Split bill with Pat Wictor on Thursday 4/8 at The Turning Point! Hope to see you there! We’ll be playing a slew of duets and backing each other up on everything. We’re even breaking out the electric lap steel for some heavier stuff. Fun!
This past month has been amazing. I told you all about my “music school” concept in March and it’s something that is really changing my life. I’m not getting as much sleep or doing the dishes quite as often as I used to, but I’m spending way more time studying the thing I love the most. Good trade off, eh?
This past week I teamed up with my long-time friend, Amy Speace. We decided we’d write a song every day for a week, sending each other an mp3 & lyrics to keep us accountable and supported. No re-writing, no critique, just WRITE! I too often judge my songs before they’re done and it makes it impossible to write, so this was a way to stop that critic in my head. It worked so well that now we’re extending it for a month. Of course at first I had to nail my butt to a chair, set a timer for an hour, bribe and negotiate with myself… I didn’t believe I could do it, but I had to. And an amazing thing started to happen. Everywhere I go, every song I hear, my mind is taking it in differently and processing it for potential use in the next song. I feel like my mind is constantly chewing on rhythms and lyrics and rhymes, while my heart is constantly falling in love with different melodies. Now, the songs I’ve written aren’t finished or ready to perform, but the process of writing is now a joy instead of torture. I wrote a few country songs, a few folk songs, and then naturally gravitated towards swing/jazz. The idea of writing a “standard” of my own is pretty thrilling. Not sure I’ve nailed it yet, but studying the format of those old songs does me a world of good.
Other projects in my music school in March- studying the licks from Beaucoup Blue records and taking a trip to Paul Beard’s guitar shop down in Maryland. He fixed my lapsteel so I can play it standing up with a strap. Very cool!
Ok, time to go figure out what rhymes with “daffodil”
Abbie