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WATCH: Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis, ‘Slow Rider’

Sep 15, 2015

WATCH: Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis, 'Slow Rider'

Artist: Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Song: "Slow Rider"
Album: Bawa
Release Date: September 18
Label: Signature Sounds

In Their Words: "'Slow Rider' was the first song that we wrote for this EP and it's based on the Bawa song 'Sisalla' which was the first thing that got us excited about Bawa music. The four-bar loop that is a back-up part for 'Sisalla' has this crazy lilt to the rhythmic composition that was deceptively hard to learn and had a mysterious magic to it. I remember the day we learned it. After our lesson with Aaron Bebe, we went straight back to the room we had rented at the University of Ghana in Legon to work on it. And it was about 90 degrees in there and there was no A/C. But we were just sitting there playing into the ceiling fans, sweating buckets, and looping those four bars on repeat for hours and hours. Finally, we were really in the groove of it and feeling all the subtleties of how the notes work together and that was when the vocal melody started to take shape over top of it and we started stringing the words together. That guitar loop is still magical to me every time I play it. It's a back-up part, but it's really the main event!" — Bridget Kearney


Photo credit: Tim Davis

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WATCH: Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis, 'Slow Rider'
WATCH: Bridget Kearney and Benjamin Lazar Davis, 'Slow Rider'