Like most of our songs, Saturday has been a work in progress for a long time. Its themes and melodies were established as early as 2013. That seems impossibly long for a song that seems incredibly relevant to 2022. We’ve attempted recording this song a few times over the years, over varying sessions with different approaches.

I originally wrote Saturday to address my feelings of boredom in my job, my life, and my circumstances. I feel everyone’s looked for adventure and found well-worn paths. At a certain point, one can know where every road ends up. I mean that literally, but of course also figuratively.

With Saturday, I felt I had a lot to say.

At the time I would never be able to predict how a line like “vacation is a trip to the grocery store" could morph under the context of lockdowns and a deadly virus. Those well worn paths—that restaurant, that grocery store, that commute—would ultimately be transformed into things I’d dearly miss. Post-pandemic, it was so easy to desire the boredom that Saturday described.

Saturday’s lyrics offer some universal solutions—picking a direction and driving, booking a random flight. These things are both a fix for feeling stuck, but each became a light at the end of our lockdown.

Saturday employs one of my favorite tricks I’ve seen Art Alexakis of Everclear use. In a b-side of theirs “Lame”, Art says “It’s hard to sleep at night.” After a pause he says “I hardly ever sleep at night”. This little tag at the end just kills me. The subtle change in inflection, the slight pause. It kills me.

I’ve been attempting to do something like this in many of my songs. With Saturday, I found the mirrored phrases of “Whatever you’re running from, I hope you leave with someone.” At the end of the song I follow it up with “Wherever you’re running to, I’d like to run there with you.”

I’m proud to have written something that feels universal and specific to our last few years. It’s not often I get to see a song’s context transform before it’s released. I’m happy with how little of this song repeats. I’m so happy with those mirrored phrases.

And finally, we were able to record this with Andy Thompson and Joe Mabbott at The Hideaway studios. We set up the 4 of us and captured it live. We included a ton of overdubs—my favorite being a squeaky refrigerator door in my kitchen that ended up sounding like guitar feedback in the first verse. Andy Thompson produced and mixed. Justin Perkins mastered it.

Since it was recorded during the pandemic, we all wore masks. I recorded my vocals in a closet in my home—happy to have the grocery store as a vacation whenever I needed it. And now for the final version:

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