That's how I roll[ed]

Part of this summer's stay in Nashville was to be about writing songs and playing guitar. Another big part of it was to be weekends roaming around the georgeous winding Tennessee roads on my bike, about which I'm feeling a bit sad and nostalgic right now. I got a call from the appraiser today -- my baby is totaled. :-(

I put over 50,000 km on it in 5 seasons, and the appraiser said he was floored at the gerat condition it was in! Let's see... I've ridden to Sudbury, Lake Superior, North Bay, Montreal, Manitoulan Island, Kingston, New York, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Muskoka, Algonquin and a zillion points in between. Met some great folks too.  

Bye-bye baby. Ah, some fond memories...

Camping in the Adirondacks. Did some really nice roads around Lake Placid on this trip. Also went to NYC and visited my brother and his fiance on Long Island.

Riding the Tail Of The Dragon from Tennessee into North Carolina. What an amazing road. The first time I rode it was after a long day of delays coming from Knoxville. I pulled into the Deals Gap campsite late at night, very happy to be greeted by a few Harley boys offering me a cold beer at their picnic table. I said "Man, I don't know if I've got the nerve to ride the Dragon if it's any curvier that that." One fella said "Which way'd you come from?" I pointed up the hill and they all let out big laughs, "Son, you just rode the Dragon in the dark!"

Just a glimpse at the awesomeness of the Dragon on the GPS. You should see it zoomed in. Or, better yet, through a visor!

With my old musical pal Jess in West Virginia. She and her man Dan were nice enough then to give me a bedroom and get me a set at the local music mecca. And after many years apart, she facebooked to offer help after the crash. Lovely people.

My mom ready for her first ever motorcycle ride, the day I took it out of storage in April 2009. Oh what a chilly ride it was! She hopped off all giggly saying "Okay, I can see the appeal now."

Tickled pink. I believe this is day 2 of riding the Dragon and other roads around the area in 2010.

Last summer, fiddler Bourton Scott and I strapped our instruments and camping gear on our bikes for a zig-zag music tour around Ontario that accumulated far more miles than cover charges, tips or CD sales. But that was kind of the point, really. What a blast!

Camping with dear friends Mike and Lauren somewhere in northeastern Ontario in October! Arrived late and freezing to be warmed up with a wicked roasted salmon supper and tunes around the campfire. Good times indeed.

Pulling Granny from the flames

As I've mentioned before, one of the great things about being a member of NSAI is the song evaluation service by pro writers. You get 12 online and 2 in-person a year with the membership, and I'm pretty sure you can buy more if you want. 

I don't want to give away any of the lyrics, but as an example of the kind of feedback you can get, here's an evaluation I got on July 2.

Evaluator feedback

FORM

• V / V / PRE / C / V / PRE / C / INST / PRE / C

SUGGESTIONS

• Edit down your chorus by 2 lines
• Only do 1 verse at the top of the song
• Don’t do the pre chorus after the instrumental break. Consider writing lyrics for the break and turning it into a bridge. Then go straight into the final chorus
• So: V / C / V / C / B / C or V / C / V / C / INST / C

TITLE/HOOK

• It’s a good hook. I suggest you don’t give it away in the verse. Save it for the chorus.

LYRIC

• You have a lot of good lines and images and it’s a good sentiment. In general it works well. Perhaps it would have more impact if you were more defined about who you are talking to. It could be your listeners, and that’s fine, but if you can put more of yourself in this, it would have more impact. You basically say the same kinds of things through out the song, so there’s room for different angles and other aspects of the subject that would be less redundant.

OVERALL IDEA

• This is a good theme. I hear this more for the Folk/Americana market.

MELODY/METER

• This is very melodic. The lift towards the end of the chorus works really well, but I suggest you have it come in 2 lines sooner and do the edit I suggested above.

CLOSING COMMENT

• This can use some tweaking, but it’s very cool. Off hand, I can’t think of any artists that would cut this, only because I hear this more for you as an artist, and other artists that would do this kind of thing, usually write their own songs.

