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Hi! Glad you could make it!

This is the site for the "Dives and Climbs EP" by Andrew Cos Band (formerly "Debtor")
Click around to view lyrics, behind-the-song-writing info, and behind-the-recording info.

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2-Familiar Place

Behind the recording:
There's quite a bit of stuff going on in this song. Listening to it now I'm realizing that I really mixed this record more for either a car stereo or headphones--some kind of surround sound. A simple CD player would keep everything flat it seems. So if you have the disc, plug in the best quality headphones you can find and listen, and to this tune especially.

Oh, there's this funny part in the bridge where I say the line "Where I find out who really matters," except I forgot if it was "find" or "found" since I've changed it back and forth a few times. In the first take of the lead vocals I said a mix of the two, something like Brian Regan's "take...luck" deal, and it came out "fiyound." For any poetry people out there, you might like this part: The term's called "assonance," and it's where vowels in sequential words are the same. For instance, "Where I find out" has the long "i" sound. However, in "Where I found out" has the "ou" thing going on. So being the "have my cake and eat too" person I am, I unconsciously got BOTH assonances to work out by saying "fiyound." So there you go.

Oh, and yeah, there's that little bell noise at the very end. Ya see, I was recording the bass part while my roommate was microwaving something but I didn't know it. As I'm waiting for the sustain on the last note to fade, I hear this bell, in the general key of the song. It was that microwave, and I couldn't have timed it better if I'd tried. Laughing hard, I chose to keep it in there. Hopefully an angel somewhere got its wings.

Behind the Songwriting:
One of my most favorite-est hymns has to be "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" in which one of my more favorite-est verses goes "Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above."
The "debtor" part hit me earlier, and became a big reason  for naming my former solo projects "Debtor." But what hit me this one time was "Prone to wander...prone to leave the God I love."
"Prone"---that's like, tending to do something, always leaning that certain way. Crud, I don't wanna be prone to leaving something good. That doesn't make sense. Yet, it's what goes on. I don't think I need to elaborate much on this. If you're human, and most of my readers are (well, I have noticed a small chimpanzee following), you know this feeling. It's what Paul writes about in Romans 6 and 7. "I do what I don't want to do. I don't do what I want to do." I like A but I choose B. In a fancier way, Paul, Robert Robinson ("Come thou fount" writer), and (hopefully) I in the "Familiar Place" lyrics are trying to say, "Wow, we are inconsistent and wretched!!

I wanted to write a lyric expressing the joy of returning to that place of forgiveness and restoration after having wandered again ('cause I'm prone to, darn it). It's funny, 'cause the "familiar place" can be as much about the familiarity of returning (not the happy part, if you remember the prodigal son in all his shame upon going home) as it is about that place where I am drenched in the "waterfall of grace," I like it that way. Every time I'm drenched I wonder why I ever left, and I so wish I wasn't so prone to go. Besides being with my Savior and my God, I look forward to heaven because I shall no longer be prone to wander! Hallelujah, Lord! Hallelujah!


Lyrics:
Heavy lights/so bright/
Seeing all Your holiness, I die/
You breathe into me/and I come alive/
Heavy wind/blowing/
from all four directions into me/
You give me a song/and I can't help but sing/
as you give this dry tongue/water from your spring/

(*) Would you lead me/under the waterfall of grace?/
'Cause it seems/I'm prone to run away/
Oh why do I leave here/knowing this is the better place/
My heart's got wanderlust/Make it Yours/
As I'm coming to/this familiar place/with You/

Consciously/each day/
I choose to follow faithfully your lead/
Heavy rain/is falling/
Cleansing to perfection even me/
You have living water/and you bid me drink/
then amidst the shower/I hear others sing/

(*)

Where all my hopelessness was shattered/
Where I find out Who really matters/
Where only heaven is the next best/
In your presence there is joy and rest/

(*)


