Restless



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Original Music After Hours Reality Check Magazine

As I was driving my wife to work one morning in the late Spring of 2001, the chorus to "Restless" suddenly started running through my head.

It was still there when I got home, about 45 minutes later, so I sat down with my guitar and my word processor and, in about 15 minutes, I'd written all three verses and worked out the chords to go with them.

When I got around to recording the song, in early November of 2002, I decided that it needed a bridge, so I wrote one for it. That took about two minutes. Recording the song itself was a somewhat more involved process. It involved a lot of experimentation -- one iteration featured kettle drums in the chorus, for instance -- to achieve an arrangement that satisfied me and the sound of the song kept evolving along the way.

But, goofy as it is, I really like the final result.

I produced, arranged and engineered the song and I sing lead and play acoustic and electric guitars, DR-707 and Korg Triton.

If you're interested in playing the song on guitar, you might want to capo up a fret, so you can just play open chords -- in order of appearance, they'd be G, D and Em -- instead of the bar chords you'd otherwise have to use. (That'll also let you play the modal G properly -- or you could just play the song in G, in which case that modal chord would be played as: 3x0033.)

Restless
(copyright© 2002 by Thom Stark -- all rights reserved)
           G#            D#
Well, it's three am, I'm lyin' here
         D#                         G#
With the breathing of my sweet wife in my ear
G#                 D#
I don't know why I feel this way
        G#                        D#
There's something going on, but I just can't say why I'm

Fm
Restless.
         D#
Yes, I'm restless.
    D#
I'm restless,
       G#                          G#modal
And it feels like a long ways from home.

The feeling's been growing in me for so long.
It's something I can't quite put my finger on.
It's not my job, it's not my wife,
But it feels like something's missing here in my life,

And I'm restless..

Fm
I'll stick by you. You know I will,
D#
But I can't help the way I feel.

It's a pitch-black night, there's not one star.
I feel like going out and getting in my car.
Hit the gas, just drive away,
And keep on drivin', right on through 'til day,

'Cause I'm restless..

(Web page copyright© 2002 by Thom Stark
all rights reserved
)