Here’s what happened. I was smack dab in the middle of a songwriting class through the Berklee College of Music’s online school (berkleemusic.com), and I had a deadline. In case you’ve never done this, let me tell you, you have to post something new every week. A blessing and a curse.
Don’t ask me what the assignment was, but I didn’t want to disappoint my instructor, Jimmy Kachulis, or myself for that matter! So I pulled “Have a Little Faith” basically out of nowhere. Really. I probably came up with the hook in the shower.
My friend Chuck Besocke came over and recorded a quick acoustic track and I literally did one vocal take in the living room. But I knew there was something special going on!
The following week I had tix to go see my friend Joel Kosche perform with Collective Soul at the Fillmore in San Francisco. We were emailing about the show and I thought, what the heck, I’m gonna send him this song.
I still have the email that Joel shot back to me. He said, “The song sounds great, that’s a nice hook! Let me know if you want some guitar parts or something, I’d be way in!” And way in he was. Joel ended up producing the song and recording all the other parts, excluding the acoustic track, which is still the original played by Chuck.
And Joel rocked it out. Because if you’ve heard the original demo, you’d know it’s a mellow singer/songwriter vibe. Not any more!
Of course, with this increase in intensity, I needed to re-do the vocal track. So on one of my business trips to New York I took some time to pop into Nuthouse Recording with producer and friend Tom Beaujour, where we laid the track in a couple of hours. I sent it over to Joel. Silence.
A couple of days later Joel’s reply surprised me. He liked the new track but told me there was something about the original first verse and chorus in the demo that he couldn’t shake. So, like magic, he did a new mix that kept that first living room demo vocal for the top of the track and then moved to the new vocal later in the song. Ta-da!
Joel knows a whole lotta folks and was hanging with mixing engineer Shawn Grove, who mixed the Collective Soul albums. He suggested we had Shawn mix and master the song, and trusting in Joel’s mastery, I said, ok. Who am I to argue with awesome?
So, here it is. What motivated the song? I’ve had tough times. Really tough ones. But it’s just in my nature to believe that everything will be okay. And somehow it usually is. It’s a song of optimism. Of believing you can get over the hump. There’s light in darkness. Song in silence. Have a little faith. It’ll be okay.
More songs coming soon!
Thanks for reading…and listening!
Laura
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