I wrote a country song today.
Well, sort of. Think "Voodoo Chile" meets the Everly Brothers (but sung very, very badly).
I even recorded it...god help me.
If I should die in a hurricane, someone will go through all my unfinished stuff and ideas and letters and everything else, and among all those things, they will find this thing. Hopefully they will have the good sense to bury it.
I also began something I resolved to do many years ago, and that is teach myself to sing and play the guitar at the same time. I've been playing guitar for way too many years, and can't do anything with it except play bad blues solos and lots of weird chords. I know almost no songs, can't sing while I play (except for my sensitive, heartfelt coffeehouse ballad "The corporations are exploiting third world nations and the workers are underpaid"), and am basically useless at entertaining people.
I've been thinking about this stuff for a while, and the subject came up again between Chris and I in SF. We had a couple impromptu jam sessions (jesus, did I just say "jam session?" Shoot me now...stop the madness...) and it hit me again--AGAIN!--I know no songs.
I will learn some.
Starting with blues standards, because it's the best thing I can play; it's what will unconsciously come out any time I pick up a guitar, anywhere, for any reason, even if I'm actually really trying to impress Amy and Alex with Yngwie Malmsteen licks. So I figured that's the place to start. Beatlesesque ideas are not the thing whichever half of my brain governs such things reaches for first. It's always blues. To an extent that sometimes I wish I could unlearn that tendency, or at least minimize it.
Usually, if the guitar is electric, I'll do that for a while, get it out of the system, and then it all goes haywire and turns into Pieter's textural conceptual art-noise wank fest, with lots of dissonance and strange intervals and droning stuff. Then comes the Sabbath, Zeppelin, Rush, and Van Halen, and it's all down hill from there.
So, to put a spike through the heart of that fifteen year old pattern, I'm resolving to learn songs. And sing over them. I know I can do it; I have full independence as a drummer. I just have to work damn hard.
And holy shit it's hard. As a player, I tend not to place accents on the 1, 2, 3, or 4. My playing always ends up being really syncopated, with a lot of space between chords and notes. Well, singing over that kills me. So I plod along on the guitar, dutifully strumming every count, with no ornaments or syncopation. Boring, but it'll have to do for now.
Anyway, Challenge 2003 is on. Let's just see how long I keep this up.
First tune? "Rollin and Tumblin." Traditional. I'm doing Buddy Guy's and Junior Well's version, although there are other more famous ones. I transcribed the lyrics, played to the song (badly), played it more slowly to myself, a very heavy foot trying to keep the mouth and hands from getting scrambled, and now my fingers hurt, because I don't play enough.
...
Since this post was so exciting, I'll tantalize you now with a teaser of the impending brilliance due tomorrow. To quote Dr. Drakken, it's "so brilliant, it amazes even me."
The subject of this important contribution to Western Civilization?
The Doctrine of Preemptive Laziness.
Happy weekend.
