Baltimore Sam and "Caravanserai" - the story behind the song

"Baltimore Sam" in Sirince, Turkey, 3/21/2014

(See the video here: http://youtu.be/ECgXuSTzc2g)

In March of 2014, we visited Sirince, a beautiful little town on a hillside in Turkey. Somewhere on those cobblestone streets, Ping found a great place that served Turkish coffee. Mark and a guy who called himself "Baltimore Sam" struck up a conversation outside while Ping went inside. She beckoned to Mark a few minutes later: she'd ordered Turkish coffee for us. Sam came in, too. The music playing in the background was distinctively Turkish, as well, and we asked Sam about it. He walked over to his laptop on the counter. "Do you have a memory card?" he asked. "I'll copy it for you."
Sure enough, he gave us copies of several albums worth of Turkish music, everything from Pop to Hard Rock to World Music--and some which seemed to combine all of that!

We listened to it over and over, after we got home. I (Mark) started fooling around with rhythmic ideas in Reaper and put together a basic chord structure. It went through several iterations, none of which were particularly compelling. Finally, I sent a version to Larry Benigno, my music collaboration partner in Connecticut, asking: "Do you think there's anything in this, or should I just let it go?" Larry clearly thought there was something worth developing--for which I was grateful! I can't remember which were done first--lyrics or melody--but, as is typical of us, I did the lyrics and Larry came up with a unique melody line in short order, once we knew we had something going.

I recorded the vocals first and handed the project and WAV files over to Larry. He had a hard time making sense of my original project file! (We've since decided: "If you start the project, you finish the project!") After hearing my own voice in the lead vocal, I suggested that Larry do it instead. His voice has so much character! In the end, we ended up trading off lead lines, which turned out great! More and more got added to the mix: more synths, guitars (lots of them, including Larry's new Strat, which gave the song a whole new feel!) and vocals. Larry spent hours and hours adding cool bits here and there, tweaking the mix, beefing up the sound of my original synth solo, riding the volume envelopes, and really fine tuning everything. The final mix was "Version 17." That doesn't really count all of the in-between steps!

As he was working on the mixdown, Larry suggested that I do a step-by-step video of some artwork for the song's YouTube video. I thought about it, and rather than video-taping a single painting, I decided to take progressive shots of some graphite and white charcoal illustrations that I would make specifically for the song. I collected some photos taken by Ping and me during the trip, and chose several for the video. I had a lot of fun drawing these.

I sent Sam a message at some point in the middle of the process, saying we were still working on the song inspired by the generous sharing of his favorite music. Who knew one song would take nine months to produce? Now that it's done, I hope he's pleased with what came of his having struck up a conversation with a stranger on that street in his home town.

This one's for you, Baltimore Sam!