After months of fitful participation, I made it to my Monday night songwriters' meeting for the second time in a row this week. In principle, I've always believed in writing to a deadline, but Casa Fretboard has been a veritable hive of activity since the school year began, making it harder than usual to show up for some things on a regular basis.
But then, along came February Album Writing Month, with its
weekly challenges, prompts and other games. Write a song based on a chord progression from the public domain? Yes please. Use the last text you received from someone as the first line of your lyrics? Can do.
To paraphrase Steve Martin: of course, I wrote some dumb stuff, too. But having those prompts helped me treat songwriting like something fun again, and while it seems unlikely I'll "finish" FAWM properly by the end of today, I've gotten a couple of keepers out the
past four weeks, and had a good time doing so.
Along the way, I also came up with a worthwhile new solo guitar instrumental, made a completely derivative Bill Frisell pastiche (solo telecaster, lots of delay) and spent one morning turning a repetitive bit of slide guitar into into a gloriously shambolic travesty of overdubbed blues licks, half-time electric bass and garage-level (if that) drumming.
Writing to a deadline isn't for everybody, and
for a lot of songwriters it feels like the antithesis of why and how they write in the first place. But the real value of the weekly songwriters' meeting, or February Album Writing Month, is that it's a practice. You don't do it to write masterpieces. You do it to keep the motor running. To make stuff.
Because for me anyway, once I'm just making stuff, I remember the most important thing: making stuff is fun. Or, as Brett Goldstein's Roy Kent tells Kola
Bokinni's Isaac McAdoo in Ted Lasso:
"Football is a f*cking game that you used to play as a f*cking kid because it was fun...So f*ck your feelings, f*ck your overthinking, f*ck all that bullsh*t. Go back out there and have some f*cking fun!"
Yeah.
Today's Youtube video is also supposed to be fun. It's not a lesson per se. Instead, I talk about my 2001 National Estralita Deluxe: what it's good for, when
I play it, and how in some ways it's a better guitar than my vintage National Trojan. You can find it here:
Why This Guitar Is Better Than My Vintage National
Meanwhile, if you're anywhere near Austin tomorrow night, March 1st, I'll be playing my monthly show at the New World Deli in Hyde Park, starting at 7pm. And
I might even pull out those new keepers from February Album Writing Month...
More soon,
David