“I wrote it all on guitar, although Emi helped me with the chord changes for the solo in the middle. When I did the demo, I played the keyboard parts on guitar, and then Emi took them and made them fit the instrument. This song is an example of me having fun writing. Somehow, the idea that the process has to be fun allowed me to be more creative when arriving at each new part in the song.

“I’m really proud of the chords at the very end, although I’m not even sure what they’re called. But I had been messing around with similar voicings from Night In Tunisia, and they allowed me to hear what I wanted and to find it.

“The songs are all improvised. I think I’ll actually play these solos a lot better when I get these songs on the road, but the ones on the album still get the idea across.

“For just about every song on the record, it would take us 10 passes just to get it assembled and clear in our heads. By take 13, we’d start getting some really good takes. By take 17 or 18, we’d have reached our peak, and then we’d play it a few more times just to see if anything surprising might happen.

“Then we’d listen back and pick our favorite sections. Jun Murakawa, our engineer, would put them together. My solos on this song were all recorded live with the drums, but I did go through and pick my favorite parts from different takes.”