As a development from talking about how I approach writing songs it seems like a decent idea to give you some idea of songs I think work and are exceptions to the bland and examples of the sparkly. So here is one.
Steve Young – Seven Bridges Road Get yourself a copy of this song, preferaby as I think the better version and the more ‘connected’ of the numerous versions out there, the first recording by Steve Young of this which on his Lp ‘Rock Salt and Tears’, from I think it was 1969. That’s ‘the one’. It’s on Youtube. Give it a search up if you require.
It’s a fine example of a song that appears to be about little that is concrete but paints a wonderfully impressionistic spiritual and nostalgic picture of a past, a place, a feeling, a love for the land and a romaticism for the countryside of his own youth. It does this in a miracle of four verses and no chorus.
It was covered by the Eagles, where it hit. Their version frankly pales alongside his but of course they had the reputation and the record company push to see a hit from it and to this day listeners and the internet seem to think that they wrote it. It quite possibly earnt more for him in royalties than he was ever likely to earn from his own recordings, sadly.
The words . .
There are stars in the southern sky Southward as you go. There is moonlight and moss in the trees Down the Seven Bridges Road.
Now I have loved you like a baby… Like some lonesome child, And I have loved you in a tame way, And I have loved you wild.
Sometimes there’s a part of me Has to turn from here and go… Running like a child from these warm stars Down the Seven Bridges Road.
There are stars in the southern sky. And if ever you decide you should go, There is a taste of time sweet and honey Down the Seven Bridges Road
Thoughts . .
Sometimes simplicity is all that is required, and with it he creates his ode to a place he loves, but that’s not quite enough for any song, it needed something a little extra, some mystery, and the lines about loving at the top of the second verse create that. Is he talking about a person or the countryside? Perhaps alluding to his interaction with it over time and ‘growing up’ within it as indeed he did. Continuing in the third verse, is he talking about needing to turn from small town America for the wider panorama of life elsewhere? Or perhaps of the need for a spiritual and creative freedom he couldn’t find ‘at home’. Steve Young grew up in a number of places, but namely in this instance I understand it’s a about an actual place in Alabama.
The final verse seems to be a return to this ‘place’ a a spiritual centre of his life and a desire to return there, at least if not physically, then in his mind. ‘A taste of time sweet and honey’, is a beautiful line that expresses this beautifully I feel.
There is something about the openess and simplicity of the lyrics, married with some wonderfully evocative and emotional chords that leaves the song open enough for the listeners’ interpretation. This is often what a truly great song is about, leaving enough space for the listener to harmonize with. not being overly literal, or painting a picture that allows for no interpretation or personalised undestanding of it.
And so, one of the hardest things for a songwriter is avoiding overwriting, having the guts to leave the space required for a listeners equal involvement. It’s the mark of a great songwriter, something in the instance of this song I think Steve Young truly was. I mean 4 simple, uncomplicated verses and it’s his most famous song, that’s pretty good going!
So in previous blog chapters, is that even a thing with a blog? I have talked in general about being and wanting to be a Songwriter, not your average pop type stuff, but the scribbling of songs of self expression, meaningful stuff, the gubbins of life. Talked a bit about finding themes in your work, and developing those. So.. I thought this time an example of how I work through a song idea, and develop it (hopefully) into something bigger and better would be a good idea. It’s just how I do it, or have done it in the instance of this particular song, it’s not how I have done it every time, nor is it how YOU should do it. EVERYONE will have their own way of doing things.
For example, Nick Cave says that he works methodically, each and every day, a bit more like a 9-5 at his songs; I’m a working man, and already do the 9-5, so I tend to write when inspiration hits, which is something unreliable in it’s frequency, but I’m not (yet) trying to make a living from song writing. He is. And hell I don’t need any futher burdens, I have plenty and this is what I do for fun.
Kicking off point..
So my kicking off points are a variety of things, they can be a personal experience, a desire to express something simple, like ageing, or a story I’ve seen on T.V., or a combination of elements. I’m going to give one example below where I sarted with an idea, and hopefully moved somewhere more interesting with it, the decisions I made in this instance and tell you why, so you can see my thought process.
The Song – The Yard (Garden of Eden)
I wanted to writie a song about the innocence of youth, my youth/childhood, and I knew I wanted to express something in that song about how that innocence is removed from us by adulthood and the experiences that lead us to being a ‘grown up’.
I decided early on that I would use a simple background to express this, the Yard that as a kid living in Alabama in 1975 and early ’76 I had ridden my bike around. It was a lovely place, shady, cool and green, while the sun shone hard on the sirrounding farmland, this little spot close to the family house was cool and more comfortable, a safe place.
Later while writing the song and remembering that Fig Trees had grown plentifully in this self same yard it struck me that there was a parallel to be made with the fig leaf that had covered the sexy bits of Adam, and with the Garden of Eden, the original safe, cool space where the children of God lived happily, un-burdened by life’s ‘realities’, as likened to the embodiment of original sin. I’m not a believer but I find religious imagery facinating (and useful).
Here’s my first draft..
So what you’ll see are some ideas really, not well organised, some of it almost pushed into a verse, others just trying to get over an atmosphere of memories and images and then the final little reminder to myself.. ‘The Yard= Garden of Eden’, this is the point where I would have started getting a bigger and better idea of what the song could be, and why it would be more than just a list of things I remembered as a kid basically.
It’s really tough but when you write I would advise not being to tight on what you want or think you want from the song, be open to thinking about moving in different directions as spontaneous and energising ideas spring up.
And now?
It would have been here that I put the pen down for a bit, probably until the next evening after 9-5 work and in the meantime thought about the contrast of light and shade, the cool of shade and the heat of the sun, the protection of the canopy from that hot sun and it’s goodness therefore and the opposing ”evil’ or ‘negative’ of the heat, and bright exposing light. You don’t have to be in front of your pad with a pen to be songwriting, it happens while you’re at work, brushing your teeth and thinking about the song you have got on the go and are excited about, energised about.
