Americana Highways presents this premiere of due Siren Songs’ version of Cyndi Lauper’s song “Time After Time,” available this Friday, from their self-titled album due to be available on May 29, 2020. Siren Songs is Merideth Kaye Clark and Jenn Grinels. Siren Songs was recorded by David Streit at The Hallowed Halls (Portland, OR) and Bryan Daste at Dream Tree Studios NW (Portland, OR). It was mixed by Bryan Daste and mastered by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering (Portland, OR).
“Time After Time” is Merideth Kaye Clark and Jenn Grinels on vocals, with Merideth Kaye Clark on dulcimer.
Americana Highways asked the duo about this song from the album. Here is what they had to say.
MERIDETH: I got really into the Appalachian dulcimer a few years ago. I love Joni Mitchell and learned her album Blue from beginning to end – and now I perform it in concert. I was playing around on my dulcimer and trying to learn a few non-Joni songs, you know, expand my repertoire on the instrument. I was trying to come up with a song about motherhood to play at an event. (I have two little kids who are often the inspiration for my music these days.) And I started playing these chords that sounded like “Time After Time” to me. The arrangement came from that. I realized that the song really is about unconditional love, one of the most beautiful and painful parts of being a mom. No matter what happens, I’ll be here, loving you. Jenn happened to be at that concert –
JENN: When Merideth sang it, I bawled! It was so touching.
MERIDETH: I love the simplicity and the open sound of the dulcimer. It has this drone, like something you hear during meditation or prayer, making the whole song sound very reverent. And Jenn’s harmony was a very obvious and beautiful addition. The album was recorded almost completely live together in the studio. Just a couple mics and us and a great recording engineer and we took the best performances – which is very in-line with the simplicity of a folk sound. It’s not a very “produced” sounding album, it’s very simple and raw.
JENN: A funny story about recording this track – as mentioned, this was recorded live and all one take, all the instruments and voices in a room. And Merideth did this perfect, beautiful performance and when she got to her big note, a big truck drove by outside!
MERIDETH: And we could hear it in the studio! We were initially so disappointed and couldn’t believe we could hear it through the mics. We knew this was THE TAKE; it was the ONE. So – afterwards, our mixing engineer, Bryan Daste at Dream Tree Studios NW in Portland, OR, was playing around with how to get this truck sound out of the track, and we started adjusting the EQ. By accident, we heard the dulcimer with all of the treble turned down and we were like, “Oh! that sounds really cool!” And that’s how we came up with the fade-in style intro. The song starts like a far away idea, and then lands right in the listeners ear.
Siren Songs is an intensely alluring album.
Pre-order links:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/time-after-time-single/1505514608?app=music&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Siren_Songs_Time_After_Time?id=Bi6cl3zxnrhezdkivspnvjp2rde
Pre-save link:
https://ffm.to/timeafter