Behind the Song: Myles Kennedy, “In Stride”

Like most of the songs off Myles Kennedy’s upcoming second album The Ides Of March, out May 14, “In Stride” was conceived in the back of a tour bus.

“The genesis of it was born on tour,” says Kennedy from a recent performance at the Fox Theater in Spokane, Washington. “I was in the back of the tour bus noodling around and came up with what I thought was going to be a lick. I thought ‘that’s a cool lick, let’s save that as something to build a song around,’ so when I was looking for something to be a little bit more uptempo and fill out the record—not even thinking single or anything, just a dynamic element—I stumbled across that lick again.”

When piecing together “In Stride,” Kennedy didn’t just want to play it straight out on electric guitar. “I wanted to mess with it,” he says. “I experimented and retuned the resonator and played an open beat, so that sounded cool. Then I plugged it into an amp with a little gain and we were off the races.”

Lyrically, since so many of these songs off The Ides of March were written during 2020, as the world shut down, Kennedy says “In Stride” was inspired by watching the everybody freak out—himself included—and “running to Costco buying toilet paper and supplies for the impending apocalypse,” matter-of-factly singing You can panic / You can burrow and wait / Impending doom is always on the take. One day you’ll wake, it’ll be too late… You can tremble as you fear for your life / You can bitch about the sign of the times / But the truth is you’ve gotta decide if you’re only wasting your life.

“It was kind of that realization of it might be wise to gain some perspective,” says Kennedy, “chill out and be calm and carry on.”