What I did with it

After a week of feeling pretty sad and rudderless following the motorcycle accident, on Saturday morning, I got my sorry ass out of bed and went to Bosco’s in Hillsboro village for lunch. There are 3 other café/brunch spots on the block but they all had insane line-ups. So I went to Boscos. And it turned out to be the perfect place for what I had in mind. It’s bigger and quieter that the other spots, so better for me to think straight. They don’t have any breaky grub, but they’ve got a wicked lunch menu. 

I ordered the grilled chicken breast sandwich: soy and pineapple marinated chicken breast grilled and topped with fontina cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and basil mayonnaise. Then I pulled out the computer and opened a PDF of the song feedback and a Word doc of the lyrics.

The core idea behind the song is about looking forward to your dreams in a positive way – and I think I put a nice little lyrical spin on it in the hook. Still, I was a bit anxious about the hook/title when submitting the song, because it’s a bit a mellow and mushy. Also, there's a fine line to walk when putting a twist on a familiar phrase or notion. The hook worked for me, but I didn’t know how it would hold up under someone else's scrutiny.

So, I was really happy to read “It’s a good hook. I suggest you don’t give it away in the verse.” I had the hook lyric starting each verse as well as the start and end of the chorus. I was on the fence about that before I submitted it for evaluation, and I’d already been through two or three major re-writes of the song. Again an interesting example of pro feedback in line with a weird feeling I’d had in my gut. I need to stop second-guessing my gut. I keep telling myself that, but it seems I'm not always listening. The same could be said for situations outside writing... Thankfully, that's not what this blog is about!

VERSES
It was easy enough to edit the hook out of the verses, which were structured like this:

Hook line
Rhyme A
Rhyme A
Rhyme A
Rhyme B

Getting rid of the hook intro quickly shortened and evened things out. Before it was like each verse had a prologue, as if I was telegraphing a pass across center ice. Now I just get down to the business of sliding the puck ahead. I haven’t edited the demo yet, but each verse is 1 or 2 bars shorter, depending on the edit, and therefore 3-6 seconds shorter, depending on what comes before it (ie: intro vs chorus).

For the time being, I haven't cut from 2 to 1 verse at the beginning. Here’s my thinking so far on that: In the original, the prechorus started at 0:30 and the chorus at 0:42. The verses move much quicker now since the ‘prologue’ is out of the way and because the other lines are pretty short (7 syllables in lines 1-3 and 5 syllables in line 4). After the edits, the chorus will still start around 0:36. And I feel like V2 really adds a nice depth to the idea. So I kept it.

Next, I considered this comment: “Perhaps it would have more impact if you were more defined about who you are talking to. It could be your listeners, and that’s fine, but if you can put more of yourself in this, it would have more impact. You basically say the same kinds of things through out the song, so there’s room for different angles and other aspects of the subject…”

This was totally accurate. I had a bunch of nice ways of saying very similar things. So I needed to decide which said it best, then come up with something more to add. The ‘who’ was a bit tricky. In reality, when I wrote the song, I was pep talking myself, but also thinking of language that a couple of friends use for positive thinking and imagining them giving me the advice.

I ended up trashing V3 and V4, and writing a new V3 that adds another layer to the concept as well as suggesting a relationship between singer and listener.

I know, this is all really abstract without being able to read the lyrics. How about this: before, I had three verses that described fire engines. Now I’ve got verses that describe the fire engine, the guys on it, and the granny they pull from the flames. 

CHORUS
The old chorus rhyme scheme was A A, B B, C C, but with the singing pauses in there, it actually sounds more like this:

Lead-in phrase
End rhyme A
Lead-in phrase
End rhyme A
Lead-in phrase
End rhyme B
Lead-in phrase
End rhyme B
Climb-out rhyme C
Into hook rhyme C

Oy. That looks complex, and I know what the real lyrics are. So your head’s probably spinning! I took the advice to shorten and simplify. Now it looks more like this:

Lead in phrase
End rhyme A
Lead in phrase
End rhyme A
Lead in phrase
End rhyme A
Climb out rhyme B
Into hook rhyme B

Which is essentially a 4-line chorus instead of a 5-line chorus. What the heck was I thinking?

