After we had narrowed down the songs to focus on for the new album, we decided to take a few days and just write a couple more. We felt confident we had a great album already but the writing chemistry was really strong so we saw no need to end that. Steve and I ventured to Coops’ studio where we had already begun pre-production on the bulk of the album. The three of us wrote a number of songs together in that time, ‘Falling Stars’ being one of them.
In the days that followed, I made a few attempts to write words and melodies for this one, but nothing seemed to work. We had enough material already so I just didn’t think forcing something out made much sense; I decided to put this one away.
A few weeks later, I was at the movies watching ‘Nowhere Man’ when I received a phone-call that Sarah had passed away. Sarah was in her 90’s and had lived a full and inspiring life. She was my Aunts Mother and when I was living at home, she was often around my house helping my dad with his business (well, that was the cover – in reality she was giving me invaluable life advice and inspiring me to look at the world and people in new ways).
Some of her ideas were drastically different than things I’d learned growing up and we’d occasionally we’d battle it out for hours. Others were things I’d known deep-down already but had not yet made their way to the surface. At times if I had come up with a new idea or argument to something we had been debating, I’d find myself coming home early just to run it by her for her reaction. The more reaction the better. At the time I deeply disagreed with her on many things but at the same time had an even deeper respect for the character of person that she was. At an age when I thought I already knew everything, she taught me that I really only knew everything that I knew… that deep truths could lie in contrasting philosophical views. She inspired me to think deeper, to question more, to love purely, and to act on my inspirations.
As soon as I returned home from the movie after that devastating phone-call, I was overrun with emotions. I was sad we would never have those debates again but I had also felt so lucky to have had her in my life. I realized how much she had changed the way I looked at the world and it occurred to me that because of these things, a part of her will always live on in me and everyone else she had done the same to. I imagined there must have been many people like this in her life and so in a way, they too have inspired me.
I thought of the song we wrote two weeks earlier and melodies finally started to flow; it was as if the song had been waiting for this moment (something I’m sure Sarah would be unlikely to believe). The words spilled out as easily as they might in a late night conversation with a close friend. I wrote and recorded all the words before the sun came up the next day.
Everyone was happy with how the song came out and so it moved it’s way into the current recording schedule… and not even having played it live, yet, we worked everything out in the studio.
At the time, Coops was trying to get Root to lay bass during every free minute he had to keep the recording moving… and just minutes before going on stage at Mohegan Sun, where we were about to play our first show with a lot of these new songs, Coops set up a recording studio back stage and Root laid his bass for Falling Stars. Immediately after, he walked out on stage.
– Nathan