Hey folks,
Well Nashville has pretty much turned into Northern Manitoba here. Snow is everywhere. We have had around 8-10 inches up where we live and we are just plain stuck on this hill. Not going anywhere. Poor Jarrod Nichols is here, expecting to be gone today, but he is not going anywhere either. Poor guy. He has to be stuck with the "Song Nazi" as he likes to refer to me.
Jarrod writes a LOT of songs and we go through them note by note and line by line. Sometimes you have to have someone look over your catalogue, and give an idea of what to "sweep and what to keep". Then there are things he can tighten up. He tends to fall into the same patterns, rhyming, musically, etc. and some songs are just the same song over and over again. We all do this, but he writes a ton of stuff so takes a lot to get through.
Yesterday we did write one, "WHAT THEY LEAVE BEHIND" which is about my Uncle Richard Weaver, who died two days ago. I was supposed to be singing at his funeral in Birmingham today but there is no way I can make it. So I wrote one essentially for his family, my Aunt, and Cousins. He was married to my Father's youngest sister. Really a great guy. Ran and then owned, one of our convinenient stores in Tarrant Alabama, where I grew up. He was a Vietnam veteran who was living with the effect of Agent Orange from that war. Also had run over a land mine in a jeep which killed the other three soldiers and his commanding officer. But wounded him. He lived with injuries for years from that and the cumlative effect was part of what took ti's toll on him.
If I couldn't be there, at least I could write about it. Hope to record it some time in the future, and will post it here when I can.
If I couldn't be there, at least I could write about it. Hope to record it some time in the future, and will post it here when I can.
He was 67, which seems to be the age for the rock stars dying off. David Bowie was 69, but Frey was 67, and then a day after my Uncle died, one of my really good friends from Birmingham and the Orange Beach area, died of a massive heart attach in Colorado. So it has been quite a week for deaths. Hope all of you are doing well.
On the OD song and what he is up to. He is taking a break from a lot of online stuff. Has things going on in Ohio although right now the snow is a monster all around this part of the country. Snowmogadden. We did finish the one song, "THE MAN SHE THOUGHT SHE GOT", and have a few more in the works. I had hoped to get one recorded this week but the weather has cancelled pretty much everything. We had a snowfall on Wed. which had melted Thus, Then we got nailed again on Thus. night. But OD and I have been doing things online and he has gotten very prolific.
He is doing some of what I call "reflective writing". That is when you look back on your life and want to note things that have happened, sort of like compiling your legacy to leave behind. I have been doing it myself for years, with certain songs you use to reflect where you were at a certain point, people you were around at that time, and things you did. It is a good idea, sort of a "family photo album" of the mind. I totally suggest it.
For me, that is what songwriting is about. The best songs are always about reality that we can put into song. We relate it with others who might be going through the same thing. My own personal touch is to try and find the positive, even in tough times. The song about my uncle celebrates who he was as a person and a life well lived. Same with my other friend. They both lived life to the fullest, which again, I think is very important. It is easy to talk about all the clouds in our lives, all the bad times. That is what most people do. But for me, you don't have to look far to find the negative in life. Just turn on the TV.
So I try to find morals of the story, the interesting twists and turns of people's lives, not always HAPPY, but just not SO DEPRESSING. It is a challenge, but that is what makes songwriting interesting in my opinion. And it is always cool to hear different twists on something we have seen and heard a billion times on that.
Having said that, I congratulate Jarrod for one of his songs. A song called "Whole lot of Boots to Fill", it is a song about his Father and his Dad's shoes. While his Father is still alive, he has told it in a way that talks about all the shoes he wore through his life as if his Dad is gone. A nice gift for a father. A really good song. And I am proud of him for writing it. He is doing well, and while he tends to go in and out of being involved with music, he is getting much better as he continues along. So that is doing fine.
That is about it today in Alaska. Hope you are all doing well and staying warm.
MAB
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