Wash Me Away

Album: Wash Me Away (2017)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This atmospheric, evocative song hits on themes of renewal, with lyrics that read like poetry:

    When I wake up
    Will I find that the diggings of this excavation
    Have come to haunt me


    Old Sea Brigade (Ben Cramer) doesn't always know what his songs mean when he writes them. His process is mumbling sounds and then building the song around it.
  • Old Sea Brigade got a lot of attention on Spotify when his first single, "Love Brought Weight" (released in 2015), got added to popular playlists. "Wash Me Away" is the title track to his second EP, released two years later. "After every EP I started going out and playing more and more shows and that impacted me a lot as a performer," he said on the Songfacts Podcast. "I experimented a lot during those live shows. I would tour as a duo with my buddy Ben. We would experiment with interesting live sounds trying to see how much sound we could come up with as two people.

    With that, we would start jamming on these ideas that I would have from little guitar riffs, and 'Wash Me Away' came from that. Things went from me playing by myself to a band practice vibe, then going out and playing for people to test out how they reacted to those sounds.

    That whole time I was working with my friend Jeremy Griffith, who is a producer. I have to give him a ton of credit because he really helped me dial in on a sound that sounded like me. I worked with him on the first, second and third EP and then the album. He's been a big part of helping me refine and shape my sound over the years."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

The 10 Bands Most Like Spinal Tap

The 10 Bands Most Like Spinal TapSong Writing

Based on criteria like girlfriend tension, stage mishaps and drummer turnover, these are the 10 bands most like Spinal Tap.

Michael Sweet of Stryper

Michael Sweet of StryperSongwriter Interviews

Find out how God and glam metal go together from the Stryper frontman.

Jim McCarty of The Yardbirds

Jim McCarty of The YardbirdsSongwriter Interviews

The Yardbirds drummer explains how they created their sound and talks about working with their famous guitarists.

Butch Vig

Butch VigSongwriter Interviews

The Garbage drummer/songwriter produced the Nirvana album Nevermind, and Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Siamese Dream.

Rob Halford of Judas Priest

Rob Halford of Judas PriestSongwriter Interviews

Rob Halford dives into some of his Judas Priest lyrics, talking about his most personal songs and the message behind "You've Got Another Thing Comin'."

Tom Keifer of Cinderella

Tom Keifer of CinderellaSongwriter Interviews

Tom talks about the evolution of Cinderella's songs through their first three albums, and how he writes as a solo artist.