Backwards induction
For me, it always starts with a concept. An idea. That’s actually what creates the sound. What creates the song. It’s like this hazy signpost hanging in the air and it’s baked full of its own special qualities and those qualities guide me in the lyrics, the melody, the tempo. Sometimes the concept drives not just the creation of a song but a whole suite of songs.
I was standing in the living room of my old apartment and E and I were about to head out to dinner and this is most often when these little bursts of epiphany tend to reveal themselves. As she’s putting on her makeup and putting things in her clutch and picking out the right pair of earrings (all of which she designed and hand crafted) I strap on the guitar and proceed to follow her around the apartment, strumming random chords, yelling out lyrical non-sequiturs and generally being a bit of a pain in the ass.
I remember standing there with the lights turned off in the living room and she said “you should have a song about me” and she jokingly repeated her name over the chords and it actually worked and that became my biggest seller on iTunes. Weird.
I also remember having this picture of the desert and of these Bedouin people peering at the sea from over a cliff and that was where the song ‘The Dead Sea’ came from. Somehow I knew that it needed to be this pounding rocking thing — like the hot sun and the salt water and a water skin.
As I think about the next album (meaning the one after the one I’m not even done yet), I’ve got similar notions bubbling around in my head. Trying to figure out where they’ll lead me. I shall document them here, for posterity and to protect my intellectual property, even somewhat informally.
I have an image of a rumpled bed, a black and white image. Like the cover of the great ‘Dry Dreams’ by Jim Carroll. And it says “Bedroom” in red on the cover. And that’s the record. And it’s this soft-rock LA thing that has a Fleetwood Mac/Steely Dan vibe and Lindsey Buckingham should produce it and we’d get lots of mandolin and it would feature the song ‘Dear Hal Ashby’ that I wrote about the director Hal Ashby who has made some of the world’s greatest films, most notably ‘Shampoo’. And yes, I’m putting ‘Shampoo’ ahead of ‘Harold and Maude’ and ‘Being There’. It’s a very special under-appreciated film and Warren Beatty’s finest moment. It transcends.
So that’s where that starts. And now I need to write a bunch more songs like that. Things that fit into that concept and that idea and the theme will guide me like a mission statement and one day it may be done.
I also like the word “Trouble”. That should probably be a record. Not a cover of the Cat Stevens song but that would be the inspiration. Trouble is ominous. Trouble is grey and acoustic with noise and dissonance under the covers like the thunder clouds rolling in, waiting for the rain to start. Trouble is the open plains. Here it comes. Like the song ‘Radio Cure’ off of ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’.
Always backwards from the concept first. Kind of strange I suppose but that’s my deal.
Tags: songwriting