So the ‘themes’ started arriving, the canvas, the placing, the location of the song was arriving, and I was starting to get a loose idea (remember don’t try to be to tight with your thinking) of a potential structure for the song. Sun, heat flames = Bad, Shade, cool, greenery = Good, but how to tie it all up???
Draft 2..
Probably the next day I wrote..
I’ll go through it .. by line (yawn, skip this bit of you don’t want to know my thought process ;-))
V1, In the Yard there grows an old Oak Pecan tree where you can knock the squirells down, And in the Shade of the branches of the old Oak there you can turn old Methusela round.
So this establishes themes of place, the canopy, covering shade, the healthy rich production of growth, as in the nuts, and a little dash of a real memory (as my Grandad employed me to stop the squirrels getting all the Pecan nuts, with the use of a slingshot, I feel forever guilty, but hey, that’s life), The reference to Methusela is a real one and a Metaphoric one that serves the purpose of introducing an image from the Bible. Methusela was the oldest person in the bible BUT it’s also the name we gave to my Great Aunt Ruth’s car, a GIANT hulk of an American car driven by my tiny Great Aunt who was the same hieght as my Uncle Jack, when he was kneeling! So yes, the verse is personal, but I felt that the slightly impenetrable personal references gave it an other wordliness that a listener could project onto, and you should, I think, always leave a little space for a listener to interact while listening.. that’s just my thinking I guess.
V2, And children pedal through the hot days, and straight through a Red Ants nest, And thru the cool leaves of the green fig trees, up the gravel drive, to the old place, where time takes it’s uneasy rest.
References that establish location (Alabama, gravel and red ants nests) establishing the heat/cool now, with ‘pedal through the hot days’ and the ‘cool leaves of the green fig trees’. And a first mention that things are not as cozy or permanent as you may think, with ‘Where time takes it’s uneasy rest’. For me this is the question that’s being asked. What’s not right here, when and where are things not ok, and why?
I try, not always succesfully to make sure nothing is in a song without a reason, and I would suggest that this single element is what often makes the difference between a good song, or one that doesn’t ‘get quite there’.
V3, In The Yard where the rain soaked soil rises up like the risen Jesus, new born in the oven light of the midday sun, In the Yard that rings out with promises, where lives have only just begun.
The smell of Alabama after a thunderstorm is like NOTHING else as the soil, bone dry with 90 degree heat beating on it for weeks is soaked and gives up a turbo charged petrichor, it’s like a rebirth, like being new born, innocent and childlike, hence the comparison drawn here with Jesus and his re-emergence from the tomb, this cool rain is compared with the oven light of the midday sun, pretty obvious stuff, nothing too complicated here, then.. ‘rings out with promises’, the promise of life, and of lives, (those of the playing children) that are just striking out.
V4 Bored yet? Sory, but I thought it might be useful to just see what I was doing, and why . . .
And not knowing it you have exchanged your dreams for the Apple core, And in the shadows of the old Oak There now, The Devils sits and scratches his black back up against, the tree, And turns you into life’s whore.
This verse got edited out and you can see why now, I struggled with it for a while, I wanted a kind of darker Folk Horror feel to the song for a while and tried to push this agenda onto the song, and sometimes, when you meet with resistance, listen to what the song is saying, its’ probably saying, oi’ mate, that bit’s crap, it’s not good, ditch it, BUT you can go up the Cul-de-sac of an idea for quite a while.
BY THE WAY… thought about a Chorus yet???
V5 In the Yard there grew a Darkness, but yet there was no cooling shade, A tree trunk stands there now, in the middle of your memories, And forgets the dreams you once made.
This is a much better idea than the verse with the Devil in it, it’s less direct, more painterly, relates to the themes of light and dark and isn’t utterly obvious and more than a bit trite. But it needs properly integrating into the song, and it’s obvious at this point that this song will need further work if verse 4 is shite and verse 5 needs better context. The tree trunk serves the purpose of expressing the passage of time, no more shady Oak, but the light penetrated shade and evil of ageing, it represents the passage of time and the passage of childlike innocence now…still you need to get the ‘corruption’ of childhood bit over more, we’re all too unbalanced towards comfortable cool and safety. It’s an issue.. hmmm.. BUT.. just before you down pen again for the evening, in a bit of a flash (and these are the enjoyable majic bits) you think of a simple short two line chorus…
CHORUS And in the Garden of Eden x 3 There are Snakeskins, laying in the sun.
You can’t help it at this point, because it just came to you, but that’s a little spark of genius, it expresses two things you need to succinctly; the fact that when you’re a kid you find snakeskins laying around in the Southern States, which as you can imagine is slightly alarming, particularly the big ones BUT more than that they are a sign of the ‘Serpent’ the snake in the Garden of Eden, original sin, the corruption of man, a sign of evil, (Biblical imagery remember?) and a perfect trope for something being NOT QUITE RIGHT in this Yard, our Garden of Eden…
Maybe you won’t need that shit verse you wrote after all as the Chorus might do the job for you??? We’ll see you think, when I get back to this tomorrow and iterate draft 3/4.
3 more iterations, and it’s a tidy up job during recording..
So there were apparently three more iterations, on closer inspection I tried to run with that crappy verse.. which got better, but not better enough. I recall getting to the recording stage, realising there was a 6 minute tune here, and needing to edit, I looked at that verse, and realised that everything it expressed had been expressed, in a much more open, accesible way that could be interpreted as the listener liked, not as I wanted to impose, CHUCK IT OUT.. this was the right choice. And I think this is something I would like to stress. At ANY stage you need to try to be open to throwing out something if it just doesn’t work, or have a use, or serve a distinct purpose, even if you have done lots of work on it, say bugger it to yourself, you WILL thank yourself later.
So the above two workings out are in my jotter, which is my workbook, you will see that I’ve started to find chords and a melody which I am working out alongside the lyrics and that I have moved some minor bits about to help the song ‘sing’ better, that simple. I’ve still kept with that crappy verse though, literally only throwing it out when I recorded the song.
final stages..
