Behind The Songs - Real

Many of the songs that make up Third World Sun’s first CD took a circuitous route to get to where they are today. Indeed most of them even continue to evolve since we recorded them as we continue to play them live. Because of this, I wanted to document how these songs came about before I forget and it all just becomes a blur. - Carhart

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Real (Johnson, Driml, Carhart, Carhart)

Real was improvised one night in the basement under our house where Lori and I used to go to worship (and ultimately became the Launch Pad and Third World Sun rehearsal space). At the time, though, it was just where Lori and I went to worship and to write after we put Melody to sleep. One night, Lori was complaining about the fakeness of a lot of Christians and a lot of churches. I was just messing around with a bass line that I thought reminded me of something from the 80’s Lori started belting her lyrics out over it. Lori’s lyrics were typically very free-form… didn’t always rhyme. I think there’s one rhyme in the whole song (“here’s the deal, let’s get real”). All the chords and progressions were mine but it was Lori’s melody and heartfelt plea that made the song work. When we resurrected it for Third World Sun, I wasn’t sure it was a great idea. It was really a Lori thing. It was her plea. I also wasn’t sure I could hit the notes (although it’s not as difficult for me as some of We Know There’s More). But the song still works and I even do a few Lori-isms with the melody in tribute to her. The harmonies in the chorus were done by Lori on the Launch Pad version (she typically did a lot of her own background vocals) and then I learned them for when we played it live. For the TWS version, I did all the vocal parts, just as Lori would have done. Real was a Launch Pad standard. We stopped playing it for a bit in TWS, favoring other songs. But it seems to have recently made a comeback in our sets and gets a good response.