The Journey Behind JOURNEYMAN

It’s done.

After writing and demo-ing 35 songs, we have the final list picked. It really is an interesting process, seeing how the body of a CD comes together.

For example, the title track of this CD, JOURNEYMAN, came from a lyric idea I wrote down in a Barnes and Noble bookstore back in 1999 or 2000. At the time, I was leading worship every Thursday evening at a tiny church in Pittsburgh and afterward, I would hit this B&N store, get some coffee and write lyrics. The lyrics called ‘Journeyman’ were originally written as the opening song of a musical that I was envisioning – the story of a man both running from and ultimately running towards the call laid upon his life, an allegorical look at the road of faith that we walk as Christians on this side of Heaven.

Well, the lyrics consisted of 3 verses, no tune and that musical never happened. The notebook from that night ended up in a bin with all of my other unfinished lyrics and ideas (a sizable bin, I might add!)

Fast forward to Spring 2010 where I am writing songs for a new CD… a CD which, at that point in time, had no real direction or cohesive theme. I am running low on ideas so I pull out that bin with old lyrics (something, by the way, that I don’t normally do) and happen across lyrics consisting of 3 verses and no tune… it has been a decade since I first wrote those words… a lot of life has happened since then, a lot of struggle, a lot of joy, a lot more of the journey…

…so, a new verse, some music and the story of a man both running from and ultimately running towards the call laid upon his life, a not-so-allegorical look at the road of faith that we walk as Christians on this side of Heaven. The theme and direction of this new CD is born…

(For those of you who are interested in helping make this CD a REALITY, please check out christopherames.com and join us on the JOURNEY!)

So Busted!

In keeping with the intent of this blog to show the ‘life behind the life’ of a working musician, I share this incident. Songwriters will probably recognize it right away, but others may have no idea this happens… a lot…

So, last night I had some time to sit down and write. I was so excited about it that I even Twittered it:

Finally, an evening below 75… on the porch, cup of coffee, writing songs for the next CD… yea, it’s good to play music for a living…

I started working on some lyrics and the chorus came fast, even with a hint of a tune, so I grabbed my guitar and hammered it out. Hm. Ventured on and tried some different verse ideas until I came across an angle I liked. With that in place, I wrote a few more verses that I could choose from later. All that’s left is the middle… an instrumental bit or a bridge? The last song I did had no bridge, so this song will get one. There it is, finished. Hm.

Usually, when a song comes as quickly as this one, I am so pumped that I sit there and play the chorus over and over and over. This time, as I played the chorus, it just felt… comfortable. Like an old pair of jeans. No thrill, they just fit. Hm. I played it later for the Lady of the Realm and she had the same reaction. “Let it sit for a couple of days and maybe it will grow on us,” she said.

So, this morning I am at the Y and I start to hum the chorus melody. That’s a good sign. And as I hum, I start to sing the words… except that the words are not the ones I wrote last night… they are the words of song written by Rich Mullins! That’s not a good sign. No wonder the melody felt so comfortable – I have known it for 20 years! And I didn’t just nick one line, it was the whole freaking chorus melody! So busted! Well, they say to steal from the best, right?

But, now I am excited again. I have to go back and wrestle with the words I wrote and find a new (and original) melody… one that will make me want to sing that chorus over and over and over!

PS… you will notice that I didn’t mention either the title of the song I am working on or the Rich Mullins song I ‘re-wrote’. That was intentional because, if this song makes the next CD, I don’t want people singing it to Rich’s tune!

Great Opening Lines

I was singing at a local church service a couple of weeks ago and they had asked me to learn a song by Big Daddy Weave called ‘What Life Would Be Like”. While I was working on it, I was taken with the opening line of the song: ‘I wish I was more of a man, have you ever felt that way?’

That got me to thinking about how an opening line can really make or break a song. Great opening lines can trigger you to break out singing, making you recall a whole song that you may not have thought about in years. Here are some of those great opening lines for me, see if you recognize them:

“Well, it was 20 years ago today that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play…”

“So you want to be a rock’n'roll star then listen now to what I say…”

“Time it was, and what a time it was, it was a time of innocence, a time of confidences…”

“And the moon is a sliver of silver like a shaving that fell on the floor of a Carpenter’s shop..”

