A Blissful Surrender

Do you want to write songs, or do you need to write them?

If writing great songs were only as simple as wanting to do it, we'd all have dozens of them. It requires more commitment than that. If you're blown away by a song you hear or a book you read, rest assured someone needed to create it (even if it came quickly, the intense need to write was probably sustained for years). Great writers aren't really so gifted, they just have an impossible compulsion. They're "all in". The need keeps them awake when they want to sleep; it keeps them hungry when they want to be fed; it demands their attention when they want to daydream.

There are times when I catch myself looking for some point of entry like a junkie tapping on his veins. Yesterday's song is just yesterday's song-- a high that didn't last. If I had to go to dangerous alleys and midnight borders of the imagination for my fix, I probably would. There are those who see a work of art and feel a gentle glow inside. There are others who see a work of art and feel a fire in the blood to create one of their own. There's no escaping it, no letting it pass, no procrastination. It's an allurement as intoxicating as any substance known to man. When it isn't there, we ache for it. But where the need is deep, so can be the result and reward.

Whenever I'm "engaged to a song" I know there will be many drafts of the lyric. There will be moments when I want to rip out my hair because part of the melody isn't holding up. Bring it on. I fall sleep on the sofa in the den and wake up at the first light of dawn excited to begin again. Bring it on. When the song is finished there's a feeling of temporary wholeness I can't find in any other pursuit. Yes, only to begin again...but joyously in spite of it all.

You'll recognize your need if you have one. Let your creative hours be sacrosanct and uncompromised. Put life on hold. Throw caution to the wind (insert any more cliches you can think of here).

As I lay awake last night lamenting another day in which I worked for ten hours and produced not a single creative thing, I thought of all the contented folk who didn't create anything either, and who slept soundly with a pleasant dream. I wanted to feel contentment, rest, peace. I told myself that most words are written on sand. Most melodies die with the singer. Most paintings darken with the patina of the world's grit and grime. Why make anything at all?

I believe we make things because we are the pressure valve of the ultimate making of things. Through us escapes the blow-off of creative forces no one can imagine. That is our role in the big picture. There's really no self-importance in a creative act when you understand the mysterious and uncontrollable nature of it. It's all for the sake of an elemental energy in the pipeline that chooses your particular point of exit. Creative needs are like geysers in Yellowstone; warm salty mud being blown out of the way so the earth can keep its crust intact for another day. The earth doesn't respect geysers, it simply uses them. I am used, you are used; we're The Need incarnate and we'll never fully understand the unseen forces below the surface. There's no remedy for it but a blissful surrender.


copyright 2009 by craig bickhardt

All The Spells

The instinct is a mystery. We can't justify it, can't explain it, or defend it. We just feel it. A song pulls us into itself before we have time to over-analyze what we’re doing. It’s the mysticism of songs that compels us to search for new ones. We discover something that reflects the beauty of the world as it appears through our idealism and we call it a song. The whole universe would sing it, every star in the night, if only it were perfect.

We second guess the instinct. We tinker with the spontaneous “unseen logic” (as Emerson refers to it); those will-o-the-wisps of connection too serendipitous to be planned and too recent to be mapped. In the process of seeking critical approval, seeking the elusive cut, we lose something. The logic has become visible and the mystery goes out. It's so subtle it would be invisible under a microscope.

Why do you love your favorite songs? Search in vain for the definitive reason; you can't name it, can't point to it, can’t analyze it, you just feel it.

If pushed for a critique some would say the Beatles song "Yesterday" needed more attitude and imagery in the lyric. I can imagine being a young McCartney trying to sell that tune in Nashville today. Good luck, Pauly. The song defies this kind of criticism because we feel the tug of the soul when we hear it. Do you trust that mysterious instinct, that soul-tug, or do you trust the ever-logical criticism?

