Song Writing: The Influence of Lyrics

I love music.  I suppose that's clear from the rest of my blog.

When I look at what I enjoy about music, it's almost always the instrumental aspects of the music that appeal to me, rather than the lyrical content.  I have a few friends who are very focused on the lyrical, and we sometimes find it hard to appreciate the same pieces of music because of it.  But it's always an interesting process to discuss our different perspectives.

In one relatively recent occasion, I was (nearly) witness to the process of creating a lyrical tapestry... my friend Simon left a friendly guitar-playing evening at my place, and emailed me the lyrics of a new song about 2am that night.  It was something inspired by an image, and the lyrics were very powerful for me, and clearly had just flowed from Simon.

The Tin Man sits in my neighbor's yard, and I had pretty much forgotten about it, but this image is significant in Simon's life, and it was an immediate and strong inspiration.

I'm very impressed with the lyrics of The Ballad of the Tin Man, and had imagined a song around the words when I read what Simon had sent me.  I guess this is the power of the imagery that can be created by human language, and no doubt what my lyrically-minded friends find powerful and moving.  For me, that has always been a relatively rare occasion, yet I find nearly every piece of music I listen to powerful due to their musical rather than lyrical content.

It's not often that the lyrics are removed from the song, though.  In this case, because I had read the lyrics first, the song had formed for me in a personal customized "song" in my head.  Imagine my shock when I went to Simon's ReverbNation page the following week to hear the song played and sung... it was nothing like what I had pictured in my head.  Sure, the lyrical content was the same, and the end message is still strong.  But the mood of the song was significantly different than my image of it.  It's still cool, and in retrospect, the music as played matches both the format and subject matter of the lyrics.  In addition, the mood matches Simon's personality and not mine... in retrospect that shouldn't be a surprise either.

Here's the Ballad of the Tin Man... lyrics and music inspired by playing guitar outside on a beautiful summer evening and seeing a surprise image.  Thanks for sharing, Simon...

Traveling or Voyaging?

Today I'm on a business trip to California.  I actually haven't traveled nearly as much this year as I have for the past few, which is nice.  Anyway, business trips for me are rarely too much fun on their own.  I've written about these issues in a past post.  I always try to find a little time for myself, though, and do something I enjoy.  Interestingly, I find that simpler when I'm not traveling with others, as they generally tend to do the standard dinner and drinks and off to bed routine.

It was a beautiful day in Silicon Valley [as is nearly every day of the year], and this was the view out my hotel window at 7pm, looking south across the whole valley:

Anyway, today I found myself in informal travel mode, and coincidentally wearing a traveler shirt:

Perhaps this was a subliminal message to me, as when I found myself alone at dinnertime I felt the urge to travel further, rather than go visit a guitar store or similar, which is my tendency when I'm here.  This urge to travel, particularly to the ocean, is a common theme when I travel.

So tonight, from San Jose, I drove west to visit one of my favourite spots: Santa Cruz.  It's actually only about 40 miles away, but with the crossing of a mountain range and moving from semi-desert to coastal weather, it seems like another world.  Unfortunately, I didn't factor in that there are fewer hours of sunlight here in Northern California than 1000km to the north in Vancouver.  I left San Jose at 7:30pm, and the sun had already set when I arrived on the coast.

I had visited Santa Cruz a few times in the past.  My first visit in 1995 involved arriving on a sailboat after sailing 7 days nonstop from the mouth of Juan de Fuca Strait at the north tip of Washington state.  Needlesstosay the warm, dry port of Santa Cruz left an indelible positive impression on me.  On that visit, I had a chance to walk around various parts of town, as the harbour is pretty central.

And I have stolen a few quick evening visits over there when in San Jose on business, including at least one very enjoyable evening with a variety of business associates.  I had never visited the Lighthouse Field State Park area, southwest of the town pier.  So that was my initial objective for this evening, and it didn't disappoint.  Although the sun was down, the twilight colours were pretty, and the silhouettes of windblown pine trees gave the entire scene a poetry I wasn't expecting.

I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the area, observing the slow swell and occasional surf breaking on the sandy shore, the undulating kelp beds, and my favourite brown pelicans gliding effortlessly above the waves.