Not only did I delete lines, but I edited the ones that remained, so they do all the work of the old chorus, plus a nice extra nugget from an old verse that got cut.

BRIDGE
I took the existing melody of the instrumental break, combined it with some edited lines from old V4 and presto: bridge.

RECAP
Now the structure is this:

    V / V / PRE / C / V / PRE / C / B / C

Instead of this:

    V / V / PRE / C / V / PRE / C / INST / PRE / C

All the parts are shorter now, and they build on each other, instead of reiterating the same idea. Truck, firemen, granny instead of truck, truck, truck.

Something else interesting is that this is the first time in my 20 something years writing that I worked on lyrics without picking up a guitar to try them out. The guitar’s absence forced me to focus and be more efficient with my time. Of course, it was a bitter-sweet evolution, since the catalyst is the cast on my fret hand. But it was definitely a good lesson in editing and focus.

I tried playing guitar today. If I hold it like a cello, I can strum high on the neck like a vertical Johnny Cash and fret G and C. But even I don’t have a chord progression that simple. So the guitar wasn’t out of the case for very long.

But the song is stronger now, and that’s what matters for this post.

ML

Always read the fine print

Honestly, I have no recollection of discussing this with anyone at the hospital:

ER Physician Report, 1 July 2012

The "new" one is a distal radius fracture. I'm of course assuming that the cast will do the trick for that too, a convenient two-for-one deal. But I'm still curious. I see more phone tag with Cincinnati in my near future. 

The Scaphoid Blues

The last time I stepped foot in Nashville, it was off a plane and into the arms of a beautiful woman who made my heart sing. Today’s arrival was a lot different.

First, there were no open arms, and I stepped out of the passenger side of a Mercury sedan. Not off a plane and definitely not off the seat of my Suzuki V-Strom as planned. My poor injured bike is currently caged at a wrecking yard in Cincinnati, its fate to be determined by the folks at Jevco Insurance. I’m hoping with all my heart that they will cover shipment back to Canada because I can’t afford to ship it back myself and I won’t be able to ride it in the next two months. It doesn’t run and needs a little work to be road worthy again. Plus there’s the wee issue of the cast on my left arm that poses some problems for squeezing the clutch and holding on in general.

My last post said that the wrist wasn’t broken. I wrote that Saturday night. But Sunday morning, I got a call from the hospital saying another radiologist had looked at the x-ray at it was indeed broken ­– a fractured scaphoid.

Dr. Hoover at University of Cincinnati Hospital’s hand orthopedic clinic was awesome (actually, everybody in the clinic was awesome) at my follow-up on Tuesday. If you bust your hand, go see him. We sat down in one of those usual little exam rooms with the white medical cupboards, ancient faded bone illustrations on the walls, and the exam bench with stainless steel stirrups and all that jazz.

Doc H started the whole thing by saying “I think the ER folks gave you a bit of a scare on Sunday and, although their hearts were in the right place, there really isn’t that much need to worry in this case.” Then he pulled out his pen. You know that roll of paper they pull down over the bench for each new patient to sit on? He drew a nice big diagram of the scaphoid bone on it. I wish I’d kept it; the pic below is borrowed. Hopefully I’ll recall the details properly.

Image source: http://www.mlrehabpt.com/?page=library&list=wrist&article=42#article_top

The scaphoid is kind of bean shaped. Blood flow comes in through the narrow end, so fractures around there usually heal quite well and he hardly ever operates for them. The fat end doesn’t get great circulation, so fractures there tend to cause problems and he often operates there. Other fractures across the middle “waistline” can heal on their own or require surgery. It mostly depends on how well the two pieces of bone are aligned. If they’re displaced, then a screw is needed to pull them back together. But if they’re still well aligned, then they usually heal just fine on their own in a cast.

The two pieces of my scaphoid were perfectly aligned in the Saturday x-rays, and still A-OK in the new x-rays on Tuesday. Doc H said there was a 90-95% chance, probably more like 95%, that my fracture would heal.

This was a massive relief. I told him how stressed I’d been about the possibility of surgery because it meant I’d have to end the trip right there and head back to Canada. I had no idea what the insurance or US cost implications would be, plus I’d like to have ongoing post-op access to the surgeon who did the job. Mostly, it was the fear of $$$.

