Tough Town?

It's not that people don't care about music in this town. You'd have a hard time finding any place in the world more welcoming to budding musicians and songwriters. This is music-city. Everyone here is in love with music and musicians. Most musicians are regarded as something of an oddity in their places of origin. They are seen either as no-accounts who can't pay the rent or they are placed on a pedestal, lauded and applauded. In Nashville a musician is a dime a dozen. We are the 99 here. There may be something different or special about you but, in Nashville, it's not going to be the fact that you make music. That is almost a given here.

I don't know if it's true of other songwriters but when I discovered that I could write a song it was a major turning point in my life. Here was something that I was kind of good at, which in itself wasn't all that amazing. The really amazing part was that I really liked doing it. It was comfortable and made immediate sense to me. There was some sort of instinct that I had for writing that wasn't something I had to study or learn. It was just there. So I let it have it's way with me. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote some more. I sang and sang and sang. I sang some more. I compared my work with what was on the radio and then went back to work. I was so comfortable in my songwriting skin that I began to allow that to define me. Music was my “thing” and I really enjoyed that fact.

Then I moved to Nashville and my “thing” was no longer “thing”-worthy. It was just something that almost everyone you meet does and quite often does just as well if not better than you. It's not so much that Nashville strips your grand ideas and dreams...it's that it strips your very identity from you. It takes that thing you've grasped onto as your beacon of hope and turns it into something dreadfully common....prosaic............dull..............just stop with that already.

So I wrote this song about Nashville and called it, “The Killing Kind”.

The Killing Kind (feat Anna Johnson) by timpepper

But I got to thinking about it and perhaps I was being a little unkind towards this town that embraces artists so heartily. Maybe Nashville is more like a loving but tough mentor who says, “ok...what else have you got? Who are you really? Can you do that but do it better?”. It kicks the rock star out of you and forces you to become a human again. It reminds you that the rules still apply to you despite your precious talent (that you didn't do anything to get anyway).

I submitted this song for critique through an online service. The reviewer was very thorough and I felt like he did a good job. It was money well spent. I've copied an excerpt of one of his points below:

“Lyrically there is room for you to take your content a step further. You could try adding a twist to really get the most out of those last 8 lines. For instance, you could show the other side, from the perspective of someone who didn't make it, or of someone who did, letting the listener in on what it took to make it. Alternatively, you could compare it to another force that people must grapple with, like time, or chance, showing how one force is colder, or more unpredictable, or more forgiving. Redemption is the counterpoint to condemnation, so touching on that element is a great way to offer a glimpse of the whole picture.”

I completely agree with his assessment and will bear it mind as I write future songs. But for this particular song I wanted to write from the perspective of someone stuck in a situation. If I'd followed that advice I might have made the song more “universal” but I think I also might have lost something in so doing. When you're in a situation and you feel stuck you're not thinking about the whole picture or the counterpoint. You're just feeling shitty and that's all you can see. I wanted this song to capture that moment of despair and disgust.

I think the redemption or counterpoint to this song is that through writing and playing it I've had to express publicly that sometimes this town feels incredibly difficult but I've also had to face the fact that it's taught me an awful lot and most of the time it's a pretty awesome place to be. Nashville won't flatter you...It will make you a better artist and maybe a better person.

On that note, here's a few things I've learned from living and playing music in this town:

• I still have a lot to learn.
• Talent alone is not enough. There's a hell of a lot of talent in this world. Embrace your talent. Love your talent. Enjoy your talent to the fullest possible extent. But above all DEVELOP it and DO something with it.
• Always be listening and and always be learning because you will never be as awesome as you think you are. Maybe you are that awesome but don't let it go to your head. Nobody's gonna want to drink a beer with you if you're that guy.
• I'd rather hang out with a good dude than a talented asshole. So be a good dude to everyone you meet.
• Focus on how you can help other people instead of wondering if your semi-famous 'contact' can help you get a show.
• Be genuine. Make friends rather than contacts.
• Don't play music for money. Play music because you love to play music or don't play music at all.
• Don't write songs for money. Write songs because you love to write songs or don't write songs at all.
• Be open to criticism and be open to change but don't be a pushover. You are an artist and it's possible people like your art BECAUSE it's different and wrong and imperfect and non-commercial.
• Strive to be true to yourself but also strive to be the best possible version of yourself.
• Strive for excellence rather than perfection.
• You may never make a dime from your music. It would be a shame to let that fact stop you from making it.
• You're in good company here in Nashville. Consider it a privilege to play and be played to here.
  
