Week Thirty-Three: Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week “Take Time”

Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week airs every WEDNESDAY at 6pm Eastern only on RadioRadioX.com 

This is Jesse Sample. A friend from my past reached out a few weeks back. She asked me to play some guitar on an album she is putting together. I was honored and naturally, I agreed. Roseanna Grimaldi is a great singer and instrumentalist with a distinct voice and a unique writing style. We hammered out this Monday at a small office she rents in nice building that used to be a school.

I helped her with a couple of her tracks and gave her some ideas that I had and asked if she’d be open to helping me with my weekly thing. She agreed and we started going track for track. I put down the guitar and she put down some vocals. I put down some vocals to respond to her vocals and she put down some vocals that would carry over into the B-Section that I would write next on guitar. We continued in this manner, and she kept me company while I had a cigarette on the beautiful balcony of the building. We returned to the office and hammered out things and reworked things and the process took on a momentum of its own.

After a few hours, it’s like we almost woke up with a fully developed song. I’ve done many collaborations, and this one was the kind you hope for. There is a lot of thought and consideration in every step of the process. There is a give and take. You must be passionate in your ideas but not overbearing to your cowriter. But there is also something else. It’s subconscious, it think. It’s as though the bones of the song want to be found. And me and my writing partner systematically excavated an idea from the universe. You train your whole life and sharpen your tools and occasionally you work effectively with someone else.

It was a great night. I drove home glowing along the moon having been spared the Tuesday night scramble that I know so well. Rosa did a nice mix and polished a few things and sent me a new wave file this morning. And it also occurs to me that the building had a hand in this experience. Without speculating too much on the metaphysics of the universe, I do think that spaces carry energy, and this sweet old build had a good heart and contained a lot of joy in its time. It was real privilege to work within its walls.

Thanks to all of you tuned into RadioRadioX. This is the Freak of the Week, “Take Time.”