I wrote Saw You There in the time it took me to play it.
The creation of this song was unlike any other. In April of 2022, two months after I wrote Par for the Course, I sat down at my guitar and started to play some chord changes. I played what is now the instrumental intro to Saw You There, and when I landed on the root chord, I could tell immediately that there was something there. I hit record on my voice memo app and started playing the song. I hadn’t written any of the lyrics, melody, or chord changes before hitting record, but it was as if I knew the song already, just by playing it. This was a completely surreal experience, writing a song as I played it for the first time, and it’s eerie to listen to that voice memo and see how much of the song is already there.
I immediately realized that this song was something special. I listened back to the recording, and hastily wrote down the lyrics and the chords I’d used. Bam, there it was, a brand new song that I’d written in record time. I was pretty stunned that this had happened, especially considering this was only the second song I’d ever wrote. I immediately went to my friends and played it for them, and it felt pretty incredible to share this brand-new piece.
The next day, I sat down with pen and paper to write the last verse of the song, because it didn’t feel quite done. So that verse was an exception to the free-flowing composition of the rest of the song, but I am glad I chose to add it, allowing the song to wrap up in a way similar to how it started.
Then, I didn’t do much else with the song! I continued to keep it in the back of my head, and play it when I brought my guitar out, but I never imagined it’d be anything more than a campfire song.
Fast-forward to the fall of 2024, when I had started to think about compiling my songs into an EP. Including Saw You There was a must, but the accompaniment wasn’t fully fleshed in my mind yet. I started with acoustic guitar and bass to accompany my voice, and my producer Xander added some beautiful touches of electric guitar.
I sat with this version of the song for a while, but it felt like it needed something new, something soaring, to match the emotional rawness of the track. I’ve always loved when favorite artists like Sigur Rós and the Goo Goo Dolls add strings to their songs, so I figured I’d do the same for Saw You There, and add this unique touch to the EP. The only problem was, I don’t play any string instruments! Luckily, I bumped into my friend Marco in the laundry room, and he offered to play violin for me and help with the string arrangement. He’s a concertmaster of the orchestra, so I was pretty hyped that he was willing to work with me! After coming up with some violin melodies together in the practice studio right before Thanksgiving break, I was ready to flesh out the other string parts. I spent the week of Thanksgiving with my MIDI keyboard, placing viola and cello parts and doing my best to fill out the song. I kept having ideas that required more parts, so I ended up writing seven total string parts, meaning the musicians would have to record at least two parts each, giving the arrangement an even grander feel. It sounded pretty great with the digital strings, and I couldn’t wait to hear live string players fill out the sound.
My friend from my a capella group, Benjamin, played in the orchestra, and was more than happy to play two cello parts for me on short notice! I also knew that Aidan, my bandmate, had played the viola in high school, so I convinced him to pick it back up for this recording. And of course Marco was eagerly waiting to play the violin part that he’d help write, and to see what I’d written for the second and third violin parts. We recorded each part individually in the studio that December, and I was blown away by the precision and grace that these three players added to the music. I was so grateful that I could call on their expertise to add this orchestral sound to my song.
The last touch we added to the song was actually Xander’s idea. He wanted me to add some high harmonies to the most intense parts of the song. I came into the studio not at all prepared to sing, and all of a sudden I was trying my best to belt out harmonies that were even higher than the vocals! Luckily, my voice cooperated, and we kept the harmonies in the song.
The harmonies and the strings are most present in two sections of the song, the section right after the whistle break and the penultimate verse, where I go up an octave. These sections are the most emotional and pained parts of the song, and they were my way to highlight the anguish I was feeling when I wrote Saw You There. While Par for the Course was my first crack at understanding my heartbreak through song, I wasn’t yet comfortable with fully embracing those feelings and explicitly saying so in my songs. In the few months between writing the two songs, I had gained some more perspective, and more fully understood myself post-breakup. Even though I had no plan for the song when I wrote it, due to its instant composition, I later realized that I’d written Saw You There as a way to follow myself through all stages of that recent relationship.
The opening of the song reflects on where I was before I met her and captures the emotions of that first encounter, and the instrumentation is more gentle and hopeful. That section is followed by a whistle interlude where there are no lyrics or strings. I like to think that section mirrors the brief actual relationship. The first few months of a relationship often feel too good to describe, and because we only spent a few months together, that’s how this song interprets that feeling.
The next part of the song reflects how I felt after the relationship ended. Each verse ebbs and flows, mirroring my feelings then, where sometimes I could coolly contemplate the situation and other times I’d be overcome by emotion. Saw You There is the most honest depiction of that chapter in my life, even though it was written without any overarching framework. I don’t know if I’ll ever write another song like it, starting completely from scratch and letting the flow instinctively in the moment. I hope you can feel the genuine emotion and rawness of this track, as I do think the freeflow composition added a lot to the song, making it feel more like an organic thought process as opposed to trying to follow a specific song structure.
Saw You There is available for streaming everywhere, and you can watch the accompanying lyric video on YouTube now!