Like the illusion that the earth stands still as the heavens move around it, “right” is sometimes just a way of seeing something that could easily be proved wrong eventually. If a song sends a shiver down your spine, you don’t need to ask for someone else’s opinion of the shiver or the shape of your spine. Better to ask why there’s no shiver produced by the other songs. And that’s probably a simple question to answer: because there’s no mystery in them. They are laid out like assembly directions. Welcome to contemporary hit radio...

I turned a friend of mine onto one of my favorite songwriters this week, Bruce Cockburn (last name rhymes with "slow turn"). I discovered Bruce back in high school when a copy of his first LP fell into my hands out of a discarded radio library. Such luck rarely repeats. He has a lot of wonderful songs, but there's one in particular I love called “Pacing the Cage”. It has a verse in it that could be the creed of every serious songwriter:

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing

We are in the advantageous position of offering something, everything that we are in song. We can weave spells. The spell is part of the mystery; the incantations of the spirit. I’m skeptical of things that appear "right" when they ought to appear mysterious. I’d rather a song lift me off the earth than grasp at my ankles.

copyright 2009 by craig bickhardt

Compass

They say there's no road map for success, but I say there's a compass. Your True North might be different from someone else's, but I'll wager plenty that you know where it is if you've really searched for it. Only a fool would look at his compass and then follow someone else's best guess about the route to travel. That's all it is-- advice I mean, a best guess. No matter who it comes from, it's a guess.

Can you look at where you are now and where you want to go, and navigate sensibly? All successful writers do this. If you have a mind, a heart, and some talent, you can plot the course. The problem is not coordinates, it's courage. We need to have the resolve to go in the direction our compass points. If we seek advice at every step, we're undoubtly going in circles. Maybe an occassional reality check to be sure the needle isn't stuck, but nothing more.

The successful writers that I know all burned bright at the start. Even through their mistakes they remained true to their course. They made some adjustments according to how others reacted to their work, but not major course corrections. The reason their song catalog is so deep is because they covered that much ground in the time that most of us spend zig-zag tentatively to our vague destinations.

If you don't know what you're trying to communicate, how you're trying to communicate it, and why you'd even bother, then you are going nowhere. If you must ask someone else the question, "Is this any good?", it probably isn't. If you really feel the song, you don't need to ask.

What's the mystery here? Why is it so hard to connect with what we feel? We say we've lost objectivity, but is this a lie or a delusion?

Every time you eat an apple you can tell if it's sweet or sour. You've eaten the same fruit all your life but you always know if this is a delicious apple or a bad apple. When you love someone you never tire of seeing their face. You don't lose objectivity about it. It remains beautiful as long as you feel love for that person. Could it be that you've never felt anything for your songs? Do you love what you write, or do you simply write songs the way you'd paint a wall-- cover all the spots, hit the corners, and roll out the rest as fast as possible?

I've mixed metaphors here, so back to the compass.

I took my eye off the horizon and the needle too often when I was younger. Now I never look away. This blindness, this lack of objectivity, the big lie we tell ourselves-- it's a problem we must address. We must decide for ourselves what level of commitment, what depth of feeling we have about our own work. You might hate the hit that's sitting at #1 this week, but you figure it's a good idea to write one just like it. I guarantee you that if you do this you'll fail every time. The biggest copyrights are the songs some writer passionately loved, passionately wrote, and passionately believed in. That applies even to those tunes you happen to hate. Remember this : for every song on the radio that you dislike, there's a writer behind it who believed whole-heartedly (and even if I'm wrong, you won't fail by heeding what I say because you'll simply write a hit that you love).

If you don't believe in your songs; if you don't cherish them like children; if they don't make you cry or laugh or dance for joy; if they are merely exercises or "completed songs", probably no one will record them. We must write what we love, write what tears us up inside and get to the bottom of the feeling, write what we're very intent on communicating, write what we can't live without expressing. Anything less will not move an artist to invest his or her career in our work.

