It's Thelma, and my friend is pissed off. Not Louise, some other friend.
We see each other about once a year, when he comes off the road and goes back into his studio to write his own songs. When he's got the time, we get together and co-write something. Sometimes the sessions go really well, we get into a nice productive zone and lyrics generally fall where they need to. Other times it's tougher, but we'll spitball something together, a couple of verses and maybe a chorus, then force ourselves to finish it later before we move on to something else.
We're both pissed, actually.
The first thing we do, usually, is catch up for half an hour or so, then make some coffee and get to work. Co-writing is like turning yourself into one of those squishy plants that sucks water out of thin air. You sit there with nothing and get something out of it. Don't ask me how it works. I really do not know. In general one of us tosses out a line as a starting point, then we improvise around it and make up what it means. He's better at it than I am, but I'm trying to give myself a chance to improve over time. Normally I don't write like that, at least not anything good, but I envy people who do. It seems so much easier than waiting around to be inspired and then being precious about your big fat great idea. Which I mostly do.
But anyway, we're pissed today. And we start talking about it.
I'm listening to my friend describe his life over the last several months. From the outside he seems just like every other talented musician with a covetable career: An astounding natural gift that he dedicates his energy and attention to, the respect and awe of his fellow players and fans, loads of fantastic career opportunities, diverse streams of income like ace-level recording session work, a publishing deal, and private-jet tours with bands you can't not have heard of. But on the inside he's twisting around in the wind just as baffled as I am about The Way Things Work. The Way Things Really Are in the Music Business. How Hard it Is to Be One of Those Artists Trying to Write Well.
He says that nothing is really about the songs any more, no matter what people say. We all want to vomit when we listen to mainstream country radio (well, I sort of like some of the songs, but I doubt if they'll be featured on the Country Gold Hour 35 years from now with Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard and Crystal Gayle). People in the industry wouldn't know a good song from the butts they chase at the after-parties. Blah, blah, blah. And it does seem like the game ramps up and changes every few years, and that artists have shorter and shorter windows for doing their best work before they slide into 5-minutes-ago obscurity, and it does seem like things happen to them psychologically, emotionally, that the rest of us can't really understand or imagine, no matter how good things seem to go. It WILL kill you, my friend informs me. It's only a matter of time. I can't decide which It he means --fame, or failure, or the partying, or the conceit of success, or the weird plight of artists in general, in which some fail appallingly upward and others languish in megatalented obscurity. Or the dealing-down, the weird inverse relationship between the quality of music and its ubiquity, the McMusic Business, you might say. Maybe all of it.
He says the same thing I've heard my producer friends say, after they've played at the major-label big money craps table until they can't stand it any more. "I just want to work on something that means something to me." I'm listening to all of this, and I'm realizing two things. Thing One: I'm relieved that it isn't just me, and his confessions make my general sense of alienation seem less of an aberration. Thing Two: Although I'm angry, it doesn't consume me any more like it used to. And I think my friend's going to do OK, too. His self-awareness is going to keep him out of the jaws of hell, the ones that clamp down on you periodically so that your wounds never heal. I suppose you could say that our sensitivity makes us vulnerable to such things in the first place, unlike less reflective types. Statisticians and claims agents, maybe. I think it's more a matter of how bad things have to get before you order yourself to acquire perspective. Hard-won perspective that demands just as much energy and attention as your art. It becomes your art. Because you can't give in. You do whatever it takes to heal. And you keep writing. Not everyone makes it out. And my friend is right -- It, whatever It is, will kill you if you don't.
So we wrote this song about how impossible it is to dodge all those bullets like Indiana Jones. And how hard it is to care about the here and now when you're strung out on tomorrow and yesterday and getting the crap kicked out of you. It's not finished yet, but I think it'll be good.
We see each other about once a year, when he comes off the road and goes back into his studio to write his own songs. When he's got the time, we get together and co-write something. Sometimes the sessions go really well, we get into a nice productive zone and lyrics generally fall where they need to. Other times it's tougher, but we'll spitball something together, a couple of verses and maybe a chorus, then force ourselves to finish it later before we move on to something else.
We're both pissed, actually.
The first thing we do, usually, is catch up for half an hour or so, then make some coffee and get to work. Co-writing is like turning yourself into one of those squishy plants that sucks water out of thin air. You sit there with nothing and get something out of it. Don't ask me how it works. I really do not know. In general one of us tosses out a line as a starting point, then we improvise around it and make up what it means. He's better at it than I am, but I'm trying to give myself a chance to improve over time. Normally I don't write like that, at least not anything good, but I envy people who do. It seems so much easier than waiting around to be inspired and then being precious about your big fat great idea. Which I mostly do.
