Recording “The End”
On October 27, 2010, I had the musical experience of a lifetime as I met and recorded with one of my greatest musical inspirations at his studio in the town where my mother was born. That day will forever be emblazoned in my mind. Many of my close friends and family may already know of this event, but in the decade since, I’ve forged new friendships and my family has expanded so I’d love to share this memory once again for those who don’t know its story.
The story begins and ends with the music. In 2004, Rick Shelley, who was a teacher at my alma mater Avondale High School, invited me to join his rock band, The Euphorians, a band which had already been playing for nearly a decade and which comprised of friends Rick had known for decades. Rick was the lead vocalist, his childhood best friend Eric Martin played lead guitar, Brian Frabutt was the bassist, and Scott Williams was the drummer. I came in as the band’s keyboardist and also contributed rhythm guitar and backing vocals. Despite being about twenty years younger than my four new bandmates, we quickly became fast friends and I felt a kinship and brotherhood with them that has continued to this day.
In mid-2006, we began work on material for a new album under the working title Maison du Jouir which would be the first major recording I would ever produce. Most of the songs were composed by Rick, Eric, or co-written by both. I wrote one latin-influenced song, “Around the World” and had an idea for one more.
Entitled “The End”, the song was musically rooted in gospel, although not religious. The lyrics depicted a couple in heartache as they separated. I recorded a very basic demo, wasn’t very impressed with it, and shelved it. Posting here is the first time I’ve heard it in 14 years.
In November 2007, my parents and I visited my great-aunt Chandana Barua in Toronto. She was a kind, soft-spoken woman whose tiny stature belied the radiance of her personality and the love she had for those in her orbit. But now, she was facing terminal cancer and with her frail state nearing the end, it was the first time I’d been in a situation of having to say “goodbye” to someone knowing it would be the last time.
She passed away a couple months later in January 2008. The experience stuck with me and reminded me of “The End”. I dug the song out of its digital archive and realized that without changing a single word, the lyrics could take on an entirely deeper meaning: the heartache of the death of loved ones, contrasted with the hope of being reunited one day.
The Euphorians’ album had ground down to a slow pace towards completion, partially because of our own overambitious attempt to include as many of our musical friends as we could as guest performers. The songs went through years of revisions, but “The End” was the toughest to complete.
With it being a gospel song, I knew I wanted to have a choir. So I reached out to Kevin Cornwell, the choir director at Avondale High School. Though I was never his student, I’d gotten to know him through my years of doing theatre, and he has since become one of the strongest musical pillars I’ve leaned on in many subsequent projects. He was also a close colleague and friend to Rick so he enlisted the talents of some of his best singers to help us. I wrote a six-part arrangement for the choir and in just three hours, we taught the parts and recorded the students after school on May 19, 2008.
The last puzzle I needed to finish for “The End” was a gap in the middle of the song where I wanted to have a slide guitar solo. I envisioned a solo with a very vocal-like quality akin to the melisma of Mahalia Jackson. While I had an idea of it in my head, translating from my “mind’s ear” to six strings and a glass bottle was beyond my talents. Eric tried recording some takes but they didn’t align with what I envisioned. I also asked my old guitar teacher Bryan Connolly to give it a try, and while he had some creative ideas, they also weren’t quite what I had in mind. I took a chance on trying to get in touch with Derek Trucks, one of the greatest guitarists of today’s generation. Unfortunately his manager told me that due to record label contracts, he would not be able to do a guest appearance on our independent record. By the end of 2009, most of the Euphorians album was complete, but “The End” was still not ready.
In the spring of 2010, my career had hit an inflection point and I found myself with an extended period of time between jobs. I spent three months in India where I traveled around the country visiting and reconnecting with family there. I spent the last six weeks of that trip with my maternal grandparents in Lonavla. My grandfather, Nagendranath Bezbora, was 89 and though his stamina had weakened, he was still in decent health and was mentally as sharp as ever. While I was with him, I would often leave my phone recording when we spoke. In doing so, I captured many great stories and thoughtful conversations along with his birdlike whistling for which he was known in our family. More on those conversations and whistling later…
Kaka, as his grandchildren called him, was an engineer by profession, but also a gifted musician. Although his music itself didn’t directly influence my own, his workflow certainly did. He was obsessed with recording and cataloguing his music, something I continue to this day.
