You're listening to song exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh her way.

This episode contains explicit language.

My name is Tao Winn of the band Tao and the get down stay down.

I was reading Marilyn Robinson's novel Gilead and

there is this character who is a black sheep or not cast of his family and he's returned after several years of being completely out of touch.

And he's about to leave again and basically break his father's heart. And there's this passage where he's asking forgiveness from a family friend.

Then he stopped and looked at me and said, you know, I'm doing the worst possible thing again. Leaving now, glory will never forgive me.

This character and the way that he's developed and rendered struck me so deeply and it reminded me so much of my dad in this one passage in particular.

Sort of brought me closer to understanding my dad and gave me a kind of compassion and a curiosity about him that I hadn't entertained before.

Wondering what kind of person he had been all these years that I didn't know him. And I just started weeping. I immediately started writing a astonished man.

Tao and the get down stay down released the album A Man Alive in March 2016.

Coming up in this episode, Tao talks about working with Meryl Garbis of Tune Arts and why their friendship was so important to the production of the song.

But first here's Tao talking a little bit more about the subject of the song, Estonish Man, her father.

He was very charismatic and he was around when I was a kid but not necessarily a responsible figure. He actually was very reckless and a source of great turmoil and turbulence for us.

But I adored him and then he left when I was a kid 11 or 12 or something and then he just kind of just kind of phased out.

I named the record a man Alive because he is alive and well I assume and that I am and that we're you know that we could both physically be capable of being in touch but we don't and is very peculiar to me.

I went up north I live in San Francisco and I went up north outside the city and I my friend and mine let me borrow his cabin.

I just trapped myself with a couple instruments and a notebook and tried. I demo as soon as I'm done with the lyrics.

Deck gates to decide I need decision.

Deck gates to decide I will never be satisfied with how I have been living.

Deck gates to decide I must find and capture and astonished man hold him till he knows he is forgiven.

And then I sent it to Adam our bassist and Merrill. Merrill Garbus produced this record and she is two yards.

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