Go ahead. Look at that compass now, and be honest about what star you follow. Because if you ask the person next to you what star you should follow, he just might steer you off the edge of the world.



copyright 2008 by craig bickhardt

Some Lefsetz Wisdom

"...prior to MTV, there were different genres of music. All with notable successes. But MTV anointed specific stars and everybody else was either a has-been or an also-ran. You were either a winner or a loser. Now MTV plays no music, radio listenership is declining and a hit record doesn't generate a career, doesn't even allow you to fill the building in most cases." - Bob Lefsetz

I wonder how many songwriters are even aware of the truth of this statement? The "hit song industry" is dying. Some of us were early victims, but apparently many writers still believe the naive advice of such organizations as the NSAI, who continue to promulgate the notion that songwriters are being groomed for staff deals all over Nashville when in fact there are no staff deals to be had unless you've just been a finalist on American Idol, or you already have a satchel of valuable copyrights (proven chart hits) to hand over with the deal.

If you are spending all your energy writing the Nashville hit, you aren't preparing for the future, it's as simple as that. What you should be writing are great songs that can be spread virally by, and to, music fans of all ages. Eventually radio will no longer "serve up" the formulaic hits, the packaged and vetted songs that have had the the heart and soul, the "cream", skimmed off the top before they're marketed. People no longer look to radio and the record industry for guidance about what's good, what's worth hearing. The jig is up.

" The AM radio hit was the cherry on top, not the starting point. Sure, FM radio helped, but the endless touring at a low price cemented the deal. That touring was today's file-trading, today's spreading of the word, outside the system. Does the system build or kill acts? Is a hit record the best thing that can happen to you, or the worst?"

Faith and Tim can't fill the arenas anymore. Tickets are ridiculously overpriced for these top heavy tours. It's no longer practical to conceive of an industry based on entourage-touring. A tour is barely doable in a van with a trailer unless you're U2 or the Stones.

What shows are people paying to see? They pay to see low priced quality shows featuring artistic singer-songwriters such as John Prine or Josh Ritter. They pay to see jam bands at festivals. They go to clubs to hear the latest alternative acts in the mold of Death Cab, Radiohead, or Cross Canadian Ragweed. What do you, the songwriter, pay to see? If Carrie Underwood and Gillian Welch are playing in town on the same night, and you can see Gillian for $30, but you have to pay $75 to see Carrie, is there any question about which show you'll attend?

Is there even going to be an industry for songwriters in ten years? Yes, but it might be the type of industry that reflects the Bernie Taupin career rather than the Brill Building or Music Row staffwriting career. Indy labels sign nothing but self contained artists-- singer-songwriters and bands that write their own material. Why? Well, for one thing, the Indy audience isn't naive. They know who writes the songs, and they value great tunes. Secondly, it's just easier to work with, and promote, artists who don't have to find songs or careers through outside channels. So, surviving the climate change might mean honing your skills as a collaborator-- and not just as a co-writer of radio ditties, but as a substantive artist who can collaborate with other substantive artists.

In the future you may be at a disadvantage if you don't understand the difference between song art and radio fodder. Turn on AM radio and listen to the pandering lyrics, the inane topics, the Gerry Springer-Dr. Phil mentality run amok. Who needs to pay for this when it's already sent out through the airwaves on radio and TV everywhere for free, all the time? Pay for it? Hell no! I need to escape from it! Now find a quality podcast, or listen to Woodsongs, or Mountain Stage, or Doug Lang's excellent Canadian broadcast called Better Days. This is where the real music is circulating.

I'll let Bob have the final word.

"...what it's come down to again... Are you any good? Can you play your instruments? Can you write innovative material? Can you touch people's souls? Can you change their lives? Can you infect them to the point where they'll come to your show for years? That's the future of this business. Not dominant superstars, but tons of journeymen, super-serving their fan base."

