Thread

The song "Thread" -- rough recording can be heard at my myspace page

This is one of those speculative story songs. Where something I've observed gets stuck in my brain and starts to accumulate possible storylines, kind of like coral. In this case it was one of the numerous run-down old houses in our New England mill town and the semi-shut-in man who lives there. I guess what struck me was the fact that he's more or less middle aged and not elderly, this incongruity was enough to start me pondering and once I start pondering usually a song follows at some point. Originally the character's name was Edgar not Edward, but I realized that was because I'd recently been listening to John Gorka's Edgar the Party Man. So I quickly changed it to avoid one of those embarrassing public rock star law suits --- like the one Joe Satriani and Cold Play are embroiled in ---I mean it's just so much work for our publicists!

Back to it: This Garden

Sorry to have been away for so long, lots of life happening including a job loss unfortunately...there will be a song about that don't you worry! The posts also got a little sidetracked into coverage of festivals etc. and got away from the original purpose of telling what's behind some of my songwriting and hopefully helping to unlock the process for some of you...

Although I haven't recorded the song "This Garden" on CD yet, any of you who have seen me perform will have probably heard it. It starts out

I'm tillin' up this garden
back-breaking work
A little more than I bargained for
being a kid from the suburbs

My mother's father was a farmer,
carpenter, man of the sea.
These days I wish there was a
little more of him inside of me.

The song did originate as I was struggling with a rented rototiller trying desperately to create a patch of velvety furrowed earth from the conglomerate of granite, clay, glass, pot shards, old hardware and whatever else makes up the soil in the yard of my old Maine farmhouse!

While my parents were decidedly arty - mother a painter, father a theatrical agent, my mother did hale from hearty stock. My maternal grandparents had a small farm in Orange county NY, had built houses during the Depression (the first one not the current one!) , and I remember as a small child digging worms, scaling fish, and riding a tractor with my grandfather. Until I moved out of my parents house I could still find his old hand tools on our work bench. Unfortunately as is typical of kids I failed to appreciate my grandparent's simple but impressive skills, preferring the glow of television, the shiney, noisy and the new. By the time I was old enough for reason to take hold, my grandfather was gone. I honestly hadn't thought much about him in years, but as I stood there swearing at the rocks and roots, I did, and I wished I could have asked his advice.

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:

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.