Firstly, take a listen to the song, At First Light.
Credits for At First Light:
Written by George Pjevach
Vocals: George Pjevach
Guitar: George Pjevach
Bass Guitar: Jason Rosner
Drums: Ken Watts
In the next article in our series, The Story of the Song, George Pjevach explains the songwriting process for At First Light. We learn about the original inspiration for this song, where it was written, and production techniques which helped achieve the final result.
The inspiration for the song
At First Light is about what you hear, feel and see during those early hours of the morning. It’s about the things you pick up on when you’re in your tree stand – deer hunting.
I actually wrote this song up in my tree stand. I went out very early one morning on the farm in Wisconsin. It was dark – completely dark. As I was sitting there – and I sat there for a few hours – I watched daylight come.
You take notice when you’re sitting there and you have no cell phone service. You’re just in nature. There’s a little bit of snow. You can hear the wind coming through the trees. If you’re lucky, you might hear maybe a deer walking through the woods, or a fox, or a coyote. You might hear them just ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. You might hear an owl, because the owls are awake in the dark.
Slowly, the daylight starts to come. The sun isn’t even up. You can’t see it yet. But when the sun gets to a certain level, it casts a light over the earth. And when that starts happening, all these little critters start coming up. The first thing I noticed was the squirrels, and then you get the blue jays and the cardinals, and then these little chickadees come out.
I also noticed the crows. If you go to the same tree stand, and you’re in a stand where the crows congregate, the crows actually meet in the same tree at the same time every morning. They gather, and they’re noisy as hell. They’re all talking to each other and it lasts for about 30-45 minutes. And then they all just fly away. It’s almost like old men going to a coffee shop.
You just notice everything. It really heightens your senses.
Genre and production
You’ll hear that At First Light definitely has a classic rock sound. It’s funny, because when I first wrote it, I wasn’t going in that direction. I almost had it going in the direction of a classical song, but I don’t have access to a full orchestra or classical instruments. When I got home, I started putting instruments to it. It just kind of morphed into that classic rock sound.
There’s a lot of things in the song that an untrained ear won’t pick up on. For instance, there’s one spot where the wind rolls through the trees, and the guitar is ascending and descending in a chromatic fashion. Now, if you think about the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, when the witch is riding her bicycle in the air, they used this sound to emulate the sound of the wind. And I did it in this song with an overdriven guitar backed behind the vocal.
I wrote the song in less than an hour. I actually composed the melody when I was up in the tree stand. It was the perfect spot. Your mind is free, you don’t have the clutter of the city, or the clutter of technology.
The overall message of At First Light
The message of the song is a pretty simple one.
When you’re sitting out there in nature, you see how life is so simple for all these little critters. They come out and look around for food. After they’ve eaten their fill, they start chasing each other – they run around, up and down trees, and they’re actually playing.
When you put this in perspective, you see how simple life really is. You see how you don’t need a million dollars to just enjoy it. That’s why I said in one of the lines that the finest things in life are still free. To me, sitting up in a tree and experiencing that and taking it all in is magnificent. It’s wonderful.
To me, the song also really highlights the importance of family, which shows in the video. It’s the importance of family staying together and doing things like hunting. It’s a great way for a family to get together and reconnect at least once a year.