Giant Steps

I've received some interesting comments and email about my previous posts on the subject of great songs. It seems we may not all agree on what makes a song great, but I think most of us have the ability to recognize special things for what they are.

About a dozen years ago I wrote a song for my son, Jake, who has a disability. It was a very personal song, something I never intended to capitalize on. I sing the song sometimes, but I've never made a recording of it other than the original work tape made shortly after it was written.

For his entire life my son has struggled against adversity, prejudice, even downright malice from insurance companies that have tried to penalize him for his congenital condition, cerebral palsy. Jake's a great guy, full of humor and determination. He wants to be a writer someday and he's good at what he does. The song celebrates his attitude and the way he has inspired me through the years.

There's a link to this song, Giant Steps, along with the lyrics at the end of this post. The link will remain active for about a week to ten days. The mp3 download is free, you don't have to buy anything or join anything, or give me information about yourself to get it. I just want you to have a song that I feel is special. I want you to listen to it, live with it, and compare it to what you hear on the radio and TV. I'd like you to share the song with friends. And if you don't think it's so special, then throw it away. But if it moves you, tell others why purposeful music matters, and please let me know or leave a comment here, I'll pass it along to my son because it's his favorite song.

Here's the "loose" story behind the song from an old journal entry :

"My young son has begun to talk about his dreams; strange dreams to him. He’s falling and calling out to someone below, Please catch me, but they can’t hear and they don’t answer. In his terror he falls until he awakens.

He stands before me now, cut on one knee, an elbow, and both of his hands. This time it’s his lame leg, not his dreams, that sent him tumbling head first. As he throws the heavy limb ahead of him, he sometimes throws it too far to the right and the cross up sends him sprawling on the grass if he’s lucky; on something less forgiving if he’s not. Gravity is his enemy, always conspiring with the roots of trees and the shoulders of washout stones to bring him down.

He has fallen in the drive this time. The bloodied skin is raised like Braille from the impress of the gravel. While his sister sings to him, I minister to his wounds, visiting the stations of his pain with alcohol and cotton. I gently wrap the gauze around the backs of his hands and he turns his palms upward in a saint-like gesture, blessing me with a smile.

Then I go inside to write a long overdue letter to a friend. I tell my friend I’ve been on a kind of precipice myself, fearing the winds that threaten to sweep me off the ledge I’m clinging to. There are days when life with my son is challenging, and a dark horizon looms three hundred and sixty degrees around me. And then there are those days of singing blue sky,when I know I’m a lucky to have him. On those days my heart is an eagle’s feather and I am made for rough winds.

My friend is trying to be helpful when he says he’s there for me. He says to call if I need him. I would call, but my voice is lost in the chasm between us. The closest of friends can drift apart under duress.

What can I tell you, son, about those dreams that alarm you? This flesh is too heavy for the spirit’s wings to lift us. Each of us in his way is a child of the falling-dream, an echo of the unanswered call. Ours is a constant prayer for the sudden awakening."

LINK (3.7 MB) : http://www.craigbickhardt.com/mp3s/giant_steps.mp3

LoFi Mono (1.9 MB) : http://www.craigbickhardt.com/mp3s/giant_steps_lofi.mp3

The song can also be streamed from My Space if you don't want to download it:

http://www.myspace.com/craigbickhardt

Giant Steps (Craig Bickhardt)

You’re just a little boy clinging to your father’s hand
Your legs are working hard keeping up with your old man
And it gives you a feeling you can’t explain
To you this big old world is just a game
Taking giant steps, giant steps
A leap and a bound barely touching the ground
Time to stretch those wings, try new things
Learning to reach for your best
Taking giant steps

Now I’m too old for games or so I used to think
But part of me is a child and I’ve found that missing link
As our days rush by us we’ll grow as one
The two of us, like father like son
Taking giant steps, giant steps
A leap and a bound barely touching the ground
Time to stretch those wings, try new things
Learning to reach for your best
Taking giant steps

