Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Sands Hall with Kit Bailey on percussion performing It May Be at the Nevada Theater, Nevada City, CA October 13, 2022
This song started out as a country tune I called “The Way That You Do.” I liked the lyrics but felt the music didn’t at all serve what I was trying to say. So I put it in a folder. Years later, playing around with an open tuning, I went looking for it. I’d originally composed the song using simple chords in the key of C—part of what I felt was a bit banal about the music—but when I began to play around with the open C something wild and deeply satisfying began to happen. Randy McKean (who often contributes his huge talent on reeds to my music) heard an early version and said, “It sounds a bit like a raga.” It doesn’t, but as I kept writing, that comment sent me in a great direction.
When I first played this song for Kit Bailey, percussionist, he pulled out a drum he thought would provide an ideal sound for the style in which it’s written. Then we discovered that the drum—an udu—is actually tuned to C. What a fabulous bit of serendipity.
Sands Hall with Kit Bailey on percussion performing It May Be at the Nevada Theater, Nevada City, CA October 13, 2022
This song started out as a country tune I called “The Way That You Do.” I liked the lyrics but felt the music didn’t at all serve what I was trying to say. So I put it in a folder. Years later, playing around with an open tuning, I went looking for it. I’d originally composed the song using simple chords in the key of C—part of what I felt was a bit banal about the music—but when I began to play around with the open C something wild and deeply satisfying began to happen. Randy McKean (who often contributes his huge talent on reeds to my music) heard an early version and said, “It sounds a bit like a raga.” It doesn’t, but as I kept writing, that comment sent me in a great direction.
When I first played this song for Kit Bailey, percussionist, he pulled out a drum he thought would provide an ideal sound for the style in which it’s written. Then we discovered that the drum—an udu—is actually tuned to C. What a fabulous bit of serendipity.
