FAWM post #11 - I'm a winner!

On Wednesday, I wrote "Mud Season," a short instrumental I consider to be only a very rough draft of a song to come:


On Thursday, I wrote "Tyranny of Complexity (Looking for Words)" with Shane:


On Friday, I woke up... A WINNER!




However... I'm far from being done. Yes, I've reached 14 songs, and that's a big deal and I should feel... proud, I guess. And I do.

But after spending a whole month just getting into the flow of writing songs, breathing songs, thinking about writing songs most of the day... I don't wanna stop. I'm in the zone, man! There are still songs to be written!


It makes me think of climbing the island with Gina. I spent a couple months of 2008 living and working on an island near Kodiak. I gotta admit - in some ways, it still seems like this huge glorious peak in my life to which nothing else will ever compare. Of course, this is untrue, but you should really see the photos sometime.

One day, the sun came out and we actually finished working a little earlier than normal, and the boss was back on the mainland for a spell. We decided to go see the top of the island, since it was getting later in the season and we still hadn't been up.

This particular peak was about 1500 feet above sea level, which is not very high. Thing is, we started right at sea level, since camp was set up just beside the cove where we first arrived by chartered fishing boat.

We arrived at the first leveled-out patch, formerly a volcano crater, now a catchbasin for rainwater and our source of drinking water. (The water trickled down the island and we collected it near the beach at a sluice. Ferrying the water back and forth by hand in buckets gave me an intense appreciation for plumbing.) Peregrines showed off in the sky. The few stunted trees of the island grew there. It was beautiful.

Even though it was a long, tiring climb after a long, tiring day... neither of us could permit it in our souls to climb back down without climbing just... a little more.

So up we went. We found a puffin skull lying very still and solemn in a patch of moss and flowers. Ravens floated below us, keeping a watchful eye. The ground got steeper and steeper and we bent further and further forward 'till we were using our hands to go up. But still, we couldn't go back without going just... a little more.

Gina had gone on ahead. I could see her waltzing up the incline ahead of me. As she reached the top, I was breathing hard and focusing on the ground in front of me.

Suddenly, she started yelling for me and scurrying back down. This was more than a little alarming, but Gina is a wonderful person who lives nearly entirely in the moment she's in, so she usually couldn't help but react fully and intensely to everything she experienced. And what she experienced was a bald eagle. As she told me, tearfully from the sheer awe of it, the eagle was flying towards the peak at about the same time she was climbing it from the other side, so they ended up surprising one another at about 10 feet away from each other.

So beautiful up there. In the sun. Watching the clouds in a slow cascade over the opposide peak. Looking out over the ocean and seeing West Amatuli, Sugarloaf, and Ushagat. Jagged mountains softened by the distance. And just... the quiet. The quiet was immense. Intensely peaceful.



I think the restless spirit needs the peace of the summit just as much as the invigorating journey. One does not exist apart from the other. So, onward, upward, more songs, please!

FAWM post #10: +1, and an article in The News Journal!

"Crowns"




Some songs I struggle to compose. I put a lot of thought into the chords, the melodies, the lyrics. This one just fell right out of the sky. I'm very happy with this one, and it'll make its way into my rotation, but it may not be one of the top-played. My comedic and more upbeat stuff tends to get more play (because who doesn't like feeling good?), but I do need songs like this in the rotation.


ALSO, and this is a big ALSO, The News Journal just put out an article today about FAWM and us Delaware songwriters. Featured are myself, Michael, and Todd. There are some very nice photos to go along with this well-written article -- it's definitely worth the read.

Click here to read the article!

I've only got two more to fill the quota, but I'm just gonna write until there's no more February.

FAWM post #9: Only one week left?!

Aiieeeeeeee! Panic!

I only have three songs left to meet the 14-song quota. I wrote another one today, "Jimmy Baker and the Bees," to add to my collection of nature-based songs:



I'm starting to get into the FAWM funk. You write about ten of these songs and they just all start sounding the same, or like ripoffs of everything else. I also get down on myself about the quality of the recording and the performance on these demos, even though I know that I wouldn't have time to write AND bring them all up to par all at once. The challenge is to write 14 songs. Yes, they're going to be rough at first; that's what the other 11 months of the year are for.

