I consider myself a part-time artist. I’m not always all that damn creative, so when I’m not in artist mode I store up observations like a squirrel for the winter. I try and keep my antennae up so that I have a lot of extra pieces with which to complete a song when I’m an artist again. There’s a time to collect data, a time to run on the fuel of inspiration, and then there’s the heavy lifting at the end—the craft. The craft might not seem all that damn sexy, but you need compositional tricks, and some understanding of music theory, formal or informal, to knock a song together. I cannot accept
...more
