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Rick
Derek Sivers founded CD Baby in 1998.
Before that, he graduated from the Berklee school of music in 1990 and toured with a circus for ten years as ringleader/musician (1988-1998). Derek quit his last “job” at Warner/Chappell Music Publishing in New York City in 1992 to be a full-time musician. Ten years after he started CD Baby (and HostBaby), Derek sold the companies to Disc Makers. Since 1998, over 250,000 artists have sold their music through CD Baby (including me) – they have sold over 5 million CDs online to customers and paid over $100 million directly to the artists. What a cool business to start.
Rick: In a recent interview, you suggested that a songwriter should “decide BEFORE you make the music: What could we create that would be SO noteworthy, SO remarkable, that there’s no way it could be ignored?” I’ve heard other voices advocate “Be authentic. Be true to yourself.” Or as Kathy Kallick said in a recent interview “I have to sing it from the heart, or it will fall flat. I’m always writing songs for me to sing; if somebody else wants to sing it, that’s great, but I first have to be able to sing it myself.” Both pieces of advice ring true, but how does one reconcile those two points of view?
Derek: Combined, it becomes, “Be the most remarkable version of yourself.”
You can be yourself and be entertaining - or be yourself and be striking.
Not just in music, but even socially. If your spouse says, “When you meet my co-workers from the office, please be charming!” - then you’re still yourself, but the best version of yourself.
Specific to songwriting, though, it’s as simple as the occasional choice of words or notes. You can go for the ordinary way to say something (”People in New York are strange”) or fascinating (”Plucked her eyebrows on the way. Shaved her legs then he was a she.” from Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side.)
In an interview with Eminem, he said his goal when writing is to make a noisy room of people not-listening stop talking, look at the speakers and say, “He didn’t just say what I think he said, did he?”
When writing melodies, you can just stream-of-consciousness sing what comes naturally out of your throat, or you can go to an instrument and come up with an interesting series of notes that fit beautifully with your chords but maybe take a little work to sing. Now when someone hears that song, your melody will really call attention to itself, for its striking originality.
All of this is still being true to yourself. Just challenging yourself to come up with something more remarkable than the first thing that comes out of your mouth.
Rick: For many creative people, writing songs is the easy part. Getting the songs out there, not so easy. You’ve written an awesome guide titled How to Call Attention to Your Music (download the PDF at http://sivers.org/pdf) that covers just about every important aspect of marketing original music, except one: how do successful songwriters keep motivated to stay in the game when the going gets toughest?
Derek: You have to love the process. You can’t just be in it for the goal. Luckily, writers can always write, anytime and anywhere. Performers have it tougher. If you love performing for a crowd and there’s no crowd that wants to hear you, it’s tougher to say, “Enjoy the process.”
The same way that you sometimes approach songwriting saying, “Let’s see what happens if I take this ballad and make it uptempo,” you can say, “Let’s see what happens if I contact this website (or venue or magazine) and ask them how to get featured.”
Detach yourself from the results and make it all a fun ongoing experiment. Persistently try little things every week, and after a few months, you’ll find out your so much further along than you expected.
Rick: On a similar note, you’ve written “Music is like perfume. You have to convince and persuade people, with your words and images, to take that initiative, to make an effort, to hear your music. If you try to just ‘let the music speak for itself’ most people will never hear you.” For those songwriters who have more humility than self-promotional genes in their DNA, is it time for a cold, hard reality check?
Derek: No! That’s a horrible way to think about it. Instead just make it a continuation of your creative writing. Instead of stopping at the last line of the song, have fun creatively describing your music.
If you’re writing a song for someone you love, and you want them to understand how much you love them, you choose words that they can relate to - words that they will love, not just words that you’ll self-indulgently enjoy writing.
So when describing your music, make it a writing challenge to come up with some enticing words that are not so esoteric or alien that people tune out — but not so boring that they tune out either. A few succinct and intriguing words can go a long way… Just like lyrics!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of my interview with Derek Sivers… coming next week.
Tags: creative process, creativity, marketing music, mus, music, singer/songwriter, song, songwriter interview, songwriting tips
The craft of songwriting takes place amidst the rhythms and context of the rest of life. A pursuit unique to itself, but holding much in common with all else.
In addition to the On Songwriting blog, I also write a social media-related blog called Listen. Engage. Create. This week’s post in that blog is about why “The Story of the Three Bears” is relevant way beyond the nursery. The concepts of too hot, too cold or just right tend to show up just about everywhere, including music.
In many ways, especially music. Consider just a few of the extremes:
Somewhere between the polar points, there is a sweet spot that’s just right.
Songwriting, approached as a thoughtful craft, seeks that goal: a song that can be played over and over and listened to again and again.
You know it when you hear it. Accept no substitutions.
The good news is there’s always room for one more song… especially when it’s in the sweet spot.
Tags: creative process, creativity, Muse, music, song, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
Dan Miller is the founder and publisher of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, a bi-monthly print and online-based periodical (and companion audio CD) dedicated to presenting all aspects of the art of flatpicking the acoustic guitar. The following conversation concludes my interview with Dan that began with the previous post on March 22.
