Church Songs

I have been involved in writing music now for over 30 years. It started when I was a kid, before I had even learned an instrument. I would use two cassette decks and sing my song ideas onto them. I’d sing a melody line on one, then play it back while recording on the other and add parts as I went along, back and forth, trying to piece things together.

For many of us who are caught up in this behavior of song writing, it is somewhat pathological. When a song starts humming in the mind, you either get it out or you get a little crazy. It’s hard to concentrate on other things. It’s like having a radio playing loudly in one ear while someone tries to talk to you in the other. It really is a compulsion, and it can be a good one if properly managed.

I’ve lost track of how many songs I’ve written over the years. People ask me sometimes, and I honestly have no idea. It’s in the hundreds. I’ve recorded a few things along the way, but I’ve never been very happy with the results. Some friends are helping me do some things now with new gear that has finally become financially accessible. But it’s still very, VERY challenging to produce anything even half way decent. My talent has some pretty severe limits.

Over the past fifteen years I’ve primarily written songs for use in churches. For those of you who don’t go to church, this might seem a little odd. I know when I was a kid, I thought all those songs we sang in church had always just sort of been there. Didn’t God write those songs? But the fact is that song writing for Church use is a long and honorable tradition. Artists have done it all throughout history, people like Bach and Handel, John Newton, Charles Wesley and W.C. Handy. And Hank Williams Sr.

Hank saw the light, at least for a little while, and he wrote about it. It’s what he did.

And there are moderns still writing for the Church. Contemporary artists like Phil Wickham, Chris Tomlin, the Fee brothers, Darlene Zschech and many others who are doing the best they can to tap into melodies and song structure that clicks with the contemporary heart and mind, while still communicating eternal truth. Other artists are trying to express their hearts in relationship to God, people like John Mark McMillan and Jon Foreman and David Crowder, who are great artists and very gifted musicians.

I’ve been drawn into this tradition, and I enjoy it. Especially the music for churches. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when you write something, like a prayer set to music, and you lead people with it and they learn it and take it to heart. You become a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac between people and God. It’s very different in some ways than a performance oriented approach to music, but I love it.

It’s an honor.


Psalm 33:3
Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2011

Cash: Bootleg Vol II

Johnny Cash’s son, John, has been gathering and releasing what could be called “historical” pieces of the Johnny Cash music catalogue. Four or five years ago they released Bootleg Vol I, “Personal File,” which was two CDs worth of demo recordings, just Cash and his guitar. And now they’ve released another two CD set called “From Memphis to Hollywood.”

The shining star of the new release is Johnny’s first recorded show, which he did for radio. They think this recording was actually made by Johnny’s wife at the time, Vivian. An amazing person in her own right. It’s a rough recording in the sense that it lacks the sonic quality of modern recordings, but it really shows how, from the earliest stages, Johnny had a very personal quality in his presentation, and his voice is a bit higher too. Plus, you get to hear Johnny try to sell awnings for the “Home Equipment Company,” which is where he worked at the time. What could be better than that?

Then the CDs goes on with some demo recordings, long lost vinyl B-sides and such. One of the “rockabilly” demos called “You’re My Baby” was actually recorded and released by Roy Orbison. Cash’s demo has the line, “you’re my sugar . . . little wooly booger.” It’s just fantastic. Johnny didn’t mind getting a little goofy sometimes, even though it’s not normative of what he did. Roy chose to leave that line off when he recorded it.

I’ve seen a few people on the internet over the past few years make snide remarks about John Carter Cash (Johnny’s son) releasing this stuff. They say the same kinds of things about Rick Rubin for the posthumous recordings he’s released. It’s that tone of “they’re just doing it for the money” thing, as if releasing music for the money is something new.

Ha.

I’m thankful they take the time and effort to get these things released. Some of us are interested in the over all body of work that Johnny Cash produced: the phases he went through as a song writer and musician, as well as the stages he went through as a human being. All of these things matter when it comes to Cash. It is a big source of his popularity that he struggled through life and tried to be faithful to God in Christ while being honest with his art. He had a certain broken nobility.

If you like roots, traditional or folk music at all, you can’t miss this stuff.




Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2011

No Nonsense

Hey diddly high diddly high dee high dee hoooooooo.

Sha na na na na sha na na na na.

Oooooooooooweeeeeeoooooo.

I happened to notice the other day, for no particular reason, that in all of my song writing, I don’t think I have ever used nonsense syllables. I have written a lot of songs over the years. I couldn’t even tell you how many anymore. But, for some reason, I have not engaged in the common practice of nonsense syllables. I have never zip a dee doo dah’d. I have never bop sha bop’d or sh’boom’d on one of my songs.

Could there be something wrong with me?

