Songwriting for the Red Ghost album started in late 2016 when I wrote the first draft of “She Says.” That song ended up being the 3rd track but the title song was the last one written in February of 2018. I knew the title though by November 2017.
Even though it was the last song, I knew the unwritten song title captured the spirit of the album and would be the name of the album as well. So, deciding I was going to intentionally write what would arguably be the most important song of the album last, I pulled every trick I knew to spark some inspiration.
Writing the Words
Essentially, “Red Ghost” is a song about closing out a heartache story that is fading in the rear view mirror. Trying to make sense of the unknown reasons for the end of a too-brief relationship. Why didn’t things work? What was wrong with you? What was wrong with them? Where do you go from here? Not a happy ending but an ending nonetheless.
I felt a lot of pressure to make this honest and vulnerable but not melodramatic. In some of the early brainstorming efforts, you can see I started to slip into real wallowing stuff but I have a pretty high filter for that in the light of day when I take those words to the guitar. Below is a screenshot from the first scribbled words and my attempt at rhyme collecting for the key words of the song.
After just throwing single lines into my OneNote book, I wasn’t feeling like I was getting anywhere so I started over in Coggle.it, a free mind mapping software. This was much more fruitful and directly resulted in the first verse and the prechorus seen on the right side of the map.
After I had these, the structure for the rest of the song became apparent and I just filled in the blanks. The rest of the lyrics ended up here.
Red Ghost
F
There’s a red ghost that
A7
lingers in my mind
Bb A7
The real thing left a while ago
G7 C
And this is what was left behind
F
And frankly it’s not
A7
half as cute or fun
Dm Dm/C
It’s silent and it’s hollow and
Dm/B Bb
And it’s run from what was done
PRECHORUS
Gm
I guess I should have known
F
That she’d know how to disappear
Dm Dm/C
She can tuck away her baggage
Bb C
And run far away from here
CHORUS
F
There’s a red ghost
Eb Bb
That lingers in my mind
F
There’s a red ghost
Eb Bb
When it’s gone I’ll be fine
F
There’s a red ghost
Eb Bb Cm
You learned to say goodbye to things
A long time ago
Well now I come to understand
what you already know
It’s over now
The chapter’s done and closed
We return to what was once the life
We used to know
PRECHORUS
But we’ve left a trail of victims
To which we must attend
The pain caused those who trusted us
Is too much to comprehend
CHORUS
There’s a red ghost
That lingers in my mind
There’s a red ghost
when its gone, I’ll be fine
And now I know what it means
To lose a friend
That old life don’t look so bad now
I guess I learned that in the end
Writing the Music
In this case, I somewhat randomly picked F to be the key of the song. I think the only justification I had was there was no other song in F on the album and the song before “Red Ghost” was “Ceiling Fan,” which is in G. That would mean the final chord of that last song would be a whole step above the first chord of this song, which would suggest a drop in momentum. Nothing more than that, I guess.
As for the changes, I originally went to the minor third (A minor) from the F but that sounded too melodramatic so I switched it to an A7. That gave the change a little backbone. I also knew that, because I wanted this to be kind of a somber ending, I good D minor walk down would fit. I ended up using it in the end of the verse and the end of the pre-chorus.
I was initially concerned that the chorus, which moves out of the key of F into a Bb 1-4-5 (F Myxolydian) would be too subtle or, worse yet, would lack the impact/payoff that a good chorus should have. I brought it to the band with some hesitation, willing to change it at the first pushback, but the guys bought into it so I felt good leaving it how it was.
Below is an early version of the chords I built using Chordbot, an Android app I sometimes use to try out quick chord progressions without the bias of the strumming patterns I have in my muscle memory. Entering the structure of changes in here lets me try out different tempos and comping patterns to rapidly prototype verses and choruses.
Here’s the same song as built out in Chordbot.
The guitar solo was a labor of discovery as I spent an entire evening experimenting and recording different ideas. You can hear the beginning walkup I use in this acoustic demo version in the final version. The recording departs into something more deliberate though after that first walkup while the acoustic above kind of fizzles after a strong intro statement of 6 or 7 notes. I remember being really excited about finding that double string slide part at the end over the D minor walk down chords. Overall, pretty happy where this simple line ended up.
