(From the Archive) - "Shameless" (2007)

Happy 2020! A new decade and a new month to share something new and something old on our Patreon! Today we present you with the song "Shameless", another oddity from The Tea Club’s top secret archive that only YOU, our Beloved Patrons, can access!

Careful listeners might recognize this guitar part. Imagine it slowed down... played on an electric rather than acoustic guitar... That’s right, it’s featured in “Creature” from our latest album If/When! You’ll hear it around minute 13:30, after the heavy middle section (which we in the band have always referred to as “Hell”). This is the origin of that part, and I wrote it all the way back to 2004!

Titled “Shameless” because it was a “shameless” attempt to mimic Nick Drake’s guitar playing, it features me on an acoustic guitar, occasionally doubled, and that’s it. It was never intended to be a full band song, always just a bare bones, “Pink Moon” style acoustic track.

However, a decade plus later, in 2017, this guitar part decided that it wasn’t done yet. I vividly remember being by myself at the church where we practice. The sun was going down but I hadn’t yet noticed, as I was deep at work on “Creature”. After listening to a demo we had done of the “Hell” section, I started to pluck away at the chords to this song, “Shameless”. I started to sing “do you dare enter this place?” from earlier in Creature, and I knew I was onto something. I kept going, taking a chord progression from yet ANOTHER very old song I had lying around I called “1904” (which will be uploaded here on Patreon sooner or later). It kept flowing, and I reprised some lyrics from “The Way You Call” and “If I Mean When”, and the arrangement was done. I came out of the trance-like state I was in and realized that I was in the dark. It was night time and I hadn’t thought to turn the lights on. It’s a surreal and fond memory.

Anyway, here’s the original song in all it’s lo-fi glory! This particular recording was done on our old TASCAM 4 Track cassette recorder back in 2007. I had just met my then-girlfriend and now-wife Kendra, and I decided to record my best acoustic guitar songs for her. I was doing my best to woo her, and luckily for me it worked!

As always, THANK YOU for your continued support, and please let us know what you think of this in a comment below! We love to hear from our Dear Patrons :)

P.S. - Here is a picture of a younger me from around the time this song was written in 2005!

-Dan McGowan