I even put off dinner in order enjoy as much of this lovely environment as I could take in.  I found myself cursing the fact that I had not brought a good camera with me.  I took quite a few pictures on my iPhone 4, but they tend to be pretty poor, paricularly in lower light.  I think they've captured the moment, though.

As I left the area, I drove a bit further up the coast, and then decided I've always wanted to see Halfmoon Bay, so why not carry on the adventure a bit further.  Of course the evening was getting pretty dark by this point, and Halfmoon Bay was well over 40 miles north of Santa Cruz.  But once beside the great ocean, I found myself reluctant to pull away so quickly.  So off I set, into the relative unknown.  I had actually driven this section of road once before on a Saturday off during a business trip.  Cruising up the dim strip of pavement was just familiar enough to be enjoyable.  This section of Highway 1 isn't overly twisty, so it was quite good driving despite the hour.  And of course I had lucked into a clear day on the coast... it's often foggy along this strip.

As I drove up the highway, I found myself musing about the difference between traveling and voyaging.  To me, a voyage involves discovery and new experiences.  As a business traveler, I have long abandoned that sort of feeling when it comes to basic business travel.  I equate travel with sitting in airports, sitting on planes, sitting in meeting rooms... lots of sitting.  But I do often find tastes of voyaging wherever I go, if I can just manage a few hours to explore.  Sometimes, like tonight, it's a solo jaunt up some unfamiliar coast in a rental car.  I've done it from Boston up past Salem, and from Tampa, Florida out to see Cape Canaveral.  Or a crazy drive across Europe last September when I had a few days free between meetings and tore from Genoa, Italy up to Stockholm, Sweden... and then back at the end of the week.

But equally fascinating have been the more urban voyages.  The narrow alleyways of old Genoa.  The cobblestone streets of Copenhagen.  Discovering pubs with good mates in Soho... both London and Manhattan.

Interestingly, my voyage tonight included arriving at Half Moon Bay to find that I was unable to locate the harbour I saw earlier from the air, when looking in the dark on the ground.  Perhaps a failure to achieve one of today's objectives, but also an opportunity to bring myself there again, perhaps in another context.  And in daylight.

If you find yourself traveling... have a little look to see if you can locate the voyage in your travels.  It makes for a more fulfilling trip.

Cheers

Dave

Concert Review: Tedeschi Trucks Band in Vancouver

First off, as I said in my last post, I'm not a "country music" fan.  This band isn't country, but...

I attended the Tedeschi Trucks Band concert at the Centre for Performing Arts in Vancouver tonight.  I am not a "fan" of this band, but had seen Derek Trucks once before, a few years back.  He's a brilliant player and not much of an entertainer.

My take on this show is that it was very solid, but not a great show.  The band was good.  Perhaps very good, but for the most part they weren't allowed to shine too much.  It's a big band.  11 people in all.  It seemed perhaps a bit much, particularly with two drummers.  It reminded me of James Brown's band, but despite being too many people in that band too... they all rocked the house down individually.

The band came on without introduction, and without any fanfare.  Susan Tedeschi said a brief "hello" at the start of the show, and spoke to the audience about 3 times in total, saying nothing interesting.  I was actually surprised at the lack of audience interaction... as with the Derek Trucks band, this show was apparently for the band, and not for the audience.  And the band seemed rather disorganized... much less crisp and professional than I expected, and apparently with no strong leadership: the band followed Derek's lead, but it was all very loose.

Susan did sing a lot.  And she sings with a lot of energy, and moderately well.  Her voice is a bit too "country" for my taste, which put me off some.  And she sang most of her high notes just a little bit flat, which bothered me as well.

There were a few backup singers (all male), who sang well.  But this band didn't seem to be about the singing... their strength was instrumental, and hinged around Derek's great slide guitar playing.  The rhythm section was very solid, with the two drummers in perfect time.  When they went into a funk number at the end of the first set, the whole band clicked, and for me this was the most amazing part of the show.  The keyboard player made the organ sing, Derek played crisp funky chops, and the horn section punched nicely throughout.