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1-Breadcrumbs

Behind the recording:
The drum sound at the beginning is the product of a tin can and the eraser of a pencil. I decided the use of weird percussion instruments breaks up the monotony of recording (read about the Mac & Cheese box I used in "The Harvest Is Ready").
I really like the mandolin elements in this tune. The "happy instrument" strikes again! Listen closely and you might notice that one mandolin track is panned left with high treble and another is panned left with no treble. That's a nerdy comment for any audio engineers out there.
Oh, and my roomate Josh sang a few notes on this tune. I was finishing up the project with some back-up vocals, but had just lost my voice, so I had him sing the 2 note harmony in the "Now---- Now----No turning back now---" part right after the second chorus. It's hard to tell, but I promise he's there. Thanks, Josh, if you ever read this!

Behind the songwriting:
After hearing the story of Hanzel and Gretel randomly, I began to think about their famous and I suppose clever way of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs by which to find their way back. I tried to see spiritual parallels between fairy-tale-them and real-life-us.
The one major thing that hit me was the one alluded to by Robert Frost in his popular "road less traveled" poem: "Knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." 

Time is linear, so, turning back is not an option for anyone. We get one shot at every point in time we have.  We should be further encouraged to make every moment count and not waste our precious gift of time.

Living in linear time, we can not go back on any decisions we make, or as i put it "renig" them, like in a game of Spades. Yes, opportunities may arise to make up for a bad decision, but if we ever get to see reruns of our lives, that mistake will be there in that certain point in time, and all "making up" in the world we do after that point in time won't change the fact that it's on still on that videotape at the point. That's the main thrust of these lyrics.

Thankfully, there's a little more to the story. It comes in the form of Christ, the greatest "make up-er" of all. His life, death, and re-life (quizzically before any of our points in time) essentially "erase" those bad points (yes, the other word would be "sins") on our life videos, but only providing that we believe in his power and ask him to do the miracle. Yes, so the mistakes will still remain at that point in time, and their scars won't leave either, but one thing has changed, and it is more important--God no longer chooses to recognize those time points. He's blotted them out of his all-knowing, all-seeing memory, tossing them into what He calls the "sea of forgetfullness." This act of forgiving and forgetting is not a show of God's weakness or imperfection, but just the opposite, as it shows his almighty strength, to the point of forgiving sins. If you know the Bible at all, just think about the story where Jesus forgives the paralytic man of his sins, then to prove his power he tells him to get up, grab his mat, and go home, and the man does! Mercy and compassion are not points of weakness, but some of the strongest points indeed.

Take hold of this great mercy, live your life in it, and stop dropping those breadcrumbs, because they're of no use. The rain of mercy is coming to dissolve them all away.


You'd think that I'd have known by now/
That this road is one way/
And no one's car go in reverse/
Here on life's interstate/
Truth be told, I've always known/
But hastily forget/
Now I'm keeping my eyes fixed on the prize/
To never venture looking back/Yeah/

(*) Now the time has come to say/
You can't renig choices you make/
Because breadcrumbs dissolve in the rain/
And I'm learning there's no turning back/now/

I'm way past the point of no return/
Like a ship with the rudder straight/
Totally committed to this journey/
so "Full steam ahead" I say/
Galloping on a tireless horse/
Chasing the horizon/
This ride of life take me by force/
I take it all in with eyes wide open/yeah/

(*)

My question's hypothetical:/
"What if I had chosen/
a path other than the one I chose?"/
Well it's okay/to never know/
yeah, it's okay (i guess)/
to never know/

I clamber up this mountain top/
the summit someday I'll reach/
Once in heaven I'll get to stop/
My journey then complete/yeah/

(*)
I'm learning there's no turning back/
Yeah, I'm learning there's no turning back/now/

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5-All I Know (acoustic version)

Behind the Recording: Pretty simple, really. Just an open-mic acoustic, doubled and panned, one side getting a touch of phaser or fun. Normally this song has a jazz/pop feel to it, but it kinda morphed into a kinda bouncy, almost kid-dish tune as I started playing. I think that could be okay, though. Maybe it's a weird allusion to the "child on lap" image, huh? Well, I'll say that's what it is.


