A welcome bit of validation.

[mapsedge]

I got a phone call from Dave, the new owner at Stone Bridge, asking if I had any CDs I could drop off. He keeps the CD on pretty much all the time at the coffee house and he's apparently been selling it, in spite of having no physical copies of it. I dropped off five on Friday night as the family and I were out running around.

Saturday morning, I realized I needed at least one of them back for an online order (I have them up on the Seamlyne site), so I went up. He had the CD playing in the shop's boom box - Maid on the Shore - and, quite without thinking about it, I started singing along.

I grabbed a couple of discs from behind the counter, let Dave know why I was stealing inventory, and started out. A woman at one of the tables stopped me with, "Is that you on the CD player?"

"Yep, me all over."

"Well, I was sitting here listening to it from over there," she pointed over her shoulder, "And suddenly it was coming from two places at once!"

I smiled. I kinda hoped for that. "Yeah, instant Surround Sound."

"I like it! Where can I get a copy?" 

Score. I extended one of the copies I had in my hand. "Right here." 

I'm not ashamed to say that made my morning. I've gotten a lot more comfortable in my musical skin, so to speak, but the validation is always nice.

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I've started work on a new song. In June 1832, a group of Irish immigrants arrived in America and went to work in Pennsylvania on a railroad project called "Duffy's Cut", leveling a hill and using the removed earth to fill the adjacent valley. Within six weeks or their arrival they were all dead of cholera, subsequently buried anonymously in the fill under the railroad bed. If there was ever a story begging to be sung, it's that one, I figure.

As I've been working on it, I made a discovery about myself and how I work. I've started half a dozen songs over the last couple of years - Prairie Departure and Where You're From are the only two that have gone beyond a few scribblings in a notebook. 

I've been trying to write the lyrics out and then set them to music, but it isn't working that way. Prairie Departure really didn't gel until I picked up my guitar and tried to sing what I'd written - and though it came together more or less as it was on the paper, I needed the music to get it past the paper stage. Where You're From (which you wouldn't have heard unless you've come to see me perform the last few times) is very different: the music gave it it's final shape and ultimately it's last verse, and the song behind the microphone is very different rhythmically than it's paper origins.

So, I've learned that if I want to write songs - and I do, I'd like the next CD to be 80% original material - I can't do it without a guitar ready to hand. I can't separate one from the other.

Comments

[glesyn.livejournal.com]

I think I saw a documentary on that group of people recently. Fascinating stuff and I'd love to see what that story inspires you to write.