Singled Out: Custard Flux's The Gardener

Keavin Wiggins | 10-27-2022

Promo photo

Greg Curvey's (The Luck of Eden Hall) latest project Custard Flux recently released his new album, Phosphorus, and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the song "The Gardener" featuring Mars Williams (The Psychedelic Furs, Liquid Soul). Here is the story:

For me, the hardest part of the songwriting process is coming up with lyrics that I can live with and are worth singing. That wasn't the case with "The Gardener" from the new Custard Flux album Phosphorus.

My family moved around quite a bit when I was a kid and I spent my high school years in a small town in southwest Michigan. Right around the time I graduated, one of my classmate's older brothers came up with an imaginative way to rob a bank and actually got away with it for a few years until he bragged about the incident to some friends. Word spread and he was eventually tracked down, punished, and sent to prison.

The idea of using the subject for song lyrics had been percolating in the back of my mind for years so, when I sat down to write, the words flowed effortlessly.

I composed the music on guitar then I bounced it off my band mate Vito Greco, who added his guitar. Once I had the arrangement worked out, I recorded a scratch guitar track to follow and started recording drum kit, piano, acoustic guitar, and voice. Then Tim Prettyman added double bass.

The track needed more dynamics, so I asked Mars Williams to play saxophone on it and chopped my guitar part out of the third verse, creating space for the piano. It's the part in the song where time is elapsing after the robbery so when the bust happens, the saxophones blast in for full effect during the final chorus.

I'm very pleased with the final mix and after spending countless hours working towards that goal, it's a good feeling!

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