El Paso band The Iveys recently released their new album "Colors of Honey" and to celebrate we asked Arlen Ivey to tell us about the song "The Dream". Here is the story:
"The Dream" is a song that came to me just like that, in a dream. I remember my dream clearly. A man on a stage, standing in the lone spotlight in front of a full audience, and singing this song, with tears in his eyes....pouring out his emotions in front of everyone, with no instrumentation backing him. Only his voice, carrying the song. As a creative person, I don't question where things come from or over analyze the details, so when I awoke, I immediately reached for my phone, found the recording app and sang out this song from beginning to end.
In the studio, my two sisters and I recorded it straight A cappella, as that's how the song came to me in the dream. The three of us literally stood in one room together, with three mics, and sang it in three-part harmony at the same time, no over dubs. The band and I considered adding instrumentation to the track, and we tried a few things, but it just seemed to take away from the raw emotion of the song. The only thing we kept was a haunting piano piece at the end. After we finished tracking the vocals, my sister Jessie walked over to a piano in the room and began to play. What you hear on the track was picked up by our vocal microphones.
Lyrically, it's just an open wound. This is a song from the perspective of someone with a deep sorrow and sadness as a relationship just completely falls apart, and there seems to be no way out, or any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.
The Dream is one of those songs that means a lot to us, and our audience seems to relate to the lyrical content. Very few modern artists will have an A cappella song in their live set, but we include it at most of our live shows. We find that people truly stop and listen as we sing The Dream, it really gives us a connection with our audience. And after every show, we are always asked about this song, where it came from and why it was written. I tell them, "it's a song that came to me in a dream. A story that needed to be told.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself right here!
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