Testing 1-2-3

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So, aside from time spent in the recording studio, I spent the better part of the past couple of months doing extra freelance design work, updating my resume and portfolio, and looking for a job. Which, thankfully, I’ve found, started and like. So as I’m starting to get back into a routine, I’m hoping I’ll be able to get back to studying and doing some songwriting, along with the performance and production practice that has naturally accompanied my initial pursuit of studying country hits, and revive this blog a little bit!

With that, I’ll leave you with a vaguely-related video from one of my favorite songwriters, Radney Foster.

The song’s structure is unusual by today’s standards: verse-chorus-instrumental-chorus, and even the verse and the chorus are basically the same melody. And the spoken lines would be way out of place on contemporary country radio, too. But even as a song from a different time, this one is a classic. Without intentionally thinking about it, you’d probably just be singing along and enjoying it rather than noticing that it doesn’t fit today’s radio format.

Additionally, The Georgian Company will be back in the studio early next month recording our second EP and second half to our debut full-length. We’ll be tracking “Flock of Doves,” “After a Storm,” “Used to Sing,” and “If You Love a Ghost.” I’m pumped about this!

Meanwhile I’ve also been writing a bit, but haven’t had the time to learn any new country songs or track anything. But I’ll get to it, I promise! Meanwhile, I hope to see you locals at The Ghost Room!

On the whole, it was a good conference that was just a little bit disorganized. The speakers were all either pretty qualified or very qualified, and all were very personable. It was cool to meet such established songwriters as Sonny Throckmorton (who is hilarious), Austin Cunningham, Monte Warden and Chuck Cannon, and to hear Allen Shamblin and Rodney Crowell play and talk. It was also pretty cool to have the opportunity to pitch face-to-face to Moonkiss, Ten Ten and Writer’s Den publishing. I wish I’d have had something ready that they wanted. As it was, I ended up taking in my most recent working song, “We’ll Dance Tonight,” mainly for critique purposes… and critiqued it was! Daniel Lee from Ten Ten liked the song on the whole, but pointed out that I had switched points of view from the verse to the chorus, and that tends to confuse and/or alienate the listener. He also had a couple lyric-tightening suggestions. Monte and Brandi Warden really liked the melody and especially the hook (”we’ll dance tonight”), but pretty much hated the lyrics. In my attempt to write more conversational lyrics, I’d actually inserted too much actual conversation! So I’m back to the writing table with that one.

Something that I think has happened in my writing since deciding that I want to write popular country songs is that I may be focusing too much on creating commercial music. I need to remember to let go and to let the songs come to me as they want to be and to follow them, instead of pushing them around. Then, once I get the song’s first draft down, I might be able to reshape it into a more commercial mold—while maintaining its artistic integrity—if it doesn’t come out in its most commercial form to begin with.

I think that what I’m doing by “studying the hits,” as Robin Fredrick calls it, will continue to help me write songs that are both artistically true and commercially viable, because I’ll internalize a lot of the popular melodic patterns and various techniques used in these hit country songs—so the commercial side will come out more naturally. I was blown away by some of the songs that one of the guys I met at the conference, Russel Sutton, had written, and he’d just started writing songs a few months ago. However, he’d previously learned to play and sing over 200 cover songs, and I’m pretty sure that has really set him off on the right foot!

Well, dang. I guess that justifies learning another Paisley song. I considered learning “Welcome to the Future,” which reached #2 on Billboard’s Country Songs chart^[1], a while back, but didn’t want to over-Paisley this blog. But it’s been a while now, and I think the song deserves its attention. Written by Brad and consistent hit-writer Chris DuBois^[2], the song takes a macroscopic look at the way technology, globalism and race-relations have evolved over the past 50 years. Particularly worth noting is the third verse, which paints racism’s ugly picture with the image of a cross burning in a (presumably black) kid’s front yard for asking out a (presumably white) girl. I think this is interesting because it’s on the country airwaves not only condemning overt racism, but also condemning a quieter symptom of lingering racism: disapproving of interracial couples.

