So I'm standing around Som's apartment one sunny afternoon, waiting to go who knows where. The Slip's latest album, Does, is spinning on the CD jukebox, certainly a pick from Som, an avid follower of the young American improvisational music scene we affectionately call jambands. Track ten cues up and we hear Brad Barr give us the first few lines of "Hey Worrier". Naturally I begin to sing along, never fearful of looking as corny as I know I am. Yet it the distance I hear a third voice, albeit muffled from tile walls and running water. It's Rob in the shower, accurately singing his heart out to every word. "Wait a minute!" I say to Som, "Rob doesn't dig The Slip. He doesn't listen to jambands at all does he?" Som agreed, but as Brad led us into the chorus so did Rob, note for note - "Yer so meeeean!" Quickly synapses fired and triggered another memory from just a few weeks earlier, when this very song came on during a screen porch session back in Williamsburg. There was utter silence amongst us until "Hey Worrier" came on and then bam, a chorus of ill-prepared vocalists chimed in enough to make the dog howl. Come to think of it, the only vocal melody I left AllGood humming many moons ago was that very tune. Something's fishy here, and I really doubt Flying Frog records had the budget to put those new seratonin releasing ultrasonic frequencies over the track like Jive Records does with its Brittany Spears and *N'Sync singles.

Nope, it's just some good old-fashioned songwriting from the hand of Brad Barr, a creative musician steeped enough in melodic and harmonic tradition to take an old gem, rework it and add his own flavor and nuance to create something truly great. Below I'll try to explain in layman's (and some not so layman's) terms what makes "Hey Worrier" one of the most fun songs to sing I've heard in a while. First one needs a brief history lesson, the contents of which are hotly debated (so all you bitter jazz snobs try and bite your tongues).

The foundation of American improvisational music, from the blues to jazz to today's jam rock, is based on two chord movements more so than any others. The first is the I-IV progression (in the key of C Major: C to F). The first two bars of the blues, it is a sound born in our nation literally hundreds of years ago and is, quite literally, the zygote from which the entire ethos of jazz harmony evolved. Instrumental improvisers at the onset of the jazz revolution sought new and inventive ways to travel from the I chord to the IV chord. Composers would leave home base (the I chord) and try to throw in as many tonal twists and turns before they reached their goal (the IV chord).

Some formulas worked well, others were weak and awkward. What worked incredibly well however is what is known as the ii-V7-I progression (in C: Dm to G7 to C), the second epochly important movement in American improvisational music. Composers found that by manipulating this ii-V7-I, they could forge a highly logical, easy to hear route from I all the way to IV. Time whittled away the weak stuff and by about the late 1950's jazz was left with about ten to fifteen strong ways to get from I to IV, and jazzers have been ripping along that path ever since.

Let's now cut to the late 1990's, whenever the muses moved Mr. Barr to write "Hey Worrier". While only Brad and his maker really know what inspired the tune, we must assume that a musician of his caliber was well aware of all the ways to get from I to IV. While Brad ultimately modified the chord change to make it uniquely his own, he chose an extremely cohesive formula for a foundation. It is sometimes known as the "Neapolitan blues" (beware: the term "Neapolitan" gets thrown around a lot in jazz) and was made popular by such tunes as Charlie Parker's "Confirmation", by Tommy Flanagan's tune "Freight Train", and more contemporarily by the Josh Redmond ballad "Wish".  It consists of the I chord in bar one, then three descending ii-V7-I's in a row until it finally resolves back to I in the second half of bar four. It makes the crucial move to IV in the beginning of bar five. 

  The beauty of it is so divine that it's almost imperceptible. The moment the ear hears that I chord, or in this case the vocal "Hey Worrier", it subconsciously longs to arrive at the IV chord. "Not so fast!", says the chord structure to your auditory expectations though, and your ears are taken on a little three bar journey before they finally get what they think they want with the word "other" in the second half of bar four. But that's just where the fun begins, because now we are finally at the IV in bar five, our subconscious auditory goal, and where the tune breaks from its highly structured roots. The lyric "Has it got you down" is really the focal point of the next five bars; it is the highest sung pitch in the tune to that point and it remains stagnant as the chords shift beneath it. Yet fundamental chord movements keep popping up again, this time a modified ii-V-I (it's minor this time) over "Are you feelin'". Later the chorus chord progression includes another minor ii-V-I before its repeat.

  These progressions can be heard all over the place in all popular music, to varying degrees of success. Certainly everyone has heard their local jamband beat a I-IV progression into the ground for thirty-five minutes, and many a jazzer is guilty of choosing tunes with lots of straight-ahead ii-V7-I's so he can tastelessly shred over it. Yet "Hey Worrier" is a fruitful amalgamation of these two structures. ii-V-I's work on the micro level to set up I-IV movements on the macro level, all creating symmetry of form that, I'll argue, your brain eagerly craves unbeknownst to you.

These techniques have all been firmly in place not only in jazz but also in soul and R&B for decades; Stevie Wonder could probably write a doctorate thesis on them. Yet The Slip is well aware of this, and they have imbued "Hey Worrier" with just enough original flair that the tune tips its hat to methods of old but stands alone as fresh and unique composing. For example, the glue that links verse one and two together is the line, "I have felt the same way too." The chords behind this move in a fashion similar to a ii-V-I, except all the chords are major 7 in quality. Sparing further music theory, it creates a pensive, contemplative texture, as if the lighthearted fun of the first twelve bars can't be enjoyed without a little serious thought. To sauce things up even more the (already extremely subtle and classy) drumbeat decides it wants to accent this passage in triplets to create that uneasy three over four feel. And don't think I forgot to mention the bouncing, syncopated bass line, the pseudo-classical instrumental interlude with bass volume swells, or the downright cool-ass lyrics. But why ruin a good thing with over-analysis?!