Then when I think I’ve done enough, or stopped at the right point, and am ready to record this song or just finish it I write it down in another bigger A4 book that I keep of songs I consider finished. There’s lots in it I have never recorded and earlier songs that now don’t cut the mustard (but I thought were great at the time). then I record it. (see link to the tune so you can listen to it below). Here is the last draft, down in the big a4 book I have, with any simple instructions on it I wanted to note.
So that’s it, that’s how I approached that particular song and just some of my thought processes with it. If you want a better trace of what I changed and how and to interpret why I changed it, you will be able to see that from looking at the photos of each ‘stage’, though to be fair, quite a lot of thought was off paper and just inside the darkness of my vaccuous head.
I hope that this has been of some use, , please feel free to comment.
In which I briefly discuss my experience of seeing Mr. Daniel Romano perform.
I rarely make the effort to go up to the smoke to see any music, I’m spoilt with a great venue 5 minutes walk away and unless it’s really something VERY special a couple of hours there and a couple back seem like just too much hassle, but I would have travelled great distances, travelled across Mountain ranges, seas and deserts to see this guy perform. And in fact some did, travelling from overseas to see this band. That’s how good they are!
Before..
I truly believe that tomorrow I’m going to see one of the greats of modern music. It takes a lot for me to say that.. I’m not easily impressed, as I’m happily a bigoted musical facist who rates 90% of popular music as dreadful shite. BUT THIS GUY…!
Discovered on my own via Youtube.. because I was interested in alternative Country music, and Folk, over time he morphed around, never staying too long in any one idiom to let you get used to him, he does it on purpose, he’s a shape shifter and we love him for it, people who know, know (as pretentious as it sounds). I have talked about him to many, very few are aware of him, and those that have been are the sort of people who are DEEP into their music, so I’m onto the right track, then over about 15 years of not even being able to get his ‘product’, buying import cds, and rare to find vinyl from overseas.. Covid output, Lps like Finally Free. I have just got to see him.
Filmed by another, that’s me you can hear whooping like an idiot in the background, how embarassing, but you know, it was REALLY GOOD.
In an odd quirk of simulacrum I could have played the venue he was at on Thursday night, yesterday, when friends The Bevis Frond were gigging at the Louisiana Bristol.
And his required support Juliana Riolino.. I’m seeing him soon and I’m very excited. VERY.
After..
Really hard to review, as they’re like nothing you’ve fallen across before, it was a wall of sound and energy. . . Daniel Romano played his Ricky like Pete Townshend, elements of the Who, Undertones, 60s Garage/Punk, Country Pickin’, there was even a moment I thought they might swing into Dead Ringer For Love, so touches of Jim Steinman, folk psych melodies, close harmony vocals, classic 70s punk.
Because it’s a rare thing.. I was very interested to see who on God’s Earth is a Outfit fan, a Romano addict. And it was wholly appropriate that the attendees were a cross section of oldies, youngsters, fashionistas, headbangers, and oddballs that can’t be categorised a bit like Romano himself; or me in my Townes Van T Shirt with Ras over shirt and Clarkes Wallabees.
The Wallabees got a mention on platform 7 London Bridge from a bloke who commented on them and then said how the only time he’d ever owned a pair was when he’d robbed some. I think he said his name was Snakey, or Cranky Pete or some such.
Everyone there was a fan, it was like some self help group. We all wanted to talk to each other about how special the guy and his escapades are. I was one of the last to get cleared out no doubt for a later club night at the venue, but got five seconds as the bass player came out to crack down some gear.. ‘I’ve been waiting to see Daniel play for about 15 years’ I said, ‘well thanks for coming man’. ‘Have a good gig in Brighton tomorrow night, they’ll like you and Brighton’s a good music town, I bought these tickets for London before I knew about the Brighton date, I live about 20 miles away’ from Brighton. He says ‘what’s your name dude’? ‘Mike Murphy’ says I. ‘Well I’ll put you on the guest list says he’.
So I’m considering it. Sunday night and work the next day and I’m 56, but BOY do I want to go.
To sum up, great gig one of the best I’ve ever seen, Juliana Riolino, Christ you would have paid £16 just to see her, she was great, but for me, Romano is the full ticket and then some. £16 for a London gig, I mean that’s pretty crazy too…
He’s the Superstar no one has (yet?) heard of, and the size of the stage at the Omeara was the perfect reflection of the situation, a SUPERSTAR on a POSTAGE STAMP.
An artist of world stature, very special, special evening, special crowd, special band and a very special frontman.
In the last post I talked generally about songwriting. Musing over how I think I’m a songwriter and how you might be one too and what you could do about it. I finished off saying that I wondered how I’d kick off the next section and how I was thinking maybe I’d talk about themes in songwriting, how you might find them. Finding themes that inspire you to expend the energy and enthusiasm required to ‘complete’ a song. (p.s. I’m not sure you ever know when your song is complete, you just learn when it’s best to stop piddling around with it).
Don’t expect your areas of specific interest to just appear in a puff of majical smoke; it took a long time for the themes in my own songwriting to announce themselves, but over time they’ve quite neatly divided themselves up into a few catergories. Family, Love (in all forms), ageing, the passage of time and the past, Nature, personal history and memory, our formative years as globe riding humans, a love and interest in the dark gothic and macabre of Folk music and Folk ‘themes’ (you know like drowning your girlfriend in the nearest pond), the unfathomable expanse of life and what it is to be living, and of course Death. (without Death life just woulnd’t be quite as, well, lifey I guess).
Christ I hear you thinking, jolly stuff eh!! But actually,I think it’s all about how you treat it, how you write it, how you express it. You can be subtle, it can just be the underlying canvas to your song and have only a tenuous link to those themes, providing it fits and sits with your general direction, sound, character etc as a writer and of course you can mix and match and intertwine these thematic choices together in a single song.
So for example (and this is a pretty dark one of mine) I heard about a murder in the North West of America where the only sign that there had ever been a body in the forest glade where people searched for one was that blonde hair was found in the nests of birds who had made their home there. This striking image facinated me, a very visual image that I then turned into a song about time, the irrevocable growth and regrowth of unstoppable nature, more than a touch of ‘the forest is always watching’ and of course, the murder.
