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14. How a Man Grows Older (Reprise) Genre: Americana, folk rock, country, bluegrass Length: 2:02 Writer: Ryan Ross Hernandez Producer: Ryan Ross Hernandez, Chad Fairweather Song SynopsisHow a Man Grows Older (Reprise), is technically the last song on the album and it's very fitting. For starters, it pulls from a lot of different musicians, the ones that inspired the music style found on this record; Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Crosby/Stills Nash, and the Allman Brothers. Whereas How a Man Grows Older was sad and slow, its reprise is rootsy and cheery. A short, end-credit kind of tune that's Cali-style country & western, with more harmonica and gang vocals. The listener can picture a group of musicians sitting in close proximity of each other playing with everyone else in the room clapping along. As was the case with a previous track on this record, Gray Young's Freewheelin' Tale, Ryan has never given a a vocal delivery like this one before either. He sounds as if he was born and bred in America's deep south region, with a natural love for simplistic roots country music. It's as if he took all the folky, country sounds he reserved elsewhere on the album, and placed it all on this one song, even some ragtime elements are found in this one. It is layered with the steady drum pattern, tambourine clangs, swirling electric guitar, cheery keys, finger-picked bass, and prominent harmonica playing. The very last lyric of the album is, "I was born and bred / Now I'm a grown ass man." Has Ryan grown up? Is he past the phase(s)? Has he matured? It sounds like he's saying he has to close off this album in celebration of his coming to terms with getting older and growing up. Lyrics1, 2... 1, 2, 3... A man grows old
Week by week and year by year
Someday soon my hair will all be gray
And I won't care
'Cause now I'm a grown ass manWhen a man grows old Now I won't be so depressed When I think in fifteen years I would have lived half a century You better learn how to leave your twenties behind you 'Cause the passing of time ain't so bad When you finally accept it A man grows old
Week by week and year by year
Someday soon my hair will all be gray
And I won't care
'Cause it's nice to know
Now I'm a grown ass manI won't be twenty-eight no more And I won't care It's nice to celebrate Now I'm a grown ass man Let's drink to the fact we're all getting older Kids under thirty won't understand The beauty that comes with this acceptance A man grows older
Now I'm a grown ass man
Now I'm a grown ass man
I was born and bred
It's good to say
Now I'm a grown ass manRyan Ross Hernandez's CommentaryThe Music"For months, many months, 'Architect of Dreams' was going to end the record. We had about two or three weeks left to wrap this record up, when I had this really ambitious idea to make a reprise for a song on this record. I had never done that before. So I began listening to the tracks back and it felt right to do it for 'How a Man Grows Older,' because that song speaks for the rest of the record. It speaks for me. We had a lot of fun making the reprise for this song because we taped it live. The only thing that we had to go back and redo, were my vocals and the gang vocals during the chorus. It was just a fun track to make. A bunch of musicians in a room together doing what they love the most in this world and just enjoying themselves. I didn't want to touch this song too much because it sounds how it should. If it's such an ode to the 70s, let's leave it sounding like it's not from this era, because it isn't."The Lyrics"'Now I'm a grown ass man.' I chuckled when I wrote that line. It might sound comedic and maybe it is, but I don't mind if it comes off that way because I know it's true. Closing off this album, I accept that I'm a grown ass man, that my twenties are behind me and now I'm a full blown adult. I felt like I was twenty-eight for four years. I turned twenty-eight then for the three or four years that followed I didn't feel like I was growing up. I had turned thirty but I still felt I was twenty-eight, so I could do anything I did at twenty-right and get away with it. That wasn't true anymore. So I'm glad this record ends off with the note that I'm accepting the fact that I'm thirty-four and getting older. I've entered adulthood and it's not awful. I love the line 'Kids under thirty won't understand,' because they probably won't understand this record or the general theme of it. I think kids that are nineteen or twenty now, will need to come back to it in like ten years so they can be like, 'oh, now I understand what I was missing the first time I heard this record.' Which is a beautiful thing. If you made it this far into the record you enjoy it, I don't think you could get all the way through this record if you hated the sound since track one or two. So thank you for listening to the entire record and giving it a fighting chance."Sounds Similar To:
OOC: Aside from the bonus track I will post later today, this is the last song for this album thread. Hope you all enjoyed reading it. :) Edited by user 16 June 2012 06:05:58(UTC)
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