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The Story
For years before Fred, Ryan, and Elliott started Equiliberation, they played cover songs with the twins' father (Fred's brother-in-law) in their family's garage. When it got too late to play high-volume rock and roll, Fred and the boys retreated to computers and created music using a program called Noteworthy Composer.

One such night, Fred thought of a complex funk bass line and sang it to Elliott. Elliott transcribed the part and typed it into Noteworthy Composer. Because it was a bass line, he jokingly titled it "Ryan, Have A Good One."

Not being a full song, "Ryan, Have A Good One" sat for a long time in Elliott's computer with other musical ideas awaiting completion. Then, in early January 2007, Fred thought of a lead guitar melody and, in an epiphany-like moment, realized it fit perfectly over "Ryan, Have A Good One." Excited, he brought it to rehearsal, and the trio began jamming on it. Everyone agreed it was fun to play, so Fred composed chorus and post-chorus music, and "Have A Good One" took shape.

Writing lyrics for the song actually proved more difficult than writing the music. The phrase "have a good one" was quite common, but it didn't really stimulate any substantive associations. So, Fred thought long and hard about it, and he recalled the way several Welsh people had reacted to him when he was backpacking in Wales. Everywhere he had gone, people told him, "Have a nice day." At first, he had thought they were just extraordinarily friendly people; but when someone had shouted the phrase at him from a passing car, he realized they were making fun of him. Sure enough, he had subsequently learned that many Welsh people considered "have a nice day" to be a stereotyically vapid American thing to say, so in parroting it to him, they were deriding him as an ignorant foreigner. Using this memory as fuel, Fred wrote a song about being cautious when traveling abroad.

Fred took his newly completed lyrics to the band's next rehearsal and tried them out. After running through them once, it was obvious they didn't fit the music at all. The song was up-beat and light-hearted, and for the lyrics to work, they had to be equally carefree. So, Fred went back to work.

After several attempts, Fred came up with the least serious words he had ever set to music. Sticking with the travel idea, he wrote a song that exhorted listeners to enjoy themselves when taking vacations. Although the lyrical vacuousness of the song could, ironically, be seen as ammunition for the Welsh view of Americans, the words complemented the music extremely well. So, they stuck.

"Have A Good One" had its live debut on February 13, 2007. It subsequently became a standard in Equiliberation's set lists.