TRY TO CAGE ME

TRY TO CAGE ME is the first song Chain Strikers released, but it started long before the band did. I wrote the main riff at fifteen, still learning guitar, then left it in a drawer for years — I never had a band to play it. What finally unlocked it was realizing I didn't need one: hearing how Dave Grohl built the first Foo Fighters record almost single-handed turned that idea into a plan. I wrote the whole song myself.

I recorded it where I wrote it — my bedroom — and it was the first thing I ever produced. The rig was minimal: a Scarlett 2i2 (I still use it today) and a loud pink Cort, the cheapest and most-loved guitar I own. Alone in the room with no real map, it became trial and error and more takes than I could count. One accident stayed in: while I was shaping the tone for Pedro Ivo Rocco's solo, a reverse delay bleeding in beforehand turned into a kind of demonic laugh. I liked it enough to keep it — an artifact that creeps in just before the solo, like something reaching out to catch you. To cage you. I produced it; Abel mixed.

The lyrics are meant to be read differently by everyone, so I'll leave most of them open. What I'll say is that it came from being told, in more than one place, what I was allowed to be — and deciding I wasn't interested. Somewhere in the writing that turned into something bigger than defiance: a refusal to stay caged in flesh and bone, a refusal to kneel to anything. Rina's artwork came afterward, built around the myth of Prometheus, punished for handing fire to humankind. I wrote it first in standard tuning, then dropped it to Drop D for weight. It was also the band's live debut at Duffy's Tavern — first lineup, my first time singing, and a version that barely resembled this one.

I'll never get down on my knees. I've got no regrets.