Derek Luttrell – Repossess My Education

Derek Luttrell of Nashville, USA has a new single out, Repossess My Education, and we’ve been taking a good long and detailed listen here at the Send Me Your Ears studio.

Repossess My Education is about that feeling that you will be forever in debt. Written about his own situation with his student loans, Repossess My Education tells how Luttrell would rather be stupid and ignorant than owe money to the system that did its best to take advantage of him when he was young.

Written by Luttrell, but with help from Jason Krunnfusz – Drums , Zach Staas – Bass/Keys, Nicholas Fry – Lead Guitar and Lucy Cochren – Fiddle Jake Bostick – Pedal Steel. Recorded in a small home studio in Nashville and mastered by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering in Milwaukee, WI.

This is a really cute and bouncy song! We love it. Standing at well under 3 minutes, Repossess my Education manages to say everything it needs to say and wraps itself up in just 2 minutes and 39 seconds of positivity.

The vocals in this track have something of a Justin Currie feel to them (Del Amitri). Warm and inviting, Luttrell encourages you to rethink your own position on your education. He mentions that he wrote this whilst out delivering flowers in his van and it really does make you think; “Student loan, now you never leave me alone”.

Repossess my Education has a gentle swaying feeling about it. Everything is understated. With what sounds like possibly banjo picking, there’s a gentle folky feel to the song, whilst the incidental panned electric guitar riffs that sit between the vocal lines have an almost surf rock feel to them. The guitar riffs have loads of different effects on them and keep you interested throughout the song.
The middle 8 (with the “student loan, you never leave me alone” line adds a nice touch and the subtle drums are there enough to keep tempo but not enough to distract the listener or turn this into a rockier song than it needs to be.

One thing of note about this track that we particularly like is how the repeated hook line (Repossess my Education) is mirrored by the instrumentation and harmonised with so all the way through, the listener is reminded of the motif that keeps bringing them back to the whole theme of the song.

There’s some great panning throughout this song, filling the soundscape nicely, especially towards the end and we are left feeling, frankly, empowered and cute all at the same time!

From a production perspective, we’d suggest a little cut around the 500Hz area in the vocals to eliminate just a touch of boxiness in the track. A cut around 800 in the whole track will also help balance just a slight dominance in that area. A boost of the top two octaves will create a more equal balance between the mids and highs and add a little more life and clarity.

Repossess my Education by Derek Luttrell is a fun, folky feeling song that will have you questioning whether full time education is for you, and whether you want to call it quits and just sing along with Derek and live your best life. Great stuff!