together stupid fast. i wanted these two songs to be direct opposites, but show off the depth of drug country. given that mike love etc. is a distorted trainwreck, i wanted to play as quietly as possible for this one. i ran my jazzmaster through my fender champ, with just barely enough signal coming through to record it. it still caught some great tube saturation (thank you compressor pedals) and sounds so swampy and thick. i tracked a second guitar with my 50’s kay hollowbody through a jazz chorus and it really adds some texture and low end. for bass i used a piece of foam under the strings for a mute, i really wanted a dead and looooow pluck sound. drums were recorded as simple as possible: glyn johns style with two mics on a kick, snare, hats and a ride. initially i was using brushes, but i wanted more from the cymbal hits, so i put a t shirt on the snare and used sticks. once tracked, i knew it needed some more magic so i asked richmond music swiss army knife brady heck to track some pedal steel for me, and he crushed it. absolutely adds to the swampy choogle.

same as the other song all i had lyrically was this one line, “you can drive the knife, my heart bleeds siver” but couldn’t nail anything down for the verses. i’ve been really enveloped in a southern gothic thing lately, been reading a lot of breece d’j pancake stories, just re-read to kill a mockingbird, watching movies from that locale, etc. i initially made up this story of a confederate ghost who stabs the present day resident of his family home. however, that got WAY too detailed for a 3 minute song so i peeled it back. i tried to add a little ambiguity, like it’s a disgruntled lover who drives a knife through their lover’s chest.

when i found the picture for the single cover from an “anonymous” source, it made the song make so much more sense in my brain. isn’t that funny how that works? i think that’s the cool part of an exercise where a song doesn’t necessarily have EVERY single detail in it. it’s up to you to use your imagination to fill in the plot holes. my good friend blake melton really transformed the idea into fruition with the gorgeous album art.

ANYWAYS i hope you enjoy the songs, i hope it satiates your appetite for new drug country material until this alleged LP is released… if you don’t write or record music, i’m sorry if this month’s edition was super boring… the drug country family band plays a v cool v different set next month at afterglow coffee on 7/19 with planning for burial, nightosphere and howling void. very, very excited for this. we’re getting swampy and droney with it, and you bet your ass we’re playing heart bleeds silver. see you next month i reckon, happy 4 of july…??? go eat a hot dog and disregard patriotism.

now listening in drug country: planning for burial “it’s closeness, it’s easy” / the men “new moon” / beach boys “sunflower” / cloakroom “further out”