You can find your inspiration anywhere, mine for this song ‘A Woman In The Trees’ was watching a Youtube video, then doing some research, and wanting to write a song that expressed the unstoppable passage of time and it’s cyclical nature and tell this striking story at the same time in my own way.
Be Prepared
You might run into the smallest bit of inspiration, sometimes just noodling some chords on the guitar having had a couple of glasses of red wine, or watching the TV, laying half asleep in bed, so keep something with you you can jot down even the silliest, smallest note in or on, an iPhone or a jotter, or an A5 lined blank paged book (my favourite). Don’t be frightened or embarassed to write down just a few words if you know you’re not in the mood to work the song out there and then, or you don’t have your preffered instrument with you to enable you to do so, or you’ve got to do the house cleaning in the next hour.
Planting a seed?
Here’s one of mine, I’ve never followed it up in any concrete sense as it’s not very good, or I felt, worthy of further pursuit. If anything it would probably slip in a bigger and better idea, but at least it’s there in my jotter, ready for the right time, if there ever is one.
‘A village/Town/roads, covered by layers of soil, & history, forgotten a history held, a present squandered.
I think you think you’re the first, when you may be the very last, there are wells that mine the village tales and keep good the layers past..’
So that’s a kind of theme of layers of time, and geology I’ve thought a bit about and some words in a kind of verse and that was it. It’s not deep, or very meaningful at all and not very interesting or good, but it’s a starting point. And later if I was mucking around with some chords on the guitar I might choose them to see if they fit, if they did and I felt enthusiastic enough, I might fit them to it better or write some more words, and if they were okay and had an energy to them I might continue, they might lead somewhere and off the song would gather. 5 or 6 iterations down the line I might chuck it in the bin, or record it, and if it was any good after listeneing to it on and off for months I might decide it was an okay song. (Though sometimes you know straight away). I think of these little jotted ideas, small lyrics, or pieces of words to collage later as ‘seeds’ really, starting places that may or may not grow. I leave them in my book and may add the compost and water of a bit of time, a guitar riff, or other words later.
So don’t expect..
So I wouldn’t expect to know what your themes are or are going to be, perhaps you can already look at what you’re doing and can see what seems to get your creative songwriting fluids a flowing?
Maybe concentrate on those ‘themes’ and develop some, or at the very least find a subject or subjects, setting, background, canvas, idea, that gets you energised. And we’ll chat about getting some of that down and developing it in the next post perhaps?
My brother and I grew up around music and in a musical family. When I was about 14 or 15, I started writing songs. I had just gotten a 3-ply top Yamaha 6-string acoustic guitar that I could hardly play, and the first thing I did was plug a microphone into an old tape cassette deck and sing a song into it, recording myself singing my own song, not someone else’s. I’m still doing this.
My brother had, at about the same time, gotten a keyboard. He didn’t record any songs; he learned how to play really well before he did that. This trend has continued throughout our lives. In parallel, he has become the consummate instrumentalist more interested in melody lines than words, and I’ve been more interested in the lyrics of a song than he is. Along the way, I just learned enough intrumental playing ability to get by, though some, including myself, might argue with that! It was later that I realized that I was a songwriter and not a musician and that this moment in my life was the signpost.
Lyrical
I guess the point I’m trying to make above is that for some, and you’ll know if this includes you, the words of a song are important. Important enough that you listen closely to them and think about them. Then after a number of years of listening you might get to the point where you make judgements on whether those words are good or bad words for a song, if they are meaningful or throwaway, if they lend support, if they speak to you and if you think the songwriter did a good job or not. If you’re thinking this ‘stuff’ and wondering if you could do it too, or even do a better job somehow, then you’re probably a songwriter and maybe you just haven’t put pen to paper yet?
1st Lesson
So, I guess my first ‘lesson’ would be to start actively listening – to start wondering about what you like, what makes you respond to a song, where you engage with a song, what topics thrill you, and what topics bore you. Maybe start thinking about what themes and topics interest you enough to fuel the enthusiasm and effort required to write a song.
So what themes do interest you?
I’m not going to be teaching you how you should write, what style to write within or what to write about. All this is for you to work out and there are no right or wrong ways, no right or wrong topics. What I’m definitely not going to talk about here is how to write a ‘Pop’ song. You can work out if it’s a Pop song that you want to write but as it’s quite possibly one of the most difficult things you can set out to do I think I will avoid getting involved. AND what I will be talking about is writing songs of self expression, songs that are in your heart and waiting to get out, not songs that are committee designed to appeal to the widest possible audience with the greatest disposible income.
State of play?
I think we have seen ‘songs’ being turned from (a sometimes) Artform into a cheap Commodity ‘product’ by and because of streaming services like Spotify and that ‘Song’ has too frequently become a cheap devalued white bread version of something that was once certainly deserving of greater respect. Sure there has always been simplistic boy meets girl Doo Wop or Sha Na Nah pop music around and there is plenty of scope for all types of treatment BUT there has also been in the past a greater respect, popularity, and understanding of the deeper more meaningful themes and lyrics of songwriters like James Taylor, Roy Harper, Carly Simon, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Cave, Townes Van Zandt or Tom Waits.
Quality not Quantity
I believe that we have already seen a return of interest in deeper more meaningful songs. Recently, at least in the U.K., there has been an increase in the Radio air time given to playing the fresh new music of bands that had their supposed heyday in the late 1970s and 80s and early 90s, The Pretenders, OMD, Suede, Simple Minds, Kula Shaker are all examples of this. I think record companies may have realised that they have underestimated these acts longevity and commercial potential with both past generational audiences and young audiences that seek substance and slightly more depth to their music. This is good news for me and hopefully for you as it may mean that people are looking for content to their musical cake and not just the decorative frosting.
Quality not Quantity part 2
I have had the joy of having an Lp released by a real live record label, Blue Matter. Half of the team behind this label is a chap called Nick Saloman who is the mainstay of the band The Bevis Frond. I consider him a songwriter of remarkable quality and significance, a great English voice in song and indeed there are many others who would agree, including names that you would know. Yet he remains, I guess, and at least globally, relatively obscure as a songwriter. THAT DOESN’T MEAN HIS SONGS are no good, it just means you haven’t heard them yet.