Rick: Excellent insights, Dan. I totally resemble the part about getting excited about writing a new song only to do next to nothing to promote it beyond the people who already enjoy listening to my music. So what are some of the other changes you’re seeing in the music industry as the digital age continues to unfold — and what is staying the same?
Dan: What is constantly changing and evolving are all of the new ways listeners are getting their music and all of the new avenues for promotion and sales. On the down side of this is that there is a lot of competition and there are so many artists out there trying to sell their music and capture the interest of music listeners. Add to that the fact that there are so many artists willing to give their songs away for free and it is so easy for the consumer to copy songs from their friends, most people, especially the younger demographic, don’t really spend any money for the music that is on their computer or in their iPod. Not many people are buying CDs these days, and huge numbers of people are getting downloads for free. That is not good for the artist who is trying to make a living at this.
What is staying the same is that it takes a lot of hard work and investment in time and money to make it. This has not changed. In the old days, a band had to work really hard to get picked up by a label. There was a lot of competition to get on a label. So the competition part is the same. Once a band or artist got picked up by a label and had the label’s support, they could get somewhere. However, if they didn’t get picked up by a label, it was really hard to get anywhere because studio costs were high, record duplication and distribution was expensive and difficult, and avenues of promotion were nearly closed off if you didn’t have the support of a label.
Today, in the digital age, recording is affordable, and distribution, promotion, and marketing online are easy if you put the time in and know what you are doing. So, in today’s digital world, it is possible for a band or artist to make it on their own without the support of a label or a lot of money. The downside is because it is all so affordable and accessible, hundreds of thousands of artists are doing it and so it is very difficult for the consumer to sort through it all. So the competition is still there and the hard work is still there, the success factor has just been taken out of the hands of the labels and put more into the hands of the artists and consumers.
Rick: Do believe it’s possible for a songwriter to be successful without touring – or at least committing to an ongoing public performance schedule?
Dan: I’ll assume that you are talking just about someone who is a songwriter trying to pitch and sell their songs, not someone who is also working to be a performing or recording artist (because the answer would be different for each). If we are strictly talking about a songwriter, yes, it certainly is possible. There are songwriters who are doing it. As I’m sure you know, there are a lot songwriters who have never toured or even performed in front of people and they are making a good living, they are simply good songwriters and write songs for other people to record and perform.
What those songwriters who are successful have is either one, or a combination of:
I set up as a vendor at a lot of music festivals, guitar shows, and conventions and there are some songwriters that I’ve met at those events who are their handing out demos to anyone and everyone. These writers will always give me a demo CD of their newest songs and say, “If you know anyone who is looking for a song, pass this along.” Then they follow up with phone calls or emails. You don’t have to be “over-the-top” or obnoxious about it. There is a tactful way of promoting yourself and your songs that doesn’t turn people off by being in their face all of the time.
I’ve owned my own business for a long time now and during the early years I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the promotion and marketing aspects because I was “in it for the music.” I figured that if I put out a good product people would hear about it and they would buy it. I wasn’t going to push it in their face and try to convince them that they needed it. I have always been really turned off by the stereotypical idea of the “salesman” or “advertiser.” So I know how some artists feel when it comes to self promotion. However, this is something else that the internet has changed. Today there is so much that people can find online that is free, that it is really hard to get them to spend money on anything. So you really have to work hard just to capture their attention and let them know that you even exist. At first, I went into the whole internet marketing thing kicking and screaming, but once I started doing it, I saw the value in the results that I was getting.
All that to say, that yes, there is a way to get your songs recorded by other people, you just have to know how to market and promote your songs and you have to be diligent and consistent about it. Be tactful, courteous, and polite and people will respond. A lot of it has to do with making connections and networking, and there are some good tools on the internet for doing that.
Rick: Finally, Dan, what’s ahead for Flatpicking Guitar Magazine as well as your record label and instructional DVD business?
Dan: Like everyone else, we are trying to keep our head above water in this economy by providing quality products at affordable prices, and we are continually working to keep up with all of the technological changes and advances. Last year we launched a digital download site (www.flatpickdigital.com) that allows our customers to download a PDF version of the magazine, plus any of our 13 years worth of back issues. They can also download a number of PDF copies of other instructional books and audio files that we have in our catalog. We also have some special issues of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine coming out in the near future that I think subscribers will enjoy. For instance our May/June 2009 issue is a special “fiddle tune” issue that features two arrangements each of 22 of the most popular jam session fiddle tune favorites, as arranged by 22 different flatpicking gutiar artists.
