"We Went Down" was written by myself and Mark O'Bitz in 2001. It was one of the very early songs that we were really excited about when we first started writing songs together.
If I remember correctly, Mark had to leave California to work on a cruise ship right after we had started recording Not At One, my 2003 debut album.
Though I was 37 or 38 at the time, I was very new to songwriting and singing. Mark had worked with me on most of the songs for my debut release, nine out of twelve. He had shown me that I had a lot of music in me. He also helped me bring it out.
At the time, I didn't want to wait until Mark returned from his months-long "day job" on the cruise ship to finish the recording. I was anxious to release my first album. I was swept up by the chance to work with Grammy-winning guitarist Randy Ray Mitchell on "We Went Down" and the other songs we had written for Not At One. Looking back, I wish I had waited for Mark to return from his cruise ship job.
Randy is on acoustic for the "We Went Down" record, but you can hear how Mark played for the demo when you hear "We Went Down Reprise," which used the original recordings from a jam session just after we wrote the song.
Mark and I agree that I should have included "We Went Down" on my 2016 release, Big World Abide: The Best of Eric Anders. I also should have included our 2006 song, "So Wrong," from Tethered to the Ground, which was placed in the feature film starring Academy-Award-winner Christopher Plummer, Man in the Chair:
"So Wrong" was originally written about the second Bush term. I adapted it for our 2017 anti-Trump album, Eleven Nine.
Mark and I both prefer the original version. I think we rushed a bit on this later version meant for Trump.
Mark and I were thrilled with how well my first four solo releases turned out and the critical acclaim each one garnered. From 2003-2004, Mark and I would get together when he was home from work and write some songs. I was also writing with other guitarist-composers at the time, like Randy Ray Mitchell, who would end up producing my second LP, my 2005 release More Regrets.
The first track, "Song 79," is an Anders/O'Bitz song, whereas the second and third are both Anders/Mitchell collaborations that would end up on Big World Abide in 2016: "Icarus" and "Settlin' Comes."
Mark wasn't around for the recording of More Regrets. It was a different story on Tethered to the Ground, my 2006 release which was produced by Matthew Emerson Brown of Trespassers William. In addition to co-writing most of the songs with me, Mark contributed by playing instruments on several tracks. You can best hear Mark's style of songwriting and playing on the title track, "Tethered to the Ground," which was our favorite song for many years.
Mark and I took a decade-long break from songwriting from about 2006 to 2016. Mark and I only wrote two songs during this decade break (around 2010, the year my second daughter was born): "Remains In Me" and "Genocide and Justice." The other songs on my five-song EP, Remains In Me, I co-wrote with Benny Bohm. The title track is one of my favorite Anders/O'Bitz songs of all time.
I graduated from my training to be a psychoanalyst the same year I met my wife: 2004. I released Tethered to the Ground in 2006, which was the year my first daughter was born. Tethered to the Ground has been our favorite album for a long time, only recently surpassed by American Bardo/This Mortal Farce.
I married my wife in 2005 and moved to Seattle from SoCal with her and my son in 2006. I moved back to California, NorCal, in 2007, unable to tolerate the wet, cold, and overcast of the Pacific Northwest. All this moving around and having babies made it difficult to work on music after Tethered to the Ground was released ... and I would not write songs with Mark for five years.
Mark and I would also not really see each other for those five years. I was married, having babies, working hard as a therapist, and I adopted my wife's son, who was three when we got married in 2005 (he's now in college). During the years of 2006-2010, Mark continued to tour the world while working on cruise ships.
Prior to Tethered to the Ground, I released my election-year anti-Bush EP in 2004, Songs for Wayward Days, and my sophomore LP in 2005, More Regrets. Almost all of the songs on both releases were Anders/O'Bitz songs.
Jeff Peters produced and mixed Songs for Wayward Days. I had the opportunity to work with Randy Ray Mitchell on guitar, Davey Faragher (Cracker) on bass, and Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello, Rock Hall of Fame) on drums.
I released one CD every year for four years starting in 2003 and ending in 2006. Almost all of the songs were Anders/O'Bitz songs, but Mark was seldom around when it came time to head into the studio. I was glad when he'd get a break from cruising the world and we would get a chance to write songs.
As I mentioned above, the only project with original music I worked on between 2006 and 2017 was the 2011 EP, Remains In Me. It was produced by Matthew Emerson Brown and it was inspired by the 1992 Michael Apted documentary, Incident at Oglala.
The electric guitarist on the EP is Jeff Fielder who was Mark Lanegan's guitarist. Mark Lanegan, one of my all-time favorite artists, passed away around the time I did the first revision of this post in early 2022. Rest in peace Mark Lanegan. You were awesome.
I would take another five-year break from songwriting after working on Remains In Me. During those five years, 2011-2016, I would move to San Diego from the Bay Area ... and then back to the Bay Area. My family and I got flooded out of a house we loved and I ended up moving my family around way too much trying to find another home to settle down in. At least most of the moving we did as a family took place within our eastern part of the East Bay, which, like our current house, now truly feels like home.
In 2016, I released Big World Abide, a collection of my favorite songs up to that point. Soon after this release came Trump's illegitimate election win and I scrambled to put together the best protest album I could in a short amount of time. I wrote two new songs for Eleven Nine with the producer, Matthew Emerson Brown ("Inside the Sacrifice Zone" and "Do You Feel") but mostly reworked old Anders/O'Bitz political songs written about Bush. I write more about Eleven Nine in my post, "Impeachment and 'This Fire Has Burned Too Long'."
The new songs I wrote with Matt encouraged me to get back into songwriting after a decade of focusing on family and career. I called up Mark to work on Eleven Nine and we ended up working on a bunch of new songs for an album we both agreed should be released as a duo. It was clearly time to get back into it--and to get back into it together.
The album that came out of these 2017 songwriting sessions became our debut release as a duo, Of All These Things (2018).
The cover is supposed to look like an aged Not At One cover--with a photo of Mark added.
I wanted to do the cover this way because, looking back, I wish Not At One had been a duo project--and all of my solo projects after that. More than 80% of my songs prior to Of All These Things are Anders/O'Bitz songs.
One of the things I love about Of All These Things is that Mark is playing his guitar throughout the album. I wish I had slowed down and waited for Mark to be involved with recording all of my solo projects. Randy Ray Mitchell joins us on our sophomore album as a duo, Ghosts To Ancestors, but all of the songs are Anders/O'Bitz songs and Mark is playing many instruments too.
This is even more true with our duo releases with Mike Butler at the helm: American Bardo, This Mortal Farce, and our collection we are calling "music in the time of coronavirus," in which "Careful Now My Son" is the first song. Not only are all of these songs Anders/O'Bitz songs, Mark is playing more instruments throughout all of these releases.
(Update from September, 2023: these Anders/O'Bitz/Butler projects include all of our twelve releases between 2020 and 2023.)
So the worn cover of Of All These Things is supposed to be a nod to the Not At One cover and, in a way, an apology to Mark for not releasing all of our music as a duo. Luckily, he has forgiven me and we continue to make music together. We have many more songs in us and we are both looking forward to working more with Mike Butler who has been so helpful to us with regard to producing and mixing these songs.
Eric Anders, January 2021