Miracle Fortress' Graham Van Pelt Explains "Beach Baby"

"Beach Baby" started as a really quick snippet of trees blowing above my roof. I chopped all but a few milliseconds from the recording, leaving just this tiny slice, more of a sine tone. I was sort of noodling around and recorded that out of my stereo into this little Realistic brand keyboard sampler (an SK-1 knockoff). That meant I could play it as these out-of-tune, quavery little chords. That's where the
initial chord refrain came from. Afterwards I mixed in some of the jingle bells my mother got me for Christmas and picked out a muted little kick-drum sample to slide underneath.

The bass line was very McCartney — I had just spent a six-hour bus ride with Revolver and A Hard Day's Night. I took the rest of those "trees in the wind," and let them hover over a tape echo-driven duplicate that was swirling around deeper in the mix. The lyrics about fatherhood came from this faster song I had just canned. They're about my adolescent fear of accidental parenthood, the feeling of losing your life the moment you start someone else's, like theirs is yours from then on. Pretty heavy.

The following feature is from the July 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. To purchase the issue, go to the CHARTattack Shop.