Songwriting

I've been thinking about how I write songs lately. I'm also recording my friend Abbye right now so I'm listening closely to her songs (which are great). It's making me think about the kinds of songs I write. She writes 'occassional' songs. I mean they usually come from some specific relational occasion. I love the way her songs are both plainspoken and poetic. They always seem to be grounded in some kind of real contact between people living real lives. She is deeply relational and her songs flow from those contact points. I admire all that about her songs.

For me, I tend to spark with a realization or a concept which leads me to a lyric that I follow out into a song. There are obviously many different kinds of songs. They don't all shape out that way, but I'm in an urge to dig deeply into this process and grow as a songwriter. I hope to learn from this project with Abbye - to learn more about my own songwriting. We have different writing voices and that 'voice' is always growing.

This is an exciting time for me because even though I've been writing, recording, and singing for the last 10 years I feel that I'm just beginning to feel comfortable in my skin as an artist. I'm just beginning to feel a freedom to really take it seriously. I feel kind of dumb saying that, but it's true that I've been haunted by a long dull discouragement. So thankful that things are changing.
See Abbye's blog here: http://www.thewaywewander.blogspot.com