“Fade” was recorded using my Thumb Bolt-on six string and my Fortress One five string fretless both direct. I believe we ran the basses through a Sans Amp before the board. I did several tracks of bass (the beginning ostinato, bass line, chords, a fretless theme, a lead melody, and a solo) plus the little piano motif. The round that the tune ends on isn’t keyboard. Believe it or not, it’s all bass.

Chris Moore did some drums, drum programming, organ, and the really rocking bass line on the second half of the song. He also did something interesting with his old Arp Odyssey. The poor thing was in such bad shape that it only made freaky noises when we plugged it in. I convinced Chris to sample these noises to make a sort of rhythm track in a program called Fruity Loops. The end product is the “horror movie” sounds that start the tune and run throughout the first half. I think it sounds pretty dang groovie and fits well with the motivation behind the song.

This song was the last piece written for the green sessions and one of my favorites. I feel it really bridges the gap between my first and second solo albums quite well. While the song starts off a bit dark (“D minor, the saddest of all keys.”), it does a 180 and ends on a more green-themed positive outlook. The balance struck by both parts of this piece begins to lean towards the subject matter explored in my second solo bass album, equilibrium.

So this brings us to the story behind “Fade”, and no, it’s not about a type of haircut. During the recording of green I was just entering my mid twenties. For me this was a period of big life changes. Cindy and I had moved to Atlanta and gotten married soon after relocating. I had finished music school and was trying to figure out how to make a living being a musician.

Also during this time, it seemed I was losing contact with many of my close friends from my late teens and early twenties. Some disappeared from my life through our flat out disagreements. You know those arguments that spawn a hopeless moment when you know that the space between two people has grown large enough to eclipse all hope of ever again seeing eye to eye. Man, I hate those.

Of the folks I lost touch with, not all departed due to arguments. Most simply lost touch as we grew farther and farther apart. It was almost as if these people I was once very close to were slowly fading into the huge background of nameless faces that make up the rest of the world.

Needless to say, this had gotten me down. I felt lost and a bit worried. Losing friends is like losing a sense of belonging or never again having a place that you refer to as “home”. This is what the entire first half of the song is about, brooding on the feeling of displacement.

My brooding wasn’t about self-pity though. It was more over being confused. I try to find the positive in any situation, but I was having difficulty finding what could possibly be good about losing friends. Then all at once it hit me, and you can hopefully hear the big 180 in the song. While losing friends isn’t all that great, it leads to a greater personal outcome. I was forced to adapt. I could choose to close my self off from those around me or I could learn to become personally invested in the people I meet. I chose to lessen the number of nameless faces in the background of the world.

I also realized I was fortunate to have had the experience of friendship at all. So what if some of these people faded from my life! The friendship was there and continues to live in my memory. Those times are never lost to me, and I still learn from them when I visit them in my mind’s eye. While I’ve discovered friendships that fade, I learned to really treasure friendships that don’t. Some friends seem to pick right up where we left off regardless of how much time may have passed. That’s just so cool. If you listen closely, you may hear this expressed in the section of “Fade” where part of the theme from “To that Effect” reappears.