Upon returning to the United States, I was motivated to wrap up the Euphorians’ album which at this point had dragged over four years, largely due to my stubborn production and unquenched desire to have that specific guitar solo in the song. In June of 2010, I had an epiphany: if I couldn’t get Derek Trucks or a similar guitarist to play, I should look to his inspirations. Trucks was actually very well-versed in Hindustani classical music, having played with sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan and slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya. But another musician he’d worked with was Padma Shri (and later Padma Bhushan) recipient Pandit Visha Mohan Bhatt, known to his disciples as Panditji. He played a modified guitar of his own invention known as a Mohan veena. I’d first known of his music from his 1993 collaboration with Ry Cooder, A Meeting by the River, which won the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 1994 and had a song featured in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. Moreoever, I’d seen videos of his performance at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2004. I went to his web site and took a shot in the dark to ask him if he could help me with the song.
I was amazed when he replied to me the very next day! He told me he’d be happy to assist and I was heartened by his faith in putting his reputation on the line for my song, never having met me or hearing my music. As excited as I was, I needed to figure out the logistics of how to do the song with me back in the U.S. and him in India (if only I’d thought of this while I was just there months earlier!). I knew my grandfather also held Panditji in high regard, so I wanted the recording to be a surprise for him. In the following months, Panditji and I exchanged emails and we had hoped to connect when he toured the U.S. that September. Unfortunately the logistics didn’t work out so we decided we’d try to complete the song remotely once he returned to India.
Shortly after his 90th birthday, my grandfather suffered a stroke. His health rapidly failed and he passed away on October 15, 2010. I decided I’d go back to India to attend the Śrāddha (a mourning ritual). Despite the sad occasion and the realization that Kaka would never hear the completed song, I realized that I’d been presented an opportunity. I emailed Panditji to ask if it’d be possible to meet and complete the recording session while I’d be in India again. He was traveling around India at the time and was leaving for Denmark for a European tour on the night of the 27th. That day would be the only day he’d be home while I was in India. Luckily, it was also the one day I had open in my itinerary! We made plans for me to take a trip to Jaipur that day and record the song at his studio.
In case anything went wrong with the studio setup, I took some portable recording equipment with me to India. While in Lonavla, I put it to use by layering a “pad” onto “The End” using Kaka’s Casio keyboard, employing a distinctive synthesized string tone he loved to use which his family will recognize in this clip.
On the morning of October 27, 2010, I flew from Mumbai to Jaipur. Incidentally, Pandijti’s hometown is where my grandparents initially lived after they married and where my mother was born. I arrived at Panditji’s studio where he and his son Saurabh V. Bhatt greeted me. Panditji listened to the work-in-progress mix I brought and I was delighted when he expressed how impressed he was with my vocal! He then went into the isolation room while Saurabh and I prepped the recording software as he tuned up. Shortly thereafter, we hit “Record” and my musical career would never be the same.
Some takes were loosely improvised, but some were meticulously planned. Having a Grammy-winning musician ask me for direction was a staggering honor. The precision in his playing was something few humans can achieve, yet there’s nothing mechanical about it.
After finishing the main song, I asked if he could help me to record a transition from the album’s penultimate song, “If I Should Die Before I Wake”. That song was written solely by Rick Shelley, and it was inspired by heartache he’d endured. In a lullaby tempo, it was sung like a bedtime prayer. On the recording, he played acoustic guitar while I played a soft piano. It also features a cello solo I’d written with inspiration from Bach’s Cello Suite №1 in G major, performed by Emmy Ketchum (née Pellerito). Being in the key of B♭, asking Panditji to segue from that song into “The End” (which is in the key of C) was a bit of a challenge because his instrument isn’t conducive to key changes without retuning. Nonetheless, he created a beautiful alap - a melodic improvisation which typically opens an Indian classical piece - which transitioned seamlessly.
After four hours, we’d recorded a total of sixty takes covering the transition between the two songs, various parts of “The End”, and its elusive solo that I’d only imagined for so many years. I flew back to the U.S. that night, taking better care of my hard drive containing all the master files than my passport!
Over the following weeks, I digested this incredible experience while processing the memory of my grandfather. I was listening to one of the conversational recordings I’d made with Kaka and he said something which really struck me: “I love life - life is so interesting! This world is very bad in many ways, corrupt and all that. But yet, there are so many beautiful people.” And then… he whistled.
Those first three notes he whistled… E, G, C. In western solfege (think back to The Sound of Music), those notes are known as mi, sol, do. In Hindustani classical swara or sargam vocalization, those notes are ga, pa, sa. Shocked, I immediately went back to the opening of notes of Panditji’s opening alap. D, F, B♭. In the key of B♭, those notes are… Ga, pa, sa… Mi, sol, do.