But anyway, we're pissed today. And we start talking about it.
I'm listening to my friend describe his life over the last several months. From the outside he seems just like every other talented musician with a covetable career: An astounding natural gift that he dedicates his energy and attention to, the respect and awe of his fellow players and fans, loads of fantastic career opportunities, diverse streams of income like ace-level recording session work, a publishing deal, and private-jet tours with bands you can't not have heard of. But on the inside he's twisting around in the wind just as baffled as I am about The Way Things Work. The Way Things Really Are in the Music Business. How Hard it Is to Be One of Those Artists Trying to Write Well.
He says that nothing is really about the songs any more, no matter what people say. We all want to vomit when we listen to mainstream country radio (well, I sort of like some of the songs, but I doubt if they'll be featured on the Country Gold Hour 35 years from now with Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard and Crystal Gayle). People in the industry wouldn't know a good song from the butts they chase at the after-parties. Blah, blah, blah. And it does seem like the game ramps up and changes every few years, and that artists have shorter and shorter windows for doing their best work before they slide into 5-minutes-ago obscurity, and it does seem like things happen to them psychologically, emotionally, that the rest of us can't really understand or imagine, no matter how good things seem to go. It WILL kill you, my friend informs me. It's only a matter of time. I can't decide which It he means --fame, or failure, or the partying, or the conceit of success, or the weird plight of artists in general, in which some fail appallingly upward and others languish in megatalented obscurity. Or the dealing-down, the weird inverse relationship between the quality of music and its ubiquity, the McMusic Business, you might say. Maybe all of it.
He says the same thing I've heard my producer friends say, after they've played at the major-label big money craps table until they can't stand it any more. "I just want to work on something that means something to me." I'm listening to all of this, and I'm realizing two things. Thing One: I'm relieved that it isn't just me, and his confessions make my general sense of alienation seem less of an aberration. Thing Two: Although I'm angry, it doesn't consume me any more like it used to. And I think my friend's going to do OK, too. His self-awareness is going to keep him out of the jaws of hell, the ones that clamp down on you periodically so that your wounds never heal. I suppose you could say that our sensitivity makes us vulnerable to such things in the first place, unlike less reflective types. Statisticians and claims agents, maybe. I think it's more a matter of how bad things have to get before you order yourself to acquire perspective. Hard-won perspective that demands just as much energy and attention as your art. It becomes your art. Because you can't give in. You do whatever it takes to heal. And you keep writing. Not everyone makes it out. And my friend is right -- It, whatever It is, will kill you if you don't.
So we wrote this song about how impossible it is to dodge all those bullets like Indiana Jones. And how hard it is to care about the here and now when you're strung out on tomorrow and yesterday and getting the crap kicked out of you. It's not finished yet, but I think it'll be good.
2 comments:
As an outsider, I too see constant changes in the music industry. I think the main issue is that the song writer wants to write art and the everyday Joe, just wants a good sound. When you're making "art" it's not always what the mainstream wants so sales drop and you've lost your window.
I'll tell you what. You keep putting out the CD's and I'll keep buying yours. I've got them all so far and you can sign me up for an autographed version of your next one. And, hopefully, someday I will get to see your show.
Chasing fame and "success" ain't no fun. When you think that you're almost there, fate pushes you back to where you were meant to be all along.
Chasing fame and "success" ain't worth it, because being famous and "successful" has little satisfaction on the day that they put your corpse on the other side of the lawn.
The music business is dead. The telegraph killed it. The age of the air waves produced music heroes, then the telegraph snuffed them out by stealing the hearts of people away from the air waves. The Sound of Music sounded best when it was on the air waves, it now seems sterile and lifeless on the telegraph. Lasting music will outlive the music heroes of the past, lasting music survives long after the creators are gone.
Good music is never forced, it arrives in its own time. Creativity cannot be manufactured. Creativity does not come from nothing.
An artist trying to write well betrays himself. Artists who write well don't try to do so, they simply write well because they were made to write well. Artists don't pay much attention to mainstream because mainstream cannot discern what is art. Mainstream is the mundane, mainstream is the vulgar.
The IT that will kill you is not fame, it is not failure, and it is not the languishing in obscurity. The IT that will kill you is the failure to see one's own vanity, the IT that will kill you is the failure to see one's own futility, the IT that will kill you is the failure to see one's own failures.
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