Soon the day will come when you’ll run ahead of me
Certain of yourself and what you’re gonna be
But when ever you stumble and lose your stride
Never lose the boy down inside
Taking giant steps, giant steps
A leap and a bound barely touching the ground
Time to stretch those wings, try new things
Learning to reach for your best
Taking giant steps

(copyright 1994, 2008 Almo Music Corp, Craig Bickhardt ASCAP, all rights administered by Universal Music)

Museum Quality: Further Musings On Great Songs

There have been many times when I’ve felt a strong urge to write something that stuck around longer than a few years: a legacy song, or at least a song I’d be proud to sing until I die. Mostly I’ve failed at this, but a few gems survive. Rodney Crowell once referred to this type of song when speaking about Guy Clark’s work-- he used the phrase “museum quality”.

I find it takes a pretty intense desire to create something great. The forge has to get pretty hot. Aspiration leads to some desperation, which leads to a spark of inspiration, and then the song sometimes comes in a rush of elation, fulfillment. Or maybe there will be a sudden vision that crystallizes in the mind’s eye and ear. This is the mystical part of the art, and it totally eludes those who have little faith in the process, or those who are in too much of a hurry. Great songs require dedication, time, effort, desire, fire, and yes, faith that the task can be accomplished.

Nurturing a great idea involves finding one to begin with-- waiting until something great comes to you, or, metaphorically speaking, stoking that fire. There will be false starts, ideas that don’t hold water, concepts that lack some fundamental truth in them. Even when the right idea strikes you, there will be misdirected verses, or perhaps you’ll be using the wrong groove, or a minor mode when it should be major, and you have to scrap it.

Then suddenly the magic happens, and very often the song is born rather quickly. I’d guess that many great songs are written in less than a few hours, and this is not a contradiction with what I said about taking the time to write something great. A great song can be written in a few hours after you spend weeks finding out how it should be written.

I’m not knocking the efforts of the journeyman songwriter who goes to work every day and cranks out another collaboration hoping it’ll be worthy of Tim McGraw. God knows I did it for years, until I sensed that my marginal ability to restrain my more exploratory creative impulses was meeting head-on with changes in the industry. Sometimes a great one came along anyway, but most days there just wasn’t enough heat in the process.

For those of you too young to remember, there was a time when Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark were hit songwriters on the Row. Steve Earle wrote there, too,and so did Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett sometimes. We all had a lot of latitude in the 1980s and 90s. A writer was given at least 3 years to prove himself/herself, which meant I could experiment—give myself the luxury of patience while trying to write a great song, and still satisfy my contractual obligations. I tried to meet my song quota early in the year to buy myself a few months of true creativity.

But today that can’t be done. The pressure for the mega-hit begins on day one and continues unabated. Publishers don’t allow much experimentation, and they allow no patience. Failure in 18 months means you’re out on the street again. The money is now completely wagging the writer.

Where has this left the so-called “great song”? It’s an outcast, an orphan of better days. In the current model, most hard working artists come off the road and feel they must co-write their next record under similar pressure. Statistically, it’s impossible to write 12 great songs in six months, cut them all, and make a great CD. No one has done it yet, although I’ve heard rumors that John Prine came close with his first record. Yet we see some variation of this plan attempted endlessly in Nashville. And this is why the radio, especially country radio, pretty much sucks.

The artists, who are unfortunately conditioned to receive instant gratification, all want the songwriting income from their hit singles, so they insist on writing, even when they have no time, and possibly even no abundant skills at it. Many people will say they deserve to write the record, who can blame them? If a hot young starlet really doesn't need a great song in order to get decent airplay, why let someone else write anything on the record?

The problem is that the modern artist (and Idol winner) has been duped into believing that success implies greatness, when success really only implies popularity, like white bread and string cheese. A record can go to #1 without being great by any stretch of the definition. And just because it goes to #1 doesn’t mean it will sell, nor that the artist will have a career in 18 months.