Why was I so impressed with Dr. Hoover? Aside from the modern art, of course... Because he said things like “Listen, this is my absolute favourite operation, so if there was any reasonable argument for doing it, I’d have you in there right now” and “If it were me, I’d get the cast and go to Nashville. In the off chance it doesn’t heal you can always get the surgery later in Canada and you won’t miss any of the great experiences that lie ahead of you on this trip. But I don’t think you need to worry about the surgery anyway.”

Therefore, I am now in Nashville, from where my friends Pauline and Oliver drove last night, arriving in Cincinnati at 1:05 AM. I had a room waiting for them and we met (amid a sea of excited and very snazzily dressed Chinese choir girls in town for the World Choir Games) over breakfast which I am willing to bet, at the Hampton Inn & Suites on Vine Street, is the biggest and bestest free breakfast at any hotel in North America. They also give discounts to hospital patients and all the staff are wicked friendly and sweet.

We talked for over an hour before loading the car and then talked for five or so more on the road. I had my first Cracker Barrel meal, great chicken pot pie. I had to wrestle Oliver away from the restaurant bill and again away from the gas pump so I could contribute something. After all, they were spending over nine hours driving, half of which was on their 4th of July holiday, to rescue me and my bikeless bike gear from the lovely, I’m sure, but lonely pit stop of Cincinnati.

I can’t thank them enough.

Cincinnati: it’s a hard road

People often talk to me in parking lots when I’m by the bike and say things like “Man you must really be cooking in that leather jacket in this heat.” True, it can be sweltering. Luckily, being a writer, I have devised a clever little catchphrase to summarize my philosophy: “I dress for crashin’, not for fashion” (say it out loud -- it sounds better than it looks). Today however, it was so hot that after about four hours on the road, I couldn’t bear it any more and decided to take a little hiatus from the philosophy. What are the odds? One hour in shirt sleeves won’t kill me. I’ll be careful. It’ll be fine. So I pulled into Cincinnati to find a pharmacy and get some sunscreen. A bottle of spf 100. After all, if I was gonna be dumb, then was gonna be smart about it. So I lathered a thick white layer of sunscreen onto my arms and neck, wrapped the leather jacket around the guitar and bungeed it all down nice and snug. I gotta tell ya, it was still effin’ hot. But I was looking forward to the cool highway breeze.

Then, about 5 minutes after taking the jacket off, I wiped out. I kid you not. Five minutes, tops. Were the powers that be saying, “Son, best not take that on-ramp.”?

It was on a wet bridge, construction zone, tight traffic. The truck in front of me jammed on its brakes. I put mine on and tried to steer it away to one side. But I fishtailed on the wet road and went flying off the bike. Exact sequence of events is a bit foggy, but I heard the bike scraping as [I think] I was in the air. What a mournful, horrible sound. My poor baby. Then I noticed vibrations and a similar deep grinding noise amplified all around my head. Noticed a very extreme close-up 3D-ish kind of concrete looking surface scraping at the other side of my visor. Hmm, oh, I guess that’s the road. My left hand was out, palm down hard on the road – still handily wrapped in its leather motorcycle glove. Luckily, I hadn't thrown all caution to the wind... My right arm skidded along on the very fashionable but leatherless forearm before buckling under, thankfully without any wonky twists or snaps. Just some good ol’ fashioned road rash.

When I came to a stop, I just lay there for a few minutes, kind of absorbing the pain in my left wrist and holding onto it with my other hand. There was also a bit of a process rolling through my head, going through what parts hurt and what parts didn’t. What parts moved, what parts didn’t. I was extremely happy when that last list came up empty. Then I noticed a woman’s voice off in the distance. I wear earplugs for the wind noise, so she sounded farther away… she was kneeling right beside my head, talking to me in between sentences to her cell phone. Uh-oh. That’s when I really realized what had happened. I mean, I never lost consciousness but, you know, sometimes when things happen fast, you just need a few seconds to put the whole picture together. In this case, the picture was me lying in the road with a lady calling 911. Awesome.

