Sunrise is a powerful rock ballad from my early years with band PILOT.
This was one of the first songs that came together after forming the band, all stemming from one of Lukes riff ideas. Initially he wrote the riff to be heavy, but we decided to see how it would sound clean, and hence came the ground work for the verse.
With an initial idea to start jamming on, it wasn't long before we had a solid structure with multiple sections. In those days I was the rhythm guitarist as well as being the front man, so it was my burden to come up with lyrics and vocal melodies.
What is Sunrise about? In a nutshell its about depression. About feeling so goddam small and worthless as the darkness takes over.
So why is it called Sunrise? Because I still had hope, I want to see the Sunrise, and I want to live.
To be honest, I hated writing lyrics! So it would always take time to get it "right". And because of the theme of this song it was hard to embrace the feeling, let alone put it down on paper. Oh yes, that's right, back in those days it was pen and paper. Lol
Once we had a handful of songs together the opportunity came up to record a demo, so we jumped in the car and drove a good 4 hours to get our tracks down. Needless to say, I hadn't finished writing all of my lyrics, so that was now a job for the car ride. I remember looking out the window while we were driving through the night in endless rain, thinking "man the rain just won't let up..", and that is how the line "the rain isn't subsiding.." ended up in the second verse.
We tracked our demo. And it was rough! But we had something down and we were proud of it.
Over the next year or so we developed our set list and decided it was time to record a proper E.P. Picking our best songs was easy, as we had been gigging and getting positive feedback from our fans, with SUNRISE being one of the most popular.
I miss playing in that band and hanging with my mates. Those years will stick with me forever as some of my most memorable times. And this is part of why I chose to lead out with Sunrise as my first Dave Webb single. It represents an important point in my life. I mean it helped that still to this day people request I play it at gigs, sing along with me, and scream the repeats back to me.
Lyrically the song means what it means to me, because that was how I felt at that age, and still even now to some point, but more than ever I have hope, and that is what I want to share with the world.