Now that I’ve given away my music for the RPM Challenge to friends and many people have had time to hear it and react, I wanted a chance to explain some of the creative process that went into making each track.  This post will be the first of several which will go into some detail on my thoughts during the songwriting process.

To keep me motivated during the process, I kept reinforcing that I couldn’t really name more than 3-4 songs off of U2′s Joshua Tree – one of the greatest albums of all time.  Or any other truly great album.  So, I figured, as long as people liked maybe 3-4 of my songs (and didn’t hit the ‘skip’ button on every track), it’d be okay.  That, and maybe a hope that no one laughed out loud at me for doing it.

Track One – Fairy Godawful:

I don’t think I intended to channel Nirvana, at least until I got to the screaming part, but my older brother said, “Whoever this guy is, he *really* likes the old Nirvana unplugged stuff!”  Which, I guess, I have to take as a compliment.  I like this song a lot.  The guys tend to like it.  Girls, not so much maybe.

I normally have pretty good endurance, but this chord progression makes my hand seriously hurt to play.  I’m honestly never sure I can play it all the way through without cramping up enough to hinder the performance.  It’s all tight barre chords.  But I was kind of proud, somehow, that it uses every major chord between A-flat through B major and then D-flat through E major.  Which I’d think would sound “crunchier” than it does.  Instead, I think it makes for a pretty good pop progression.  The rhythm of this one is also difficult to strum along with the vocals.  I’ll need to practice.

The term “Fairy Godawful” occurred to me as if out of the blue, and I loved it and ran with it.  It’s almost like saying something is “fairy godawful” – a bad thing – and almost like the term “fairy godmother” – a good thing.  But it evokes something completely different – maybe somewhere in the middle.  I’ve had a few friends, maybe, that are a little like this.  People I like a lot, but who might not could take the full light of day in mixed, muggle company.

I like the lyrical shift that goes from him being “sweet and shy” in the first verse to the narrator maybe admitting that he’s “not so shy” later in the song.  When I sing, “He’s not a lady,” I worry that it sounds like, “He’s no lady.”  Which really might be okay.  I like the transitions, too, between, “He’s not a drag,” and “He’s not in drag,”  and then between “He feels so high,” and “His heels so high.”  These shifts, I think, paint a different picture both of the person being described and the person doing the describing.  I like this shifty kind of vocals, where you’re not entirely sure what a singer is saying and can make it up yourself – Rorschach style – on the fly.

Track Two – Probably Orange

The initial riff to this one is fun to play, but fairly basic.  I think I’m imagineering it to eventually be done by a bass guitar, if I had a full band.  But I don’t.  So it works out okay as it is.  It’s a little hard to sing and play this at the same time, but I’ve been practicing.  The first two songs on the album are, I think, the hardest two to play.

As long as ONE person commented on the Ray Kinsella/PacMan Jones/Astrodome trifecta of sports references, I was going to be happy.  And at least one person has.  Now, I am happy.  I think all of them are sports “dreamers”.  I started off with the phrase “Bentley Clerihew” which came right out of my rhyming dictionary.  I remember playing around with it for a long while in the first chorus.  This was, of course, after I’d written the first verse, but before I really knew what the song was about.  When I changed Bentley Clerihew to Ray Kinsella, everything fell into line.  PacMan Jones is just so much fun to say – it had to stay.  Along with me, now: PacMan Jones, PacMan Jones, PacMan Jones.

The outro just came around while I was tinkering with the guitar at some point in the recording process.  If I had originally voiced the chords like that, it might have become a whole different song.  Much sweeter.

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.