Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and it is hot hot hot in North Carolina. I just saw my first tomato out back, and the squash is trying to take over the patio. Next Thursday, I have a band show in Durham NC at Broad Street Cafe, and we’re going to take advantage of BSC’s wireless to webcast the show, so you can watch it live online! It’s my first full-band, club show webcast. Other shows this month include an acoustic trio show at Weaver Street Market in Hillsborough NC, followed later that night by a solo gig at Six Plates Wine Bar in Durham, and a trek out to Gastonia NC for my semi-annual show at Rodi. Oh, and those of you watching the sky for signs of my new album, the artwork is DONE. It won’t be long, now…

Check out my live webcast show on Friday June 12, at 7:30 pm EST! It will be archived at my Ustream channel afterward, in case you miss it.

PS, I had an awesome time in Kerrville TX at the folk festival there. Camped out for twenty days, saw dozens of shows, met lots of cool people. Took a harmonica workshop, a songwriting workshop, didn’t see a single scorpion, and bathed infrequently. Two thumbs up!

Friend In The Cloud from Tad Dreis on Vimeo.

I offered to play three instruments simultaneously and sing an original song in praise of my web host, Surpass Hosting, and I got a free camera out of it. Sweet!

I’m madly packing right now for my trip to Texas. In 24 hours, I’ll be in the hill country, getting settled in to work crew at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Think of me hopping over scorpions, writing songs, and sitting with friends around an imaginary campfire. The campfire has to be imaginary because flames are banned in the region during the current drought.

Artwork for the new CD is in process, finally! John of Hale Dixon is helping me out. It won’t be long now :)

If you recall the song “Bad Reputation” from 1994, that’s him. Here’s a video .

This is Freedy’s first gig in Raleigh since around 2002, so we gotta get the word out. It’s at the Berkeley Cafe. Did I mention that I am super psyched to be playing this show?

If you’re already a fan, you’ll be interested to know that our guy has finished a new original studio album for release later this year, titled “Rain On The City,” and you can listen to three tracks at his Myspace page. Also, if you were at his last Chapel Hill show at Go! Studios seven years ago, he played a bunch of covers that eventually came out last year on a limited-edition studio release called “My Favorite Waste Of Time,” pictured above. I think chances are good you can pick up the covers record at the Berkeley show on June 25. With any luck, you may even be able to pick up MY new record there, too…

This was the weather at noon, mind you, because that’s when my gigs were, and that’s the time of day that stuck with me, because I tend to take in all the details when I’m on the line. The rest of the day I could drive and listen to NPR on XM radio, or contemplate my nutritional options at drive-throughs, or just eat another one of the ten apples from the bag I bought at Wal-Mart.

But at noon each day, I went out and met a whole bunch of people and played music. I looked out the windows, I looked at the kids, sorry - students, at their tables, either looking up at me, or talking with each other, or playing massively multiplayer online role playing games, or sometimes just eating and reading.

Usually I’ll go around and put tattoos, postcards, and mailing lists on the tables before I play, and chat with people if they’re amenable. Sometimes they did cartwheels, sometimes they would look away with raised eyebrows like, Um, ok, uh thanks? and I was all, You’re welcome!

I try to keep a brave face for strange places. It’s like being in a wildlife preserve. What I remind myself is that the bears are more scared of you than you are of them. I stand up and hold out the sides of my coat and shout and try to appear as large as possible.

At no point do I run, because students are quick and besides, they are expert tree climbers. I have played dead on occasion, and survived with only slight mauling. But that’s kind of weak. Better to be loud and get eaten alive.

Everybody was pretty nice, though. Strangely, CD sales appeared to run in inverse proportion to the amount of applause at any particular show. Which kind of balanced things out. It’s amazing to get the whole room involved but it’s also cool when people are moved to step forward and say hello without reinforcement from the group. Not to mention spending money, as broke as everyone always is.

The storm was blowing back in when I returned my rental car at CID. Milk cost three dollars in ORD, and I refused to capitulate. Eventually I found a free pitcher by a Starbucks but was over it by that point. I paid five dollars for a magazine I wanted to read and when my friend Alex picked me up from RDU, I left it in the car for his apartment mates.

Thanks again to the Kirkwood and NICC activities folks for bringing me to campus, and to the prairie people and everyone in the Driftless. See you next time!

I play a set of chords, sometimes only one or two, sometimes as many as four or five, and repeat them until I get a sense of the mood that they create.

Then I start singing. I try and sing notes that match the chords, working by ear. I don’t always know what I’m talking about at first. But I come up with a first line, and then I do a second line that rhymes, usually using the same melody with a slight variation.

Verse: Once you have four or eight lines, you have a verse structure. You can just repeat it, creating additional lyrics that tell your story, and that’s a song. Period. You did it!

Refrain: To give your song slightly more structure, maybe have the last line repeat in each verse, and that can be the title. Like, oh, I don’t know, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.” Something like that?

Chorus: You could also write a chorus. Same procedure, just pick new chords or rearrange the order of the ones you’re already using. The words are the same each time, which makes this part of the song easy to sing along with. Hence the name “chorus,” as in, “everybody join in now!” When you have a chorus, it usually contains the title of the song.

Bridge: same process again, just come up with yet another chord progression. In a 3-4 minute song, this section only happens once. It gives relief from the earlier parts of the song that have repeated a few times already, and maybe looks at whatever you’re talking about from a slightly different angle. Or it can be instrumental.

A couple of song structures:

Verse
Verse
Verse
Verse
Verse

or

Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
–> bridge
Verse
Chorus

I recommend learning songs you like. Memorize all the words and the chords, and practice ’til you can perform it all the way through, singing and playing. You’ll learn new chord progressions this way, get a sense of structure and appreciate when lyrics are easy to sing versus when they’re harder to sing.

Also, if you learn to play your instrument really well and pick up some music theory, that will help a lot.

Just don’t get hung up thinking you have to learn 5,000 songs or become an awesome pianist before you can start writing. Jump right in. Keep it simple. Also, be kind to yourself. It’s really cool that you’re creating something. That’s enough.

Hope that helps!

Tomorrow morning I’ll be up eeeaaarly to travel to Iowa, where I’m playing at colleges Monday - Thursday. My last tour out that way was in February of ‘08 and I’m looking forward to seeing what April looks like in the driftless lands. Off to pack. Talk to you later!

I’ll start playing at 7 pm Eastern Standard Time. You can watch it here, or go to my Ustream channel to text in comments and requests while you watch.

Charlotte folks? Charlottesville folks? Hong Kong? All places I haven’t visited in far too long. And this won’t be the same as a real live show, but at least I can splash a little sweat on the camera and help make it more viceral for ya.

Also, I want to try making this as interactive as possible, so I’ll be taking requests at my Ustream page. If you want to, go write “Woooo!” on my wall and I’ll give you a shoutout on camera.

The other neat thing about this is that since I’ll be in my own studio, I’ll be able to play some songs on instruments that I don’t usually travel with, like piano and mandolin. This also could lead to a few epic fails, but that’s still entertainment, right?

On Sunday, I’m heading out for a series of shows in Iowa. If the venues have internet access, maybe we can stream those, too. Letcha know. See you Friday!