We continue to put out instructional material for guitar. Tim May and I are working on an eight-volume guitar instructional course called “Flatpicking Essentials.” The first two volumes have been released and the third volume will be out by the end of April 2009. The course teaches the flatpicking guitar method step-by-step as it developed chronologically in history. The first volume covers rhythm styles of the early pioneers of acoustic guitar in roots and country music (those who played in the 20s, 30s, and 40s). The second volume then moves on to teach how to arrange solos to vocal tunes in the styles that were common during the 1940s through the 1960s. The third volume then teaches how to arrange solos for instrumental numbers using some of the techniques that folks like Doc Watson, Clarence White, and Norman Blake made popular in the 1960s and 70s. Volume 4 teaches how to understand the fingerboard, teaches how music theory can be useful, and applies that to playing up-the-neck. Then in the remaining four volumes we teach more advanced concepts and styles, again in a step-by-step, easy to understand presentation. The plan is to release a new volume every-other-month.
We also continue to produce DVD concert performance projects. We just recently released our 5th concert DVD in the concert serie. The new one features Robin Kessinger, Robert Shafer, and Mark Cosgrove. Artist we have featured in the past include David Grier, Kenny Smith, Wyatt Rice, Tim Stafford, Bryan Sutton, Jim Hurst, Tim May, Brad Davis, Cody Kilby, Josh Williams, Andy Falco, and Chris Eldridge. We will be filming a new one in May 2009 featuring Jack Lawrence, Scott Nygaard, and Robert Bowlin.
Our record label is getting ready to release a great new various artist project called “Flatpicking Bluegrass.” This will be our 28th CD release. This CD highlights lead guitar work on standard bluegrass vocal tunes. Each song on the CD features a full bluegrass band. While the band remains the same for each tune, the guitar player/lead singer changes. The guitar players/lead singers who are featured on this CD include some of the finest in bluegrass: Josh Williams, Tim Stafford, Kenny Smith, John Chapman, Brad Davis, Tim May, Richard Bennett, Jim Hurst, Chris Jones, Jeff White, Stephen Mougin, and Jim Nunally. The back up band includes Shad Cobb on fiddle, Charlie Chadwick on bass, Chris Joslin on Dobro and banjo, and Dave Harvey on mandolin. Tim May and Brad Davis provide harmony vocals on most tunes, although others also sing harmony on select tunes. If you love traditional bluegrass and flatpicking, you will love this CD!
Tags: acoustic music, creative process, Dan Miller, Flatpicking Guitar, marketing music, singer/songwriter, songwriter interview, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
Dan Miller (right in photo above) is the founder and publisher of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, a bi-monthly print and online-based periodical (and companion audio CD) dedicated to presenting all aspects of the art of flatpicking the acoustic guitar, as pioneered by such great guitarists as Doc Watson, Clarence White, Norman Blake, Tony Rice, and Dan Crary. In May 2008, Flatpicking Guitar Magazine launched the Flatpicking Guitar network, an online community to discuss, explore, learn and interact with other flatpickers. In the following interview, Dan shares some of the insights he has observed about the art of creating — and marketing — original music.
Rick: You’ve had the opportunity to personally interview well over 100 highly-respected guitar players through the years, many of whom are also talented songwriters. Have you observed any recurring themes or shared traits among the songwriters you’ve interviewed?
Dan: While each artist may have a different process, I found that the most prominent common thread amongst the songwriters I’ve interviewed is “Don’t try to write a hit. Don’t try to keep up with trends. Write from your heart.”
When I interviewed Marty Stuart about his album The Pilgrim, he called the pop country hits “disposable” and told me that when working on The Pilgrim he wanted to write songs that “sounded like they were old.” He said, “What I feel like I have done with The Pilgrim is regained my credibility. Not to say that I discount anything that we’ve done over the past fifteen years, but you back it up to before we had a hit with Hillbilly Rock, and man I tried everything. I tried bluegrass, I tried folk, I tried country, and the first thing that took off was Hillbilly Rock. So what do you do? You start chasing. You work what works for you. We played for thousands of people, sold lots of records and won lots of awards. But there came a point where I looked around at the state of affairs in country music and it was just disposable pop music. I went over to talk to (Earl) Scruggs about it one day and he said, ‘It just don’t really turn your crank does it?’ I thought, ‘Well put!’”
Marty also said, “I read a book called In the Country of Country. It made me really stop and think. The music we are talking about here (in the book) is going to last forever. The kind of records we are trying to keep up with and make a trend out of (today) are going to be disposable. I thought, ‘Well, I am going to stop making records long enough and really make a record.’”
Chris Hillman, whose songs have been recorded by Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, Tom Petty, The Oak Ridge Boys, Patty Smith, Marshall Crenshaw, and many others, said something along similar lines. His recommendation was “Look at the lyric that you are writing and ask yourself, ‘Is this something that I am going to be able to listen to in twenty years?’ Do not ever listen to what is on the radio and say, ‘I’ve got to write that kind of song.’ By the time you do write that kind of song, it will be passé. We have created an amazing disposable culture. When I got into the music business it was a small cottage industry. Even if you were lucky enough back then to get on a label, they’d keep you around for a while if you worked hard. It is just disposable now.”
