Monday, July 30, 2007

New England Songwriting contest (the 3rd) report

Yesterday I played in the finals of the New England Songwriting contest, held as part of the Ossipee Valley Bluegrass Festival. There were 20 finalists selected from about 100 submissions. The finalists came from a pretty wide area including Maine, New Hampshire and a couple from Nantucket MA. The variety of genres represented was pretty wide from contemporary singer songwriter to pop to real old-time bluegrass. I can't imagine trying to select one winner from the variety and generally high quality of the submissions. That was left up to the panel of 3 Judges -- there were two outstanding bluegrass musicians and songwriters Audie Blaylock and Ted Demille who were performing at the festival, and then there was the legendary Bill Morrisey.

In the end the winner was Michael Troy and deservedly so. He played a great song and his performance was a picture of ease: flowing out of him as if he was talking and accompanied with buttery smooth guitar. Michael has already garnered a number of festival and songwriting accolades including the Boston Folk Festival and Kerrville. Another finalists who has been wracking up the awards lately was Jud Caswell who will be off to the Philadelphia Folk Festival next month after winning a spot there through the Plowshares Songwriting Contest.

In company like that it wasn't hard to feel good about just being a finalist. The atmosphere is great and the things you learn just by chatting with folks certainly makes it worthwhile. A bonus was that Ted Demille also gave me some great positive feedback on my song. So while the money would have been nice I still left having had a valuable experience. Maybe I'll try a couple more contests this year...

Monday, July 23, 2007

What do songs do for us?

I mean as people, not songwriters. What purpose to they serve? My friend Ken from NY was visiting. Before I moved to Maine, he and I played in a band called Dogs Gone Fishing.
So while he was up visiting we played a reunion gig at the Gorham Grind . He always played this great obscure cover tune called "Spider John" by Willis Alan Ramsey, the Texas songwriter who wrote Muskrat Love (a hit for The Captain and Tenile) believe it or not. Anyway we finished playing the song and Ken turns to me and says "Scott ______ " (I don't remember the last name). That was the name of the guy he learned that song from thirty years ago. Do you think he would have remembered that guy if it weren't for that great song. So memory is one thing songs do for us --I think you could find a lot of examples of this in the ways that aboriginal peoples retain their histories...

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Indiana (a Blue Song for a Red State)

This song idea came from a short business trip I had to Indianapolis. I'm sure it's not a fair portrait but I found it to be a pretty ugly city, and was distressed that the main feature of downtown seemed to be a huge sports stadium and a comparably huge mall. On the weekends, crowds seemed to stream in from all the outlying towns to go to the mall. This made me think about how our agricultural farming heartland became the industrial heartland. As is often the case, it was the discovery of a quirky fact that helped shape the song. While looking at the local paper I realized that Indiana is the state farthest west in the Eastern time zone. I'm from the East coast so this fact was brought home to me when I was going to the airport in the dark at 7:30 in the morning and realizing that it would already be light at home by this time. This supplied the central metaphor of the state or region needing to wake up, and look at what was lost with the family farm that can't be replaced by malls and fast food joints. The interest in Ethanol as a fuel source gives me hope that some of the farming life in the area will regain its value.

During that ride to the airport we also rode past numerous factories with their smokestacks spewing fire - all of which helped to add to the imagery.

So that was the kernel -- the rest fell into place pretty readily...

You can hear the song on my website:

Friday, July 6, 2007

Songs? Stories? What's this about

First post: so I guess I should tell you what this is all about. This is a place to tell stories behind the songs. It's something that songwriters are often discouraged from doing in concert because really, 80% of the audience doesn't care. And sometimes it can be detrimental: interfering with the listener mapping their own experiences to the song and relating to it. So in concert I don't introduce every song, and if I do tell a story I keep it short... just enough to place it in context.

But this blog is for that 20% whether they are just enthusiasts interested in the creative process or other songwriters wondering whether anyone else is as crazy as they are. I think I'd had the urge to do this before, but I did recently come across a book that may have helped crystalize the idea. And I have to say as a songwriter I found it more instructive than most books I've seen on songwriting. It's On Songwriting by the Canadian folk legend Bob Snider . In it he starts out just describing in general terms how he goes about chasing an idea down and getting it right or leaving it alone and coming back to it, etc. etc. And then he takes 10 of his songs and tells the stories of how they came about.

I plan to tell the stories about my songs, but I hope this becomes a place for others to share their own stories and connections to their music. Perhaps this cloud of concepts becomes a new way of connecting people to our songs.