Behind the Song-writing:
Everyone at some point, I think, has at least one very close encounter with the living God, even if only that one time when they ponder the meaning of life at a funeral before their cell phone buzzes another text update from their broker.  This song come comes from a time when I felt God was hiding me in the side of mountain as He passed by, and a teensy bit of His glory burst through my fingers to blind my eyes.

I still remember my thoughts, because most of them are here in the form of lyrics. I recall taking a deep breath as I closed my eyes, and feeling my heart beat. It was a still moment, outdoors with a breeze caressing my face. In this moment I was overcome with gratitude for these simple things I'd forgotten about (blinking, heartbeat), let alone been mindfully grateful for them. 

Hey, take a second and just breathe....I bet you'd forgotten you were breathing at all until just now as I mentioned it. Now blink.....ha! You're going "dang it" because you feel like you have to think about blinking now that you've become aware of it. Trust me, more than likely you will be blinking in an hour and forgotten. Okay now, get up and do 50 jumping jacks.....I know you won't, but if you did, you'd realize that you're heart is beating, and has been, faithfully and wonderfully ever since it first began way back when.......and all these things you'd probably forgotten about. I know I did.

As I exhaled and opened my eyes, I felt very small. "Oh God, why do you love me, anyway?" Humbled greatly and wanting so badly to somehow say thank you, I grabbed a pen and paper and put down these words. I started it out with this lyric about how fast life changes. Fits right with the "dives and climbs," and is why it made this album.

Lyrics:
See, it's a mystery/
how life can change in a mere instant/
Before I knew what was happening/
My hopelessness dissolved/
into peace inside/
We're reconciled/

(*) All I know/is I could not go on with you/
I couldn't even take a breath/to sing this song with you gone/
That's all I know/

I'm coming clean/erasing the lines across my forehead/
'cause lies cause stress/
I'm looking/to much bigger Hands than mine/
(The very ones I've been fighting)/
To hold me/

(*)

If you take me away from you then/
you'd see what that would do and/
I'd be just like styrofoam in fire/
'cause you're my life/
Though I'm a child on lap trying to steer/
you still hold the wheel/

(*)


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4-Dives and Climbs

Behind the Recording:
I must admit, this tune grew out of listening to the Coldplay albums. Something about the steady quarter beats with subtly smooth bass, and a head-noddy rhythm really manages to slide into your head quickly and take residence for extended amounts of time. I cut the Coldplay idea of falsetto vocals for the most part. I guess I did leave that "yeah-whoo-oo-whoo-whoo" thing for some reason. Thanks, Chris Martin, for starting something there. Now all us guys wish we hadn't gone through puberty. Heh.

The bass guitar track took so many takes! Oh my goodness. I wore lovely little blisters on the end of a couple fingers like tiny purple hearts after my war with getting this part right. I think the final result was worth it, but man, that was a bit rough on the old fingeroos.




Behind the Song-writing:
Whenever life seems really bad, like down in the dirt, or whenever it seems completely perfect, like good and extra awesome, I try to take a step back and remember how quickly life can turn around. It helps me stay focused and not get lost in either the blisters or the bliss too much.

The bridge is easily my most favorite part of this song, probably of this whole album. It stems from the idea of free will and love, and how God has allowed us to think somewhat freely, and He decided it would be worth the risk of us not loving Him to give us the ability to choose to love Him. I think His own love is why He did that. Wouldn't forcing love out of a someone not really be love on your part, let alone that it wouldn't be on that person's? It's funny how this idea found its way into lyrics about the ups and downs of life.  I think that might be because our choices can direct how a lot of things in our life happen, whether or not we love well.  This tune is a celebration of our choice to love. 




