Today Is A New Day

johnnolanmusic:

Your Name Here isn’t the song I had planned to end my playlist with. I had a lot of requests for it though, and I thought it would be fitting to close things out with one of the songs that people have asked me about the most.
I wrote this one as an acoustic song probably in the summer of 2001(I know! A long time ago. Some of you were probably in elementary school then.) As many of you might know, I was involved in a much talked about and much sung about feud with Jesse Lacey of Brand New around that time. The short version of the story is that we had been best friends for most of our lives, and then had a falling out over a girl that we both liked(I know! It’s ridiculous.) He wrote a song called 70x7 about it and Taking Back Sunday wrote a song about it called There’s No ‘I’ In Team. The two of us didn’t talk for almost a year after that, and then gradually we reconnected and became friends again.
Somewhere in the midst of the ridiculous drama of it all I was overwhelmed with the simple feeling of missing my friend. That was what led to me to write Your Name Here. The first verse was actually written to the listener, using “Your Name Here” in place of any direct reference to Jesse. The chorus was written to Jesse and it was sort of an invitation. The lyrics were actual directions to my apartment on Long Island at the time.They were fairly accurate, but had to be altered slightly for the purposes of rhyming and general lyrical flow. It was Carman’s road that I lived off of. You also had to take the first right after the the first stoplight, there was no traffic light on my corner. I figured I’d be specific about that since I’ve talked to a few people from Long Island that actually tried to follow the directions with frustrating results.
The song didn’t see the light of day for years because it wouldn’t have made it as a Taking Back Sunday song, and when Straylight Run started out I had a whole batch of much newer songs that I was really excited about. Your Name Here had already been on the shelf for quite a while even then. I think it was one of the first songs we worked on after releasing our first five song EP online.
So, as I said, this will be the last song of my Straylight playlist. If any of you have these songs I would recommend actually putting this playlist together and checking it out. I posted the songs in an order that I think flows well and makes for good listening. If you don’t own the songs and you want to check them out you can listen to it on Straylight Run’s myspace page. http://www.myspace.com/straylightrun I could only fit 10 songs on our player though, so it’s missing one.
It’s been great for me to post these songs and reminisce. Thanks to all of you who wrote to tell me how much you enjoyed it. I wish this was something I could keep doing, but the longer I continue it the further it will get from my original intention. I wanted to make a list of some of my favorite Straylight Run songs and memories to say goodbye to the band in a positive way and right now I feel like that has been accomplished. I also want to thank all of you who have stuck with Straylight Run through so many years and so many changes. It’s an amazing thing to have been able to develop the kind of relationship I have with all of you. I  appreciate your love and support so much more than I can say.