What I’m saying I guess is that you should be prepared, prepared to work on your songs and get your writing better on your own, with no plaudits, no encouragement, no record deal, nothing, because you’re a songwriter and it’s just what you do. Of course you may have lots of reasons why you want to write but in my opinion doing it because you just have to is the best one of these. Then, when someone whose song writing abilities you admire tells you your stuff is good, say thank you, take it fully onboard, agree with them and move on more confidently. Being even more opinionated than you were previously.
This is one thing you certainly have to be I feel to be a songwriter, opinionated, and willing to reflect that in your writing. Know what you like and don’t like and be prepared to stand by it, looking semi arrogantly down your nose at rotten songs.
That’s it for now..
So I think I will stop here for a while and consider where best to kick off, or what to ‘discuss’ next. Maybe I’ll talk about the themes that interest me, and why, and how that developed for me. How you might focus on themes that could fire you up to write and some practical considerations about the process (for me) of writing, of putting pen to paper and working and re-working a song that might help you out too. For example Nick Cave says that songwriting is like work, you should work on it every day, and hey, he might well be right, he is afterall VERY successful on all levels of commerical and artistic songwriting. I however disagree.
I spend a lot of time thinking about, considering, criticising (In my own head) songwriting, I didn’t have much of a clue about how to do it, but then again it’s not something they teach at school (though you can take lessons in it), it’s something you have to feel your own way through, and make your own decisions about. I think I’ve slowly learnt a bit about how to do it.
I’m not coming at this from a commercial pop songwriting angle, but one of writing about what you know and love and want to express and want others to hear about. How to do that hopefully in an interesting an engaging way that allows for your own voice to be heard.
I’ll write here occasionally about my ideas, how others do it and what you and I can do to enhance our songs. I’m not saying I’m some incredible songwriter, but I do feel that it’s where my particular talent lays and others (more lauded and awarded than I) have complemented my abilities, so hopefully they’re right when they say they think I’m talented to some degree.
So you know the story don’t you? How Marty Stuart at the age of 13 or 14 got drafted into the Royal Family of Bluegrass, (or one of the big three at least), Lester Flatt’s band, that’s Lester Flatt of ‘Flatt and Scruggs’ fame, .. FFS!! you know!! ‘Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’ & ‘Duelling Banjos’? They recorded (but didn’t write it) Ringing any bells? You know, that cornerstone of musical heritage that lazy ass writers fall back on when you the reader doesn’t know what the f@@k they’re talking about. This tune was duplicated by their very own tricky flying fingers the blurred digits of Blooo Grassssss… and it in turn became a byeway of bigotry and ignorance for decades as people squealed porcine like and rolled about the imagined forest floor collecting leaves in their baggy Y Fronts.
You don’t know what I’m on about do you? Oh, you do,! Then I call, and raise you – ‘boy you got a purty mouth’..
Factoid – (Did you know that Joe Boyd, Nick Drake’s producer and the man who first recorded Pink Floyd for single release also produced Duelling Banjos? Read his Autobiography ‘White Bicycles’ if you don’t believe me)
Anyway, … yawn. Marty is a Good Ole’ Suthern Boy. Marty was virtually brought up on a Bus. He learnt all the right attitude, press savvy nouse and how to make his way through the narrative of Nashville Country Music fame from Lester and the Boys. Respect for his tradition, his elders and for his listeners. He got real good at playing Mandolin and Guitar too and then he got even better. YES He’s VERY good. He got so good that he played for Johnny Cash and married Johnny’s daughter Cindy. (later divorced) It was while playing for the gruff voiced Black Buffalo that he has said that he became aware of how an artiste can draw on and promote American Culture and to that end he is engaged not only in promoting the Lakota Sioux Nation but also his own planned ‘Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Music Museum’. I hope the Museum is good, every State in the U.S. of A has some sort of Museum honouring it’s musical heritage and not all of them are of a standard to deserve positive remark. I suspect though that his will be wonderful as he’s collected Country Music ephemera, Nudie and Cohen suits and the same such since a wee youth AND he owns Clarence White’s bBender Telecaster, the first guitar of its kind and now an essential tool in any decent Chicken Pickin’ Country guitarist’s arsenal of cliché’d weaponry. I say ‘Clichéd’ in a purely positive sense. As in ‘Shit That Sounds Good’ – ;Yeah but everyone does it’ – ‘yeah and do I f***kin’ care?!?’!
Nope.
It also appears that Marty’s latest cultural activity may be in promoting the feel of Psych Country Rock on his Lps and while gigging with his band ‘The Fabulous Superlatives’ selling that ‘Byrds Sound’; and perhaps affected by touring with Roger McGuinn and with other ex Byrds presenting their ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’ revitalisation he has sought to replicate the general vibe of that era. The Country Rock ouvre of those like the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons and Steve Young is one worth mining for certain. Maybe he’s been put under a mystical dose of Rock majick when he came into possession of Clarence’s bBender? Maybe there was some super strength 60’s Acid clinging to it’s frets that made it’s way though his sweaty palms and . . . . . * who the hell knows.
Clarence White’s b Bender – What?? – When C.W. was a member of the Byrds he and his bandmate Gene Parsons invented this gizmo that sat inside your (preferably Fender Telecaster) electric guitar that could with a dip of the hip and a pull on your guitar strap bend the b string of the guitar up a full tone to C sharp. This imitated the chromed smooth sound of Pedal and Laptop Steel Guitars. bBenders are now used by artists as non-Country as Glen Tilbrook of Squeeze and now, with Clarence’s actual original prototype guitar, which he was virtually given, by Marty Stuart. (But that’s a whole ‘nother story y’all).
