My best friend John and I have known each other for decades, ever since we met in a college acting class. When I met him, my college punk band had just broken up, and I discovered he was a really good singer and guitar player — so we started collaborating under the name End Construction, because Duluth was covered in construction signs at the time while the town renovated its whole street structure.
"Another Verse" came out of my college theory and composition class, where I told my professor I wanted to try writing more "normal songs" — the classic verse-chorus structure. That is why the song's chorus references the word "verse" itself: self-referential, in a cheeky way. I had my own primitive demo of it, but I didn't know guitar well enough to make the chord changes in time with the music. Once John played it and added his background vocals, the song came together amazingly. We had a good, short collaboration — we even performed on stage at the Bull Pub at the University of Minnesota Duluth, which ran an open mic every month.
A couple of years later, when we were both living in Minneapolis, we did experimental recordings together under another name: Quincunx.
Last year, when Suno was just starting to get good, I did the same thing I had done with "Down To The Town" — took an older recording and used AI to cover it as a polished version in a different style. I fed our duo recording of "Another Verse" into Suno and asked for a ballad version in the style of James Taylor, adding piano, bass, and drums. John gave the result a thumbs up. The video is in a painting style, showing two guys like us playing the song around Duluth and near the Aerial Lift Bridge — an iconic Duluth image. And since Duluth is the most inland ocean port on the Great Lakes, the other iconic thing about the town is seagulls, everywhere.
It's an evocative memory for both of us.
— Red Hector
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