Story Behind the Song: Temecula Road, ‘Fades’

Temecula Road's single "Fades" is more than just a bubbly, mid-tempo meditation on the passage of time over the course of a breakup: It's also one of the first songs the group released that they say perfectly encapsulates their sound as a band. Below, bandmate Dawson Anderson -- who co-wrote the track with Kevin Bard and Mike Daly -- recounts the story of how the song came to life.

We had it for quite a bit -- like, for a year, we had the demo. I feel like, with this one, it was something we were able to really connect to on a personal level. We hadn't been writing a ton before that, so it was cool because it was kind of the start of us releasing music that we'd written, which was awesome and something new ... We took some time to really figure it out and get our sound right, and "Fades" is pretty much the first song to come out of that.

[The day we wrote it] was a really good day. It was actually in LA, with this guy Kevin Bard. We were just sitting around, and he has the cutest little dog. So we were just playing with the dog, and we made some coffee -- we were just hanging out.

He was like, "I have this idea for this song title. It's called "Fades." I have no idea what we're going to do with it, but I just think it's really cool." I was like, "I think it's cool, too." So then we started to kind of bounce some ideas around the room, [thinking about] what concept we could put behind it.

And I think he said, "You know, sometimes in a relationship that's kind of moved on, it can be so hard to get rid of those feelings, you know? Everything in life fades, essentially -- so why won't this?" It blew my mind. So we wrote it, and I showed it to the girls, and [they] texted me, just saying, "Oh my goodness." They loved it.

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