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Songwriter
Monday, October 21st, 2024 10:07 pm |
58F and clear tonight, after a high of 82F today.
So, I had this epiphany over the weekend... that through my 20s and 30s, I was a songwriter.
And here, I'm using the term, songwriter as distinct from... musician, performer, rock star, recording artist, etc.
And it was an epiphany, because back in those days, there was always this pressure to be... a musician & performer, looking for a recording contract, to become a rock star.
Like... that was the very band-centric template everybody was using!
You start a band... and if it's a good band, you're all good at playing your instruments, and jam well together.
That band has a genre, and an asthetic, that you all know well.
And songwriting was only a big deal if you were part of a scene... some culturally significant city where all the bands actually do originals, seriously.
And all scenes had their specific sounds... so to be competitive in a scene, your band needed to kinda... stick to the sound.
But songrwiting for bands like that is kind of a collective effort.
Maybe one guy has most of the ideas, but it's the band that really makes that song what it is... and it's the scene that tells the band how to get there.
So, Nirvanah's a good example, because they were around my same age.
Nirvanah was part of the Seattle grunge scene.
Grunge was a kind of punk and metal blend that everybody on that scene was exploring.
So, Kurt Cobain was the front man, and the songwriter... but Nirvanah wasn't performing, "Curt Coban songs," as much as Curt was writing Nirvanah songs.
And Nirvanah songs are grunge songs, because Nirvana got it's relevance from the grunge scene.
So, what I'm driving at, is that everybody in Nirvanah, and any other scene band, were performers first, and musicians second, and songwriter's last.
Your look, and your stage presence was the top priority, followed by your instrumental skill... but a big part of the songwriting was dictated for you by the scene!
Could Kurt write a snappy, upbeat song about a day in the park with a pretty girl?
Sure!.. but he'd be laughed out of his own band if he wanted them to play it... and if he wasn't, then his band would be laughed out of Seattle!
For non-scene bands... which was the vast majority of bands across the western world... it didn't really matter if you could write songs.
In fact, it was kinda frowned upon!
In a non-scene town, what people want are cover bands!
And that's fine!.. because cover bands have a lot of fun, and make decent money, if they're good!
But just like in scene towns, the big focus is on performance first, and musicianship second!
And that's because the whole point of music... according to the template... is to put on a live show!
To wow an audience, and get the applause!
To be recognized in the community as... a great, or even genius entertainer!
Aurora, Illinois, of course was never a scene town.
And I never was that much of a musician, in the sense that I only played one instrument, the bass guitar... and I never really played it correctly!
I was also never much of a performer!
I always struggled trying to play bass and sing at the same time!
It was hard to do both without screwing up... never got easier... and I always had to look at the fret board to see what I was doing, which meant... very little engagement with the audience.
What little audience there was... in the basement, or at the dive bar.
But what I DID do... and this is something I only truly recognized this week... was sit down nearly every day, to write songs!
And I was pretty professional about it!.. I treated it like a job!
I'd sit there on the bed with my bass, with that inspirational antenna up, and just mess around until I'd worked up a new song idea... and then I'd record it, so I didn't forget it.
After that, I'd review the previous days ideas, and work on those... then I'd spend another couple hours rehersing songs that had already come together.
I made sure everything was not only saved to tape, but that the tapes themselves were clearly labled, dated, and listed out.
And as that body of music grew... I'd take days to brush up on older songs, so that I didn't forget them either.
And I did all of this, for years, just... to do it!
And this is why, over the past year, I've been continually flabberghasted to keep turning up new songs I totally forgot I ever wrote!
Archeology was just ten songs pulled at random out of that disorganized collection, that I thought was about IT for the forgotten songs!
But over the past couple weeks it's been like, NOPE!... there's 20 more... NO!.. 30!.. OH!.. 40?
It'll probably be closer to 80 good songs, or song ideas, when I'm done reviewing the archive... that were never produced.
And the number is that high, because... I was a songwriter!
Brian was a songwriter too!.. we were talking about this on the phone on Friday night.
He's forgotten more songs than most musicians have written... with his total going well over 100, like mine.
But it's because we took that job of songwriting seriously, and put in that work every week, over the months and years, to work up these... catalogs of songs!
And Brian was more of a performer and musician than I was, but he still found that kind of a pain, and would rather just record, if he could.
But neither of us called ourselves, songwriters in that sense of... we write songs, first and foremost.
And with both of us, those catalogs are not scene, or even genre specific.
I have songs in that archive that are dark, light, happy, sad, angry, playful, punkish, rockish, folkish, avant-garde-ish, fast, slow, cynical, romantic, theatrical... and so on.
They're all good!.. but every song is it's own thing!
And that's what you'd expect from... a general purpose songwriter!
Here's a good song... you figure out where to put it!
Because of that omnipresent performer template, I never saw clearly that... I was just a songwriter, pulling them out of the aether, like you can do in your 20s (and early 30s)... and it's a noble persuit in it's own right, that requires no further justification!
So, when I was 37, and my digital 8-track bit the dust... my only two thoughts about it were;
- I'm all out of good song ideas anyway.
- I'm too old to keep chasing this rock star dream.
And I just gave it all up and moved on like those 20 years of my life never happened, or didn't matter.
And it WAS very unexpected, last year, to find myself crying, as I worked on that new version of, Closer To You, in FL Studio!
