2001 You Are So Awesome

Written in 2001 by Mark Fielding Darden; Chris Kisgen collaboration

It is going to be very hard to remember even the last six months with this song. I wrote it and recorded a lot of tracks on it many years ago… around 2001 or 2002. I think Chris Kisgen played bass on it, but I’m not sure.
I played rhythm guitar and sang. I also added electronic drums on top of the drum machine track. Mick Purdy played keyboards, and a friend of Chris’s played electric guitar. I think his name was Jim. Kristin Kanady sang harmony on it with me. That’s what I found in my computer files around June of 2020 of this year. Nothing mixed down, just a bunch of stray tracks.

But I heard the good stuff. I also remembered what a great song it was. So I took the wav files down to my studio in the yard and uploaded them into Protools. I then isolated the tracks and made sure I had the drums and bass together. (That took weeks of editing, a few hours a day. I was still doing that yesterday before I officially called the song “Done”… and it’s now October 2020.) Then I added my rhythm guitar track, which was happily in perfect condition.

After getting the rhythm unit together, I listened to my vocals. I was very surprised to hear quite a good vocal track. I tweaked a few things, but I didn’t have to re-sing anything. Harmonies were great too.

Next I took a listen to the piano. It was not right. It had technical issues I could not overcome. I had to ditch the entire track. Too bad, but the song was already sounding a bit busy anyway.

Then I opened the lead guitar track. The young man who played it was obviously very talented on guitar, but he seemed to have trouble nailing a theme to the song. It was more like noodling along, trying to figure out a lead but didn’t have enough time. I had to ditch that too.

Without the lead and piano, I had to come up with some melodic theme, and I did. That’s the guitar part you hear at the beginning and end of the song. I think it turned out great. I was going to do more within the song but eventually decided it was fine like it was.

But adding the intro and ending made the song too long! So I edited out half of the second chorus. That was just before the song modulates. And speaking of the modulation, I had forgotten that the song had that in it. I had forgotten that the song was as sophisticated as it was, actually.

I think the song turned out very, very well. I often cry in humility when I hear it at high volumes in my truck. It is a very moving song. I am grateful to be a part of it. I list Chris Kisgen as being a co-author of the song but I can’t remember what he actually contributed. I wrote it. But I’m leaving his name on the credits. I’m sure he added something or I would not have put his name on the song. Very talented man.