blue eyed dressed for every situation

I haven’t been blogging much lately because everything I want to say I’ve been putting into my songs.

I’m hoping that by Christmas I’ll have demo‘ d all of the songs for this album I want to make. It’s taking longer than I wanted but I’ll have to learn patience I suppose.

Everything is written in my notebooks and usually on guitar (though there’s one that I started on Banjo so who knows where that might lead ?). I have a Dictaphone from Radio Shack and have been filling those little tapes with songs as they progress from a nugget of an idea through to completed verses and choruses. Dan P. has been a good sounding board – keeping me confident that I’m not going to make a tit of myself. I’ve played about 4 or 5 of these live at open mics and have learned a bit from that.

Once I’ve worked through a few attempts on the Dictaphone and have listened to the results on the iPod while driving I get a better idea for how I’ll start to arrange them. Garageband is a brilliant brilliant tool for me and I’ve demo’ d a few bits on it already. There’s a couple of simple guitar + vocal demos on my MySpace site.

So far I’ve got the following

Interference. Words are a poor tool for communication. Who’s jamming your signal ?

Pretty Little Thing. It’s about my pretty little thing who laughs because she can. Do you remember being a child and just rolling around on the floor laughing because you could ?

The Sky Is Falling. This is an interesting song because so far all I’ve got is my Dictaphone demo with the banjo and a vague idea that it might be about the tabloid press. Very influenced by Simple Kid.

Man In The Moon. If I ruled the world I’d get Richard Hawley to record this song. This is the first time I’ve written a song that I can imagine someone else recording. I’m hoping this will be similar to some of his material from Coles Corner.

Devil & The Deep Blue Sea. Our eldest girl is growing up fast. I have to come to terms with the fact that her expression of needing me for ‘stuff’ is changing. I can’t save her from monsters and bad dreams anymore.

Dive. Was written in April at Bore Place with Danny Higgins (the link is to my blog entry about that magic weekend). Since that weekend I’ve added an introduction and a middle 8 (which I wrote last Friday !). I changed the chorus melody ever so slightly.

(Gonna) Be Alright. Appeared on a Saturday afternoon and has been with me ever since. A very simple song in A minor telling us that the glass is half full.

There’s a couple of others that need a bit more graft before they’re ready. I might never do anything with them.

Namebadge was started when we were on holiday in France and I really really want to do something with this because I’ve got something to say and this song might be saying it.

One of those Days is a bit too whiny and self indulgent so I’m thinking of rewriting it to become ‘One Of Those Girls’ because the chorus is good and I don’t want to lose it.

Who’s Calling The Shots is written about a friend. Who’s wearing the pants in that relationship ? This one needs more work, it’s a bit too obvious to be honest and I can’t convince myself.

Words Don’t Work I performed at my first gig back in June. My mother-in-law is challenging. In so many ways. What part of fuck-the-fuck-off don’t you understand ?

I’ve been spending as much time as possible playing, writing and even doing some gigs.

The songs are getting better – a couple have been good enough that I was looking forward to playing them live at some open mics.

On my MySpace page http://myspace.com/imadethebbc there are 2 new songs

“Devil & The Deep Blue Sea” was started in mid-June while sitting in the sun out in our garden. The dictaphone has been a powerful tool in developing songs like this one.
It took a few days but I managed to craft a fully rounded song (well, in my opinion anyway). The song is about our eldest girl and how she needs me less and less as she grows. I don’t want her to grow up too fast and with secondary school starting this week I’m really conscious of the fact that she’s no longer our little girl.

“Man In The Moon” was a chord sequence I first played around with in 1998. I found the piece of paper with the chords and a half-thought-out lyric. It was one of those evenings when I promised myself I was going to write something, anything. Part of the advice I’ve been given is to make sure I set aside time every week to write and to make sure I produce something. To write a good song I need to write several crappy songs.
Imagining myself as Richard Hawley (look him up and buy some of his music) I tried to write something that could have a big twangy reverbed guitar solo in the middle straight out of the 50s complete with a big band behind me.
The lyric is about someone trapped in an bad relationship. It’s not 100% finished but I’ve played it live twice now and I’m getting a feel for the tempo and where the lyrics need to be polished. The demo on myspace is slower than how it’s played live.