How did you start out as a songwriter?

[Guest voclizr]

I bought a cheap guitar in 1977 and bought a chord book (Mel Bay) and learned some basic chord fingering. About two weeks later I wrote a little folk ditty which I called "Carolyn". From there I started singing into stereo tape recorders and I went the Les Paul route ie sound on sound with two tape recorders, adding parts back and forth (building up tape hiss along the way). In 1984 I bought my first 4-track (Fostex X15). The evolution continued in 1988 when I bought a better 4-track (Fostex 160) and some cheap keyboards and a reverb unit to patch into, and a drum machine (Yamaha RX-17). I felt like Dylan must have felt like after he recorded "Highway 61 Revisited". I did that for about five years followed by a 12 year writer's slump. Then late last year I got my Zoom 8-track and my better (but not best) Yamaha keyboard. My sister-in-law asked me the other day, how many songs I've written in all this time. I'd say about 100, but most are total junk. There are maybe 10 I have any use for.

JB

[Donna]

Good thread!

Had a toy drumset when I was 6 or 7 and before teenage years a couple years plying string bass and sax. I used to tune my toms (and snare w/ the snares off) to make a chord. I'd play melodies on them and build...something, anyway. I was never a solo-er with drums. Too hard to do!

I think I was 12 when I wrote my first song. As I wrote the lyrics, the melody came, but also 3 vocal harmonies, horns, big sound.

They didn't want me to sing lead as a teenager. Suddenly a few years later I could sing. By then a lot of experience playing and listening, it was so wide. In my early 20's I had a feeling I could write but was afraid of not following through so I sold my drums and used the $ to buy a synth which stored several thousand notes. I did sound-on-sound, too, but w/ ghetto blasters (big step up from the really cheap tape recorders).

I didn't get a drumset again til like 15 years after I'd sold it. That was the way to go for me. A good friend (biker who wrote gentle, sad love songs) left his ovation w/ me many moons ago. Haven't heard from him since . But I learned some chords, so now can compose doing simple lines either keys/guitar.

Cannot remember when the 4-track came into my life - but so glad it did.

[Rudi]

I started making up bits of music as soon as I got an instrument to make it on. Having no tuition or knowledge, making stuff up was all I could do anyway. I had wanted to play since I was 8, but had to wait until I was 16 and buy my own guitar, because my father was a mean git.

An early recording I made (at Art College) I called “The Sea” or “The Shore” or something, and was supposed to sound like waves lapping at the shore. The Em chord was ‘the ebb’, and the E chord was ‘the flow’. I used quiet strums that grew louder for the ‘flow’. The crescendo occurred as the wave broke upon the shore. Then I changed to Em to which decrescendo was applied as the water receded. I then tried to improvise over this with overdubbing.

I didn’t get interested in conventional songs until I had to, ie:- began to join & jam with other players. I have no idea what my 1st song was like or what it was called. It was almost certainly embarrassingly derivative or pretentious (I was no small thinker as a lad).

All my music & lyrics have become humbler & less grandiose as the years have worn me away. I will probably return to an acoustic version of “The Shore” on my deathbed and peg out with a whimper.

[Colonel]

I've played drums all of my life. I was blessed to have been around the world with my music.

In 1995, my wife and I were sitting on the bed reading the paper when I saw a AP press about Doug Maten, a truck driver who was taken to the graveyard on the trailer of his big rig.

It was like a movie was playing in my head. I back tracked to reach his widow, Karen, and the rest is history.

We talked for sbout a hour and I called her back in less then 15 minutes with the song. Not a word has been changed since.

We both received the key to the city of Memphis, and it started a new career for me.

[Rudi]

The key to the city. Great. Was this for the song?

[Steve]

We both received the key to the city of Memphis, and it started a new career for me.

Does this mean you can go in and pinch stuff and nobody will know who it is?

[roxhythe]

This is a fascinating thread, folks. Surprising number of drummers, here.

I learned guitar to impress my girlfriend. (Still have guitar, no longer have girlfriend. Classic story.) Also wrote my first song to impress same girlfriend. It was a stereotypical, medieval-themed teenage-angst kind of thing--and no, I will not play it. Mostly, I wrote bad poetry--obituaries for all my friends, that sort of thing. (I also did one for myself. Figured I'd need it someday.)