Right, let’s natter about the two Lps…
WAY OUT WEST – SUPERLATONE RECORDS 2017
I’m going to try to avoid writing about individual songs, but just give my impressions of each Lp, starting with 2017’s ‘Way Out West’, produced by Mike Campbell who played for Tom Petty and who is an avowed Byrds fan. It shows. Perhaps this was enough of a reason to engage his services. Of interest (to sad fat men in basements like mine) is that though the overall production ‘sound’ is quite similar ‘Altitude’ released 2023, credits Marty Stuart with production, even the layout of ‘Altitude’ with it’s intros and reprises is like ‘Way Out West’. It seems like Marty Stuart learnt a fair bit while watching Mr. Campbell. To my ear ‘Altitude’ is the more musical of the two Lps. the more developed, and vibrant. But of that release, more later. Back to ‘Way Out West’.
The Lp starts with a filmic intro of desert dreamscape replete with a Jerry Jones Sitar Guitar played over Indian chanting soundscape, tape echoed to suggest those Peyote trips you never had; leaping into the first tune, a Surf Music, Hank Marvin’d Shadows tinged, Tremelo’d instrumental, 12 String guitar pipes in, are you trying too hard, you’ve thrown at least six 60s tripped out musical makers in already & we’re not 2 minutes towards the centre of the record….. hey you’re setting the scene!
To be frank, it’s a bit predictable, less original than one might have hoped, but.. I think there’s a reason for this… I’m really not sure but I think I can possibly say that Marty Stuart is unlikely to have ever tripped in his life. Marty, if you’re out there please feel free to drop me a line and tell me about the time you lay on the Motel bed asking over and over and over again for it all to stop. It doesn’t bother me but I think this is more tie dye by the instruction manual, less tie dye by the.. what’s that speck on the carpet, oh my god it’s a whole Indian village with a mouse who thinks he’s Jesus and who controls the wallpaper and how deep he wants it to be.
Don’t Take Pills
It’s not long before you’re into the title track ‘Way Out West’, where Marty talks about popping pills, what it did, what it does, and you’re not so sure anymore that he doesn’t have some first hand experience of the Lysergic, then you reassure your current opinin with, ‘well he joined Lester in the 60s and was with him until late teens (I think), unlikely Lester Flatt was dropping Acid or licking the Toad, always possible, but unlikely, more likely, sippin’ that good olde ‘Shine’ and talking dirty about the Hippies’. That wouldn’t have left the young Marty with much room for experimentation, but hey, it’s all just conjecture and wandering thought.
What I can say is that what Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives excel at is their instrumental ability, and no wonder with a player like guitarist Kenny Vaughan also in the band. What Marty Stuart doesn’t excel at always is powerful lyric driven songwriting. It’s good but it’s still more about the delivery than the substance. Don’t get me wrong I think both of these Lps are utterly fantastic, they are both beautiful things and I love them, they are getting a stupid amount of revolutions on the 1210MkV. However I can’t get away from feeling that the wordsmithing is a bit, well,.. weak. Maybe Marty doesn’t want to get too complicated, as Porter Wagoner said to my Dad once in the wings of the Ryman Auditorium, ‘Barry, you got to keep the songs simple, the people listening to ’em are just so dang stupid’.
The playing is sublime throughout, though for a moment you’re distracted as the engineer drys up every last vestige of washy psych’d out reverb in the mix and Marty Stuart says with all sincerity ‘Don’t Take Pills’. Always the Country styled American, there’s got to be a moral in the message along the way. You didn’t expect 16 time Grammy nominated 5 time winning Marty Stuart to sing a song about drug taking without establishing that he’s agin’ it, did you?
Before you know it, Time Ain’t Waiting for Nobody as in the guise of the tune ‘Time Don’t Wait for Nobody’ and the end of s1 is creeping up on you. (See what I did there, good huh!). Yes I’m listening to the Vinyl, suffering as it does from a slightly depressing poor pressing in places. More Ps than a bag of Jolly Green’s own.. hoorah. Anyway the song kicks off with Electric Ricky 12 in John Lennon meets Roger McGuinn style and you get the references, they’re fairly obvious to most listeners I would imagine, a bit like being fairly sure that Oasis were influenced, just a bit, by the Ruttles.
Side 2 ~ Rumble, is it a bungle?
Side 2 kicks off with a tune called ‘Quicksand’ credited on the Lp liner notes to Kenny Vaughan, but surely it’s a pastiche, a rip off, just the same as, pretty dang durn close to, ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray. In fact when I saw them last year, didn’t they introduce it as Rumble, before doing some hick stuff on the double bass, could just be holes in my memory, it has been known. maybe because unlike Marty, I did inhale and later, stir the Teapot. Given Vaughan’s punk past and love of the axe it’s a bit weird to see him credited and not Wray, good little intro though and off we go with some trad Bluegrass (or is it?) all eleckyfried, more volts in it than a pig in a slaughterhouse just before, well you know… ‘Air Mail Special’ written by Charlie Christian and Benny Goodman??? Well I just learned something. Believe me it don’t sound like the below. But it is the same song. Wow. Buy ‘Way out West’ and compare.
Do not expect the Superlatives to sound like this!
It’s proper Country now, dressed up for dinner and straighter than a heterosexual man drinkin’ shit beer in a strip joint. It’s gone all surfy now again with Kenny Vaughan stripping his Tele back to basics on the tune ‘Torpedo’. I said I wasn’t going to do this, to track by track it, I can’t stand reviews that do, however I suppose the linearity of an Lps play helps to structure an overall Story Arc and stops me from drifting off into the surf with the only Torpedos we get off the coast in the UK. Namely big fat old brown ones with sweetcorn highlights that help beaches fail their ‘clean swimming water’ status and ruin the local economies of places like Bexhill On Sea, where I last saw Marty play. Where Mr Stuart who, in beautiful wonderful Country Star style shouted out at one point during the gig ‘Howdy Bexhill, how y’all doing’ and then laughed when somone in the crowd shouted out, ‘That was Risky, well done’. He’d probably played Dortmund the night before. To his credit he laughed and I liked him then, and still do. The thing you get about Marty, is he ain’t no dumbass, you do get the feeling that he’s a smart, well educated, well read, gentleman and a genuinely nice person. Like Marilyn Monroe, it’s not just about a shapely and attractive figure. But Ooo I do like his neckerchiefs…
Crack on. The beautiful, ‘Desert Prayer – Part II’ rings out, and then a truly sublime song comes forth, the subtlest of Drawbar Organs in the background gives the tune an utterly majical shimmer, a song called ‘Wait For The Morning’. I take it back, it’s Marty Stuart penned, yep, it’s simple, religious lyrics borrowed, blended, straight, uncomplicated, but strong and hey who needs more words when more words aren’t needed. One verse and into a lovely slow, felt solo, choice, nothing flashy. It’s the song of an older man looking at the sunrise and reflecting on all the darkness now left behind him. It finishes, one verse one solo and a middle finger as it goes. Probably the best tune on the Lp for my buck and one of the shortest. The lp closes with an orchestral movie soundtrack remix/reprise of ‘Way Out West’. No mention of pills this time, just a fade to black through close harmonies and a rather tacky re-lick on the Jerry Jones.