  

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  The recording above features Anna Johnson singing background vocals and was mixed by Chris Wright. 

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I Think, Therefore I Think. I Am Alive, Therefore I Am Alive.

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Steve Murray is a friend of mine. We used to play open mics together at Zack’s in Durban, South Africa. I met Steve through another friend of mine, Esjay who now lives in San Diego and who is the soul’s core of the band Stealing Love Jones. Before I moved to Nashville I got together with Steve to practice one afternoon and on a whim decided to record the proceedings. In the song you’ll hear Steve and I communicating and since this was a practice there’s a couple of rough bits. I always liked Steve’s style of playing and I miss having chats with him about Seinfeld and beers and music.

picture courtesy of: http://www.motorcycleridesnow.com/roadtrip

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There’s a million and three thoughts going through my brain about life, music, God, girls, babies. I need it to slow down so I can pick a few things out and take a bit of time looking over them. I’d like to reach in and find the ‘off’ switch sometimes but I know there’s not one there so all I can hope for is that things will slow down in there a bit.

You keep moving and doing what you have to do. You don’t focus on the stuff that seems impossible to understand. As soon as you focus on that you lose your mind completely because it all seems ridiculously complicated. But if you keep on keeping on; if you just keep doing your daily things your brain keeps working and these thoughts pop into your head in the middle of doing something else:

I spoke to a woman outside RuSan’s the other night. I was on a smoke break and so was she. She was digging through her purse with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and I offered her a light just as she found hers. So we started talking about the weather and which Hooter's was the best and she ended up telling me about a trip she’d taken on a motorcycle. “We kept to the back roads and only stopped to eat where the locals eat. We figured that the place with the most pick-up trucks outside was the local hang out and we usually got the best food and lowest prices at those places.” After a few minutes I realized that this woman was really cool.

I talked to my co-worker and buddy, Ron about it a little later and said to him that I was really glad I’d talked to her because she was with a party of people whom I’d served and my impression of them was terrible. If I hadn’t offered the lighter and hadn’t had the conversation I would have left that night with a totally wrong impression of her by association with her party.

People get crazy when they eat in restaurants. I know this because I work in one. Even though I know this I still fall into the trap of misjudging people. When it comes to food and restaurants all social normality and politeness falls away. People who keep their own kitchens as tidy as a surgery room will leave trash and bits of food and gum and toothpicks strewn about for their waiters to clean up (seriously people...I don't want your toothpicks..throw them away your own self). So you can’t always judge a person by the way they eat in restaurants (maybe first dates should remember that). But I still do judge people and it’s a shame that I do. I might be missing a lot of opportunities to hear great stories about motorcycle trips.

That’s what I mean though about things coming to you in the middle of doing something else. You get these flashes of comprehension all because you bothered to talk to a middle aged woman for two minutes about essentially nothing at all. I don’t think I could have mined that little life lesson from all the millions of thoughts in my head if I’d been sitting and thinking about it. Maybe you have to be doing life to understand life. Maybe you can’t sit and think everything to its logical conclusion. Instead the conclusions jump out at you when you’re out walking your dog, or ringing up a customer at the till (cash register) or plonking a plate of sushi in front of their nose. Maybe….

Take My Hand

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Love songs are strange. They are a testament to a deep emotion that once was and may or may not still be. Emotions are not static. They change. I imagine that’s the reason that a lot of love songs get classified as ‘cheesy’ after a while. When you are high on love you say cheesy things. You say all the clichés from a thousand songs and poems and you think that they mean something when you say them because you actually mean it. They don’t feel like a cliché when you are the one saying them. The song though, remains the same as it was the day it was recorded. Whatever happened to the girl (or guy) and whatever happened to the feelings, the song stays the same.