Chris continued, “It’s kind of a trite saying, ‘write from the heart.’ Try to look at it as if it is a short story and get as descriptive as you can. Write from something that is familiar. I can’t say what comes first, the melody or the lyric line, because it changes. These days I write more of a positive bent to most of my songs. I don’t have anything to whine about at age 60. I’m alive and I have a good family, so I’m a pretty happy guy. It is hard to go back and write some sort of angst-ridden song that I might have written when I was 23 years old.”
Since I publish a guitar magazine, the questions I pose to songwriters usually focus more on writing music, not lyrics. The common “recurring theme” answer there is “The music and the solos have to support the lyrics.” Regarding his approach to playing the guitar in support of songs Darrell Scott said, “I am hyper-aware of composition – it is an important aspect of supporting the song. I listen to the lyric and support what it is saying.”
Darrell continues, “Kenny Malone is a drummer, yet he has to know the lyric to a song before he plays it. He wants to help the singer tell that story and so he keeps a copy of the lyric on a music stand. A lot of guitar players are just waiting to ‘blow’. As a guitar player you need to support every piece of the song, and the guitar solo is just a part. It is funny how many guitarists know the chord changes, but not the lyric. The chord changes are a skeleton that the lyric sits on. When I know the lyric and sensibility, it tells me what I can play. I think that playing licks keeps from bringing the song to the listener.”
Darrell explained that he views the song as an umbrella that encases parts that can be broken down into a familiar form, for instance: intro, verse, solo, chorus, bridge, and outro. He said that in a great song there is a reason why everything is there and every part helps to carry the listener on a journey. If a guitar player is mindful of all of the parts, then they can better support each part of the song and can make a conscious shift from one part to the next.
Rick: In addition to your work as a magazine publisher and record label owner, you’re also close to the inner workings of more than one successful music career. With the Internet eroding the traditional star-making power of the major record labels, what are some of the most important things a songwriter can do these days to get exposure for their music?
Dan: I would say that every songwriter and musician needs to learn as much as they can about marketing, advertising, and publicity and work at that just as hard as they do their songwriting. How to market your songs and music in today’s changing music market is a large and complex topic, which continues to evolve rapidly. So it is hard to really dig into all of that “how to” information in a short interview.
The one thing songwriters need to do, however, is be as creative in their approach to marketing and pitching their songs as they are in their song writing. The music industry is in the middle of a rapidly changing revolution, so it is no longer viable to just think along the traditional lines of record labels, CDs, touring, etc.
While the “old style” music industry is in decay, songwriters have to realize that there are more markets and opportunities for their songs now than there has ever been in the past. There are songs and music on video games, hundreds and hundreds of shows and commercials on cable television, hundreds of large and small video productions, cell phone ring tones, and numerous types of digital downloads and broadcasts — and there are a lot of new, interesting, and exciting ways to reach these markets.
The obvious ones that everyone uses on the Internet are MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Internet radio, and podcasts. But there are also many others that a songwriter can find and use to his or her advantage. The songwriter simply needs to do his or her research and explore all of the possibilities, and think outside of the box.
As an example, Brad Davis, an artist and songwriter on our FGM record label, does a lot of writing with actor, writer, and musician Billy Bob Thornton. He and Billy were working in the studio a few years ago, staying up for days on end and drinking a lot of coffee. They ran out and ordered some coffee from an Internet company called Coffee Fool and absolutely loved the stuff. Brad was telling me this story and raving about this coffee and so I said, “If you love the product so much, write a song about how great it is, call the song “Coffee Fool” and send it to them. Brad wrote the song, recorded it, and not only did the company use the song on their website, they have since sponsored some of Brad’s shows and clinics and continue to work with him on some other promotional projects that have turned out to be mutually beneficial for both Brad and the coffee company. So, you never know. You have to pursue all avenues. Don’t just think about pitching to labels and/or other recording artists.
The biggest problem that I see is that songwriters and musicians like to write and record songs, but they are not always so crazy about working really hard to promote those songs once they are written and recorded. The ones that are super successful have other people doing all of that work for them. That’s great, however, until you can afford to pay the publicist, the radio promoter, and the song plugger, you have to do all of that work yourself. It is not always fun and the constant rejection is hard to take, but it is a necessary evil.
The other thing to say here is that the concept of promotion, and all that it entails, can be very overwhelming. There is a lot to do and you don’t have time for it all. It is a lot of hard work and it can be very disappointing when the majority of your efforts don’t pan out. I recommend that songwriters and musicians look at marketing and publicity as a very long and slow moving process. Consistency and diligence are the keys. So I recommend that artists set aside a certain amount of time every day, maybe an hour, and work on promotion and marketing consistently. Don’t finish a new song or a new CD and work really hard to promote it for only three or four weeks and expect to get very far. Work on it an hour or so every single day of every year. Be consistent, keep at it, and results will come.
Part II of my interview with Dan Miller will be published same time next week… Stay Tuned!
Tags: Brad Davis, Chris Hillman, creative process, creativity, Dan Miller, Darrell Scott, Flatpicking Guitar, Marty Stuart, music, singer/songwriter, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
Have you ever written a song that sounded too good to be true?
