The Squinge by the Jake
This is a long story, so settle in.
I recorded the underlying tracks for this song back around 2008. It was a short 20 measures of funk bass, solo, and drums: 25 seconds worth. There wasn't much to it--just a theme and solo with some of my cliché licks, so I soon forgot about it.
I broke my fretting hand in 2012 (badly--see the cover), and couldn't play guitar for about a year, so I did the next best thing: I went into my studio and rummaged through my old recordings, reworking demos into songs. On this track, I played the clav with one hand and added numerous effects to the solos, chopping and looping phrases to tell a musical story. I composed the horn chart using my favorite instrumentation; trumpet, tenor, bone and bari.
I don't know about what the two lead guitars are arguing, but they sound pretty exasperated! I always liked this aspect of the song, so in 2022 I imported the masters into Logic Pro and added a rhythm guitar part, new drums, and more realistic articulations for the horns.
The title comes from a word I (and my friends) coined back in the '80s. "To Squinge" is a verb meaning to take possession under the pretext of borrowing, but where circumstances and context indicate no intent to repay, e.g. "Hey, can I squinge a cigarette, my friend?" As a noun it means someone that squinges, or a significant act of "squinging."
I thought it a fitting word for the title, because I squinged a song out of about 25 seconds of doodling on the guitar.
Long Live the Squinge.