I thought I was just doing it for fun, but I was crying!
And all through the studio work on the Archeology album... I would cry to hear these things finally fleshed out... and practicing singing them in the car, I could never get through one without choking up, and getting tears in my eyes!
That's still a thing now!.. but my point is that all of that crying (about the music) has been totally involuntary!
In the 15 years between ages 38, and 53... I never once felt sad that I couldn't still record... or that I'd lost this big part of my soul, or anything.
I didn't dream of a future day where I'd finally do what I'm doing now.
So, I guess it was just repressed!
I mean, going back to the two bullet points above... they were both created out of a kind of blindness to what was really going on.
Yes, I was all out of song ideas... but only because I'd mined them all!
I didn't give a thought to all the unrealized songs and song ideas in that tape archive that was in the storage unit back then.
I'd forgotten about most of it... and there was also an element of pride at work with the idea that... only new ideas are worth a damn! Fuck old ideas!
And yes, I was too old to be playing rock star... but that was never the point!
The point was to write songs... and get them realized... for their own sake!
But repression was the order of the day, and I filled that creative void with other things like painting, and later with home improvements at Melody Manor... and taking care of Dad... and just working a full time job, and being responsible... and buying stuff on Amazon... and writing!... look at me writing right now to relax on a Monday night!
So, as I said, the crying was unexpected... but clearly it's because that part of my life, and that part of my soul is deeply important to me, as a human being.
Music is a very right-brained endeavor, and there's a school of thought that says we are effectively two people... inhabiting the left brain, and right brain respectively... but that only the left brain ever gets to speak, and interact with the world at large, while the right brain has to just sit back and watch... unable to speak, or do math, or any of the things you need to do to survive in the world.
And music isn't the only right-brain expression... art, and any kind of creativity are, as well... even down to decor... and probably also connecting with animals and plants, and that kind of stuff.
But music is, by it's nature, purely emotional!
So, even though I've continued to be creative on many fronts, over all the years since I last wrote, or recorded a song...
Those 20 years where I was actively songwriting, and singing every day... were a BIG deal to my right brain!
Such that, when I came back to it last year... I found myself involuntarily crying!
And like I said, I do still involuntarily cry about this stuff... like just last night, listening to Reavis 309 with a nearly complete guitar line, by night's end.
Like Brian and Tim, I was born with an ear for music... being able to not just sing on key, but sing harmonies on the fly, and just the whole innate understanding of what music is, and how it works.
But it's a head thing, and I never learned to read or write it.
In my youth, starting a band was still the best way to ever hear a song idea get realized, as self-production with recording equipment was hugely expensive, and still required a lot of instrumental skill.
And like I said, it was a genre and scene driven world where even if you had a band, it wasn't gonna last long if you were just... in your town, following your own muse.
So I did what I could at the time, which was compose on my bass guitar, and record my ideas... playing and singing... in hopes that down the road I'd have a way to produce the stuff somehow.
And I did finally get a digital 8-track, in my early 30s, to try and do just that, for the songs I felt at the time were the most worthwhile.
But even with the 8-track, it took a lot of work, and things were pretty touch-and-go!
I had a free-standing, drum machine to finally work out actual drums, but it was a huge pain to program for each song, and when it was programmed, it had to be MIDI synched to record, and took up two of the 8 tracks.
The songs were all recorded on ZIP disks, with a finite capacity... so... there were limitations!
And the guitars and keyboard had to be performed live on the fly... meaning they were never truly in time with each other or the drum machine track.
And it was incredibly difficult to go back and edit any of that.
You either had to, punch-in, a fix, and hope it blended well... or just redo the whole track again.
And it was dials and faders on a machine that had no way whatever to interface with a PC computer... no mouse... no screen save for a little LCD readout.
It was a lot more powerful than any cassette teck had ever been, and it was digital!... so the songs could be saved on drives, uploaded to the internet, and copied a billion times with no generation loss.
But it was nothing like what's available today!
A modern DAW, operating on a PC, is SUCH a huge leap forward!
Especially for a... first and foremost... songwriter!
But there's so much more that you can do with a DAW, and music has evolved so much over the past 30 years, that I don't think many people are using one to... just do a song!
I'm in a weird position right now, for a lot of reasons.
- Many people my age just can't adapt to using a DAW.
- Most people using a DAW don't have a big archive of old song ideas.
- I shouldn't have time to be fleshing mine out right now!
I should be taking care of an old house, dog and two cats, and a huge yard, while working a full time job.
And most people my age are also married, and taking care of kids, on top of that.
I should NOT be in a studio apartment by myself right now, with nothing better to do, than revisit this whole other chapter of my past, when I was a songwriter... and turn those old ideas into freshly minted, digital content!
Does that mean this was all meant to be?
No!.. I don't think so!
I think what it means is... as a young songwriter, I was competent enough to leave behind this treasure chest of ideas that an older version of me could navigate, and work with... just on the off chance that was necessary and/or possible.
And then life fucked me super hard on all the future fronts... because I live in a borderline right-wing dictatorship of a capitolist oligarchy... and so I DID wind up here, with nothing but that treasure chest, and a copy of FL Studio, on a refurbished computer from E-Bay.
It's just the story of trying to be a whole person... despite the world... while surviving on instinct.
°¦}
