As winter revives I’ve been delighted by the recent snow we’ve been getting. Recently, I took a winter camping trip with some friends of mine, something that’s becoming a January tradition, and used the cathartic process of shelter building and trudging through snow to think about my marketing efforts. Many of you have commented to me over the years that you enjoy my blog posts, and I’m sorry I haven’t been as consistent as I could be. I’ve always enjoyed writing; whether it’s poetry, songs, short stories, or methodical musings, I find that I am continuously challenged by the written word as a means of expression.
Many of you have asked about my songwriting and specifically how I come up with ideas for songs. Every artist is different. Some hear melody or rhythm first and others are lyric-based. I have written songs in many different ways, but I would say the vast majority of mine are sparked by one word or idea that coincides with a melodic concept. As a guitar player who has played in many rhythm sections, I tend to think in chord progressions. Often when I get home from school, I grab my guitar to decompress from the day and play random combinations of chords, rhythms, and licks. Sometimes these random sounds stick in my brain and hang around for a while. Other times, they disappear into the ether.
When I wrote Naked Bourbon, I came up with that opening riff first. Then I came up with a rhythm for a melodic idea. Then I had the phrase “it’s been a long Monday” in my head and I matched it to that rhythm. The song evolved from there in a simultaneous process of story/character development, chord progressions and rhythms until I got a rough version of what you hear on the record. After that it was all revision, which is where I spend the most time on my songs.
Lately, I’ve taken a completely different approach that has proven to be much more difficult. Instead of this reciprocal development of melody, rhythm, and lyrics, I’ve been writing lyrics absent of my guitar completely. I’ll take a concept and free write about it for a while, trying to whittle down my ramblings to what I think is an honest, genuine, and cliche-free idea. Then I’ll start over completely, thinking about that idea. I might try writing in a specific meter or rhyme scheme, or groupings of lines. When I get something that I think isn’t total garbage, I’ll take it to my office and pick up my guitar and free play while looking at the lyrics. Sometimes it works and I’ll get an idea that makes me go back and change my lyrics to fit that musical idea. Sometimes it doesn’t and I go back to the drawing board. I’ve written some of my more recent songs that you may have heard live in this way. It’s different from what I’m used to, but the added challenge has made me focus on the words.
I think something that keeps a lot of writers returning to the craft is the mystery of how certain pieces emerge at the times that they do. I will say, it’s not always a pleasant process; it can be frustrating enough to make me slam my journal in disdain and go over-scrub an already clean pot. And then there are the times it all seems to flow and you have a draft before lunch on a Saturday morning. That draft will either work out and get added to the set or cut in a future session, or you play it again the next day and tear it to shreds or delete the entire thing and wonder what the hell you were thinking. Whatever forces come together to create something whole and worth listening to and keeping around for years to come is something I don’t think I’ll ever completely understand. But, to quote a book I’ve been reading lately about hunting that is fitting to this writer’s toil, “[the writer] needs a credible challenge: to work hard, to suffer and sacrifice at least a little, and to fail more often than to succeed.” (Peterson, David. “Heartsblood”. Raven’s Eye Press, 2010, p. 83, Durango, CO.)
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