Singled Out: David Franz's Silver Arrow Sunday

Keavin Wiggins | 08-23-2021

Single art

David Franz recently released his new single "Silver Arrow Sunday" from his forthcoming album, "To The Unknown" (out September 24th), and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the track. here is the story:

This song started from kind of a musical trance. Fresh back from a trip to Joshua Tree, the high desert was still swirling in my heart as it tends to linger with me. I was looking for a sound that could translate what I felt about that strange desert place, and had a thought “What does a mirage sound like?”. What is the sound of heat that creates waves that blur our vision? Why and how do we see things that don’t exist? What does that experience sound like?

When I plugged in my Rickenbacker bass into a small Yamaha THR10X modeling amplifier, the combination of distortion, reverb, and delay effects sounded to me like heat waves. The ostinado bass line that is the foundation of the song came right out, as if it was just waiting for the right sound.

That bass line stuck with me for a while and I would revisit it from time to time, but the story of the song didn’t make itself known until I was at the breaking point in a relationship several years later. In the time nearing the breakup, a temptress showed me that there were positive paths away from a broken relationship, even if the path towards her wasn’t the right one. This was a message I had forgotten and needed to receive.

The lyrics fictionalize my interaction with this temptress and the realizations that I took away from it. The real takeaways from the experience provided both clarity and confusion and made their way into the dream-state lyrics in the verses and the moments of semi-certainty in the choruses. Ultimately, the temptress was the mirage, but our meeting fueled the fire to help me push through my breakup.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here