Oftentimes I've been asked what a song that I've written is about. I've always enjoyed hearing the explanation about a song from the artist, so I decided to write a short bit about each song on the new "Plant a Dream" CD. The first song on the CD is Checkmate. I will attempt to add a new entry each week. If you'd like to listen to a clip of the song, simply go to the link below.
Checkmate
This song was originally about a political figure, because I wanted to write a hard-hitting text. Debbie said: “you can’t play that in public. Half the people will love it and half the people will hate it.” So, I went back upstairs to work on it. I had recently been watching my middle son play in some chess tournaments and decided to write a song about chess, using vocabulary that many chess players will recognize. The title didn’t need to change, because I had already titled it Checkmate.
Leon Olguin worked his wizardry, as usual, and inserted one of my guitar lead lines at various points of the song, giving the backup guitar a nice feel. Robby Galke added his Djemba drum to give the song a nice percussive element. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for listening.