FAWM Blog #9: Showcase Showdown

For me, the FAWM season is now done. The songs have all been written, and the showcases have all been SMASHING.

The first, at the Newark Arts Alliance, was recorded entirely by Michael. You can watch the whole playlist on YouTube. (I had to scoot in after a contra dance, which is why I’m wearing my skirt and being barefoot.) The audience was very attentive and eager to interact. Which worked out awesomely on “Sea Song” - I had them humming along... it created a perfect ambiance. It was a great opportunity to play my uke and dulcimer stuff, which I felt would be too troublesome to bust out at other showcases.



The second, held at Extreme Pizza in Wilmington, was kickin’. This was a later showcase put together by our friend and fellow musician Jacopo de Nicola. Many thanks for his thoughtfulness and hard work. It was nice to have an evening showcase - and a Friday night, at that! Jacopo let me borrow his bass so I could play “Your Star.” It was well-received. (Especially by one of the waitstaff who I’m pretty sure was the one hollerin’ at me “I know that’s right” as soon as the bass licks started rollin’)

The third, at the World Cafe Live at the Queen. The staff treated us so well. The sound was great. The food was great. Our audience, attentive and sizable! Bam! And the “Stinkbug Song” finally made its stage debut.

Here’s a photo of us at the end, courtesy of James Simpson Photography:




And also a photo of Matt and myself playing “Let There Be Snow,” courtesy of Michael:



I gave out plenty of CD’s of my FAWM output and I’m thinking I will release the tracks to bandcamp. Just trying to decide whether to post just the 14 that are purely mine, or if I want to ask my collaborators if they’re cool with me putting their work up on my bandcamp. For free. Hmmmm.

Mostly I am proud. Of myself? Yeah, sure. I am. But I am primarily proud of our awesome little community. Three showcases. Many folks showed up at all three. Ten acts at least at each. Incredible talent. (As I frankly told one audience member, “the only difference between us and what’s on the radio is that we’re not on the radio.”)

But... incredible people, too. People whose talent wells up out of a naturalness of self. And the thing is that the selves involved are just beautiful and wonderful.

There was one FAWMer who approached me at a showcase, expressing gratitude towards Michael and me for all of our work promoting and organizing. There was a note of underlying worry. A kind of worry that says “it must have been such a burden for you.”

If you’d ask me, “Were there hard times?” I’d say yes, definitely. But I was blessed to be working alongside of some awesome people who shared them with me. “Did it stress you out?” At times. Life is busy, and enthusiasm is a poor guard against time constraints.

“Was it a burden?” A resounding and emphatic no. Because every step, good or bad, is part of the journey toward this end. I already know the outcome is good. I am already wholly convinced of that. If a difficult thing happens in the process, I can deal with it in its own moment without losing sight of the big vision.

It’s good, people!

FAWM #8: FAWM OVER

I received a text from a friend this morning. This is how the conversation went:

Friend: MORNIN' 8:42 AM
Me: I BEAT FAWM :D 9:10 AM
Friend: Now we rehab you so you can enter society again! 9:11 AM


(Is it that obvious!?)




This is a word cloud compiled from all the lyrics I wrote or helped write this month. (Pretty cool!)


So, yep. All the songs done been written. I was surprised by my output. Someone posted on my wall telling me I had the most songs of anyone in the Philly area. (I didn't know anyone was keeping track!) This is pretty cool. But only 14 are purely "mine." I don't know. I'm flattered, but I'm also being humble about it. I wasn't competing, I was just trying to write and let God do things by my writing. And I'm really, really pleased.


ME, JUST ME!:

Songs
1. Kaleidescope Heart
2. The Stinkbug Song
3. Keep in Mind
4. I Like Trees
5. Amaranth
6. The Underground Spring
7. Vultures
8. Murre Song
9. Come June / Swallowtail
10. Your Star
11. Sea Song

Electronic
12. Game Over
13. Earth and Sky

Instrumental
14. Waltz for a Clementine


Playing nicely with others:

with Matthew Halley:
15. Let There Be Snow
16. Finding My Feet (also with Erin Magnin)

with Erin, Shane, Andrew, Michael:
17. White Kids

with Shane:
18. Flowers Gotta Grow
00. *Viva (and Stefan) (*I did not accept credit on FAWM due to limitations on listing 2+ collaborators)

with Michael:
19. Damsel of Distress

with Stefan:
20. The Errant Whistler (and... Shane. Kind of. Accidentally. Darnit Shane.)

with The Other Otter - Bryan, Josh, and Angela:
21. The Downtown
22. A Song About Physics
(and maybe a couple other tunes that I've contributed to but they're not done with 'em yet)


Now, that's a nice sight to see:




WOO now I can sleep and do laundry again! ...

