Why Do I Make Music?
It’s all about the song. Songs are like miniature movies or the briefest of books. In just a few minutes, they can tell a story so profound or so emotive, it can leave you in tears. Songs don’t just bring back memories, they actually transport you back to the very emotion, feelings, and physical spatial memory you had when you first heard that song. You’ll often hear people say “Wow...that song really takes me back…”.
Songs are like bookmarks in your life...where simply listening to that melody, those words, and the familiar tones of the singer and band, transports you back to a time and place, engulfing you with the same visceral emotion of that moment in your past.
I am always in search of “the song”. It is why I compose, record, and perform. My goal is to have as close to a perfect balance of honest lyrics, original melody, and authentic emotion to earn the privilege of having people want to listen and engage in the song. I may not ever get there, but I will always be trying. I have hundreds of hours of tape recordings of little ideas and thousands of words captured on pieces of paper…and my brain is constantly assembling and disassembling permutations of ideas…eventually manifesting into songs.
I am always in search of the song.
I guess writing a song is a bit like creating an oil painting or building a house. You have to have a foundation, a structure, a pleasing perspective or correct feng shui, colors and textures that compliment, and the like. And then it is the craft of painting or construction that takes over until the final creation emerges.
This is the craft of building a song.
Finding a theme that resonates, discovering the emotive voice of the song, carefully selecting each word of the lyric, channeling the emotion or enlightenment that embraces the listener, and then building it bit by bit until the song comes to life. And while it is impossibly evasive and challenging, the journey is often joyful and enlightening. It is a job with a purpose.