Intermission came after just less than one hour.  The second set included an extended Jazz section in the middle of one song, and that jazz section was something Miles Davis might have dreamt up in the mid-70s... for me it was horrid. Things were getting pretty bad when they went into what I think must have been the Beatles' song Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

The encore was the tune Space Captain, from Herbie Hancock's The Imagine Project album, which was pretty good, but the keyboard player made a mess of the piano solo. One encore and they were out.  It was enough for me, though there were certainly a lot of satisfied people leaving the auditorium.  I overheard a number talking about Derek... none talking about Susan.  That said, the couple sitting in front of us were big Susan Tedeschi fans, and seem to have absolutely loved the whole show.

I don't like to put down music acts.  Everyone's taste is different.  But at $75 a ticket, I expect a lot from a show, and tonight only marginally delivered that.

Good night.

Reviewing a Few New Releases

The past month saw the release of quite a few new albums that I was interested in.  I bought a few of them, but can't seem to keep up with all the things of interest.  Still to investigate is the new Rush album Clockwork Angels, which is getting some pretty positive reviews. 

The ones I did get are [note: my ratings are: *** = solid;  **** = very good and memorable; ***** amazing]:

Joe Bonamassa - Driving Towards the Daylight ***

John Mayer - Born and Raised ***

Steve Lawson - 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything ***1/2

Bees Deluxe - Space Age Bachelor Pad Blues ***1/2

First off, I have to admit that I'm quite fond of the past music of both Joe Bonamassa and John Mayer. In fact I'm sitting here in a Joe Bonamassa T-shirt... though that's primarily because his website has some of the best designs of Guitar-themed T-shirts I've come across anywhere... I bought the first one figuring nobody would actually notice the little Joe Bonamassa name on it, as the guitar picture was very cool.

Bonamassa's Driving Towards the Daylight has been a bit of a disappointment for me.  Overall, it's a solid rockin' blues album... it really is quite good.  However, something about the way it was recorded makes it less appealing than his last few albums.  Joe's singing voice is very very good these days, which has helped to differentiate him from all the other blues players out there.  Sure, he plays the ass off his guitars, but he can really sing well, with subtle expression and emotion that you hear rarely.  Unfortunately, few of the songs on this album show off his voice well, and the voice tone is thin... I don't know if it was a different approach to mic'ing or what, since the producer Kevin Shirley is unchanged from his past few albums.

My favorite tracks on the album are the title track Driving Towards the Daylight, A Place in My Heart, and Too Much Ain't Enough Love (with Jimmy Barnes).  This latter track doesn't feature Joe's singing at all.  I found Jimmy Barnes' voice almost too much, but I think the effect is very good in the end... it's a great song.

I have to admit that I [and a few of my friends] find that Joe's slower songs are always the highlight.  I think he really enjoys playing the rockin' tunes, but the slow blues stuff is just amazing.  This album was just rather short of that flavour. 

BTW, I also just received Joe's concert DVD recorded at the Beacon Theater in New York in 2011 on the Dust Bowl tour, and it is very very good.  I saw two of his shows on that tour in December, and a good portion of the show was the same.  The DVD has guests on it, including Beth Hart, who is really great, and I previously rated the Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa a solid ****. 

John Mayer's Born and Raised is kind of in a similar boat for me as Bonamassa's new album.  I have really enjoyed Mayer's previous albums, and my view is that this one is just not quite as good, after a handful of listens. In the case of this album, it's not the production that I'm unhappy with, but just that the material doesn't appeal to me as much.  Much of the album has something of a country flavour to it, and I'll openly admit that Country music is one of the few genres that I find unappealing [along with Opera and musicals].

I'm mostly influenced by music rather than lyrics in the majority of my music consumption. Oddly, Mayer is one of only a very few where I do tend to listen to the words, and I've always really enjoyed the (apparent) sincerity of his writing.  These songs mostly failed to touch me, and I found most of them less interesting than most of his past material musically as well.  Lyrically, I do find the song Something Like Olivia to be quite interesting.

The one song that sticks out for me as very very good is If I Ever Get Around To Living, and my wife feels the same way about it... if you're thinking you might skip the album, try this track out at least.  The final track on the album is Fool to Love You, and it's pretty good, and definitely catchy.