Just pushing on through. If I stick just with requests, I've got a space trash song on the docket, with also a possible emerald ash borer song and a campfire safety song (the last two as per request by a co-worker). Which is enough to meet the quota, but I've been really wanting to go a little more introspective with some of these. Really, I'd write seven more if I could. I think that would be a good goal for me.

Yes, I only pushed out one song in the last week. It was rather an insane week. I'm back to my regularly-scheduled insanity, more or less, which is really, really nice.

Dear God, better music plz?

(Warning... I'm approaching a HUGE topic, I know. I can't say everything that needs to be said in this one little entry. Please just bear with me, okay?)

I've been trying to write some non-annoying songs about God.

I'm a musician and a latecomer to faith. Before I was Christian, I'd flip past the Christian radio stations just as fast as I could. Now I still flip past them, just more slowly.

Yes, there is good music out there that celebrates God and His Kingdom. And I don't really have any problem with the fact that there is bad music out there that celebrates God and His Kingdom. I just don't want to listen to it.

Worship is good. Love worship. And yes, worship songs are going to end up being the songs that are more accessible to the performers, so that it can get played more often. There is something to be said for accessibility and a lot to be said for the surrender and submission of self in worship.

But when I write a song purely about God, I find myself pushing a little harder. I want to write stuff that isn't boring, stuff that captures the imagination, stuff that makes you want to listen to it. It should be music that you just can't flip past on the radio.

At the same time, most of what I write about God is not what I consider worship. It's more of a musical journal entry. It's deeply personal. Most of it I've never even played for anyone. Not for lack of wanting, just for lack of an appropriate anyplace to play it.

To be fair - yes, a lot of secular music really annoys me too. Most of what's on the radio, period, is just musical junk food. The Doritos of music, if you will. Ear candy. (Talk about annoying - there is that one song... "do you ever feel like you're a plastic bag... baby you're a firework..." who WRITES this crap!?)

In the end, all music is God's. In the end, I want everything I write to give glory to God's kingdom. I don't want some songs that are "church me" and some songs that are "other me." There's no such thing, because my faith isn't a front. It's God and it's me and we're just taking a walk together for the rest of my life.

FAWM post #8: EPIC WIN (with Michael Natrin) and Valentine's Day

I just love this. I just love this. I can't say how much I freakin' love this. Yeah sure, it's not perfect and I botched a few things, but hey, who gives a crap when you have SO MUCH WIN.

(Hey, check out the rest of Michael's FAWM songs! They're awesome!)


A few short minutes after I saw this for the first time, I stopped spazzing out and headed over to Mojo Main for another fabulous open mic. I was betting on getting a spot near the beginning on account of it was Valentine's Day. It's probably Newark's best open mic. I don't really say things are great unless they really impress me, so rest assured: IT'S GREAT.

And I was right about getting a spot near the beginning, which was good. I thought to myself, hey, self! You could, like, go home if you wanted, and get some sleep!

And then I didn't leave 'till like 1 AM. I have this notion that being a singer-songwriter is pretty much not conducive to sleeping ever. And I am comfortable with this. Except for when it's 8 AM, at which point I am too busy telling myself what an idiot I am for staying out late again.

FAWM post #7: Collab weekend

A note on collaboration. I have not developed any sort of collaborative skill up to this point. None. You may recall that one thing I loved about guitar was that I could be a one-woman band - no need for other musicians.

So, yep, I'm a collaboration newbie. But I have learned to play well with others since I started learning guitar all those years ago, and I did okay as a collaborator this weekend (if I may say so myself).

Saturday I met up with Zach and we did some jamming. This is what we came up with:



I guess we're calling it "Irish Platypus," because we couldn't think of a better name. I do believe we're taking suggestions, though. We thought there might be lyrics, but we didn't write any. So far I have found that writing lyrics with other people to be an extremely awkward experience. Writing music, pretty okay. Writing words with someone else terrifies the living snot out of me.