Not in an ego-centric expression of “C’est moi, what an amazing songwriter am I!” but in the genuine sense of “This song sounds pretty good. It must already exist — I just can’t remember where I originally heard it.”
Yet there it is, your new song. A finely-crafted melody with good, easy-flowing words. How is it possible that this song has been out there floating around in the ether for literally anyone to grab and make their own, yet you’re the first and only one to notice it, write it down and record it?
Kind of like a bunch of fisherman angling on the same river at the same time with essentially the same bait. Then, out of the blue, BOOM — a huge, feisty and majestic German Brown that had been owning those waters for years is suddenly hooked on a single thin line, just as surprised as the one who just caught him.
Unlike the trout that may well be released, however, there you are with something beautiful and wild right out of that teeming river of creativity where songs hatch and swim around freely… a genuine keeper.
Most of the time, of course, it’s rare to hook a finished song out of thin air, whole and fully formed. It’s usually harder work than that with multiple iterations, edits and twists along the way.
But even after I’ve found my way through the creative process and crafted a new song, I often second-guess if the latest one is really mine.
Nobody wants to tread on the IP of another songwriter or represent that a creation is yours when it isn’t. With literally millions of songs already written and in the bag, so to speak, it makes you wonder how it’s even possible to create something totally brand new. How can there be anything left that hasn’t already been thought of by somebody else?
Yet it happens all the time, and that’s one of the most special and true things about songwriting. Your next song hasn’t been written yet, and nobody will ever hear it until you create, perform and publish it.
How it works, why it’s possible… I’ll leave those questions for others to answer. I simply believe that if you approach songwriting from your own genuine point of view, listen and respond to ideas that are authentically your own, bring them forth with the help of the Muse and work the craft, magic can happen.
Do that, and every so often, it really is true.
Tags: acoustic music, creative process, creativity, Muse, music, singer/songwriter, song, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
Kathy Kallick has been leading bands and writing songs since 1975. Over the years, she has grown and evolved into an outstanding composer with over 100 of her original songs recorded and enjoyed by fans and listeners in Northern California, around the country and throughout the world.
Rick: With so many songs already written and published, what inspires you to keep writing?
Kathy: I can’t help but write songs. I have a very aggressive Muse who will not be denied! When I’ve tried to intentionally take a break from writing, it never works. Neither will it work for me to sit down and make myself write a song. The busier I am, the more input I’m receiving from the world at large, the more likely I am to have a burst of songs.
I’m very inspired by the stories I hear from friends, or a common thread that runs through several situations. Sometimes I’m percolating a song subconsciously, and it’ll come out fully formed and surprise the heck out of me.
I tend to write a lot in the first person. That’s how my first bluegrass songs came to me, as stories from my experience, but many songs are just story songs, or quite removed from my own experiences, when I can take the opportunity to try on another point of view. I love a good story song, and I’m sometimes inspired by novels I’ve read or songs I’ve heard. Sometimes I want to think about more of the story than has already been told.
I get inspired to write new songs when ever I learn a new chord shape, or guitar run, or strum pattern. Anything that gets me playing the guitar a bunch to learn something new is likely to unleash a melody, and then the words fall into the cadence of the melody. For me, songs start in all those ways; melody inspires words, the lyric suggests a cadence that leads to a melody, or the lyrics and melody appear simultaneously. Sometimes a new song will be based on playing out of a certain chord shape and I’ll have to capo a gazillion frets up the neck in order to sing it in the right key!
Rick: What have you learned from your personal journey as a songwriter that might be helpful to others walking their own creative path?
Kathy: I’ve found that listeners will often take their own meaning from a song, and that’s something I really love. I’ve often not thought about the meaning of a song in the same way as somebody who hears it from their own experience, and the song is open to different interpretations. I never try to correct somebody who’s heard something that resonates for them, even if they’ve heard a completely different lyric than I wrote. Sometimes the music happens somewhere between my performance and their ears, and it’s magic.
I think the most important thing about songwriting is to write in one’s own voice. By that I don’t mean everything has to be True Confessions, but that the voice I write in is believable. Even if I were to write in some arcane dialect or different gender or historical background, I have to believe the voice of the singer. I have to sing it from the heart, or it will fall flat. I’m always writing songs for me to sing; if somebody else wants to sing it, that’s great, but I first have to be able to sing it myself.
I like to write a song that’s interesting to me, so even if it’s a simple love song, I’m going to reach for some word or phrase or perspective that’s not been worked to death. I’m going to let unlikely words and language into a song, and let the story unravel how the song tells me, even if it goes somewhere uncomfortable.
I try to never force a rhyme, or force a word into a song just because I like the word. I let the song take the lead. Then I go back and edit. Get rid of clunky stuff. Take out verses if it’s too long. I often like to leave a bit unsaid, and tell the barest bones of the story, implying things. That lets a listener fill in the blanks and get personal with the song. I think many songs fail by being too long and just beating the listener to death. Of course, the details really give the rich flavor to a song, but Hank Williams wrote some killer short songs!