Oh wait, we've got some showcases around the bend yet. :3 STAY TUNED!!

FAWM Blog #7: The home stretch.

Well, I left you hanging around song 16. I finished up FAWM with 22 songs this year. As I mentioned, I was determined to do 14 songs entirely on my own, and I met my goal. I praise God for this. Because in all honesty, most of these last few songs have just dropped completely into my head. Much of the process, by the end of February, has become so internalized that I don't consciously think about the way I want to express it, I just do it. OR it gets dropped into my head. A couple of lyric sets I had envisioned completely different music for. Then, the way they came out was completely not what I had originally wanted, but it fit so much better than how I would have done it.

SONGS:

#17: Vultures. I will not link you to the demo because I didn't want it available for download. It's one of the most negative things I've written in a long time, though it does redeem itself at the end, and I feel it's a true representation of something deeply lodged. It's not bad to write stuff like that. But if my heart is for my brothers and sisters on the earth, I want to take time to think about what I'm going to feed into their spirits. This is most important. Yes.

Vultures was written over a period of a few days. I had meditated on the words and the meaning for awhile. In spirit, I was carrying something painful and I really wanted nothing to do with it, so I was crying out for the burden to be severed from me. I woke up one day and felt quite definitively that the vultures said no. Keep going. And while this could seem depressing, I was... relieved. Honestly. Because it was not a condemning sort of "keep on sloggin'," it was more of a "you're not as dead as you think you are - you're alive and you'll carry this just fine."

#18: Game Over. (mp3) An electronic thing. This was a verybadday. I was intentionally not eating because I had been marginally ill for a week and wasn't digesting and had a disappointing weekend at the beach and lungphlegm and the painful thing was still painful.

#19: Murre Song. (mp3) I wanted to write another Alaska song. It has taken 2.5 years for them to start trickling out. I am hoping for more soon. Anyway, this is from the liner notes: Murres!! I had a chance to study Murres in Alaska in 2008. I have always been somewhat awed by the way they come into the world. They nest on these rock cliffs (see below for photos/videos) and after being alive for 3 weeks, they "fledge" by jumping off the edge of these cliffs into the ocean IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. You've probably seen the Planet Earth ducklings jumping out of a tree. They've got NOTHING on murres.

I told Matt Halley that this was in the style of Matt Halley, and he agreed. He has been a good influence on me because he has taught me by simple example that slow and contemplative songs are powerful and worthy of my effort. I did write them before, but now I have more peace about writing them.



The next three were written between 5 pm and midnight yesterday. I am somewhat amused of the variance in genre between the three songs. Who the crap am I that I can do that? So crazy.

#20: Come June / Swallowtail. (mp3) Essentially, I've still got these three black swallowtail butterfly pupa, in their chrysalises, sitting beside the kitchen sink, overwintering. I had no idea when they'll emerge. Or even if they'll emerge at all. But I can NOT bring myself to get rid of them.

This is one that I did not expect it at ALL to sound as it does. I had this idea that this song was gonna be sad and slow and it ended up being... multifaced. Charged up at times, meditative at others, emphatic even a bit. I'm very proud of it. It's a stab at something a little new and different.

#21: Your Star. (mp3) I basically had wanted to write something with just the bass, and I also wanted to put a ton of filters on something. Again, NO IDEA. The music came out of nowhere. I was mostly just playing, I mean, for an hour I was about 8 years old writing and singing. I didn't try to write excellent lyrics, I didn't try to think about it very much at all. And I kinda... like it. :)

#22: Sea Song. (mp3) A celtic-y hymn-like thing. Pennywhistle x2 and dulcimer. This one actually came out how I thought it would.