The Power of Us

I had a good conversation with Will Kimbrough on Saturday night about his guitar effects pedals. I've always been a fully acoustic musician so it's only been recently that I've had an interest in electric guitars and stomp boxes. He gave me his thoughts on the pedals that he takes with him when he travels (Civil War Fuzz and Garage Tone Axle Grease among others) and explained to me how he does this really cool ethereal effect that I love. I am planning to get delay and overdrive pedals in the not too distant future so I can play around with some of this on my own, although I'll also need a volume pedal to do that ethereal swell Will pulls off....

It sparks creativity in me to talk with other artists and I know I'm not alone in that. For me, seeing another musician at work, or any kind of artist really, spins my thoughts into new directions and leads me to places I may never have visited without that interaction. It makes me feel like when I was a kid excited on Christmas morning, or when I see the ocean or mountains again after a long separation, in awe of life itself. A riff or a bit of percussion leads me to explore that thing that sticks in my head in the context of my own writing, whether I'm writing music or a script. And it always takes me somewhere I enjoy exploring, whether anyone else would consider that place productive or not.

We spend our whole lives inventing and re-inventing ourselves. Like the oscillations of our internal physical and physiological systems, our interactions with others also ebb and flow and contribute to our own personal change in a synergistic way. For me, interacting with other artists reinforces the power that we are all part of, that all of us share. It reminds me how truly amazing we are as a collaborative and communal species.

Teachable and Teaching

Over the weekend, we had the opportunity to attend the Backroads Birthday Bash & KDHX Benefit at Focal Point in Maplewood Missouri. While we didn't stay for the entire show and I didn't have a chance to say hello to all of my former colleagues, we did have the opportunity to hear seven songwriters (six local and one regional) and they were a treat. It was great music and as usual, I learned something along the way.

For me, it's always inspiring to see what other songwriters are doing. After seeing Rodney Crowell recently, I went home and wrote the entire first draft of a song (music, lyrics, rhythm) in about ten minutes. And yesterday I landed on a rhythm and chord progression for a song that had been dogging me for months - all because I heard Lyal Strickland (the regional songwriter at Saturday's benefit) play something with a similar style. I was fooling around with the technique and my songwriting partner said "yes! That's exactly what w-w-w-dot [the name of one of our songs] needs!" And she was right.

I've started to teach guitar to a friend's teenager. It's a good opportunity for me to reinforce what I know and to share it with someone else. I think I'm also going to be learning all the things I only half-learned when I was teaching myself to play the guitar, like the notes on the frets in standard tuning, scales and the Nashville Numbering System. So far, the teen seems to like my teaching style. At the end of our second lesson yesterday I gave her a song to learn for next week, which I think is farther faster than she got with the two other guitar teachers who came before me. I think this is going to be a win-win.

By the way, my songwriting partner and I still haven't heard anything back from the Bluebird Cafe, but no worries there. We might not be ready yet and even if we are, for us this is really a year for staying more local and honing the craft, in terms of both the writing itself and performing our songs in front of a live audience.