Singled Out: Speedfossil's Luckiest Man In the World

Keavin Wiggins | 04-07-2022

Album art

Boston-based rockers Speedfossil just released their new album, "No Anesthesia" and to celebrate we asked Garret Vandermolen to tell us about the song "Luckiest Man In the World". Here is the story:

"Luckiest Man In the World" was one of those songs that, once I started kicking it into gear, really wrote itself - I knew right away that the tune had some legs when it was finished. The earworm synth riff that kicks off the song actually started its life as a guitar riff. It was the first thing I wrote for the song, and I spent a few weeks just noodling around with it. Once I was proficient at it, I then figured out the chords to go behind it. That was all I had for several days, and then we had a rehearsal one night and something happened that just triggered me to want to get home that night and write the whole thing.

Speedfossil is pretty fortunate that both I, and my long time bassist, Michael Scotti, have home studios in our basements that we can also rehearse in. On this particular night, the rehearsal was at Mike's place, and it was back when I was just getting to know him. He left the door open so I could come in and set up early.

Mike and I are both the same age - I have two teenage boys, and he has four daughters. Three of those daughters (triplets!) are now young adults, but his fourth daughter, Lily, came to him later in life. At that time, she was around 6 years old, when my boys were around 14 or so. I used to have this dialogue in my head about whether or not I could handle being a parent to another young child, a decade or so apart from all my other kids.

As I was setting up that night, Mike came down to his rehearsal studio with Lily bounding in behind him - it was my first time meeting her. She had so much energy and was very excited about us playing some music that night! All smiles and questions about the instruments and amplifiers, asking her Dad who I was. I could see not only the joy and youthful exuberance in Lily, but also how awesome Mike was as a Dad in interacting with his young daughter, and just how much joy and happiness was in his life. At that exact moment, I wanted to be the parent of a young child again and experience that joy, and I thought to myself, "Mike, YOU are the luckiest man in the world, and Lily is a blessing in your life".

I got home that night, super late from rehearsal, with the lyric idea for the song. I did the quietest ever voice memo demo, thinking about what happened that night and wrote the first lyrics: "She's got a certain kind of smile-the kind that really speaks to me. Makes my life seem all worthwhile, lifts me up and sets me free - I'm the luckiest man in the world, I'm the luckiest man alive". The rest of the song just spilled out, including the chord changes for the bridge and pseudo-chorus. I really can't explain how quickly the song just came out of me that night, but I was inspired by seeing how lucky Mike was to have this little girl in his life.

The next day, I wanted to make a proper demo, but was feeling lazy, so I did it on my iPhone with GarageBand. I programmed out the drums on my couch and used the "guitar" sounds for the chords; recording the vocals in the part of my little house's staircase that had the most reverb. On a whim, I played the guitar riff on the keyboard sound in GarageBand that is now emulated on the final recording - it sounded cool! I started letting some people hear the track and the universal feedback was that it sounded really good, and that Speedfossil should record and play that song. We recorded a version that is VERY close to the sound and spirit of that original GarageBand demo, with the addition of those fun vocoder vocals at the end. We felt so good about it that it became the lead off track for NO ANESTHESIA and first single we released from the album!

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