I try to stay away from maudlin, tear-jerker, National Inquirer songs. If a song is manipulative, it doesn’t move me, it just makes me mad. If the emotional content is real and believable, the song will be moving to a listener.
These are my opinions, and I could go on and on, but, each songwriter will have their own set of criteria, and checklists of good intentions. The world is full of way too many songwriters. Nowadays everybody has to be a songwriter, and sadly, there are so many generic sounding songs.
Sometimes I take a break and go back to Carter Family songs or classic Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers — just anything pure and plain — and I loll around in the beauty of those songs, thinking I’ll quit cluttering up the air with more songs. Then the cosmic radio switches on and a song starts screaming away in my brain, and I’m off and running! I guess I’ll probably keep writing songs as long as that continues.
Tags: acoustic music, Add new tag, creative process, creativity, Muse, singer/songwriter, song, songwriter interview, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
Since 1975, Kathy Kallick has released 14 albums and recorded over 100 of her original songs, including four “solo” albums for Sugar Hill and Copper Creek Records. She has won a Grammy and two IBMA Awards for her part on True Life Blues: The Songs Of Bill Monroe and was recently recognized with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the California Bluegrass Association.
Rick: What originally interested you about songwriting? Why was it something you wanted to do?
Kathy: I started writing songs as soon as I started learning to play music. When I was 9 or 10, I had a try at writing a minuet when I was first learning to play the piano. It’s always been intriguing to me, and an irrepressible urge.
I started playing guitar when I was 11, and began making up my own tunes as I learned to play chords. I had written a few, and then my dad brought me the brand-new first Janis Ian recording, “Society’s Child.” She was a few years older than me, and I was blown away at the thought of her having written this amazing song, and actually recording it!
I was also a Beatlemaniac, and I loved those songs, and then started learning contemporary folk songs by Joni Mitchell, Tom Rush, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan – all kinds of people. My folks were taking me to folk events, The University Of Chicago Folk Festival and other concerts, where I heard the likes of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee, Odetta, the Clancy Brothers, Malvina Reynolds, Muddy Waters, and Bill Monroe. In high school, I flipped for James Taylor and then, of course, Carol King. Also, my mom was a singer and performer of all kinds of roots and folk music and all these sounds percolated around in my brain.
Then I heard local boys John Prine and Steve Goodman. Those guys could really write some songs! Smart, heartfelt, poetic, funny, topical, passionate songs, and I started writing songs in earnest. So earnest! I wanted to be a really good songwriter, and it definitely took a while.
I wanted to capture everything I’d heard, from Hank Williams to Laura Nyro, in one song. My first many songs were very mannered and unreal sounding. I hadn’t found my own voice yet. Still, my friends were nice, and they really liked to hear me sing my songs.
I left a thriving folk scene in Chicago and came to the Bay Area, where I couldn’t find the same songwriting community, but I did land in the heart of traditional bluegrass in California. My first task was trying to learn some bluegrass songs, and even a tiny bit of what that sounded like. I also started learning to play string bass to play in the evolving Good Ol’ Persons, and these things put my songwriting on the back burner for a bit.
The rest of the bluegrass community was pretty traditional, and nobody was writing their own material — except for Rich Wilbur with High Country. Rich had been in the band before I moved to the west coast, and was still in the area when I started playing. I loved his songs on the High Country records, and he was a big inspiration to me. I remember going to visit him in Pt. Richmond and getting a listen to what he was writing in the late ’70s. He was really into reggae and country, and finding a songwriting place between the two – which was not really bluegrass.
Pretty early on I tried to adapt some of the songs I’d written to the band format, but nothing translated. My first songs for the band were really more country songs, or kind of honky-tonk sounding, like (Just Tonight) Pretend You’re Mine. Then I tried to emulate the sound of bluegrass songs and came up with You’re The Song, which was pretty good sounding, but not really from my own voice. It really took me a while to figure out how to satisfy my need to write and sing my own songs, and capture what I loved more and more about the sound of bluegrass.
Rick: As a West Coast songwriter who now has a substantial catalog of songs including many in the bluegrass genre, how did you find a unique and original voice in a community that tends to have rather strict ideas of what is — and what isn’t — bluegrass music?
Kathy: I was interested in writing songs I could sing in a bluegrass context that were from a woman’s point of view, or, at least, accessible to a woman’s voice. I learned stuff that had been sung by other women, like Kitty Wells and Hazel and Alice, but I’m an urban, modern, northern Jewish woman, and that’s pretty far removed from the perspective of most bluegrass!
I was thinking about Bill Monroe’s songs, and how specific they were to his experience. He told his story, quite plainly and personally, and those songs became the universal repertoire of bluegrass singers. So, I took that as the model and tried to write a bluegrass song from my own life, as if Bill Monroe was the daughter of divorced parents from Chicago. Far fetched, but that’s how I located my first bluegrass song, Broken Tie.