The eerie coincidence of the whistled notes (which happened to be in the same key as “The End”!) and the message of my grandfather were both too good not to include. With the blessing of my four bandmates, I included my grandfather’s voice and whistling to conclude the record. Finally, all the puzzle pieces had connected. By the time the album was released on July 15, 2011, it was renamed Beautiful Dirt. It had a dozen richly diverse songs and featured 38 guest musicians comprising of some of our closest friends headlined by the credit of a Grammy-winning musician in V.M. Bhatt.
We enjoyed sharing the music of this record for the next year, but in August 2012, tragedy would strike our group. Less than a month after we last shared a stage, Rick was hospitalized after he’d suffered a massive stroke. I saw him that evening and though he couldn’t speak beyond the word, “yep”, he clearly recognized me and was happy to see me. Despite those early initial signs of progress, he suddenly deteriorated a few days later. Susan, his beloved ex-wife who he’d remained close with, called me the morning of August 26, saying I’d better get to the hospital. Susan, their child Faye, our bandmates, and some very close friends all gathered as the doctors told us there was nothing they could do to save him. They told us they would give him morphine so that he could die painlessly, but that after extubating, there was no knowing how long he’d continue to live. It could be seconds. It could be days. After they removed the life support, they allowed us to enter his room.
We all held each other, sobbing, watching him calmly lying on his bed. One of our friends suggested we play music for him to hear since it was what he loved more than anything. I had our album with me on my phone and immediately thought of the songs that Rick and I had written about finding comfort in the face of death. So I started playing “If I Should Die Before I Wake”. The song played as we continued to cry. Rick’s breathing continued slowly, his face remaining still. As the second cello solo near the end of the song played, his breathing slowed. By the time the song ended and Panditji’s alap began, Rick Shelley - my friend, my teacher, my bandmate, my mentor, my brother… was dead at only 49.
Even though he was gone, we didn’t need to speak a word to recognize that none of us wanted to face the chasm of silence without him. So the music kept playing, as the alap transitioned to “The End”. As we wept, looking upon Rick’s peacefully motionless body, the lyrics’ power amplified far beyond what I could have ever dreamed when I first wrote them.
Now you know the story. Please enjoy the music of these two inseparable songs. This incredible music would not exist if the stars hadn’t aligned for me to meet Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt ten years ago today.
“If I Should Die Before I Wake”
(music and lyrics by Rick Shelley)Now I lay me down to sleep.
I wonder where you put that soul you might keep,
’Cause I never
Got it back.If I should die before I wake,
Don’t let it be my last mistake
With you.
I don’t know what else to do.But I’ve been getting ready for it.
Not sure what it could be.
But it keeps me up at night
And it drops me to my knees.I saw you standing on that stage
And I remember the light surrounding you.
And all I wanted
Was to be near you.We made a miracle on that day
And no mistake can ever take that away.
We gave our lives
To living.Were our hearts just full of loose talk?
What more can I say?
I feel for every new story inside us,
I can feel one go away.Don’t fade out on me, don’t fade out on me,
Just because we disagreed.
I know, I hope the everlasting
Don’t fade away.All I wanted was to impress you
But my shadow cast was that of a fool
As I stumbled
Over my own vanity.But God, I’m ready for it.
Can I have some please?
You know it keeps me up at night
And it drops me to my knees.
— — —
“The End”
(music and lyrics by Sameer Barua)
Please note: though I sing the lead vocals throughout, there are actually two distinct characters in the song. On the left side of the stereo mix (non-italicized lyrics) is the character who is dying, praying that they’ll be reunited again with their love one day. On the right side (italicized lyrics) is their lover, in anguish, letting go of the departed.I’m standing up on my own two feet.
Head up high, and you know I’m going home.
Take my hand, we’ll stay here forever.
And I’ll never let you be alone.But now you’re walking,
And you’re going the other way.
The sky’s turning gray,
I’m feeling left in the cold.
And I know
That you’ve got to move, baby.
So that you will never,
You will never grow old.On this morning, the sun will rise.
And that light will cleanse my soul.
And though you rode off in yesterday’s sunset,
Please, please know that you’ve made my life whole.One day I know we’re gonna meet again.
And I’ll see you when I’m at the end.
I just pray that you’ll remember me.
Will you hold me, will you hold me and set me free?Will you hold me and set me free.
And I pray that you’ll remember me.
I’ll see you when I’m at the end.
One day I know we’re gonna meet again.
