The inspiration for this song came from two places. Firstly, a scene I’ve always admired (and one of the best ever filmed for a Western in my opinion), ‘Jill’s arrival’ in Sergio Leone’s amazing ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’. You can see it here on YouTube. Ennio Morricone’s score is simply wonderful and the scene and music were crafted as one, rather than the music being grafted on to a scene already shot -  a hallmark of Leone/Morricone films. I subscribe to ‘True West’ magazine and a few of months ago they did a fascinating feature on the ‘soiled doves’, i.e. prostitutes of the old West. This prompted me to write this story song about an imaginary lady seeking her future happiness out West and finding sadness and disappointment. She doesn’t want to burden her hard-pressed family so pretends to them everything is going well. Many thousands sought their fortunes in the American West; a lot were indeed successful but what we don’t hear much about in films is that most found it extremely hard going to say the least and made of it what they could.   

The girl in the photo on the left is Bessie Colvin, a prostitute who plied her trade in El Paso brothels during the late 1880s.

Technical notes:

I used PG Music’s Band In A Box RealTracks and Drums On Demand’s Band On Demand loops.  The steel guitar track was from Band In A Box and the piano and two rhythm guitars (panned L and R) were from Band On Demand loops. I programmed the drums in MIDI and used XLN’s Addictive Drums for the sounds. I did the vocals and three-part vocal harmonies using my usual trusty RØDE NT2 mic, and Melodyne. (Melodyne is very useful for creating artificial harmonies as well as adjusting any slightly wayward notes).  I sweetened the vocals with EQ and reverb in Sonar’s ProChannel tools. The whole project was done in Sonar Producer X3e.

Everything was mixed in Sonar and mastered there using IK’s T-RackS Grand software with some extra ‘loudness’ provided by FabFilter’s Pro-L Limiter and Sonnox’s Inflator.