Song Premiere: Buckstein "This Time"

A bass-baritone powerhouse who once hit 200 million television sets worldwide as a contestant on Season 5 of American Idol, Buckstein is gearing up to release his new EP, Country Side, on  June 2nd.  The Colorado-based singer's latest outing contains five songs (four originals and one cover) that mine  Buckstein's varied musical influences - and while there are country rockers and contemporary country  numbers, Buckstein  also has a deeper, emotional side which is displayed on  "This Time,"  a  piano-tinged, heartfelt ballad about  finally reaching the end point in  a relationship after being on the receiving end of deception for far too long.

"You can't undo the damage or re-tie the knot
That held us together and made you mine
It's heart-breaking situation when you give a girl all you got
And those pretty blue eyes won’t cover the lies this time"

TDC is pleased to premiere "This Time" in its entirety above. Listen and then learn more about   Buckstein as he talks about the track  in the Q&A below.

What is the story behind this song?  Why did you write it and what story did you want to tell with it?
There was a great line in the great movie "Crazy Heart" where a reporter asks a successful songwriter, "Where did all those songs come from?"  To which he replied, "Life unfortunately."  This song is a true story.  Fortunately for me it wasn't mine.  It was my co-writer Dillon Carmichael's memory of something that happened to him in his youth.  "It" happened one-too-many times.  So the last time it happened he didn't raise hell about it.  He went about his day with his girl like nothing was wrong.  And the next morning he was gone forever.  It was a powerful image and it gave us a lot to draw from when we decided to write this song.

What was the recording session like for this particular track?  Did the song come easily or was it a challenge to get it just the way you wanted it?
This one was tough.  This song is filled with powerful imagery and it really requires a lot of introspective emotion.  Bringing that into the microphone was tricky.  I probably took more passes on this tune than any of the others on the EP.  And when it came to the mixing I had the most criticism and direction for my engineers with this track.  To be honest, I still feel like there's things I'd like to fix.  But that's the plight of the artist.  You're never satisfied.  At some point you just gotta let it go and let the people decide.

This song shows your gentler side.  Do you prefer your more rockin' self, or do you enjoy indulging in ballads just as much?
My energy is usually much more upbeat.  I bring a lot of energy to my shows and my recordings  But the sweet is not as sweet without the sour.  You need ballads.  I love a good power ballad.  Upbeat tunes will grab your soul while ballads cut to the heart.  Affecting the heart is an important job in music.  We want to feel something.  Music is emotional and it's why we select the music we do. It's because of what it does to us emotionally.  The tricky thing with this ballad is that it's not a love tune.  It's a cheating tune.  You don't win as many people over with cheating tunes.  But it was a story I felt needed to be told.

What's your favorite lyric line from this song and why?
The easy answer is "This time tomorrow I'll be gone."  It was cool discovering that line when we wrote it because it has a double meaning.  It could mean "this time I'll be gone tomorrow" or "by this time tomorrow I'll be gone."  But I also love the line "there's no stories left to sell."  I actually wrote that line as an after thought before recording the song when my producer suggested I put something better in for the original line, which was "your friend can go to hell."  I think the idea of "selling stories" paints a lot of pictures about a liar and how they operate.  It was one of my better lyrical moments.

What do you hope listeners learn about you from this song and from your EP as a whole?
I don't know that I want listeners to learn anything about me from this song.  It's not about me.  If anything I hope listeners learn that there is a civil way to handle your broken heart and it's just as effective.  With the EP as a whole I hope people get a sense of who I am as an artist as well as an individual.  I try to never sing about things I don't believe in so you can know that if I'm singing about it, it's something that I support/believe/think about/think is funny/etc.  I also hope people learn that they like my music and that they wanna come to my next show and buy my next album. Ha!

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