Only the great song guarantees that an artist will be making money at the end of the long, hard road. Does it matter to the Drifters that they didn’t write “Up On The Roof” (Carol King and Gerry Goffin), or do you think Dion cares whether he wrote “Abraham, Martin and John” (Dick Holler)?

And let’s not argue that it’s only semantics, that an insipid contemporary radio ditty is “great for what it is”. Really? I say anyone who thinks there’s room for debate about this is a musical illiterate. The term “great” used to be reserved for songs by The Beatles, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Cole Porter, Simon & Garfunkel, a few Motown classics and Brill Building evergreens. These days, according to an indiscriminate industry press, everyone writes great songs, which of course by deflation of meaning is the same as saying that no one does.

I’d like to believe this will change, but I’m not optimistic. The money comes too easily, even though the dollar is worth less these days. But the diamonds are still forged over time, and ‘museum quality’ is a standard for which we all should strive, at least once in a while.


copyright 2008 by craig bickhardt

The Angels Aren't Crying

As the changes in the music industry continue to come at us like Nolan Ryan fastballs it's easy to lose sight of what matters. What matters has always been, always will be, great songs. No amount of home recording technology or do-it-yourself social networking can replace the good old, chill-bump-raising, heart-tugging, gut-wrenching, gotta-hear-it-again song.

Bob Lefsetz's interesting recent post, "Singles Only", discusses the need for new artists to earn the listener's attention by promoting great single tracks as opposed to whole CDs. It's another way of saying, "Don't bombard me with 46 minutes of self indulgence, send me one great song." He's right. Nobody has time to listen to all the cheap music that's available on the Internet these days.

Why are there so few great songs out there in the sea of mediocrity? That's an easy one. We're all too busy pimping profiles, networking, auditioning for American Idol, Facebooking, emailing, and mixing the tracks we wrote and cut in the garage last Sunday. Who has the patience to nurture a great idea, or to write and re-write a really great song? Besides, we're the judge, jury and executioner for our own careers these days, so why not pretend none of this matters?

And yet, more than ever, it does. A voice is just a voice. I'm sorry Mariah or Justin (or whoever you are), but without a great song your vocal exercises amount to nothing, you're toast.

Voices are all different but how do we fall in love with one that has little or nothing to sing? If you could make the angels cry just by opening your mouth, you'd be discovered by the whole world overnight. But you can't. So you have to sing to mere mortals. But we'll listen if you just understand this simple fact : we want to hear a great song.

Maybe you're only trying to sustain a career, you're late for the tattoo parlor, and you think I should just butt out of your business. But you forget : I AM your business. I love songs. I listen to music. I even buy it. And guess what? All you have to do is trust what you feel when you hear the great song, then record it.

But you didn't write it you say.

Did it ever occur to you that Katherine Hepburn didn't write "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and Ben Kingsley didn't write "Ghandi" and Denzel Washington didn't write "Malcolm X"? In fact you've spent your adult life watching great performances on film and never once criticized the actors on screen for not writing the words they speak. No actor would dare insist that he or she co-write every film he or she acts in, and yet if you're a young country artist or another pop diva...

You see, we have all the musical wallpaper we need. We don't require more mundane thoughts hung upon the ordinary scale, sung by your standard-issue lungs and mandatory vocal chords, even if you're cute, shapely and young. Even if you sing perfectly. If you love the sound of your own voice, for God's sake get over it. I have never, not once, bought a record simply because I loved someone's voice, nor because the drum samples were hot for that matter.

What we lack, what we'll always lack, are great songs that move us, that make us feel more human, that show us something about life we may have missed, that kill us with great lines and make the hair on our neck stand up. We lack meaningful communication in non-disposable form, and we'd sure like to be able to sing along with it and not sound like adolescent dweebs, bitchy models, hoes, thugs, Satan worshipers or meth heads.