It took me a couple of tries to sit up straight. My wrist was throbbing like an sob and then all I could think about was that I can't ride my motorcycle and I can’t play guitar, that the whole summer trip is ruined.

But of course it could have been much worse.

So… I am thankful that I am not dead, even more so that I am not maimed or broken, that my x-rays were negative, that my right arm is just scraped and quite able to do most of the work on this blog post, that my guitar is in one piece (albeit with a cracked soundboard). I’m thankful to the lady who got out and stuck around, though your name did not stick with me, sorry. I’m thankful for the two fellows who helped me lift the bike up and roll it out of the way so traffic could get moving again. I’m thankful to the Cincinnati police, fire and ambulance lads who all arrived lickity split to make sure I was okay. I’m thankful for all the great smiling faces and silly senses of humour at The University Hospital ER who reminded me very much of St. John’s.

I can’t really say for sure that the trip is ruined. But it will be a lot different than planned. Certainly with far less guitar playing or motorcycle riding than I was counting on. It’ll take a week or so to get a handle on how little of those activities there will actually be. I was reminded on the phone by a friend a couple hours ago that I will just have to spend the first month focused on lyrics, not music, and on meeting people rather than playing open stages. And those are not bad things. At the moment, I'm still feeling sad but, like I said, it could be worse.

So, I’m temporarily stranded in Cincinnati. I’ll go see the bike at the garage in the morning. Please say a prayer or cross your fingers or send light or however you like to describe your sending of hopeful vibes. Monday is a holiday in Canada, so I likely won’t hear back from my insurance company until Tuesday. Not sure if I’ll stay here or head to Nashville somehow and deal with the bike later. Will think more about that tomorrow.

But now I must get some sleep in a not-so-fancy bed at this hotel, which I take thankfully instead of the fancier one at the hospital.
 

Two bees are better than one

Last week was Tin Pan North, the annual fund-raising festival for NSAI’s Toronto chapter. There are two sets of music a night for three nights at three bars, featuring four writers each in the round. Three of the writers in each round/set are local small fish like me, and one is a bigger fish, either a Canadian or Nashville pro. I played an early show on Thursday. There was a small audience but they were very attentive, which honestly is way better than a big crowd talking amongst themselves in a small bar.

One cool thing about Tin Pan North is that NSAI members have the opportunity for a small fee to sit down with one of the Nashville pros for song reviews. I Googled the writers who were available and very quickly settled on Rob Crosby. I didn’t know of him before that, but it turns out that I did know some of his songs, one of which is Friday Night by Lady Antebellum.

So I took Friday morning off work and, with laptop, lyrics and guitar in hand, headed off to meet Rob.

Editing with Rob Crosby
What a great guy. Super friendly, easy going and really lyrically insightful.

We chatted for a little while and then took a couple listens to the first song. We ended up spending about 45 minutes on it! We took a lot of time discussing the subtle differences between various words, how they worked together, etc, moved the whole message along from beginning to end. We ended up changing 23 out of 198 words.

It was really exhilarating and confidence-building to be sitting there across the table from a veteran hit writer, sipping coffee, me strumming his guitar while he sang, and bouncing ideas back and forth.

One thing I’ve learned about critiquing creative work, whether it’s me giving feedback on other people’s songs or marketing stuff at my day job, or having my own work critiqued, is this: supposing the critic is experienced and insightful, the more specific and narrow their feedback, the better the material was in the first place; and the more general and vague the feedback, the rougher the material was.

So I left the meeting with Rob feeling pretty stoked and happy. And, to be honest, I’d been needing a lift after the last month of so of rocky terrain.

We finished up that song, stretched our legs and took a quick run through a second song. I was all set to leave because the allotted time was up, but Rob was gung-ho on listening to something else. See… great guy.

So I think that was the closest I’d come to co-writing since I wrote lyrics for another fella’s music back in high school.

