Singled Out: Air Traffic Controller's 20

Keavin Wiggins | 10-28-2022

Dash album art

Air Traffic Controller recently released the single, "20", from their forthcoming album, "Dash" (out November 11th), and to celebrate we asked Dave Munro to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

The writing process for this record was unlike anything ATC had done in the past. Some members had moved away, and although we didn't have much of a choice, we were excited to try new ways to create. One night I met up with our drummer, Adam, who walked into our rehearsal space with a gigantic Korg Triton keyboard. I knew he could play piano, but this was the first time he was going to play keys for ATC purposes. He had this repeating chord progression and a great little melody started. After a while of singing nonsense, I changed my original lyric from "out of body" to "I was 20", and began reflecting on my past life as a young air traffic controller in the military.

When I was 20, I moved from the barracks to an apartment with two fellow air traffic controllers. Getting outside the confines the Navy base was a life-changing event. I was finally able to live out my late adolescence, and just put on a uniform and go to work like everyone else. I was writing my first songs, pursuing my career in aviation, things were looking up, or as I sang, "big things gonna happen for me". Adam added "kind of funny, I'd rather dream, out there in the middle of the street". It is funny, his line didn't make sense to me at that time, but now, I think most people would agree, it's the best damn line in the song. Being 20, you feel confident, the world is your oyster, but looking back at my 20 year old self, I realize how naive and vulnerable I was, not knowing much about the world, yet taking risks, swinging for the fences, dreaming "in the middle of the street", and that's how you should be at 20, just going for it.

Adam used the sequencer on his Korg Triton to create our first multitrack demo for "20", but there was no way to save it, so he had to create a whole new one every time he turned it off and on again. The demo was played through headphones and recorded using an iPhone held up to the headphones, with no actual recording equipment. It was asinine, we know, Adam has come a long way since engineering that ridiculous demo.

The song came to life once the whole team got involved in a real studio, Dimension, Boston. Adam invited sax legend Dana Colley of Morphine to play whatever he wanted and he completely blew our minds. The breakdown gets real Morphine-ey... as Dana chose to layer his different saxes leading us into this big ending. In the mixing phase, we decided to have the whole band drop out for that moment so it's just a bunch of Danas. I knew right then, this song is going to hit people, especially if they've been 20!

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