But me and Michael wrote a song today with words. It was good. It sprang up out of an idea I was incubating. At first I thought this might be cheating, in terms of collaborating, but I now think that it probably helps to come to a collab session with a few ideas in mind. I hope you'll get to hear our sweet song soon, but I also hope that the poor guy isn't driving himself crazy on the other side of this small town trying to do schoolwork, fix up the recording, and throw on a mandolin solo. Cripes. No one needs that kind of stress.


Anyway, I also just wrote this puppy... partially for the occasion (it is, after all, Valentine's Day as of this writing). Title: "The Five Stages of Infatuation"




I'm a little nervous about it. I may end up pulling it, honestly. I can't quite stick my finger on why it makes me so nervous (possibly sleep-deprivation as well as simply being the worrier that I am), so until I can, I'll just... leave it. It's like the line in the Automatic Toilet Song where I claim that the toilet is demon-possessed. I don't exactly feel 100% comfy with it. There are people in the world who really did not appreciate that line. But... I don't know, I can't please everyone when it comes down to it.

This song is really intended as a caricature and a satire of what really happens in the pursuit of romance - I guess I just don't want someone running off with it thinking that I glorified jealousy and things like that. 'Cause obviously, I don't condone stuff like that. I want to lift people up. I guess my hope is that this song helps to entertain, and make light of some of the normal and healthy aspects about being single, but maybe also help reveal how insane it is to obsess about stuff like this.

Well, whatever. I don't think I have any more time today to devote to worrying about it, so you let me know if I'm crazy or not. Okay?

FAWM post #6: Halfway done

-- SONGS --

I just uploaded my seventh song of FAWM 2011, "Small Town Places." Click this link for lyrics 'n all.



Still got lots of ideas, plus a weekend full of collaboration coming up. I hope to overshoot the 14-song mark, let the drive that is FAWM just carry me past it so I can write more songs! We'll see.

-- PUBLICITY --

Carla Lucas wrote a great article about FAWM. (And a lot of it is about me, for some reason.) You can view it at the Chester County Press website!

Also, keep your eye on the News Journal/Delaware Online...

-- OTHER --

I quit the choir I was in. I feel badly. I was so excited and then I just crapped out on everyone... I kept looking at the rehearsal schedule and thinking, "well, I'll just reschedule this, and that, and the other thing I normally do..." 'till it got to be too many things and I realized I was overbooked again.

I'm doing a lot of performing this weekend. Hopefully I'll even get to sleep a little, too. Life is a little crazy between work, FAWM, housesitting on and off, plus other random stuff that pops up as a normal matter of course. It's a mad dash to the end of February.

FAWM post #5: the explanation for my mysterious silence

It has something to do with the flu and the symptoms thereof. Still not really 100%, but good enough to work today. And go to church yesterday.

Church. Guess what, the funniest thing happened there... God wanted to talk to me, I guess. He forced my hand on the way I've really been feeling about myself lately, because it was damaging our relationship. I don't really like confessing stuff like this because, you know, someone might think I'm depressed, and then they will want to put me on medication, and stuff like that... when I'm really just human. This I really believe: if you don't go through the dumps on a somewhat regular basis, you're numb. Numb is worse than the dumps. Way worse.

But, anyway. Relevance to FAWM: I followed the feeling to its root, and in the process, discovered that I was trying too hard - at everything - for all the wrong reasons. Worth is not based on performance, and worth is not based on who you have been, but I fall back so easily into believing all those lies.

So I'm just breathing and re-centering. Been writing a bit and jotting down ideas, but the momentum's gone and I'm not really upset about it. I was setting a breakneck speed and I couldn't keep up with myself. There is plenty of time.

FAWM post #4: the lazyman challenge

In the words of my father,

"I'm siiiiiiiiiiiiick."

I am not a fan of complaining. Yes, I woke up with a searing headache, staggered around at the speed of a grandma trying to find the thermometer, nearly just started crying on the bathroom floor when I couldn't find it, found it behind the nightstand, swore up a storm because I was apparently too weak to move the durn thing, finally got it and found out that my fever is 101.2.