Nice (but it ain’t jazz)
Natter about the lps Part 2
ALTITUDE – SNAKEFARM RECORDS 2023
So it’s the next night, I’m back from work, watered, scrubbed and now back down in the happy musical womb of my basement spinning his follow up release ‘Altitude’. I’m immediately struck that the Lp starts with a musical name drop, the same sort of drop that ‘Way Out West’ did, some sort of loose ‘trippy’Jam that they’ve recorded. I can tell by the tentative way the drummer is playing just behind the rest, listening, wondering ‘what the actual eff is going to happen next’, anyway, they used it, probably uneccesarily. At least they avoided using the Sitar Guitar again at this point. Maybe they can for the rest of the Lp?
And off they crack into what no doubt was intended to be the tune that gets the air play, just alternative enough to fit the overall sound of the Lp but straight Country enough to get the radio exposure no doubt absolutely neccesary when you want to make real money from what you do. ‘Country Star’. He’s not joking you know. The song is about becoming a Country Star and yes he’s done that and he’s here to tell you that he has, he knows it and you do too. When I saw him play last year he was definitely one of Music’s Charismatics. You knew you were looking at Country Royalty, a Heraldic Prince of Country Popularity if nothing else. I don’t really like this song, it’s kind of ugly somehow. Still gosh durnit, these good ole boys can play!
It’s a balancing act, popularity, artistic integrity, career, money, the next Grammy nomination, alternative, but just alt enough to be on the edge of what Trump voters will buy, while also surfing with the Aliens. It’s about width, covering the bases but frankly that’s what it’s always been about. The Big Money Music Biz is about pleasing as many as you can, as much as you can, for as much time as you can, and making the most money from doing that as they can. It doesn’t always make for truly classy music.
Then just to top it off, to sour the cream pastry of artistic integrity you have to tolerate jerks like me looking down on you and what you do writing shite about your musical travails. Like some putrid glacé cherry of self importance, I am guilty. I apologise Mr Stuart, no I really do!
The Byrds take flight
Bursting out of the commercial sounding ‘Country Star’ comes, ‘Sitting Alone’, a Byrdsian song, simplistic in it’s rendering of deep philosophical thought and jangly guitarings. It is a rather beautiful song even if the lyrics say very little and the ‘sound’ is derivative. You aren’t going to learn anything listening to this, you’re gonna think you have, but you haven’t, it just sounds like you ought to have, but you ARE going to have fun listening to it. I’ll be honest it’s the tune that made me want to check this whole Lp out and the band’s live rendition of it at that gig in wonderful Bexhill On Sea, was enthralling. My partner, Sue, had come along to this gig with me and was unconvinced about why she was there, this is the song that convinced her that her evening had in fact been very well spent. She too is now a fan.
Rockabilly Burnette
‘A Friend of Mine’ chalks up a more than listenable Johnny Burnette Trio style homage to the darker days of a American Gothic Rockabilly, It’s an ‘I get you if you feel like you’re an outsider, because I am too’ type song (surely every Lp has to have sort of song on it, fabricating as it does a bond of familiarity between singer and listener). A little predictable for me but again, beautifully executed. I guess this is where I go back to my comments made earlier in this critique, that he’s a greater presenter, a greater instrumentalist than he is a songwriter, or potentially (as there is so little information on the Lp) a song chooser. Perhaps his editorial faculties may have been warped by too many years on the bus? Or maybe he just popped one too many Grand Ole Oprys?
Jerry Jones Sitarings re-appear in SPACE
There’s that Sitar Guitar again, but wait, hold on now, it’s all worth it for the Crosby Stills and Nash harmonies. SPACE. Another tune about alienation, ageing, a repositioning… To be Freeeeeeeeeee. Just to Be, To Be Freeeeeeeeeee…. It’s really rather wonderful. If you ever listened to CSN, or Crosby’s ‘If Only I could Remember My Name’ and thought, ‘I wish there was another song by them like this’, then this song might be it. I’m trying to get annoyed by the Sitar Guitar solo, and I just can’t, the song as a whole is just too good. For the first time it doesn’t feel like Mr. Stuart has been thinking, ‘should I put this on the Lp or not’,‘what does it say about me’, ‘what does it tell the people’, ‘how will it sit with the Hippie Aliens and the Trump Voters’. He just does it and it washes over you like a refreshing aural stream of cooling silver water on a sunkissed mountain stream bed.
Bang, then straight into a levelling straightener, ‘ Altitude’ the album’s title track, Pedal Steel, galloping (almost Ska like Shuffle Blues) Piano, a traditional sounding song replete with a no doubt expensive Strings arrangement. The Flying Burrito Brothers are only a studio away. T’internet says Marty Stuart wrote all the songs on this Lp. I recall him saying he’d got ‘Sitting Alone’ from someone else though at the Bexhill gig, so just not so sure. But this is rather a fine song which I think may be about an impending visit to Heaven and his personal wish to one day explore and benefit from it’s restorative powers. Truly I just don’t know what the song is about and that’s a good thing, it’s not obvious, it’s a little obscured, open to interpretation. It’s actually a Christian song, I think, intentionally obscured so it doesn’t put off the Hippies.
Like I say covering all the bases, surely puts money in the pocket.