For all of its merits, there are still a couple things that bug me about this song. Specifically, there are two lines. The first is maybe just a personal dislike of calling things “a revolution” due to overuse of the term, so Every day’s a revolution bugs me. But then if I think of the other, more mundane meaning (which I don’t think was really intended as its mundanity runs opposite of the song’s theme), I kind of like it, because it’s true: the earth makes one revolution on its axis every day. The second thing that bugs me is that Martin Luther King Jr. is referred to as Martin Luther. This makes me nuts because those are two distinct historical figures, but since the context clears up who’s who, I guess it’s okay. And I apologize if those pseudo-critiques brought you too far into my world of hearing things literally.

Musically, this song was crafted to showcase Paisley’s guitar-slinging between just about every line, and as a result, the verse structure is surprisingly sparse by contemporary country hit standards. It was pretty hard to get the phrasing right when learning this one. And the “Hey”s in the chorus and bridge overlap, so I had to do this one as a multi-track. Instead of filling the whole thing out with bass and fake drums, though, I kept it to acoustic guitar, a lead and some back-up vocals (on the “Hey”s) and then a synth, to bring in one of Frank Rogers’ notable production choices the Paisley version. I really like the electro-sounding synth in the original recording as a nod to the concept of “the future.”

I was driving to lunch one day last week, and after hearing it on the radio, was crushed that I couldn’t just hear it again. This is one of the few songs that I’ve heard recently that has actually got me to go buy the song from iTunes for a whopping $1.29. The concept and verses seem a little lacking on first listen; in a way they sound like a rehash of Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” (and a million other songs) in that they’re describing a good American girl. But in the third verse the song takes a reflective twist, revealing that the singer is that girl, later in life, which is a redeeming payoff for the song. However, if the chorus hadn’t been so perfect, I would probably have changed the station before ever getting to the story’s payoff at all.

Again in the chorus, it’s not even the lyrics that I love, it’s the melody. Jason Blume makes a case that it’s not the lyrics that make a hit, it’s the melody. And he’s right. Of course the lyrics have to be great, too, but without the melody, no one would buy the record. Honestly, the title and hook lyric “American Honey” kind of irks me, to be perfectly honest, but it’s catchy. And it’s smashed into your head at the end of not only every chorus, but also every verse, so you’ll never forget it, and won’t have any trouble finding the song on iTunes.

According to iTunes, “American Honey” was written by Cary Barlowe, Hillary Lindsey and Shane Stevens. I think they might have listened to a lot of Huey Lewis when writing this one… listen for it in the chorus. Whatever they did, it worked.

I made another multi-track recording of this, mostly because I started with a midi piano track so I could transpose easily and find the right key for me to sing in, with a drum track to make it easier to stay in time. And then I added the harmonies, so I figured I should finish it out with bass and guitar. It’s not perfect, of course, but I got tired of working on it, so here you go, even if I am a bit flat in a couple places, and even if it’s weird for a male to be singing this song.

Categorization aside, the simplicity of it is just beautiful. Just about every time I hear this song on the radio, I tear up at least a little, and I don’t even have kids!

“All I Ask for Anymore” was written by a songwriting power duo consisting of Casey Beathard and Tim James^[1], who both have a stable of previous cuts and hits. The lyrics in the song do a great job of being so straight-forward you don’t really even have to think about them, with one notable exception of some ingenious foreshadowing in the first verse. In the singer’s list of smaller things he’s prayed for in the past, one of them is “one pink line when Katie said, ‘I’m late.’”

Of course Trace Adkins’ vocal performance is killer, and the producer’s use of a guitar in Drop-D tuning really brings out and echos the low baritone in his voice, too. And as always, I love all the pedal steel. Currently this one is #15 on the Billboard Country Songs chart, but I bet it’ll keep climbing for a bit.

I did my best live guitar-vocal of this song, up a step from where Trace sings it, but it’s still crazy low!

Of course I’m still working on it, so any comments and/or critique would be appreciated. Bring it on!