Apart from little episodes like that, I'm comfy, there's ibuprofen, and I have tons of juice. And God. I have God, too. Situation like this just puts you in a place of submission and reminds you that you can't do it without God. It's a good place to praise from.

Anyway, this illness just means that I have a unique challenge ahead of me: The Lazyman Challenge!

(I would've said "lazywoman," but it just doesn't have the same ring.)

Anyway, I've piled up everything I need all around my recliner. The goal is to write as many songs as possible without getting up.



Honestly, I'm pretty stoked.



Backtracking a little, I blame this illness partially on FAWM, partially on coffee. After abstaining for 48 hours, I broke for Dunkin Donuts coffee at 3 PM. I was busy FAWMing 'till midnight on Wednesday, and I was cognizant of the fact that the coffee had me wired, but I hadn't quite grasped the idea that I'd need to be getting up at 6 AM the next morning.

So here's me in bed that night, completely wired, eyes wide open, fluttering in and out of sleep, waking periodically to think "wow, that would be a great song idea!"

Needless to say, I'm 90% sure I had this fever yesterday and just decided to go to work in spite of it. Sometimes I'm an idiot like that.



Also, I just did my first collab! I finished setting Jocelyn's lyrics to music and I'm pretty daggum happy with the results. The recording I am less impressed with, mostly because of the vocals -- it'll probably be one of the last songs with true vox for awhile, because of my crappy-feeling lungs and all...

Here's "Little Bird."

FAWM post #3: +1 and I'm in a choir now?

Lemme see if this'll work.



Here's my latest and greatest, hot off the presses. It's called "A Rather Politely Phrased Request From A Fellow Citizen and Motorist," which I understand is a very long title, and I'll probably never actually call it that. But now that I've said that, I probably will.

This is the great thing about FAWM. Everything becomes inspiration. EVERYTHING. The madness of having to write 14 songs in 28 days opens your mind to all kinds of possibilites. Like the phrase "renegade haywagon." Y'never know. I don't think it'll become a song, but man, I liked that phrase so much when it first came out of my mouth today.

I also got some lyrics from a fellow FAWMer, Jocelyn, who wrote some awesome and very fitting lyrics that I'm hoping to musicalize before I get much hoarser. Yes, I am losing my voice just in time for FAWM. It'll be interesting to see how I deal with this hurdle.

I forgot to mention that I went in for a hearing to be in Schola Cantorum yesterday. It was awesome. Mostly it was a simple test to make sure I had all the skills I'd said I had. Which I do. I totally beasted up the sightreading... I mean, it was just not a complicated piece, but there was this weird part of my brain that really really loved working out the visual mathematics and translating them to audible pitches. It's the engineer in me. Most of my blood relatives tend toward either arts or engineering.

El fin, time for bed - tomorrow's an early day and a late night. Hopefully I can get at least a few hours of sleep this month. ^^

FAWM post #2 - Day 1, two songs done

Whew.

February started with a bang this year. The snow's still lying all around, making street parking impossible, and today it rained. Tomorrow it'll rain. Other places in the US are receiving massive amounts of snow, but here in Delaware it'll probably just rain and I'll go to work tomorrow.

Today, no work. I wrote two songs for FAWM. The first, "The Invitation," I felt compelled to dedicate to God... later realizing that it used to be common fashion to dedicate the first of things to God, such as the harvest. Hmm. Wrote it with the banjo, which was a ton of fun. What a fun instrument. Me and the banjo get along pretty good.

The second song, "The Migration," is actually based off a short idea that was based off another short idea. A short, maybe 4-bar idea - the guitar part came years ago, the lyrics months ago. I count it for FAWM if it's only a very short idea. I would have a hard time counting a song that I'd already written at least 50%.

I was also writing another song - it just didn't turn out tonight. Sometimes songs just flow, and sometimes they just don't. I think it'll come another time, but it was hard accepting that now was not the right time for that song.

Must remember to take time to feel good about what I'm doing - writing 2 songs in one day is a pretty good thing, but right now all I feel's tired.