It was 2018, spring was around the corner and once again I had rolled out of one of my winter blues-es. I was in my bedroom in Eeklo and I was messing around with an alternate tuning on my mom's old classical guitar, which was probably ten years older than I was. I had seen some video's about Keith Richards cutting off his low E string and tuning the remaining strings to GDGBD, basically an open G tuning without the low D. He uses this tuning on songs like 'Start me up' to play a very bright and unique-sounding blues on his Telecaster. I tuned the guitar even lower to open F so FCFAC. The sunlight fell through the open window and kissed my skin. The warm glow made me so happy to feel the brightness of spring once more. As I have explained in 'The story behind: Watchtower', I associate different keys with different colours. This is called Chromesthesia and also applies to different things like numerals, letters of the alphabet and even people, e.g. for me 1 is white, 2 is blue, 3 is red, 4 is blue, 5 is darkviolet, 6 is orange, 7 is darkblue, 8 is purple and 9 is brown and so on. The key of F always had something white for me so the open F tuning naturally related to the bright sunlight. The lyrics are the most simplistic I've ever written but they hold truth. I need, want, miss and love the sun.
(The 5-stringed guitar in action @ Open Mic Inn in Herberg Macharius in Ghent, 2018
pic by Jaime Korbee)
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