Songwriter Soup

Here are some tidbits from the always-excellent Performing Songwriter (January/February 2006 issue).

Producer Hal Willner on his latest project:
“I’m about to do a multi-artist album of sea chanteys. I don’t know much about sea chanteys, so I’m diving in with everything I can.”

This is cool—I’ve been thinking about sea chanteys ever since I got hooked on Patrick O’Brien’s Master and Commander series. As I wrote in this space some time ago, I have a song called “The Names of the Winds” that I wanted to be sea chantey-esque, whatever that means.

Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics on strange sounds:
“Annie [Lennox] and I play[ed] milk bottles on “Sweet Dreams.” On “This City Never Sleeps,” I went down into Camden underground station, and recorded the trains, and then I tuned my guitar to the sound of the track. On “I Love You Like a Ball and Chain,” the rhythm track is drums, but it’s also my mum and auntie on the roof of a building that had all gravel. I had them up there with earphones on and they were marching to the beat of the drums…. On “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” I was trying to get a sound that was like a shaker, but not a shaker. More like an African sounding thing. I couldn’t find anything, so I got all these pencils and rulers and put them inside a big box, and taped the lid shut, and I would shake the box. Then I would trigger that sound from the hi-hat of the real drummer. I was always experimenting.”

How inspiring! I’m going to see if I can go out and get some “found sound” for my next album. But reading it brought back memories of my first Tascam 4-track recorder. I remember trying to duplicate the sound of congas playing a bolero pattern with pots and pans from the kitchen. As usual, I thought that was amateurish—and yet when you look at so much of the Afro-Cuban instrumentation, it comes out of necessity. I mean, a donkey jaw! Or in New Orleans, the washboard. Or the jug band.

“Fett” (I guess that’s the columnist’s name) on gimmicks for getting heard:
At a recent music conference, a man walked up to him and “asked if I’d be willing to listen to his music and provide some feedback. … He handed me a tiny, keychain-sized Nomad USB MP3 player from Creative … and a set of ear buds and said, ‘I’m Brian Kingston and here’s my demo.’ … then he explained, ‘I have four songs on the Nomad for you to listen to. I’ve already put instructions on how to use the player and my contact info on it. It’s yours to keep.’ I was immediately intrigued because no one had ever presented their music to me this way.”

The author says it worked out well, as he listened to this guy’s music before any of the other stacks of CDs he’d been handed (and he said it was really good). Further, “I found out later that Brian didn’t have to spend a lot of money to be unique. He told me that he scours the Internet and buys refurbished Nomad players in bulk, so he only ends up spending five or six dollars apiece on them. That’s not much more than the cost of a CD with a label and case and a nice-looking press kit.”

Disposable technology has truly arrived. Now don’t everyone go out and do this at once!