Contributors:
Brian Wooten, pedal steel guitar
Heath Nicholls, bass and harmony vocals
Jay Miller, drums
Jules Bryce, keys
Mac Bartine, lead vocals and rhythm guitar
Rich Adlin, lead guitar and harmony vocals
Seva, recording, mix and master engineer

We like the jammy, upbeat vibe of this song, especially when we play it live. All of us love the old greats of jam band rock like the Grateful Dead, and this song lets us play around with that vibe a little bit in live performances. It was fun to do in the studio as well, and forced us to nail down the instrumental part, which we always improvised until the recording. Getting that instrumental right was one of the hardest parts of the recording process, requiring multiple trips back to the studio, mostly for new guitar takes.

Mac’s Songwriting Notes: It was in the late 1990s when I wrote Life Fever. I had just started dating my first wife April, working my first post-gradschool job at my first software startup, listening to a lot of Grateful Dead, and of course also listening to the Beatles. Basically the whole 2nd half of the 90s and most of the 2000s was one long Beatles binge for me. I was also reading a lot of interesting novels by authors like Tom Robbins, who was fond of using unusual literary devices like the personification of inanimate objects. Lastly, I was what some might describe as “very optimistic about life” throughout all of my late teens, 20s and 30s. Today, that mindset is still my favorite kickstarter whenever I need one, and back then it worked its way into several of my songs. Life Fever was born out of all those influences. It’s an ode to my late 20s that I look back on very fondly.