The first one is usually the most challenging.  What makes this song so special is that this is the first song Michael and I wrote together.
 
Michael and I first met after one of the “Bubble" shows when he was playing with the Flaming Lips during a pandemic in Oklahoma City in 2021.  It was such a wacky, yet awesome experience to see a concert during this time of isolation.  Audience and the band were in their own bubbles. Michael playing bass on stage in a bubble covered by strings of lights was difficult to see, but he was there and so was I. Everyone was literally in about 100 plastic bubbles.  Truly the coolest experience I've ever had seeing a show.  Little did I know it was going to get even better.  
After the show, I was hanging out at a bar and looked up from my pint of beer and there he was, out of his bubble, Michael Ivins with some of his bandmates.  I was too nervous to approach him in a group, but then I noticed him later that night sitting on a bench by himself and I thought, “this is my moment to ask him for a selfie”…. A flood of thoughts followed- ‘Walk fast before anyone else approaches him… don’t walk too fast, I’ll seem too eager, tell him he did a great job, mention Kentucky, didn’t he live there or something?… and most importantly don’t talk too much’.  I worked up enough courage and a little practice conversation in my head.  If it was too awkward, I was just going to be like “thank you for a great show” and bail.  That certainly was not the case.  My life was about to go an unexpected direction.  Once we started, we didn’t want to stop.  The selfie was taken and the rest is history.
 
Since we met, life has thrown us some unexpected curve balls, but we keep reminding each other that we have one constant- our love for each other remains no matter what.  
 
The original title of this song was called Play With Me, You’re Over There, then Step Out of the Shadows, and finally Betwixt Fear and High Key.  High key, you know, the opposite of Low Key.  When a person is next level super excited about something. It’s like when you meet one of your favorite musicians,  or sharing your heart and soul with the world, or falling in love.  When I told Michael that I wanted a little 45 vinyl of our song, Michael replied, “Oh no, we are making a whole album”.  I didn’t really believe him at first.  I had never done anything like that before nor did I have much faith in myself to do such a thing, but with Michael’s encouragement, expertise, and my drive and discipline, I thought “Why Not?”   This song is one out of about a dozen to be released in 2024. 

During this production period, I was taking Shakespeare classes and Michael was helping me run lines a lot during our breaks.  We found ourselves laughing when olden words like  “Betwixt” were popping up casually in our every day conversations with eachother.  I guess Shakespeare has a way of rubbing off on people.  

Michael set me up in the bathroom with a microphone and told me to just sing whatever. I was super critical of myself and if he gave me more time, I could be better.  He stretched sections of my vocals and added some cool weird effect on my voice and surprised me with it the next day. This became what we called "the ghost vocal track".  It’s my favorite thing on the song.

The creative process, for me, is like looking in a mirror and sometimes I don't like what I see, but it's the truth.  (Fear, Excitement, joy, love, pain, sadness, anger, happiness, etc all the feelings and emotions in the book).  This was the first time ever recording my voice for a song.  It was disturbing hearing my voice back to me. I really didn’t know what I was doing or singing, but Michael kept giving me these pep talks to trust myself.  With this foreign process of improvisational singing whatever was there inside of me, we started to get somewhere. I mean, we already had a chord progression and a melody, but no real words except “I want you to play with me” (which you can kind of hear in the ghost vocals if you listen hard enough).  Practicing this technique of just singing what I was feeling then working out the lyrics with Michael, we realized what our song was actually about. 
This song reflects on the side of us that is closed off from intimate relationships after heartbreak and being stuck in the shadows. When we meet our matches, we can finally allow happiness back into our lives by just hanging out with someone who mutually gives a shit shadows and all.  This song is about finding our way back to the possibility of love again after heartbreak. 
It’s cool how songs will just unfold the way they are suppose to if you can trust the process without trying to control it so much. Allowing things to happen and opening up to something different than what is expected isn’t always easy.  We laugh when we talk about what we originally anticipated for our sound, but we’re rolling with it.  It’s bizarre and different. We like it and hope you do too.
- Julia