Hello my ladies and my lords.
It brings me great pleasure to thus share with thee my latest musical adventure. I spent many a moons conjuring thy tune from the greatest depths of thine deepest of imaginary orifices. I hope that when you grace your exquisite ears with but one single note from my melodic bosoms thou wilst understand thine inner struggles at which is beyond necessary to nurture a precious song of this nature out of nothing and into existence.
It is an honor, my ladies and my lords, that thou should spare even the faintest of moments to entertain thy humble request that you shall bear witness to a song that is undoubtedly unworthy of your presence.
Now, let us shift thy gears and remove ourselves from the nonsense so eloquently contained within the pros of the paragraphs above.
My new song is called “We Got A Mystery” and it is the 6th song from my latest album One In A Row.
The song is about reacting to unexpected bad / weird situations with an unreasonable “it’s my fault” first mentality, even if whatever is happening is outside of your control. And also keeping those thoughts to yourself (because you find them embarrassing) while you publicly search for explanations even though you’ve already convinced yourself that you are the reason that this thing is happening.
I hope you like the song.
It features my good friend Nathan Sarver on pedal steel and electric guitar.
Bonus Song Nugget #1
I did not like this song initially but I came around
I wrote “We Got A Mystery a few weeks ago. It was at a time when I wasn’t feeling good about myself and my songwriting skills. It took me a long time to write. So much longer than I would have liked. I was salty about it and came to resent the song because of it.
In my head I was saying “I spent a million hours writing this dumb song and THIS is what I ended up with. Fuck this stupid song”.
A couple of days later I showed up at a regular music / song jam session group that I’m a part of. They asked me what I’d been working on. I reluctantly shared the song with the group. We played it together multiple times. And the song just came to life in a way I couldn’t believe. They loved it and went out of their way to tell me. The whole experience changed my entire outlook.
The big takeaway from that story is that I am incredibly poor at evaluating my own art. It’s nice to have people in my life that I can trust who can do that for me. Point me in the right direction and keep my head straight.
It’s nice to be reminded that I’m capable of making good things, that good stuff can come out of me. It keeps me going sometimes. What a gift.
Bonus Song Nugget #2
The chorus!
I love the way the chorus turned out. The way the bass line almost takes on a melody of its own that is outside the underlying rhythm.
And the way the guitar doubles the bass line. It’s an old trick that I learned from They Might Be Giants. They do that kind of stuff all the time
Here’s one example. Check out the chorus of their song “It’s Not My Birthday”
Bonus Song Nugget #3
Hats off to Nathan Sarver
(What a catch!!!)
Nathan Sarver is one of the best guitar players I know.
He always comes up with cool ideas. For example, he wrote the main guitar line/riff for the Mike Votava and The Ding Dongs hit song “Possum House”
I’m beyond impressed with the guitar part he came up with for the 2nd verse “We Got A Mystery”. Listen closely, that shit is not easy to do.
He played all the electric guitar parts on the song.
Plus Nathan laid down some incredible pedal steel parts (also not easy to do).
The pedal steel is a magical instrument. When you hear pedal steel in a song, no matter what the song is, you just have to take the song seriously. It brings immediate credibility to a song unlike any other instrument.
We Got A Mystery
by Mike Votava
Bingo has been canceled
nobody knows why
the doors are locked and I am trapped outside
Maybe it’s my fault
Was there something that I did to offend the Bingo Gods again
We got a mystery on our hands
Answers are elusive like a suspect’s fingerprints
all the clues refuse to get involved
I am not the fastest but I know I’ll win this race to the bottom of the case that can’t be solved
We got a mystery on our hands
I am offering a twenty-five dollar reward to anyone who can share some information about this bingo situation
We got a mystery on our hands
