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Love Me

#Music #Ninth Street Mission

Lyrics

You got eyes
Why don’t you look at me?
You got lips
Why don’t you kiss me?
You got a heart
So why don’t you love me?

Can’t you see
The way I look at you?
Can’t you say
The things I want you to?
Can’t you feel
The way I feel?

You got eyes
Why don’t you look at me?
You got lips
Why don’t you kiss me?
If you have a heart
Then why don’t you love me?

Copyright © 2008 Karl Ward

Release Info

  • Release: Love Me
  • Artist: Ninth Street Mission
  • Format: Digital
  • Date: November 30, 2008
  • Personnel:
    • Karl Ward: electric guitar, analog synth
    • Adam Chimera: piano, mixing
    • Quinn Raymond: electric guitar
    • Namrata Tripathi: lead vocals

Writing notes

I wrote this song at my parents’s house in Georgia. I had been listening to kind of terrible eighties country songs, and I thought, “I do better than this.” So I tossed off what I thought was a fairly straightforward eighties country song. I sat down with my Strat (“Betty”), a digital delay pedal, my Juno-6 analog synth, and a drum set miked with a single SM57 plugged into a Fender Champ turned up loud. It got all Portishead. But none of the original demo is used in this version, which was heavily rearranged for Ninth Street Mission.

Recording notes

Adam Chimera is a musical genius, let me just start with that. One day Adam called me up and invited Nami and me over for food or something–again, I could be making all of this up, maybe we were playing a show somewhere that night. But anyway I remember there was food shopping involved. And we get to his place in the West Village, where there’s a piano in the living room. He’s all nonchalant, like “oh by the way I got something you should hear.” He sits down at the piano and drops an amazing piano arrangement of “Love Me.”

Tracking the piano, vocals, and my guitar parts was pretty quick. We spent a bit of time corralling Quinn’s fuzz parts, which were always wilder when the tape wasn’t rolling. I remember that Quinn’s guitar was recorded in the basement of the West Village joint. I might have recorded my guitar parts there too. My one regret on this track is that I should have spent more time on the synth part, which was so much better in the original demo. I guess I also sort of regret giving away that delay pedal, which was not a great pedal but certainly had some charm.