BEHIND THE MUSIC  

“I began writing ‘The Very Beginning’ on a friend’s piano in Hawthorne, Los Angeles while visiting the city for a wedding last summer. At the time, I had just broken up with my girlfriend after spending a long weekend with her in Las Vegas, (the first time we had seen each other in two months because I had been traveling in Arizona, Utah, Alaska and finally California before flying home to New York).  I was in LA right after we broke up and it was the first time I had sat in front of a piano in months. 

A melody quickly emerged along with lyrics about finding a way to start things over (hence the chorus of the song). I had totally forgotten about ‘The Very Beginning’ for the better part of five months until I began to assemble a collection of songs that I wanted to record for what would become ‘Without A Throne.’   I challenged myself to finish ‘The Very Beginning’ and it is one of the two brand-new songs on the album.   There is a great coda for me to this song’s composition: I finished writing it on a lonely piano housed in the sanctuary of a synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (where I worked this past season). I loved the piano so much that I inquired if I could have it since no one used it. The answer was yes! So now, in my apartment in South Brooklyn, I have the 1950s Baldwin Spinnett on which I finished composing ‘The Very Beginning.’ I also patched things up with my girlfriend too.“

-Matthew Check 

August 3, 2022