“Sipping whiskey from a paper cup, You drown your sorrows ’til you can’t stand up…”

“Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”

“Here’s a story of lovely lady…”

Currently, I am writing songs for a new record and I am always looking for a great opening line. So, please comment and tell me 1) your favorite opening line in a song and 2) give me your best original opening line… maybe it will end up in a co-write!

An African Blog, a Celtic Journal, and the Seeds of a new CD

A few months back, my wife sent me an email with a link to a blog. The blog was being written by a friend of ours who was spending some time in Africa. In a post entitled ‘The Cry Of My Heart’ she ends with this line:

“Without Christ I am nothing. Apart from Him there is nothing good that I can do. And yet in His great love and mercy He has chosen to use the foolish things of this world… He has called those that He has rescued to love the world as He loves it. These are the thoughts that I have been pondering the last few days… this is the cry of my heart—that I would draw so close to my Jesus that my heartbeat falls in rhythm with His and that through my life His love would be displayed vibrantly as a testimony to His greatness”

My management team has on occasion suggested to me the possibility of recording 1) a ‘praise and worship’ record (which I am not interested in) and 2) an edgier youth oriented record (which I am interested in). After hearing so much P&W music that is simplistic, overly repetitive, chronically ‘me’ centered and musically dumbed down – I wonder if an ‘artistic’ worship album is possible? Or is all music written unto the Creator, in actuality, worship music? Won’t I bring the most honor to Him by crafting the best music I can? By digging deep?

The phrase from our friend’s blog – the cry of my heart – struck a chord with both my wife and myself… maybe I can dig into this phrase, this desire, this call and make a record that is both the rockier, youth edged one as well as (through the back door) a worship-ful record?

Knowing that the first phase of any record is the writing, I went to Barnes and Noble and found a small journal with a Celtic design on the front and started jotting down notes, thoughts and ideas. This  journal will hold the chronicle of the journey from seed to CD, with all of the complete songs, incomplete songs, fragments, titles, versions, ruminations, and musings that go into the writing.

And when it is all over… there may be a new CD from the effort. Or as my wife pointed out, maybe a new depth of heart… indeed.

I Hate Admitting This…

Having been a professional musician for nearly 20 years, I have enjoyed going to several conferences… industry conferences, indie conferences, performance conferences, songwriting conferences… all sorts. I took home a lot of great info from all those experiences but there was one area where I pretty much just dismissed what they were telling out of hand. Songwriting…

It seems that every time I got in a room with songwriters, they would start talking about co-writing and re-writing; writing songs and then rehashing them and then tearing them apart and then re-writing them yet again. And all of this with a blissful look of abandon on their faces… I would always dutifully take notes and then toss them on my way out the door. Sure, maybe that’s how you all do it, but not me. I argued that I did all of my rehashing and re-writing in my head before pen hit paper and if you didn’t like the song, I would write another rather than try to re-write the existing one. Frankly, that is how I wrote papers in college, too. Maybe with my GPA, THAT should have been a red flag… As far as the co-writing thing, I had no real experience with that and didn’t know anyone who wanted to do it, so that was pretty much a non issue.

All of that caught up to me with this current project. Really pushing to take everything up a level on this new CD, from look to sound, it was time to face the whole co-writing/re-writing thing. So, after having co-written with 5 different folks and written, re-written, and re-re-written over 40 songs, grown a thicker skin, tried out ideas, thrown out ideas, stared at lyrics trying not to sing that melody that everyone hated and find a new one, fought to resurrect ideas and then thrown them out again… I hate to admit this, but… they were right. Iron sharpens iron, as they say. The songs on this CD have benefited from the co-writing and re-writing process and are a cut above my previous work. So, yeah, those conferences were right… but don’t quote me on it, I’ll just deny it…