Side 2 ‘Altitude’.
Here’s the weird thing for me, I could almost dispense with this side of the record in preference for sides one and two of ‘Way Out West’ and side one of ‘Altitude’, almost, but not quite. Side one of this Lp is STRONG like Sampson yet side two relaxes it’s grip somewhat and lacks equal focus. It has the ear appearance of a more traditional Album of songs, ie. a collection of just that, tracks. Whereas what Stuart does succesfully on side one of ‘Altitude’ is to ape that late 60s and 70s feel of an Lp that takes you somewhere. Though it has to be said that somewhere in my day was generally just staying put on the beanbag you were moulded into already and rolling another Squidgy Black Leb joint. Then arguing with your fellows about who was going to flip the Lp and who was going to go get some Chocolate Hob Nobs from the … and flash…. it was you, you were the one there standing at the counter trying not to look stooooooned… then almost as quickly you were back, back to the embrace of Mamma Bean Bag…. Phew that WAS trippy.
All sorts of references decorate this side of the Lp, Scotty Moore and Les Paul licks, little almost Jazz like riffing touches on Beatles, Byrds and Monty Norman melodies. It’s a bit of a show off fest and frankly I’m finding it a little tiring, it’s wearing me out, it’s 10.15 and time for bed, again. I’m on that roundabout of home, work, home, work, home, work, home, work, home, work, weekend. Trying to squeeze in the creative shit that gives my life a purpose… yawn, think I’ll hit the hay.
Then,… ‘The Angels Came Down’. The last song. And you know he heard ‘Hurt’ and the Black Buffalo’s version of it too. And you instantly realise that he’s written one for himself, a little sweeter, but for all that a too similar song. I can hear the Country cogs meshing ‘hell it worked well for the Man in Black, it’s got to work for the Man In The Black Neck Scarf’! For all my cynisism it is though rather lovely, rather beautiful, with simple acoustic guitar and just choral vocals until the very end.
And Fade. – It didn’t need the reprise.
All Words Copyright 2023 – Mike Murphy Images Courtesy of ‘the internet’.
I’ll add other vendors when I come across them, at the moment the USA is an issue, mainly becuase of their postal costs and prohibitive treatment of U.K. based artists, hopefully a distributor is being found currently by the label though and I hope to be able to direct American listeners there soon.
So the Lp was reviewed on Terrascope, a very well respected ‘magazine’ for those interested particularly in Psychadelic music, unsuprisingly they concentrate on the one truly Folk Psych sounding track. But that’s really cool, one thing I love is that everyone has a different tune or tunes that they like on the Lp. Here’s the review to read here if you prefer.
The most recent Blue Matter release to date, Michael Cullen Murphy’s ‘All Change at the 5 and Dime’, is a bit of an outlier, insofar as it doesn’t feature any of the other Blue Matter stable of musicians as accompanists. That’s not to say American country-folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (and reggae expert in another life!) Mike Murphy performs solo; these nine songs of love and loss and yearning all feature contributions from Andy Stokes and Grant Allerdyce on drums and percussion, Orlando Shearer on double bass, Kirsten Hammond on violin, Jules Lawrence on musical saw and Tom Walker on pedal steel guitar, the latter of which elevates songs such as ‘The Best Thing I Ever Did (Was Leaving You)’ above the notable to the utterly brilliant. The stand-out track however has to be the fabulous ‘The Day That We Have Here’ which features guitar played in the Nick Drake style underpinned by distinctly psychedelic backing. ‘Been Here and Gone’ which closes the side is also a bit of a stand-out by dint of the fact that it features some gorgeous, albeit unidentified, background ambience (keyboards, perhaps?) and closes with the traditional sound of English church bells, which isn’t something you hear every day on either a Country or a Western record. If ever you’ve dug a Bruce Cockburn LP, then I would heartily recommend this album. And if you haven’t, well you have a double treat in store: buy this, and then go find ‘Sunwheel Dance’.
Originally on Art & Craft record label, this re-issue is delivered on Lantern Records. Even though it appears to have been out for a while, I thought I’d tell you about it, as I’ve only just cottoned on myself.
First released in 1982 the Lp was rare, sought after, difficult to find and expensive if you did finally source it. It has been released on Cd a couple of times in the interim as ‘Morning Star’ yet it’s taken 40 years for it to see the first Vinyl re-release. A handful of the tunes were released as 12″ singles by Art & Craft and also re-released at later dates, including the super heavyweight ‘Rude Boy’ which I have owned both on original press and revive. (If you are looking for that tune, buy the original, the re-press has none of it’s heavy crisp presence, and lacks quality).
Like most Johnny Clarke work it’s a collection of covers and originals, and benefits from a Roy Shirely song ‘Music Field’ probably the only Roy Shirley track I’ve ever liked, even a little bit!!
Those of you who have known me for a time may recall my authoring of two websites dedicated to the work of Johnny Clarke and this was one Lp I never owned, I’m glad to do so now because unlike many Reggae Lps it is consistent & isn’t just a collection of singles rammed together with filler tunes. It benefits from the Roots Radics rhythms, laid down at a time when the Dancehall sound was just coming to the fore. It’s a good listen from start to finish, again a rare thing in Reggae Lps, one Lp that you’ll leave on the whole way through to enjoy.
Apparently it’s a Ltd number release, though of course that’s quite possibly just a label ply to get you to buy it as I can already see it was on sale, ceased to be on sale, but somehow has appeared again; one always wonders in that instance if that is because they’ve pressed it a further time!
Anyway, heartily recommended, though as with all Lps these days, not cheap. I know Lionvibes has it, though I will admit to shaving a whole 50p off the price and getting it from a Discogs seller.
So, I like my Folk Music with a twist. As a young teen, I liked Steeleye Span. That wasn’t the most popular thing I could have done when all the other kids were Nutty Boys, Antz, New Romantics, or Causals besporting the latest Sergio Tachini tracksuit, or Mods in a Parka.. Mods, I mean, Modernists, 20-30 years after the movement, lots of old guys on scooters, FFS! Just stupidness.
Michael Cullen Murphy 