On The Record

"Best That I Can Do"

This series, “On the Record,” will be a weekly Substack exclusive in which I’ll go through my recorded catalog song by song starting with my first album, Alabama Song, which was released on MCA Records in 1998. Photos will be attached if available and tolerable.

“Best That I Can Do.”

Here’s where the first turn in the story happens — the narrator (me) reveals her struggle with forgetting and admits her unsuccessful attempts at the things she’s talking about doing in “It’s Time I Tried.” The on again off again, I can’t live without you I can’t live with you nature of the relationship is outlined.

And just listen to what happens between the string quartet and the pedal steel after the word “go” in the first line of the 2nd verse. And then that walk down bass note Michael Rhodes played after the “sometimes I” on the second line of the 3rd verse. Good Lord. Such beauty and tenderness. This was the first time I ever got to use a string quartet, which is probably my favorite configuration of strings — a result of the Beatles records ingrained in my head, I’m sure — a quartet is so charming, so dry and vulnerable. This wonderful arrangement, again written by Kris Wilkinson, is one of my favorites on all of my records, and I’ve used strings a lot. This may be my favorite vocal on The Hardest Part, y’all. No high jinks, no showing off, it’s just me doing what a singer should do which is find the emotion and point of the song and deliver it. And what a great track. Buddy Miller is on acoustic guitar.

How did I get so lucky?

It’s an interesting lyric — a little awkward in places but overall still satisfactory. I guess we’ve all been there in that limping along space, trying to heal our hearts through whatever means we can find and coming up short. There’s such a melancholic romanticism here, a knowing, a settling with what just is. This was good work. I’m happy to find that it holds up so well.

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Personnel:

Acoustic Guitar: Buddy Miller

12-string, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar: Kenny Greenberg

Piano: Jay Bennett

Pedal Steel: Russ Pahl

Bass: Michael Rhodes

Drums: Chad Cromwell

Harmony: me

Strings: The Love Sponge

Recorded by Don Smith at Woodland Studios, Nashville, TN

Overdubs by Peter Coleman at Treasure Isle, Nashville, TN

Mixed by Justin Niebank at Masterfonics, Nashville, TN

Thanks for reading these “On the Record” installments. I’m so enjoying writing them. I’ve made ten studio albums so that means I’ll end up covering more than one-hundred songs! More to come next week with “Think It Over.”

Onward,

AM