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with nonsense syllables. Where would Doo Wop have been without the Doo or the Wop? The Beatles would have never koo koo ka choo’d. The Beach Boys would have had a lot less to say in the parking lot. And I don’t know how many singers and song writers still na na na and la la la their way through song after song.

But these things are conspicuously absent from my music, and I don’t know why. I have no idea. And I had not noticed until recently that it was the case. And I don’t know what to think about it. So I thought I’d just share it here, because what else do you do with such observations?

It all makes me wonder, who really did put the dip in the dip da dip da dip? Perhaps they could tutor me or something.


Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2010

The Work of Art

There are at least two basic theories about creativity that you hear articulated in different ways by different people.

Theory #1: One theory is that a person creates something out of nothing. Sort of – poof – and they have some new idea or some new song or some new thing. They feel that what they have come up with came out of nowhere.

Theory #2: And then there is the theory that a person creates something out of a kajillion things that they can’t even necessarily understand. The mind is full of puzzle pieces that life has tossed in there, and somehow the mind or the spirit or both begin putting the pieces together until the picture starts to make sense.

I am a theory #2 person. To my way of thinking, only God is a theory #1 person. So I go with #2, and the reason is that I can sense the puzzle pieces floating around within me and in the world. I can sense when they are starting to connect. My job is to do things to help them connect. In my mind, that is the “work” of an artist. To develop the skills that enable you to bring about these connections.

If I’m right about this, it suggests that if you want to be “creative” and you’re waiting for some sudden flash of insight from out of nowhere, you’re not likely to create very much. And if you want to be creative, but you don’t train yourself to do the work necessary to put the pieces together, then I don’t think you’ll produce much either.

Art is not for sissies.

Being creative means developing skills. It’s about craft. Songs, poems, stories, needlepoint, paintings, relationships, cars – whatever – the created thing has to be crafted in one way or another. Albert Einstein did not wake up one morning with the theory of Relativity bouncing around in his head. He agonized over it for a long, long time. He found pieces of the puzzle in the work of other scientists, which he added to other pieces he observed in everyday life. He had to develop his math skills because it wasn’t his strong suit, and he knew he’d need to get the math right to present the theory. He pressed pieces thinking they would fit, but they didn’t, so he had to keep looking. Finally, he managed to put it together. He didn’t create a law of nature. He painted it into his mind and into the minds of other people. Well. A few people. The rest of us just scratch our heads.

But the point is the same. Every work of art takes work. You have to do the work. To my way of thinking, that includes your stories, your paintings, your children, your spouse, your church, your songs, your movies, your theories on life and death, your work, your play . . . everything.

Life is an art.



Colossians 3:23-24

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010

Purge

I write songs. Pretty much always have. Hundreds of 'em. It's what I do. And I was really young when I started. Somewhere around the 4th or 5th grade. I’d come up with ideas and I kept a notebook full of lyrics that I was working on. I would take two cassette recorders and record tracks by dubbing back and forth. I’d sing a melody line into one recorder, then play it back and record it on the second recorder while adding a harmony. Then I’d play that back and record again adding another harmony. Ad infinitum.

High tech. That’s how we rolled.

When asked why I write songs, I find it hard to explain. I’m tempted to say, “Why do you vomit?” It’s not very elegant, but it does make some sense. When you’re sick and your body wants to get it out, it gets it out. Just try and stop it. Well. That’s sort of what it’s like. Ideas and sounds start buzzing around the grey matter. They start to take over, falling like puzzle pieces into place. It’s like sporadic OCD. I can’t concentrate on other things while it’s in there, taking up space. I feel like, if I don’t get it out, my head might explode.

You could call this the George Romero philosophy of creativity.

Sometimes I think it’s a way of avoiding madness. Life crams so much into us all the time, if we don’t pour something back out, I think it can be crippling. In order to relieve the pressure we have to purge. For some people, tears are enough. Or laughter. For me it’s mostly songs and stories and good conversations about what makes for great coffee. For you it might be something else. At least I hope you have some form of expression. Working on cars. Painting. Needlepoint. Singing in the car while driving to work. Whatever. Everyone is different. Trust me, finding a way to express yourself in healthy ways is a lot better than exploding with anger or being addicted to drugs. Some forms of expression can kill you. Like Freddie Mercury said, given certain circumstances, even “too much love will kill you in the end.”

There's a man in the Bible who was hit with practically every bad thing that could happen to a person. His children died in a storm when the house they were in collapsed. He lost most of his possessions. His wife had given up on him. And so we get page after page of Job, expressing himself. He says, "So I won’t keep silent. I’ll speak out in the anguish of my soul. I’ll complain in the bitterness of my soul.”

He had to say something. I think he was just trying to stay alive.




Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010