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, your way.

In this episode, Jimmy Laval from The Almond Leaf breaks down his song The Outer Banks.

The Almond Leaf is primarily a solo project, but for The Outer Banks, Jimmy collaborated with members of the Icelandic band Cigarose.

Coming up, Jimmy strips the song down to its parts and talks about the value of letting go of control during recording.

Here's The Outer Banks by The Almond Leaf on Song Exploder.

My name is Jim Laval and I do the album leaf.

Cigarose in 2001 asked me to tour with them. I had never heard of them at the time.

And it was when the first record came out. I'm not going to even say it.

Jettis Björn, I think is what it's all you say.

Basically, I guess they picked up my record that was out at the time in 2001, which was one day I'll be on time at a record shop in Iceland.

Then they all heard the record and invited me on tour.

2001 was my first tour with them. 2003 was my second.

And kind of my backing band for that 2003 European tour turned out to be Carrie Maria and Ori from Cigarose, which is who's on this song.

Because of that tour in 2003, they had their own studio in Iceland, Cigarose did, and invited me to come out and make a record at their studio.

It's like, hey, come out to Iceland, record at our studio. It's great, it's beautiful, it's serene, it's magical, blah, blah, blah.

We have all this amazing equipment. Sure, of course I will come out to Iceland and record a record, because that sounds like something I would really like to do.

I just got a loop pedal, a chi head rush, which I used to this day on my road's piano.

So originally the road's loop that you hear that starts the song was basically a loop that I made, you know, with my head rush pedal.

So that loop is consistent throughout the whole song, basically, and the whole song is kind of structured and written underneath that loop.

With my microcork just kind of came up with a bass line underneath that loop.

And I guess I tend to do that a lot where the bass line is kind of more so than melody than the top.

It's another thing is obviously I didn't have my own road's piano that I normally used to record without in Iceland.

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