Times Were Hard

from Ghosts by Nordlund

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about

We had a lot of fun with this intro track. I invited some friends out to the studio and taught them the lyrics. We sang the lines about 20 to 25 times in a row and then Marc picked out a few of the best ones and layered them. For the "gunshot" sound all of us went into the foyer of the studio a stomped in unison around a single microphone in the center of the room. Those stomps were then organized to a timed beat and ran through a 60's tape delay effect, one of Marc's many pieces of vintage gear. Finally, once the stomps and the lyrics were paired up I played the simple yet haunting organ part on the Hammond B3.

The full version of this song was released on my last project, Nomads Assemble, which was released in 2015 and you can find it here on Bandcamp.

lyrics

Times were hard, times were hard
Growing up, times were hard
Broken family, lord have mercy
Times were hard, times were hard

credits

from Ghosts, released June 1, 2017
Vocals & Stomps - RJ Nordlund, Brian Jacobs, Taylor Greenwood, Erin Peyer, Zabrina Debroux, Andy McNamara, Tony McNamara, Tim Vancyk, Mark Hulbert, Trevor Hulbert, Nikolai Makaroff and Tyler Streeter.

Organ - RJ Nordlund

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about

Nordlund Appleton, Wisconsin

"Inexplicable, organic, fresh and potent" - John Sinkevics, Local Spins

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discography

Ghosts

Jun 2017
Nomads Assemble - EP

Dec 2015
High Hopes

Nov 2015
Oh Well

Jun 2015

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