North Caledon is not far from Toronto, and when we traveled there we just put in the name of the place in our phone and decided to follow it to see where it would lead us. What would Google Maps consider the important place to identify as being “North Caledon”? It turned out to be a cul de sac near the town cemetary. A rather interesting spot, to say the least. Because it’s easy to wander in a graveyard and imagine dozens of stories behind each stone and symbol and epitaph and even sometimes just the proximity of the stones or the length (or brevity) of the date of birth to the date of death. Some of those stories are instantly tragic. Some raise a lot of questions.

One of the epitaphs we read was short and to the point. I won’t name names, but let’s say it was John Doe. The epitaph read: “John Doe – He moved on.”

It had this sort of Buddhist and/or parallel universes connotation, but it also made me think about the fact that the things that happen to us are transitions — sometimes sharp and sometimes blurred. The start of one story is the middle of another and the end of something else. And although we really wanted to write it as a kind of love song, it never really turned out that way. It seems to be hard to direct a story, sometimes; it takes you where it wants to take you. And this one went a little bit dark at times, but maybe that’s just our natural bias.

When it came time to arrange the harmonies we thought about the fact that we had never done a song with intense two-hand harmonies, like The Everly Brothers. And because of the nature of the story it felt like a constant two-part harmony made sense telling this particular story. It felt like the most intimate way to deal with the dynamic. Two voices both dealing with misunderstandings and consequences and the weight of things unsaid before someone had to move on, and then the opportunities are lost.