Dark, 3-piece pop a la Elliott Smith, Spoon and John Lennon

9 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Modern Rock, POP: with Live-band Production

Show all album songs: What it did Songs


Details:
Daniel Hightower Smith moved to New York City a little after 9/11.

He started playing solo shows, as he had in DC and northern California, Eastern Europe and back home in Dallas.

It wasnât the teaching gig in Hungary that spurred the songwriting, nor an upbringing with all the rural and urban trappings of Texas. It was that concrete drag of a life in DC. Shows at the Velvet Lounge and Black Cat released steam.

Moved up to Manhattan, Hightower played his first show on the corner wood stage at Bar B on Allen Street, in a building leveled a couple years ago.

Much later, the Mercury Lounge made its first offer. So Hightower placed an ad and a band was assembled. After a couple more Mercury gigs and a monthâs residency at Pianos, things were tight for recording. Head Gear Studios (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio) turned out to be a comfortable place to spend a summer last year. Alex Lipsen of the Jealous Girlfriends engineered, grew facial hair, sweated, called coffee his security blanket, worked a lot. A few months into the sessions the albumâs name appeared in a text message (âWhat? It did.â) twisted around.

The songs told the story: meeting someone and missing them when theyâre gone awhile, comparing them to others, looking up just as they make their hat-tipping, anticlimactic departure.

This is an arrival, though. It took years to write and arrange all the songs, get the band, figure it out. Lyrics for penultimate cut âThe Bridgeâ happened in the humid little space upstairs from the live room in the last week of sessions, while the engineer yawned and the band paged through magazines.

This is what it did, "What it did."