PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase Dead End Road_with Little Scottie C. and the C-Street Band

So, I wanted to resurrect another old number, this one from the age of 19, I think it was.

I wanted to bring out the pros and recreate the sound of thunder I had with my first band, so I pulled in Scott Collingwood on the electrics because he brings the big guns, and my friend and collaborator Jon Healey from LA on Sax.

https://www.reverbnation.com/davidpsnyder/song/29692241-dead-end-road

https://soundcloud.com/david-snyder-gigs2/dead-end-road

The C in Street stands for Collingwood and Canada. Here are some guitar-worthy notes, because Scott is one awesome player.

Scott is playing four guitar parts. He is doing a clean and gritty Les Paul, with a really muscular rhythm left and right channels, and when his astonishing guitar solo comes in at the 5 minute mark (a minute and a half solo) he is playing in freakin’ stereo with himself on two separate tracks, one clean and one dirty, again, left and right. You can’t miss this moment. He blows your socks off. Then Jon comes in on sax. Whoaaah. Dudes!!! That's what I'm talking about.

Hope you have fun and enjoy the ride.

Dead End Road
By David Snyder

V1

Johnny pumps gas near an overpass
At a Union 76
He feeds his dreams to a coin machine
He’s got a toolbox full of tricks
He married his high school sweetheart
On graduation night
They made love in the parking lot
Under some neon lights
Now she works at a grocery on the boulevard
And she says
Life would be so easy Johnny
But it’s gotten
So damned hard
So damned hard

CH:

And we’ve been driving down a dead end road
Driving down a dead end road
Driving down a dead end road
Just driving down a dead end road

V2

We got little kid brother sittin’ dirty faced
By the side of the road, by the side of the road
Smokin’ cigarettes, smokin’ cigarettes
And acting real slow, acting real slow
Stealin’ quarters, just to play some foosball
All night long, down at Nicky’s pool hall
Sayin’ brother drive me to the county line
We’ll buy a sixpack of beer and we’ll feel real fine
Then we’ll go home
And mama will ask where we been
But daddy’s at work at the factory
He sleeps all day, goes to work at three
And I think she knows, I think our mama knows


CH:

That we been driving, just surviving
Making our plans, but never arriving
On our own
Cause we’re all alone
We’re all alone
On this dead end road

Words and music copyright David Snyder, ASCAP/Day of Faith Records

David Springsteen and the C-Street Band is:

David Snyder, Acoustic guitars, piano, B-3, synth, Vocals
Little Scottie Collingwood, electric guitars and guitar solo
Jon “Skinny Man” Healey, Saxophone

RealTracks in style: 1522:Bass, Electric, PopPower8s Ev 120
RealDrums in style: MetalSlowBigTomGroove: a: Toms, Snare b: Busy Big Toms, Snare

Great song David, this gives a long ago feel to me, which I love, almost Boss, Bruce Springsteen sound, we, me an my friends could not stand him in the 70's the girls loved him, well you make it sound really good. He seemed ok back then now he is just a dancing bear. HA

Hey, Spanish Johnny...

That's a mighty fine 19-year-old write. Nice job of getting Springsteen-like images and phrasing throughout.

Sort of a Wild-and-the-Innocent chaos, too. I thought it was difficult to separate Scott's guitar (lead) and Jon's sax - they are such similar frequencies.

Good BruceYells in the outro...

fj

David,

This is awesome as always!

I love the rawness of your vocals and production.

Side note: Does that TEAC reel-to-reel in the pic still see any use?

Cheers
Kent

David,

This is over the top AWESOME! Love the huge production and mix. Your vocal and instrumentation was perfect

Great guitar playing by Scott...

I was with you for the whole 6+ minutes!

Bob

Thanks David for including me on the track. Really had allot of fun with it. I borrowed a few licks from Little Steven on this one :-)
Excellent vocal. Love what you did with the lyrics. Great story telling....

Great work - this is a throwback to the 80's! I love the synths, and the song has a great energy to it. The tune sounds so huge and vast. There's some really cool lyrics as well here. Pretty impressive you wrote this when you were only 19!

You did an outstanding job on this one - thanks for sharing

This song delivers the whole package. It gives you this really raw feeling, like you used to hear more often in older rock songs. I think you did a really good job on this one. It was fun to listen to!

Thanks for the experience.

I like the way you can capture the feel of both Dylan and Springsteen.

Your voice lends well to this style.

Really good job of the lyrics. Man they could have been a Springsteen write from back in his Asbury Park days on the Jersey shore.

Personally, if you're redoing this, I'd do a slight rewrite and eliminate the many repeats BECAUSE... man you don't do that in the first verse and it just flows extremely well and shows the gritty side that Springsteen is soooo good at doing. Don't get lazy in the chorus and the second verse.



Man, that's freaking brilliant writing right there..... It takes you into the story and makes you feel the heat of the night and the sound of the coins dropping into the pinball machine.

I'm sure the sax and guitars parts were great, but they are playing together and over each other hiding the brilliance of each other in the confusion.

This song has potential to be a slam dunk knock out. But it needs some more work.

Very strong pumping rock tune. Excellent vocals, 'wall of guitars' mix and guests.

Janne

Thanks Clifton!!

Hey Magic Rat,

Are you pants still rolled up? Is your girlfriend still sitting on the hood of a dodge drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain? Are you gonna disappear down Flamingo Lane?

I don't know man, the poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.

And yeah. I need to clean up that solo mix.

Thanks Kent man, couldn't have done it without ya--literally!!



As for the Teac. Yessir. Being an engineer, I guess you know there is just nothing like getting a perfectly pristine ready for iTunes stereo digital track, loading it into Real Band, and mastering that puppy onto tape.

Or feeding an acoustic guitar part back into the console with some tape on it.

Oh yeah. She runs, buddy. You better believe.

Thanks Bob! We had a lot of fun with that!

Glad you enjoyed it!!

Thanks Scott.

Man you killed it. You made the song.

I do need to fix the guitar and sax mix on my second go around. It needs some work. But hey, Bruce took six months to mix Born to Run, so maybe I will get it done before that.

Definitely sounds like it belongs on The Wild, the innocent & the E Street Shuffle - part Sandy & part Wild Billy with some later Thunder Road thrown in for BIGgness...
Cool revitalization of your musical youth (pass the Dutchie anyone?).
Great contribution from your collaborators.

Thanks Deryk! I am so glad you liked it man.

Thanks Ember! That was very sweet of you to say!

Glad you liked it!

hi david love the vocal and the lyrics guitar and sax sounded nice sure brings memories back thanks eric

Hello David,

Scoot & Jon, too. I fully agree with the Springsteen references. Pretty in-depth lyric for a 19 year-old - nice insight to things most kid at that age don't have. But, you've always been a visionary with your music. You truly are one the most creative people on the site -.

You accomplices outdid themselves - you are so fortunate to hive them with you on this. Scott and Jon are more than icing on the cake - they add a lot to the batter, too. Super collab. You guys kicked it in the a$$!

Alan