Two by Two: The Story Behind the Song
*”Two by Two” by Kingwhistler was released November 26, 2021
I wrote Two by Two several years ago as a gift to my mother, Denise (and her twin brother Denis—Uncle Den!!) for a milestone birthday. The song is very special to me and took me a VERY long time to complete, and even longer to finally produce, for reasons I’ll get into. I’m a procrastinator by nature, and as my mother’s birthday approached I made the mistake of telling her I was writing a song for her, which had the unintended effect of adding far too much meaning and value to the idea of the song and resulting in writer’s block. I couldn’t finish it. Her birthday actually came and went and I hadn’t given it to her because I couldn’t get out of my own way and head and finish it. When inspiration finally struck, I wrote down the words on a piece of printer paper and presented it to her several months late on Mother’s Day. I still hadn’t put it to music, and even though I had the beginnings of a melody and hook I could never just plow through and finish it. So I abandoned it for a time and worked on other tunes.
A couple years went by and I tried to pick the song up again to finish it. I had made some headway with the music and had given myself permission not to get too hung up on the sentimental value of it all. And then something incredible and unexpected happened: I found out my wife was pregnant with twins! And in the midst of all the happiness and joy, the thought occurred to me that I had been writing a song about my twin mother and now I was having twins myself!!… You see, I am a sentimental person and this concept was now blowing my mind… and I became saddled with… an even LARGER case of writer’s block due to my own silly sentimentality. The song would have to be perfect, and I’d never get it right. I put the song down AGAIN. For a while this time.
3 more years went by (I get foggy on the timeline now, due to the effects of years 1 through 3 of being a twin dad. If you know, you know.), and my identical twin daughters were doing great, growing, learning and…SINGING. Beautifully. All the time! And I was playing a ton of music around them. At some point, I began strumming some of the chords I previously had begun arranging for the song and started picking up momentum. I finally completed the music and decided I was going to record a scratch track and I was going to try to get the twins to sing on it. It only seemed appropriate. So I taught them their lines and actually managed to get them to sing a couple decent takes. It took a little cutting and pasting and glueing, but pretty came out decent for 3 year olds! I recorded it hastily and sent it off to my mom, super relieved that I could now consider it DONE. The final composition was a male-female duet, a direct nod to my mom and uncle. She loved it.
I knew that I wanted to record a pro version of it some day, but I had moved away from LA to a much smaller town, Carson City, NV, where I didn’t yet know anyone the music community and the odds of finding a female vocalist who could sing it with me were slim to none. So I went about playing gigs, and trying to write other new music. Through a roundabout series of shows and introductions, I got introduced to Josh Procaccini who had asked me to join him for a duets show. He is a great guy and an even greater musician, and we hit it off. At a jam session/rehearsal I taught him one of my songs and shared that it was missing a third, high harmony. Josh mentioned that he sung with his partner Jenera who had a great voice, and I asked to be introduced so we could see if she’d be a good fit for the song. Long story short, Jenera is AWESOME and she came in, learned her part beautifully, and when the three of us song together it made for wonderful harmonies. I gave Jenera Two by Two and asked if she’d give it a shot and she agreed. The first time we sung through it, I got chills. Her voice fit the part perfectly and it was so incredible to finally hear this thing that had been in my mind for YEARS floating through space! And to top it off, Jenera was a twin, so it seemed fitting. We polished these and a couple other songs in preparation for a show in late 2019 and I began crafting my strategy to get these songs recorded.
As fate would have it, I won a grant from the Sierra Arts Foundation and learned about it on New years eve 2019. It paid a modest sum of money, but more than enough to get some studio time and track these songs. A couple months of planning and rehearsing went by and it was time to record. It was now March, 2020. MARCH. 2020. We had 2 sessions in the studio over a couple weekends. We tracked nearly everything we needed for my first song, Jacaranda, and got through a couple takes of some parts of Two by Two, And then the news came that the world was shutting down. We all went off to socially distance and my effort to finally record this song was stopped in its tracks AGAIN. A few months went by, and I managed to scrap together a couple musicians to play (safely) on Jacaranda since we had the most material, and I finished the song in June of 2020. But it would be some time before Two by Two would finally have its day. Covid happened (MAJOR oversimplification!) and more than a year went by before it was even remotely possible to record again.
Then, finally this past summer, as the world slowly began opening up I finally got my chance. I had been playing some of the first open mic’s locally since the shut down and I met Charlie Marks, an amazing banjo player and and all around awesome human. Charlie and I met to rehearse the song and agreed that it sounded great. I reconnected with Kat MacMartin, who had played violin on my last single. We put together some material for Two by Two, polished it up and got ready to record. Back in the studio after a year, we got all the major parts finished and we were rolling. The last part to record was the twins. They weren’t vaccinated yet, so I wasn’t comfortable taking them to the studio. So I improvised. I took a set of fort sticks and constructed a small “booth”, tall enough to fit a 6 year old. I set up my microphones and covered the whole thing in some sound absorbing fabric I had recently been gifted and VOILA! It had a makeshift recording booth (check out the pictures here and you can see it and other gems from our recording process). The twins got tracked (I I got a take of their mamma, Sierra Scott, singing as well for safety) and we could wrap on recording.
Probably the most crucial person in this whole process was Kyle Rothchild, who was our tracking and mixing engineer for pretty much the entire process. Kyle’s meticulous attention to detail and focus were major factors in getting such a beautiful mix. He elicited beautiful, strong performances from the musicians. His work turning the twins performance into an entire “choir” of children is downright incredible. Much thanks to Jenera, Kat, Charlie, and Kyle for helping me bring this beautiful tune to life once and for all! And to Leone and Aveline, my beautiful daughters: you are miracles to me and I think in the end the reason it took so long to get this thing produced was so that you could sing with me for all the world to hear. And finally, to my mom: sorry this took so long, but I hope you love this tribute. You are the reason I sing and that music is such a huge part of my life. Thank you!
And so, fellow whistlers, I couldn’t be prouder of this song and I’m so happy to share it with you all. I hope you crank it up and feel the joy we felt recording it! “Through pain and love and hope, its true: we’ll go singing!”
Keep on Whistlin’!
-Nick, Kingwhistler