More About "I Won't Say Adieu"

The Inertia Case (1997) Elton Lin, Hoyt Emerick, and Carly Emerick

Just yesterday, a friend reminded me of a song from our back catalog that Hoyt and I composed called I Won't Say Adieu. This Inertia Case song got a second life because it was covered and used in an indie film directed by Casper Andreas. We would often close our live sets with this song and it was always so well received. 

Back when we wrote I Won't Say Adieu in the late 1990s, Hoyt had just gotten back from a trip to France. For those of you who don't know, Adieu is a French word meaning "goodbye". I remember being excited about the title that we came up with. We already had a song called Between Love and Goodbye, so I thought that was a clever way to use the word again without sounding too redundant. 

I remember writing the bass line for this song and thinking; "oh, this is good". We worked tirelessly and passionately on the lyrics. The song had a universal larger-than-life feeling to it. There was something almost magical about the way the key signature, chords, bass line, lyrics, and tempo all came together. It was almost like the sky had opened up and a thunderbolt came down to light our path. This song felt important. It quickly became a fan favorite in our inner circle. 

We were getting ready to shop ourselves to the major labels by putting together a demo tape of our best 4 tracks. We all believed in I Won't Say Adieu. So for the first time in The Inertia Case history, we paid an outside audio engineer to help us achieve a more professional sound. Before this time, we had always demoed our songs by ourselves using a portable Tascam 4-Track tape machine.  

I will always remember Hoyt, Elton, and I dishing out almost $1,000 to try to properly record that song. In 1997, a thousand dollars might as well have been $10,000 to us. It was a mountain of money, but we were willing and ready to invest in our musical future. Sadly, this endeavor proved to be fruitless. The slow-moving recording process left us all feeling tired and artistically drained. This "professional" demo didn't capture the real spirit of the song and we ultimately disliked the results of this recording. So we never used it. 

Lately, I've been thinking a brand new Candy Apple Blue version of I Won't Say Adieu could be in the cards. I know, after all of these years of experience, that Hoyt and I could give our old song a new life. 

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me. I have many more stories to share. 

Big love, Carly xoxo

The Inertia Case (1997) Promotional Band Pic

The Inertia Case (1997) Band Promotional Pic

We started getting serious about music-making while living in New York City. After all, we moved to NYC to pursue our dreams. So back in 1997, we formed our first band The Inertia Case. 

Hoyt and I both knew that singing wasn't really in the cards for us. We were strong enough to recognize our own weakness. We were passionate about songwriting but lousy singers. So, we knew that we had to find a qualified lead singer.

We placed an ad in The Village Voice looking for one. After countless unfruitful auditions, we finally found a musical kinship with vocalist, Elton Lin (currently of the band Notorious MSG). 

Elton's voice is so magical and angelic. He has a remarkable gift. He's also a wonderful human being. We became fast friends and developed a great working relationship. Together, the three of us worked hard on our craft. During this time we wrote our signature song, Between Love and Goodbye. That song always got the greatest response from the crowd, when we would play it live. 

Drawing inspiration from our personal musical favorites at the time (e.g. Erasure, ABBA, Stevie Nicks, Depeche Mode & Yazoo) we managed to produce and record a whole album's worth of material. We eventually released a self-produced best-of EP that is on all the streaming platforms if you're curious to hear it.

I look back on these days with so much fondness. If only we had the deep pockets of a major record label behind us. I feel confident that we could have made it big time. 

Big love, Carly xoxo