I’ve been almost finished with the new recording of “Old Photographs” for a while. Everything is balanced and the parts sound exactly how I intended. But it was missing something. I kept tweaking, hoping it would magically fix itself. Somewhere around the third iteration, I tried adding some harmonies to the chorus. This made everything worse. I re-recorded the chorus vocals three different times. On iteration 10, it was so close. I was ready to call it “good enough” and move on. Then it hit me. I knew what it needed. This morning I found myself in the vocal booth. The vocal booth is basically a small closet with old carpet hanging on the walls. I was in the closet with a microphone and I was screaming “I’m okay without you” over and over. This is not the weirdest thing that I’ve done for a song. However, if someone had shown up at my house at that moment, they would have been concerned. It was just what the song needed.