I went to hear Rob's set that night. One of my favourites was "She's More" which was originally recorded by Andy Griggs and, I believe, later covered by Keith Urban. I just listened to Andy's version and Rob's was a bit more upbeat and I liked it better! :-)

Writing with Emily Hurson
Strangely enough, I had my first co-writing session planned for the coming Sunday afternoon. A friend introduced me to Emily a few months ago. She’s a local actor and writer and I knew she sang too. So I asked her if she’d like to take a crack at writing together and she was all for it.

I was a bit late crawling out of bed Sunday because I was out late with Alex watching the hottest, tightest most fun funk band in the country (possibly the world!): Five Alarm Funk.

Over coffee, I thumbed through my notebook looking for ideas to share with Emily. I came across a line I had back in March. Ideas started flowing and I had the song finished before lunch. It’s a really upbeat, positive love song that I’m really happy with. Have edited it a bit since and will probably fuss with a few more words before it’s “finished.” Obviously it didn't end up as co-write material, but at least I knew I was in a good creative space for our meeting.

So Emily showed up and pulled out her notes. She read some lyric starters she had for a city-mouse-country-mouse sort of theme. There was one word in there that I thought had a whole other concept to offer. So we batted that around for a while, just lyrics, hadn’t gotten into music yet.

Then I asked her what key was good for her. She didn’t care, so I said sing any old random note. She gave me a big fat laaaa which turned out to be an A. So I fiddled around and came up with a melody in A. Now, this is the really interesting part. It’s hard to explain why exactly I know this, but I know without a doubt that I never would have written a melody anything like it if I was sitting alone in that room. There was just something about the flavour that was new for me. So I told Emily that and she said “yeah, hive mentality” as in collective consciousness.

Very cool indeed. We were off to a good start.

So that melody got Emily rolling with some vocal embellishments and we started filling in a few words here and there. Turns out she writes a lot like I do, humming and singing gibberish until words begin to form. The tune seems to have a young, upbeat vibe. Makes me think of Taylor Swift. And the subject we arrived on had nothing in the slightest to do with the city-country idea we started with, or the second one that fell out of that.

We wrote the chorus and I recorded some music for Emily to work on verses with this week. We’ll get together again this Sunday. Looking forward to it.

Buzz buzz.

Pluggin' away...

I've been agonizing and struggling with lyric revisions lately. On Thursday or Friday night I was staring at a haystack of scribbles in my notebook and feeling stuck like a two-wheeler with bald tires on wet grass. So I thought, there's no need to be stressing over this. Why aren't you having fun with it? Leave the edits alone for a while and write something fun. Who cares how it turns out. As I glanced around wondering what I could write about, it wasn't long before I saw a whiskey glass (probably because I was reaching for it). Now there's a novel idea: a country song about whiskey. ;-)

It may not win a Grammy or CMA, but it's a neat little song with lots of catchy bits and a nice concept running through it. Something came to mind and I just went with it. No expectations = no handcuffs. And it didn't take long at all -- did a rough demo of it on the weekend. I may go back and try for a quick little bridge, but I've got 3 cool verses and a catchy chorus. And the chorus melody is something I never would have dreamt of in a million years if I was "seriously" trying to write a song.

It's the second full song I've written since getting home from the Nashville trip. The other is a love song about two characters at the Bluebird Cafe. I submitted it a week or so ago to NSAI for one of their online song evaluations. You upload your lyrics and an MP3, choose an evaluator (based on bios listing styles they write, experience, cuts, etc) from a list of 4 or 5 available, fill in a short form with any specific questions you have in mind, etc. And, a few days later, you get a review of the song. I've had 4 or 5 songs evaluated by 2 people this way and they've both been fairly detailed and really helpful.

Another thing that's been helpful these past several weeks is having somebody to regularly bounce ideas off of. My friend Paula in Nashville's been giving some great straight-up feedback about the lyrics. I've found that when you ask most friends, even other musicians, what they think of a new song, they usually say something polite or at best skim the surface. So it's nice having someone who understands that I want to pick things apart, who actually reads through every word and ponders them all. Then, if she comes back questioning something, it usually means I've got some editing to do!