My other breakthrough was letting go of writing a fast song. I guess I think a medium up-tempo song might be the heartbeat of bluegrass.
The thing is, the first time Bill Monroe heard Broken Tie, he actually listened and he really loved it. We were playing at his festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana, and he told me it was a “fine bluegrass number,” and said he’d like to hear it in every set. Then he stood out in the audience every time we played and watched to see if I’d sing the song. You bet I did.
After such a vote of confidence from the Father Of Bluegrass music himself, I had my assignment. Write songs from my own point of view, and keep it real, and bluegrass. Not everything I’ve written is bluegrass, by a long shot, but I really know I can write a good bluegrass number.
Rick: I remember listening to you play some of your original bluegrass songs (like I Can’t Stand to Ramble) with the Good Ol’ Persons at Paul’s Saloon (San Francisco) in the early 1980s. In the years since, you’ve led other bands and performed with so many other legendary musicians. How has your experience performing with others informed your approach to writing original music?
Kathy: Oh yeah, I Can’t Stand To Ramble. I love that song and I haven’t sung it in a long time. Maybe I should dust that one off. That’s a good example of my trying to express a point of view that’s more feminine. You know, after all those Don’t Fall In Love With A Rambler-type songs, I thought: some folks like to sit and watch the flowers grow around their front door, and that could be bluegrass too.
All the musicians I’ve played with over the years have had their influence on me, on my singing, playing, and songwriting. I definitely write to the strengths of the folks I’m playing with. So, songs take on a bluesy, swingy, Latin, jazzy, rockin’, country, ballad, or kick-ass feel at different times. If I’m playing in a band with great harmony singers, every song has lots of three part harmony. If I’m in a band with killer soloists, that will effect the layout of a song. If the band has one hot groove, I’ll wind up writing songs that really live in that groove.
Playing in a band with John Reischman for all those years sure colored my songwriting, and we co-wrote and collaborated on some songs, which was great. That ’80s era of the Good Ol’ Persons (with John, Sally, Bethany, Paul, and Kevin) really enabled me to flourish as a songwriter. The band was so supportive and open to ‘most anything. The ten years with the original Kathy Kallick Band (Avram, Tom, and Amy) launched another spate of songwriting, and those folks loved to dig in and work on new stuff.
All along, there have been songs that didn’t fit into the current band sound, or into a bluegrass context, and I’ve often saved those for other situations, like the duet gigs with Nina Gerber. I started bringing odd unfinished bits of songs to Nina, and she could breathe life into them. Pretty soon I started writing with that in mind, leaving room for Nina to embellish and complete songs. There are songs I only play with her that just stay in the dark between times. And then it’s fun to throw a real burner at Nina and see her strut her bluegrass chops!
I’ve loved collaborating and co-writing with Scott Nygaard. He’s got guitar voicings I would never dream of, as well as rhythms and accents and vocabulary that are way out of my realm, so the songs go someplace I could never take them on my own. That’s a big thrill.
More recently I’ve had the honor of playing bass and singing with Mac Martin, a bluegrass pioneer and icon. His phrasing has been elusive for me, and I’ve had to work to sing with him, to match his quicksilver shorthand style of phrasing, which is really loose and conversational and so bluegrass! I just wrote a song that required me to apply that style in order to sing the thing. I was struggling to sing my own song until I realized where the phrasing came from, and had that “Oh yeah!” moment.
Rick: Part 2 of my interview with Kathy will be published next week, including her thoughts about what inspires her to keep writing original music and answers the question “What have you learned from your personal journey as a songwriter that might be helpful to others walking their own creative path?”
Stay tuned…
Tags: acoustic music, creative process, creativity, Muse, music, singer/songwriter, song, songwriter interview, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
Sometimes it can be helpful to look at one creative pursuit through the lens of another.
What can shopping for fresh ingredients and then prepping and cooking a wonderful meal teach you about songwriting? How does your knowledge of, say, storytelling or literature inform your efforts in an adjacent area of interest?
I’ve come to believe that the art of oil painting is mostly about the art of problem solving. How do you represent the full spectrum of daylight in all its brilliance and luminosity with tubes of mostly opaque paint? Think about it — the whitest white is bland and chalky compared to a single ray of sunlight.
So how does a painter get a painting to “read” such that art viewers are pleased and satisfied by what they see? No easy task that.
How long does it take to paint a painting? The answer is some number of hours or days, plus years or decades of ongoing work, failure, progress, study, comprehension, trial, error, growth and development. With each painting and every trip to a museum, the artist has the opportunity to progress on a journey that yields ever finer distinctions and greater knowledge.
Knowledge precedes execution. Although anyone can have an occasional happy accident, nobody can consistently paint better (or cook better or write better) than he or she knows how.
So what does all of this have to do with songwriting?
The answer is totally up to you.
But if you’ve noticed or learned something about songwriting from an entirely different creative interest, please drop me a line or share a comment. You never know when a nugget inside your own head may help somebody else in just the right way at just the right time.
