After the thrill of having their Star Wars themed tribute song"Farm Boy" played on the October 13, 2006 episode of "The Force-Cast" with Jason and Pete, childhood friends and bandmates, Glen Nelson (music teacher and co-founder/vocalist/keyboardist of CT-based family-friendly rock band Spaghetti Cake and Flipper Dave) and Todd Howard (tech/film/music blogger for Zoom In Online, multimedia producer, author and bassist/vocalist of Last Fair Deal, Chalk, and also Spaghetti Cake) felt a calling to return to the genre and write a follow-up tribute song in honor of the new Indy film, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", being released May 22nd, 2008. "The Indy-Cast," Australia-based Ed Dolista's fantastic podcasts focusing on all things 'Jones' seemed like the perfect place to world premiere an up-tempo rock-pop number written in honor of the good Doctor, and Ed was more than happy to oblidge. The new High Adventure single called "The Ballad of Indiana" was featured on Episode 24 of the Indy-Cast, which came out Sunday April 27th or Monday April 28th depending on which side of the international date-line your computer happened to be when that episode hit the show's RSS feed.

On the heels of watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and Julie Taymor's Beatles-inspired masterwork "Across The Universe" on DVD for inspiration, the boys put nose to grindstone on March 29, 2008 at Todd's Mac-based home recording studio in the Berkshires of northwestern Massachusetts, for an exhaustive 18-hour, non-stop session, where they wrote and recorded the entire song in one epic sitting. At the beginning of the day, Glen rose early and began blasting out 6 pages of handwritten lyrics in his journal, some fourteen-odd verses that had to eventually be whittled down to three. Glen read Todd his lyric brainstorm over rich, dark, strong coffee, and the two knew they had a song in the making. Todd mentioned to Glen an idea he had for the hook lyric that dawned on him a day or so before, which was "I'm makin' this up as I go," as it was always one of his all-time favorite Indy lines, as well as being a perennially-embraced philosophy of life for the two songwriters. Glen had an instinct that the line was great as the hook but that it needed a preceeding line - something to lead up to the final phrase. Then at the same moment, the two of them had the inspiration to look back to the film again, and it turned out that in the actual dialogue of the scene, Indy asks Sallah and Marion to get them passage out on a boat or a plane, and states that he's "going after that truck." "How?" Sallah asks. To which Indy replies off-handedly, "I don't know, I'm makin' this up as I go." At that moment, the hook of the chorus was born.

Todd "E-Bones" was eager to break in his newly updated Logic 8 Pro digital recording studio, which is running on a 2.4 GHz 24" iMac with a Lexicon Omega digital audio interface, M-Audio Radeon 61 key MIDI controller and had a brand new AT 4050 microphone just out of the box awaiting the vocal performances that were to come. The song was actually written, performed and recorded in separate pieces (loops, verse, bridge, chorus, intro), and as soon as any part of the song's structure was decided on, that piece was immediately captured so they could move on and focus on the next section. "Hit Save" was a watch-phrase of the day. Todd even had his laptop sitting open in the middle of the studio all day long with GarageBand recording everything that went on in the room, lest a fleeting moment of inspiration evaporate before memorization could lock it down and then feebly be replaced with the scowl of loss and the phrase 'I got nuthin'". This technique proved all-too useful at least a half dozen times throughout the writing phrase, especially in moments of "E-bones's" spontaneous melodic vocalizations - not the least of which was the unconventional second half of the bridge melody. All of the elements were later magically pieced together, and the form of the song was finally manifested in the wee hours of the morning, at the very end of the writing and recording process! Said Glen of this approach, "I had never written a song like that before, but it actually helped us to write and record it very quickly, once the words were flowing. In the end, the pieces fit together really well. It felt like doing 'Good Vibrations' or something."

Todd composed two downright orchestral ostinato loops in Logic on the piano and Hammond B3 that kind of 're-purpose' melodic phrases from the beloved original John Williams film score. Glen played all the keyboards and drums on the MIDI keyboard, and Todd was able to really get in there and tweak it all in preparation for the final mix. Bones played live bass and guitar, and the boys of course sang their trademark harmonies. The pic on the cover of the February '08 "Vanity Fair" was there all day in the studio for moments of inspiration. (Glen later thanked Bones by sending him an Official Pix© print of "Temple Of Doom" Indy, which now hangs proudly on the wall.) Two weeks later, Todd began the arduous and detailed process of post production, and all told spent another 18 hours on editing, tweaking MIDI, deliberating over the final mix, sending WAV files back and forth with Glen, who offered astute notes on each version. On into the final mastering process, there was a valid debate about whether to take the extra time and effort to tap mixing and mastering ace Don Gunn out in Seattle to give the Logic project the once over. Give it the once over he did, indeed. After a spectacular revision of almost every EQ, plug in schema, and tonal decision, Don's expertise and bat-like hearing broght the final mix to fruition, and a little mastering goes a long way as the track now punches and shines through as did the deep hearts of the recovered Shankara Stones. The results are nothing short of glorious fanboy bliss. Listen for yourself and enjoy!

Remember all you musical scholars out there, that just like in "Farm Boy", there are lyrical and musical cues all over the song, besides the obvious payoff moment at the end. The classic Indiana Jones main theme is indeed re-rendered here on bagpipes, as a tip of the hat to the Joneses long life of globetrotting as well as the heritage of Sean Connery himself who of course plays Indy's dad in 1989's "The Last Crusade", as an example of the copious internal references. (We won't give them away here, but as you discover them, let us know!) The more you listen to the song, the more you're going to pick up", said Todd, "Not a word nor a note was chosen by happenstance - and also like 'Farm Boy' in 2006, 'The Ballad Of Indiana' is a labour of love." "Indeed," adds Glen, "a love letter back to those childhood heroes whom we have loved so much, and have had so much influence over our lives. From the two of us: 'Thank you George, Steven, John, Harrison, and of course, Dr. Jones.'" He concludes, "just like everyone's favorite whip-brandishing, jungle-traipsing, Fedora-sporting, idol-pilfering archaeologist compelled us as pre-teens way back in 1981 to do - we're making this up as we go."

©1981 Paramount Pictures & Lucasfilm, Ltd.



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