LET THE MUSIC STEER THE SHIP

​Well…the songwriting bug hit me something fierce at the beginning of February. I mean, I am always writing…always creating. Even if it’s a little riff here or a little lyrical idea or song title, I am always open and have my antennae on. At the start of February, instead of jumping into... 

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my computer music madness, I sat down with my guitar & notepad and started writing. I was a little apprehensive, since I hadn’t actually written lyrics & music simultaneously in quite awhile and was afraid that I may have lost my mojo…but this was not the case. I wrote about 2 songs a day for a good two weeks and just let the music flow allowing lyrical ideas and music styles steer the ship.  After it seemed that I had all I needed to say, I was left with 16 tunes…running the gamut of genre’s from straightforward rock, acoustic ballads to proggy Djent to 1920’s jazzy Charleston number…
 
This project was definitely not in my wheelhouse of projects I wanted to work on in 2017, but again, just letting the music steer the ship out. Material, which I think, had been bottling up for many years. I believe this is the stuff I was trying to express with Citizen 603 in instrumental form, but now I can convey in words, exactly what I’ve been thinking about for the last few years…from my last few years in NYC and my move back to Buffalo. I’m throwing in about 4 songs that I’d put together over the last couple years, then gonna whittle it down to 12-14 tracks.
 
I have been posting these new tunes on Instagram in their “stories” feature, because FB suxx…so go ahead and follow me on IG if you’re interested in hearing some of these new tunes that I’ve been brewing. They only stay up for 24 hours, so once they're gone...they're gone.
 
The tracks I’ve shown to a few of my friends that say it “sounds like you”. Sounds like me? I don’t know what that means. Someone else said it “sounds weird…but like a musical”… well, that’s cool.
 
Not many people know that I’ve written about 4 albums worth of material in the last 5 years, 2 unreleased musicals as well as a dozen more instrumental tracks…I try to keep my work to myself until I think it’s ready to be shown to the public. Which perhaps isn’t the right approach? When I hear “it sounds weird”, doesn’t make sense to me because these tracks are simply “me”. I’m so close to all the material I’ve written over the years, that these new tunes don’t sound anything out of the ordinary of what I’m usually outputting…but I seem to forget that no one else has heard that stuff. All they know is the music from Conversation Pieces, my TV & commercial music & the cheesy 80’s stuff, which is a small fraction of what I actually have in my “archive” if you will.
 
Another one of my resolutions for the new year was to start sharing more and more music with the world…as much as it’s an outlet for me and way to express myself, is it all for nought if no one else hears it?…perhaps other people can relate to the stuff I am writing about?

Stay tuned.

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