Your Guitar Questions Answered or How to Write a Song or Fake it for Fun and Profit

This morning as I was checking on the ol' e-mail, this little comment/question trickled in:

My question to you is: before you learned to play the guitar, how did you stay focused enough to get a song written? Every time I go to write some lyrics, and sing them aloud, I find I'm sounding more and more like a song I've heard before. I have your CD and have listened to it quite a few times. I just love the stories you paint for us. The way you're able to find the right thing to say at the right time is a talent all in it's own.

Any words of wisdom you'd care to share?

-Amanda from Santa Cruz

My first thought was, OH YEAH, I FORGOT I am a songwriting musician. I'm approaching the year anniversary of my last gig, where I said, "That's it. I'm done performing like this. I need a real change." This doesn't mean I don't play anymore--I just don't do it outside my home. I actually have even been writing songs again and that is always a HAPPY experience. Maybe not for my cats and husband who have to hear the same song OVER and OVER again, because it gets a little OBSESSIVE, but hey, that's called MARRIAGE.

So Amanda, this is where I should out myself right now: I learned to play guitar BY writing songs. After a botched attempt at trying to learn "Leaving on a Jet Plane" I just SKIPPED the whole learning by example and literally created a new song for every new chord I needed to learn. The upside to this was that I was writing A LOT of songs and learning to play guitar in the process! The downside to this is none of the songs were actually THAT GOOD and it took me another TEN years to feel I could play anything else beyond my own songs and the words HACK and SHAM came to mind every time somebody said to me, "Hey, you wanna jam?" Um, I CAN'T. I don't know HOW.

That being said, ANYTIME you begin something brand new, you will sound like somebody else. Do not PANIC. This is not only totally natural, but a good sign. It means you HEAR something and can MIMIC it. A lot of people can only hear things, but not take it the next step further. I was hopelessly like Liz Phair until I wasn't. I can't tell you the number of Ani Difranco's I met or Dar Williams in the folk scene of 1999. Don't even get me started on the amount of wanna-be Bob Dylan boys I came across. If you are worried about this, just know it is just the monkey mind telling you STOP TRYING SOMETHING NEW. Tell that monkey, SCREW IT and move forward. I guarantee you, if you stick with it, your own voice will emerge slowly, but surely.

This is what I recommend beyond all else: read and listen. We all know what we like when we hear it--there's a reason. There is something about a song or a piece of writing that can speak to us so clearly. Find out what speaks to you and use it as a filter for your own work. We all have our own relationship to music, but what I LOVE about it beyond all other mediums is that it has the power to make me remember something SO CLEARLY. Nobody looks at a Picasso and says, "Man, that takes me back." Yet, if I hear Psychedelic Furs' "Pretty In Pink" I am 13 years old again on dollar night at the Island Theater in Coronado, California, and I am full of hope and dread about high school.

Music also has this unbelievable power for making you feel like you BELONG to something. The first time I GOT that a song could do that, a friend of mine played Bruce Springsteen's "Spirit of the Night" on a guitar for me, and it was like a huge hammer hitting a BELL. I actually don't like Bruce's version of that song, but something about the way Evan played it made me realize what I was looking for in music: a sense of belonging. My favorite songs make me feel like I belong to something. I wanted to write songs that made me feel like I belonged to something.

Then there's just the lessons on songwriting you can learn by listening and reading. I remember the first time I heard Lou Reed's song "Dreaming" it HIT ME like a TON OF BRICKS: Oh, I can put DIALOGUE in a song? That was a wake up call. When I read Anne Sexton's poem "Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound," and I read the lines:

and I am on the top deck now

holding my wallet, my cigarettes

and my car keys

at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday

in August of 1960.

I realized that being SPECIFIC in writing has REAL POWER. This one poem has had more influence on me as a songwriter than any other piece of music or art. It taught me not to be vague. It taught me to not get lost in words like "love" and "hate" but to show SPECIFICALLY what love and hate looks like to me. When you get your heart broken, don't say, my heart is broken, say what you are doing around that heart. What are the objects of your life? What do you do every day? Or to quote Don Henley: Do you drive by his house, even though he's not home?

So that's my LENGTHY bit of WISDOM. Come from what you love always. Write the song you would most like to hear. Don't sweat the questions of originality. Just try. As the Estonian proverb says, "The work will show you how to do it."