So, I'm happy to report that the new love song got a really solid review. Everything was really positive, about how I developed the story, had a creative title, nice melody, etc. I was tickled pink. There were two criticisms:

1) At 4:43, it was waaaaaay too long for commercial radio. I knew this going in, but I guess I just needed someone more experienced to confirm it, plus I thought that some feedback would help me focus the edit. The evaluator tucked a great quote from Mark Twain into his review: I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

2) The last line of the chorus wasn't standing up so strong as a hook. Here's what he said:

"You do well to keep the hook rolling throughout the song in each of the pre-choruses, which is actually a cool idea. But you never really hit the hook very hard in the chorus (as in there's no "Aha!" moment that gives the listener chills) but it sounds pretty as it's sung."
I liked that the evaluator didn't suggest any edits. He just gave me a goal of 3:30 total or 4:00 worst case. So I went back and re-read the lyrics.
My structure was Verse, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus.

I absolutely loved the first two verses and how they set up these two characters and how they interacted with each other. So I didn't want to edit there. But the problem with them was that as 60 seconds rolled by, I still had 2 lines left to sing before getting into the first chorus. This was breaking one of Murphy's Laws for sure.

So I broke them up with a chorus: V C V C...

I'd been uneasy about the 3rd verse and bridge before I submitted the song to NSAI, so that's where I looked for the big edit opportunity. Paula pointed out that it seemed like I was trying to tie it up in a pretty little bow, jamming a definite conclusion that didn't feel natural or realistic. It was trying to be too pretty, too perfect. So I started editing. As I got into it, pulling apart what each line was saying versus what it could be saying, I realized that V3 and B were saying a lot of the same things, just in different words. That gave me a great way to chop a lot of time off. I boiled all of that down into a new bridge that's more realistic and believable. Pretty bow in the trash. And I cut 42 seconds right there! Mark Twain would approve. At 4:01, I was now comfortable with the length.

With the 3rd verse absorbed by a new and improved bridge, the new structure is V C V C B C.

Next, I set out to tackle the hook in the last line of the chorus. I'd really liked the words and the way they flowed, but I knew what he meant about it lacking a certain 'aha' factor. So I homed in on the sound of the key word in the title/hook and played around with rhymes for it without changing the meter/phrasing at all. It wasn't long before I had a new line that was a HUGE improvement and really summed up a lot of the characters' emotions. I was stoked.

I know it's difficult to really get into the crux of the matter when I don't give specific lyrics. I'm sorry. I just don't want to give too much away here. After all... I am working toward pitching these songs to artists! I felt a bit strange about that until I watched an episode of Man vs Row by Brent Baxter about recording demos. He let you see and hear just enough to give you a feel for what goes on in those sessions, but didn't let you hear anything telling about the song itself! Okay, I feel better now.

So, back to editing... I had four songs reviewed when I was in Nashville. I told you about the range of really helpful feedback I got at the time. I've since finished editing 2 of the 4 songs.

One of them was really difficult because the original lyrics were really close to home for me, with emotional ties and symbolism about my family and growing up at our house in St. John's. As such, I could see that a lot of the lines were a bit esoteric/cryptic and not straightforward. So I set out to re-invent the story being told. Let me tell ya, it was tough -- the original lines were [still are!] etched in my head. But I plugged away at it over 3 or 4 rounds of edits, including several whole new verses and bridges, and I think I've nailed it! So happy with it. It still holds true to the original sentiment about family love and loyalty, but there's a much more vivid and understandable story and characters now. I'm very excited about it!

The other song was much less work, just a few lines changed here and there. But I think there's more work to be done on it yet. I've always had a strange feeling about the chorus. I didn't get any negative feedback on it in Nashville, but this process is teaching me to listen to and trust my gut more. So I'm pretty sure there's a better chorus in me for this one. I love the idea in the words, I just don't like the way it's delivered. So we'll have to see what happens there.

The other two songs both need a fair bit of work. I haven't really rolled up my sleeves on either of them, but I've poked and prodded them enough to know that I'll most likely only be keeping their choruses, which are quite strong. It's those pesky verses, characters, stories... So there's a lot of work to do. I was working on one of these last week when I started feeling overwhelmed and decided to write that fun song about whiskey.

Let's see if I can take something from that "fun" little song into editing those other two "serious" songs.