The Creation of SS-001
Songs by Saves the Day - Can’t Lay Down

Can’t Lay Down was the accidental start of Sparrow Sleeps.

Sparrow Lucille wasn’t even two weeks old when I had the idea of creating lullabies of my own to use. I had recently been on a Stay What You Are kick, so I sat down at my keyboard and composed soft renditions of three Saves the Day songs; “At Your Funeral,” “Freakish,” and “Three Miles Down.”

When I felt that the songs were complete, I uploaded them to Bandcamp as an EP called Can’t Lay Down; an obvious homage to the album Can’t Slow Down. I paid tribute even further by creating a terribly tacky photoshopped version of Can’t Slow Down with a similar (so I thought) font.

The purpose of uploading the songs was to show a friend of mine in Austin, TX. I then went out and ran some errands. 

But when I came home, the Bandcamp site had over 20,000 plays, and I had no idea why or how that happened..

So I searched Sparrow Sleeps online, trying to figure out what on Earth happened, and I found that AV Club had posted a very kind article about the songs, resulting in a ton of web traffic.

I finished the album a month later, and these 10 songs are attached to the earliest memories I have with Sparrow; rocking her back to sleep during the wee hours of the morning with a smile on my face as I sang along in my head…

Your eyelids close when you’re around me, to shut me out. Don’t shut me out. 

 

And because of that, this is probably (and will probably always be) my favorite Sparrow Sleeps album.