Tags: creative process, creativity, music, singer/songwriter, song, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
I had the pleasure and privilege of listening to Jim Hurst perform his special brand of musical magic this weekend. Performing with the totally awesome Claire Lynch Band (in my former home town of Sebastopol no less), Jim presented a delectable, bottomless cornucopia of melody, tones, percussion and brilliant phrases song after song, each one just right.
As you watch Jim play his guitar, straining hard for a glimpse of insight into what he’s actually doing to produce such amazing sounds, there’s surprisingly little to see. My ears tell me he’s using a bunch of fingers on his right hand to pick his lead notes while maintaining a strong, precise bass line, but I could hardly see any of his fingers move. That, plus his warm, soothing harmony and lead vocals and his creative songwriting ability and his obviously joyful and generous spirit make Jim Hurst somebody you’d really enjoy talking with.
Rick: Your improvisational solos always sound so fresh, thoughtful and fluid. Do you think about improv similar to how you think about composing a new song from scratch?
Jim: Thank you. Only in that the melody and rhythm/groove aspects are important. Other than that they are pretty different approaches to me.
I create a song from some inspiration and origination that to me is a fresh canvas. I only have to make me happy. My improvisational approach to soloing definitely is relegated by the song and the options or limitations there. Also it can be more or less relative to the melody depending on the song and the numbers of solos — whether I do more than one or if I am one of a group of instruments taking solos. I try to consider the dynamics of a song and character or overall feel of the song to give me my parameters as well as the artist’s or producer’s desires/thoughts. I then have to make my happiness fit theirs.
Rick: When you listen to new original music, what are some of things that tend to catch your ear in a way that you end up saying “Mmm, I kinda like that song, maybe I’ll pick it on my guitar sometime?”
Jim: I have a fairly wide musical palette and can enjoy (or tolerate) most types of recorded or live art. But I tend to enjoy things I can musically and lyrically understand more than the overly cerebral or complex things. Not to confuse full orchestration symphonic pieces or power-chord rock to this, I enjoy those type things as well. I mean lyrics that have me looking things up in history books or otherwise spending time trying to discover the meaning(s) or lingo, or music that is more mathematic or theoretic by design, and/or done primarily to put down another culture or lifestyle — or overtly brag about it.
I tend to use music and musical expression as an escape from real-world issues, political or otherwise. But I also need to have something there I can latch onto or at least somewhat understand or can digest without too much “study.” I will learn from music, especially things I can’t do as of yet, if ever. But I think melody and feeling good are the main ingredients.
Rick: What have you noticed about the creative process of songwriting that helps most with your own writing?
Jim: That no one way is the only way, unless of course one is writing to fit a scenario (like a movie, TV or theatrical score) or commercial success goal (country music). If one would make a list of their top five songwriters and listen to the works of these folks, you would possibly hear similar chords, arrangements, story lines, etc., but they would sound different if not unique.
In one genre alone, let’s use traditional bluegrass, I can choose a few: Bill Monroe, Carter Stanley, Jimmy Martin, Pete Gobel and Hazel Dickens. Each of these folks come from near the same demographic background and era, yet they sound different in their approaches. Same for any genre. My biggest takeaway here is that they were each trying to reveal a story, emotion, or experience that they felt sincere about and wanted to share. Even if it was an imaginary point of reference, they made it seem real. I try to do the same, and the biggest difficulty for me is trying to sound new without changing the overall genre.
Rick: What is the single most important insight you’ve thought about that could benefit other songwriters?
Jim: Write what you feel is good. Don’t be complacent or eager to wrap up, and try not to overwork. Sounds like a dichotomy, doesn’t it? I’ve heard other songwriters say, “It’s not finished until it is,” and I think that is a good saying. Every song I have ever written (instrumental or lyric song) has benefited from my deciding when it is finished without prejudice. I mean, I don’t want to overwork the song, but I do want it to feel complete.
Also, I try to record and listen back, sometimes over a period of time to confirm my own opinions, positive or negative. I also hate to hear someone say (judge) that one’s creative art is either not good or incomplete when it is really only their own opinion. Who would have the audacity to say that Beethoven’s or Mozart’s pieces are either incomplete or overworked? How about Bill Monroe or James Taylor? Duke Ellington or Hoagie Carmichael? My opinion is the only ones that would say anything like that are arrogant and have a false sense of perfection in their own efforts. Commercial success doesn’t mean art, and vice versa.
www.jimhurst.com
www.cdbaby.com/hurstjim
www.cdbaby.com/hurstjim2
www.digstation.com/jimhurst
www.discrevolt.com/jimhurst
www.myspace.com/jimhurst
www.sonicbids.com/jimhurst
Many thanks to Kevin Russell for presenting the Claire Lynch Band to a sold-out house in Sebastopol and for hooking me up with Jim for this interview.
Tags: creative process, creativity, Jim Hurst, music, singer/songwriter, song, songwriter interview, songwriting ideas, songwriting tips