Before I leave John Mayer, I will say that I recently got his live album Where The Light Is.  I've seen the concert footage from this show on HDNet.  I have to say that it's a very very good album.  If you don't have any John Mayer music, and are interested in checking him out, this is a really great place to start.  The show is done in three parts, with an acoustic set, a blues set with the John Mayer Trio, and then a full band playing more of his material.  All the parts are very good, and there is very little on the recording that I didn't enjoy immensely.

Steve Lawson is a UK-based bass guitarist, who specializes in solo electric bass performance.  To me, his music is much along the lines of what I find in various acoustic solo guitar performers, though his expert use of looping and various effects ensures an interesting musical palate.  I actually bought a few individual tracks of Steve's at the same time as this album (via iTunes), and in particular I really liked the tunes Blue Planet, Scott Peck, and Grace and Gratitude.

Overall, I'm finding the 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything album to be solid, but not consistently engaging for me.  There are a few songs that stick out for me, but overall it's going to be dinner music, rather than something I go out of my way to listen to directly.  The tapestry that Steve weaves with his bass is generally enjoyable, and occasionally quite intoxicating.  The highlight tracks for me on this album are A Year Afloat and Take Your Time, Choose Your Route, Pick Your Tunes.

BTW, Steve Lawson is an active and engaging fellow on Twitter... check him out.

Finally, I somehow stumbled across this band Bees Deluxe a few months back. I think I mistook their name for Blues Deluxe, which is a great Joe Bonamassa tune.  Anyway, at the time they were offering up a free download of a tune called Blues for the Decline of Western Civilization.  This instrumental blues tune is nothing short of brilliant in my view.  Go find it!  The tasteful guitar playing and really great Hammond organ tones are just delicious.  The band are an active live group in the Boston area.

Anyway, I saw that they had an album coming soon, which has now arrived.  It's... interesting.  As expected, the band is really solid, and the guitar and organ tones don't disappoint.  None of the material is quite as brilliant as the above-mentioned single, but there's a lot of very good music here, and a few really great moments.  However, the singer in the band put me off... his voice is just not at the same level  as the rest of the playing, and takes away from the effect of the album.  Although, I have to admit that I suspect this voice will grow on me... perhaps 6 months from now I'll love the voice as much as the rest of the album.  Strange...

My current impression is that my favourite track on the Space Age Bachelor Pad Blues album is the opening number, 3454 Miles.  It's another instrumental.

This is a band that intruiges me, and if I lived on the East coast, I would go out of my way to try to catch them in one of their frequent live shows.  My guess is that they would be very good.

I didn't attend the Van Halen concert tonight

Seems like a weird thing to post, but I found myself almost surprised that I did not go to see this seminal band tonight in Vancouver.
To give them credit, this was the first arena concert in more than a dozen years that even tempted me. I really love intimate shows, and no longer really appreciate the spectacle of the big concert scene.
Van Halen is perhaps the one band which was most instrumental in my own development as a musician. Not that I play like Eddie Van Halen, nor even really play that kind of music in particular. But somehow the band was really important in opening my eyes to "possibility". Eddie played like nothing I'd ever heard before, when I first heard the band in the late '70s. And few have come along since who blew me away the way his playing did. But it was a lot more than the showy super-fast guitar work... the band just rocked in a way few others did, and I dug it.
I don't nearly own the entire Van Halen collected works. But I do have Van Halen (I) and their newest album, A Different Kind of Truth. I'm inspired by the return of David Lee Roth to the band, as I wasn't particularly a fan of Sammy Hagar in the VH role. Sadly, Roth's voice really isn't quite what it once was, and I found it takes away from what otherwise is a very solid album, very much in the vein of the early Van Halen music. The band rocks, and some of the songs are quite good.
Overall, though... I just couldn't quite get past Roth's voice to convince me to give up a pile of money and an evening with my family to go out and lose another slice of my hearing. I guess you might say it was Woman and Children first.
I did listen to all of my Van Halen recordings on my iPhone today, though, to celebrate the band being in town. So thanks for the great music, dudes!