I got into songwriting through the parody angle--it is, among other things, an easy way for a would-be poet (especially a tone-deaf one) to break into music. I was familiar--I think everybody is--with the old bluegrass turkey, "Wreck of the Old 97," and the much more famous parody by the Kingston Trio about the Boston subway system, "The Man Who Never Returned." My baby sister had a Japanese boyfriend, who'd written a parody of the parody, about the Tokyo subway system. And I thought, "If this kid can do it, I can do it, too." Portland, Oregon, where she lived, didn't have a subway--but it had a publicly-owned bus system, that had just implemented an unpopular (and stupid) rate increase. The result was "The Tri-Met Bus Song," which I think is still poopular in Portland. That was over 30 years ago.

Over time, more and more of the music became original, too, so I was writing fewer parodies. I still do occasionally, though (I maintain it's because I have toruble remembering the words to popular songs). I don't write much poetry any more, either--songs are more of a challenge--but occasionally, one will pop out.

I had the good fortune to be rhythm guitarist for The Dodson Drifters, a popular "bluegrass punk" band in the late 1970s. Jeff Tanzer, the lead guitarist, and I had a Lennon-McCartney thing going for a long time; we both wrote songs, and the band played them (one of The Dodson Drifters' claims to fame was the amount of original material we did). It wasn't so much collaboration as competition--he'd write one, so I'd have to write one, too--but we'd routinely perform each other's songs just to keep audiences off balance. A couple of those are still popular, too, and it continues to surprise me. After the band broke up, I didn't play music for a long time.

I started again in the late '90s, and deliberately tried to get in touch with other writers; I'd noticed that hanging out owth musicians who were better'n I was made me a better musician (and I think they tolerated me mostly because I wrote interesting stuff they liked to play). I hoped hanging with other writers would help be become a better writer, and I think it's worked. Had to find the writers on line, because I was the only one in our small town. (However, since then, there have been a couple people following my example, which is nice.) These days, most of my gigs are solo, but I have a couple of informal groups of musicians I hang out and play with regularly.

And all that is waydam wordy. Sorry. I currently have 40-odd songs I consider "keepers"--I don't count the others, and try hard to forget them--and I perform them, either solo or with a band, every chance I get, because it's about the only way to showcase them. I have one CD for sale, and hope to have another out by Christmas.

Joe

[Colonel]

The key to the city. Great. Was this for the song?

Yes, Karen and I both received the key for Truckers.

That was cool.

Colonel Robert

[Colonel]

Does this mean you can go in and pinch stuff and nobody will know who it is?

I often joke that after giving me the key, they changed all of the locks...

Besides it is not that big.

CR

[Desertrose]

I've enjoyed reading through this thread.

I started writing songs when my parents divorced.

My dad asked me if I wanted to go back to Zimbabwe to visit family with him and his new wife, OR he could buy me a piano.

Being the little shit I was at age ten, determined to hate my new stepmum (she is now my best friend!) I opted for the piano instead of the trip.

I did the whole tape to tape thing accumulating hiss too

The songs were hideously depressing, but that's where it all began.

[Steve]

Welcome back Tracy. We missed ya! Did the move go OK then? Got all the decorating done?

[Desertrose]

Welcome back Tracy. We missed ya! Did the move go OK then? Got all the decorating done?

Thanks

I gotta tell you we have moved into the most fascinating house!

It's nearly 100 years old, designed kinda like a medieval castle, all rough stone walls (not a flat wall in the house) and archways everywhere.

It's spooky as heck, with five fireplaces, a resident possum, kangaroo's outside our front door and we're loving it!

Anyway....not really appropriate for this thread, but you did ask, lol!

[Steve]

Thanks

I gotta tell you we have moved into the most fascinating house!

It's nearly 100 years old, designed kinda like a medieval castle, all rough stone walls (not a flat wall in the house) and archways everywhere.

It's spooky as heck, with five fireplaces, a resident possum, kangaroo's outside our front door and we're loving it!

Anyway....not really appropriate for this thread, but you did ask, lol!

Lots of inspiration for new songs then?

If you feel like posting some pictures? We'd love to see them! (in the Bar)