It’s About The Songs!
How do you go about making a record? I’ve released a couple of EPs in addition to the full-length solo record, and I always find it useful to go back to square one to ask myself this basic question. I’m a pretty distracted person by nature and there are so many big, and little, tasks that go into getting the job done that you can easily lose sight of the ultimate goal: to produce a piece of art. Is it also a commercial, marketing and PR statement? Well, sure. But if the thing you’ve created isn’t compelling on its own, without packaging, messaging, advertising, performing, then it’s kind of an empty exercise.
My first solo record benefited from being able to draw on all the songs I’d written over the previous ten years. I knew going into producing this, my sophomore effort, it was going to be a taller mountain to climb. I was determined not to wait another ten years to release something and I wanted it to be better than my last. A lot of that pressure is self-imposed, but I view it as a healthy desire to be productive. I few years back I read “Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now.” I was struck by how, even in the earliest days of their writing partnership, Paul and John valued being productive. When they sat down they almost always came away with a finished song. Now I’m not putting myself anywhere near their league, but I do share their view that one of the characteristics of successful artists is that they make art. In the realm of pop music, that is generally viewed as releasing some kind of artistic statement every 1-3 years (there are varying opinions whether this is still the case that I won’t go into here, nor why I still believe it is).
That’s why last summer, about a year after “Truth and Love,” I made a conscious decision to dial back the number of shows we played so I could focus on writing. I confess my original intention was to finishing writing songs over the summer, record in the fall and release this spring. Reality got in the way of that plan and it’s taken up to now to complete the songs that will make up the record.