Lyrics:

They say this life/
is full of dives and climbs/
ups and downs/
wrongs and rights/
you know this/yeah, yeah/

You criticize/the only one who's right/
Asking why/
we sometimes fly/
and are sometimes grounded/

(*) He holds the world/
in perfect spin/
To improve us/
from our sin/
He made a way for change/
And that's still His way today/

They say this life/
is full of dives and climbs/
ups and downs/
wrongs and rights/
you know this/yeah, yeah/

It's all a must/
To give us will to love/
'Cause love's a choice/
It can't be forced/
Unless we're robots/

(*)

Is cornering your lover really love?/
Is handcuffing your lover truly love?/
Isn't relentless/chasing and racing/
after the chosen one/
paying her debts/by dying her death--/
Isn't all this love?/
If not/then what?/

They say this life/
is full of dives and climbs/
ups and downs/
wrongs and rights/
You know this/yeah, yeah/


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3-The Harvest Is Ready

Behind the recording:
This song feature's the mandolin I got the Christmas of '05. I call it my "happy instrument" because every time I play it or hear it I just get this light feeling. The 3/4 time on this tune really helps give it a swing and a lift. The happy feeling of the music is supposed to give the balance to the more serious nature of the lyrics, which I'll address with the songwriting story.
The mandolin was tuned to itself for the recording, but I didn't realize that it was really slighty flat or sharp (I can't remember which). So when adding the guitar part, I had to retune it all slightly to fit the mandolin. It still turned out all right, I think.

The shaker sound you hear is a box of macaroni and cheese noodles I borrowed from my roomate. After kicking out the bass and increasing the mids and treble on the EQ, I got a decent shaker effect. Macaroni noodles never sounded so good! 

Last of all, my friend Isaac helped out with some vocals. Isaac writes and sings as well, and it was a pleasure to have him help me out on this tune. His harmonies on the choruses (chorii? nah, guess not) are my favorite part. Isaac and I have written a couple songs together, and I have recorded a few guitar tracks for his CD project. Thanks, Isaac!

Behind the Songwriting:
There's that fairly well-known passage in Luke 10 about the harvest being plentiful and ready but the laborers  few. For some reason this passage caught my eye more than it ever had before. I found it interesting that it says "now pray to the Lord of the harvest to send more workers." I figure that implies you should be working the fields yourself, but even if you're not, to pray for workers, for willing hearts.
 
I realize that witnessing to others about the gospel can still be to fellow believers. Why not? With each reminder of this greatest news of hope, our spirits can lighten all the more and journey not seem so tedious and harrowing.  I work on living and speaking the gospel in various ways to everyone, from drug addicts on the street to the people who know have memorized the Bible.

So I consider this song both my "prayer to the Lord of the harvest" and slightly critical but mostly tough encouragment to the Church.  It is for to the hesitant and afraid as much as the lazy. May you feel the urgency of the gospel in a new way from hearing this tune.

Lyrics:
The harvest is ready/
The stalks have grown tall/
The crop is too many/
to count it all/
The farmer's asleep/
and his workers at play/
as they think to themselves/
"It can wait one more day"

(*) Ooh Ooh/I'm seeing signs/I don't wanna see now/
Ooh Ooh/Maybe it's time/for a change in me now/

The harvest is ready/
The fruit has grown ripe/
We day-waste, then make/
the excuse that it's night/
Our tools have grown rusty/
No action they've seen/
They're just decorations/
like the gloves much too clean/

(*)

So many people/
are ready to listen/
But all that we've got to say/
Is "You're empty-handed/
Ha! But I've got a ticket/
to get me to heaven someday"/
The fruit on the trees/
falls down with the leaves/
Left just to rot away/
While we all play dumb/
and twiddle our thumbs/
It's been time to go/
There's no time to waste/

(*)
Ooh Ooh/Come, bring the others/the good news needs feet now/
Ooh Ooh/Will it change you/like it's changed me now?/

The harvest is ready/


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Some pictures from around the time of making this album

 












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