Okay, posting one new song every Monday and then more, old songs throughout the week is slowly becoming just posting one new song late in the week. I’ll admit that. It’s hard work writing a new song every week. And finding a theme. And then digging through my old recordings for similar songs.
Anyway. I got a new song finally. Wrote it yesterday. I thought I had 2 or 3 others over the weekend, but when I started putting music to them they just weren’t going anywhere and the words seemed less interesting than when I wrote them last week.
So, I missed Monday, but this song is okay. It’s about cold hard facts. That’s it. This song is indisputable. Unquestionable. I challenge anyone to find a hole it it. A crack. Or any fiction or lies.
Wrote this one just last night. I’m kinda unsure about it right now. Don’t know what it’s all about. Don’t know if I like it at all. Don’t know where it came from. And don’t know where it’s going.
Anyway. That’s it for today.
For the rest of the week I’ll be writing about how I get to next Monday’s song. I’ll probably post some of what I write. I’m gonna go for writing one new song a day until I get something. So that’s that.
Also, the Barehand Jugband is playing some really great shows this weekend. First, on Saturday the 2nd we’re playing at the Design Harvest Festival on Grand Ave. You know the Hideout’s not having a block party this year, right? Well the Design Harvest Fest is kinda taking the place of that. There’s a bunch of great bands playing. We go on from 2:30-3:30.
Then, on Sunday, we’re sort of playing at the Design Harvest Fest again. It’s not at the official festival, but at one of the sponsor businesses along Grand Ave., Grand Street Gardens. It’s their Fall Festival. We go on around 3pm.
Sunday night we’re playing at the Old Town School of Folk Music. It’s a benefit concert to buy gravestones for a couple old jugband blues musicians who died and are buried in unmarked graves. We play a couple of their old tunes, joined by a host of other really good bands.
Okay…here’s the new song for this week. It’s a few days late, but you can read my excuse in my post from Monday.
I sat down yesterday with my mind set that I’d write a song. Sometimes…or most of the time, I do this with some instrument in hand (guitar, mouth harp, pentachord), but yesterday morning I was doing some writing trying to come up with something just on paper with a pen. Here’s how it went:
First I thought of what style I really wanted to write in. That’s to say, what style I would really like to play in. And I realized I’d been writing songs in one way for awhile and so, maybe, I should do something different.
So I made up my mind to go for a softer song. Something nice and beautiful.
Next I tried to figure out what I wanted to say. I wrote this line first:
If I’m not there
Then this one:
If you don’t find me there you won’t find me anywhere
And then:
If you can’t find me there don’t bother looking here
And finally:
If you can’t find me where I was
Don’t bother staying there cause
I won’t be back any old day
And just like that I had a repeating chorus line part. I tweaked it one more time, so it said this:
If you can’t find me where I was
Don’t bother staying there because
I won’t be returning this-a-way
So, I had the meat of my song done. That’s what a good chorus line is. Everything else just helps hold it together. So, I needed some sort of something to hold that together and make sense out of it to someone who wasn’t me. Cause I already knew what this song was about, but who else could tell that just from the chorus line?
At this point I asked myself a few questions:
Who’s looking for me? Where am I going? Do I even know? What am I going from? Did I say goodbye? Why did I leave? Do they know why?
I wrote these out. That’s what’s in my notebook. And that’s basically what formed the whole song. I wrote 3 verses from those questions in about 10 minutes. The second, third, and final verses. So i still needed something to start off the song. I felt those each jumped into the story a little too abruptly.
I worked at that first verse a little and then I took a break. After a couple hours I came back fresh, wrote the first verse pretty easily, did some cleanup of the whole song (you’ll notice the chorus line is a little different than the original), and then set out figuring out how the melody of the song went.
Now, I did have something basic in mind while I was writing it. And I did pick up my guitar while I was writing the initial verse just to make sure it fit what was in my head and the style I was going for. But once I finished the song I realized it was a little boring and I had to work on the music to make it sound better.
I’m not totally sure I’m at the end of that. But I wanted to get the song posted (mainly because I need to start working on another new one for this coming Monday…so i’m not behind or late again).
Anyway. That’s the whole ball a wax. Hope ya like it.
Okay. Here’s the song I was talking about yesterday. I changed the chrous line a little bit. Now it goes like this:
Oh, I got the wake-up blues, yeah, the wake-up blues,
Well, I may be weary, but I can’t stay here with you
That fit better into the rhythm and melody of the song, which is basically Blind Boy Fuller’s “Step It Up and Go.” If you check out those lyrics (by clicking on the linked title) you’ll see a note with some explanation about the song. Blind Boy Fuller‘s is basically a rip from an old jugband tune, which is probably ripped from somewhere else. So, mine, here, is not in any danger of infringement of any kind. It’s also really similar in a lot of ways to my song “Pray to Your Lord,” from my self-titled, full-length album that I released back on August 10. That one is also formed around the same Blind Boy Fuller song.
I guess I like that song.
When I wrote this one I wasn’t too confident in the lyrics, being somewhat silly and matter-o-fact. It’s also more of a traditional-sounding blues song, which I don’t really write as much anymore. But I’ve grown to enjoy it over these past 12 hours or so.
And now that’s another new song for this week, which has become Work Songs Week. If I want to get any more songs about work I’ll have to write some more cause I don’t really have any in my backlog of recorded material. That’s probably appropriate, though. To have to work on the songs for Work Songs Week.
Here’s a stupid little song. I wrote it last week. It’s sort of a blues song. Sounds a lot like most of the other songs I’ve written lately…and is, obviously, based loosely on the Roy Orbison song Workin’ for the Man.
Anyway, that’s that for today. I’ve got some other songs bubblin up this week. Don’t know, though, what kind of theme it’s gonna turn into, if it does at all.
Looking ahead, the Barehand Jugband has a few gigs this weekend and I’m playing a house show Sunday night in Oak Park.
Music Vomit 