(But most of all: collaboration)
I’ve had a week when I intended to concentrate on songwriting. I had in my head a sort of Immersion Week, as championed often by Dan Whitehouse. I started the week well, with a day with my friend Joe Bayliss, another singer songwriter. We had a morning of gossip, swapped some music of each others, and other people’s. Always good to hear new music. We then had a bit of time in the afternoon to write a song together. This was fun! We did come up with something… not sure whether we will decide it is worth pursuing, but the act of making a song is always good, and it did make us laugh. I think we both enjoyed the process.
I had thought at the beginning of the week that I would spend some time trying to get some musical ideas of my own down. I do this occasionally, but it always feels forced. I think really my strength lies in lyric writing when on my own, but musically in collaboration. I can find a top line melody over chords, and I can figure out the phrasing and delivery, and I can usually find a harmony. I can rearrange things once they exist, I can hear how things could sound, but I can’t invent them… at least not quickly, easily, or to a satisfactory standard.
So by mid week, other than a zoom call and some swapping of files over WhatsApp, I stopped, and packed away the music gear. Maybe I need to value and accept my strengths and recognise and accept what I can’t do. (But sometimes it is good to challenge yourself, right?)
This morning I had a bit of rehearsal time with one of my band-mates, Andy Jenkins. The difference in how I felt was noticeable. Even though I was rusty and my voice croaky, I love the rehearsal process, trying things out, practicing the songs, perfecting the harmonies, tweaking the lyrics… That’s the creativity for me, being in a room and making the song, from the words on the page to the words in my mouth, being sung. Witnessing the music being born from the heads and fingers of others. Bouncing it around, until it falls into place.
We are practicing before a live recoding session towards the end of the month. We are very much looking forward to this, a new venue, a new way of working with a new person doing all the technical stuff. I actually quite like the discipline of doing things over and over again, either in the live recording way, this time in a church with Dave Shaw, or in a studio environment with Michael Clarke. I do like the minutiae of the repetition and performance from a small box with a microphone in. I enjoy the careful listening that goes with it, and watching people who know what they are doing, do their jobs really well. I also feel I can give my best when I have the option to drop a line in again, or re-do the chorus.
Andy and I were talking about the importance of documenting our songwriting. It’s not necessarily that we feel we must release an EP or an album every year, but we three have written some really good songs, so we should record them, (not just on our phones in my dining room) whether we keep them for ourselves or put them out in the world, for posterity. We have been writing and performing together for almost ten years, that’s a lot of material.
Performing is a different beast. I like it, but I think I like the writing and recording bit more. I am an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. Gigs are a buzz, but exhausting. I am the front person… interestingly I find it far more relaxing doing backing vocals with Ian Sutherland’s other band than doing the main vocals for The Sitting Room.
But performing is fun, it’s all about collaboration, harmony, reaction, connection… and I often think, and have said so, that visual artists could do with a lesson in collaboration from musicians, and even improv comedians! Some artists (I have spoken to people who really think this, it’s not idle imagining) think that if they work in collaboration, their work will be “diluted” in some way, so they hold back the best ideas for themselves. Musicians and improvising actors and comedians know that what really matters is the piece. If the piece is funny, we are all funny, if the song is a good one, then we all shine. Rob Lane told me this in an improv workshop I did with him and he’s right. And what you get when people truly trust in the collaborative process, is work that you could never have imagined, and it belongs to ALL of those who collaborated.
However, I have been very lucky. I have found band-mates that really get it. They are generous with their time, patience and talent. And more recently I have also found a small group of artists who know how to do it properly. Stuart Mayes, Bill Laybourne, Helen Garbett and Rick Sanders know what they are doing. It makes all the difference in the world having good people around you. That’s why I have unashamedly name-dropped throughout this post… thanks all!
