Thank you to Bob Boilen, National Public Radio, and the folks at the RPM Challenge.  The challenge (supposedly) “is simple: record an album in 29 days, just because you can! That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February.”

I’ve been playing guitar and singing since high school.  I’ve got two-and-a-half notebooks scrawled full of transcribed cover tunes.  But sitting down to write my own music has always been a disaster.  Lyrics – damned lyrics.  My guitar stuff pours forth like water from a spring.  Words, however, have been like squeezing water from a sproing – whatever that means.

Several omens collided to push me to try again.  First, I heard a story on the radio about RPM and it sounded cool.  Second, I had some time on my hands, since I haven’t been practicing law for several months.  I also met a sweet blog girl from Texas who made me think, “If she can sing in public, so can I.”  Finally, a major reason I bought my house was because the previous owners converted one of the bedrooms into a pretty good recording studio.  Late at night, the studio screamed out to be used or I’d have to abandon all hope of ever following through.

So, from February 1st, I fort-ed up in my house, determined to create some passable music.  I devoted the first week to coming up with musical “ideas”.  I played guitar every day – amidst lots of “creative procrastination” – in an effort to come up with little fragments and pieces-parts of songs.  When I gathered five little riffs or chord changes together, I picked the most promising one and put it to the side.  The least promising fragment went into the trash bin.  Once I had enough of these little “ideas”, I moved on to fleshing them out into three or four minutes of guitar, complete with changes and transitions.  This process helped me feel like I was rooting out the gems, instead of just playing everything spur-of-the-moment and off the cuff.

After the first week, I spent a few hours looking for drum machine software on the internet, tinkering with an old keyboard’s drum capabilities (before I banged on it til it broke), and literally banging on pots and pans in my kitchen, before I remembered that my friend Tim might have a drum set.  Thank God for Tim.  I think my drumming – although totally amateur – adds quite a bit to the feel of my songs.  I never wanted to be an acoustic guitar singer/songwriter.  I wanted to rock out with a BAND, man.  Drumming is theraputic, even if I’m pretty terrible.

The third week was all about lyrics.  Well, procrastination and lyrics, really.  I got intimately acquainted with a rhyming dictionary and my thesaurus.  Sat around on the couch a lot.  I kept thinking how my favorite musicians, like Andre 3000 or whatever – who may be the coolest people on earth – must spend a significant amount of their time totally alone on their couches flipping through dorky word-books.  Just like me.  You can’t become really cool without doing some really uncool stuff along the way.  Right?

One thing I noticed is that my songs rarely started with a tangible topic or idea.  Instead, I just baby talked the rhythms until some words popped out.  It often wasn’t until I wrote several lines – or full verses – in this way that I’d go, “AHA – that’s what this song is about!”  Then I’d go back and change everything to fit.  Which is not at all the way I thought it should’ve gone.  I’ll bet there are as many ways to write lyrics as there are musicians.

Whether my music is good or not, I feel like I can finally call myself a “musician”, rather than a person that just dabbles in music from time-to-time.  It feels like I finally sneezed it all out. My head is much clearer, thank you.  I’m also the only person I know in Birmingham that participated in the RPM Challenge ‘09.  Maybe next year we can have a few more.  I’d love to collaborate if you know anyone.

You can find my music here.