Singled Out: Surrender Hill's Last Goodbye

Americana duo Surrender Hill just released their seventh album "River Of Tears" and to celebrate we asked Robin Dean Salmon to tell us about the song "Last Goodbye". Here is the story:

his song came about while we were taking a couple of days of R & R at a friend's house on Lake Keowee in South Carolina. We went out on their boat, and on the way back to their house, a big storm started rolling in. Everything got pretty choppy out on the water, and we made it back just before the sky opened up. Afton and I were sitting inside watching the storm come in over the lake, and we started talking about her family in Alaska and what it must have been like out fishing when storms came in. I traveled to Alaska with Afton in 2014. We spent time with her family and friends of the family. They told stories of the many adventures at sea. We thought about the many goodbyes and how you never really know what could come your way out there on the ocean. "Last Goodbye" is a song about two lovers and a goodbye as one leaves on a boat and the other stays on shore. Could it be the last goodbye?

When we recorded this song, we had Matt Crouse in our studio in Ellijay, GA. I had a very specific drum feel in mind. I wanted the choruses to be frenetic and kind of desperate, something you can barely hold on to. It took a while to get to where we ended up, but Matt nailed it. I reworked the rhythm electric guitars on the song probably seven times, wanting them to be edgy and raw and able to carry the emotion of the lyric. Mike Waldron laid down a slide part that grabbed the emotion of the song, lifted it, and swung it around like a howling wind. When time came to mix the tune, I spent hours working on the song. It was feeling really good to me, so I sent it to my friend Joe Smith, wanting him to tell me what a great job I'd done. Instead, he asked if he could take a crack at it. Now, I am very specific in how I want something to feel. I can't often put it into words. I just know when it sounds and feels right. Joe spent about a day on it, and he knocked it out of the park. It is not often someone else works on one of our songs where I say don't change a thing. This was one of those moments.

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

Singled Out: Surrender Hill's Will You Pass Me By

Singled Out: Surrender Hill's Will You Pass Me By

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