There’s a song on Dave Mathews’ latest album in which he says, “Someone’s broken heart becomes your favorite song.” It’s true that we don’t always get the whole story when we listen to a song and we don’t always care. We just like the way it sounds. Maybe we like the story that the song evokes in us and that story may be far from the actual one.

They say that true love isn’t so much about feelings as it is about doing. Love is a verb. The kind of love that makes people stay married or makes people give money to poor people is probably a more important kind of love than most of what gets sung about. That’s because that kind of love seems more boring. It’s not as exciting as the emotions of new love.

As a songwriter I’m continuously desperate for something to write about. There’s plenty of stuff out there to write songs about but it’s always obvious when I’m trying too hard to write about something that’s not real to me. So when love comes along it makes for a great muse. Suddenly clichés come rolling out of the abyss and present themselves in ways that seem normal, and even good, even though they are mostly the same things everyone has been saying and writing and singing for hundreds of years.

“Take My Hand” is a love song. I suppose it’s a little cheesy, and more so to me because I know the full story. I’m not going to tell you the whole story because I’m tired of that particular story and the telling of it. I hope that it tells a good story for you.

As a songwriter I hope to write lots of cheesy love songs that are so catchy that people can’t help but buy them. As a person I hope I get to write a love song one day that I won’t look back on and wish that the love was as enduring as the song.

Are You Coming?

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I’m an impatient person I think. I want all the things I want in life right now. My album is called “beautiful frustration” because I spend a lot of time being frustrated with where I’m at and trying to figure out how to change it for the better. I like to spend time thinking. There’s probably nothing worse for an impatient person to do than sit and think, but this is who I am. I’m learning to be a more patient version of me.

In November of 2006 I turned down a job with the volunteer organization I’d been working for earlier that year because I wanted to pursue music. Although I’d been writing songs since 1996 I had never tried to make it a career. A lot had to happen before I felt like I could legitimately hope to be a songwriting artist for a living. So I moved back to Durban to live in the spare room at my parent’s house so that I could keep my overheads low enough to survive as a musician. I went to all the open mics and I found a couple of regular gigs by handing out demos to restaurant managers everywhere in town. I produced and recorded my first EP, “Believe” that year. I got paid to play music and even though I didn’t realize it I was making progress. I should have been happy with what I’d accomplished.

A little over a year later and I remember writing this song out of complete disgust. I’d been pouring my heart and energy into music for all of a year or so and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and I really wanted my reality to be something different than it was. I like this song a lot. If I hadn’t been impatient or if I wasn’t the person that I am I wouldn’t have written it. So I’m happy for the experience. But I also like the fact that I can look back at this song and realize that I was a bit of an idiot. It’s an angry song. To be honest I was talking to God in this song. I was asking Him if He was damn well doing anything about my situation. How dare He make me wait for everything I always wanted. Right?

In retrospect it was ridiculous to have expected huge changes after only a year. Stranger things have happened but usually they don’t. A year used to seem like a very long time. These days a year is just long enough to do a couple of really good things. I’m building a career and my goals for this year read a little different than they did in 2006. Back then it would have read something like, “Monday – prepare to take the world by storm. Tuesday – Get ready world. Here I come”. Let’s just say I’ve downsized my goals a little. I believe in aiming high but if I’m going to achieve high I’ve got to do all the little things that high requires. So I’ve got to do the nitty gritty. I’ve got to plan to do the nitty gritty. I’ve got to shift my focus from the big dreamy goal and concentrate on the tiny little steps that make dreaminess happen.

When I was studying my masters degree I had several conversations with my supervisor, Barbara Huckett. She turned out to be as much a life mentor as she was a supervisor. I’ve always had a great deal of respect and fondness for her. She told me once that I was a dreamer. Oh but she was right. Like everyone else we dreamers have our strengths and weaknesses and it’s taken me a while to start to understand what the weaknesses of that really mean. I love being a dreamer. I love being an artist. I love to create songs. I love to imagine what all this seemingly thankless work will amount to in ten years time. But thanks to people like Barbara and thanks to the wisdom that comes with experience (and I know I need a lot more of that) I’m learning to be aware of the pitfalls too. Do dream big. Do everything your heart desires. Do enjoy the things that you enjoy. Do work hard. Do work smart. Do everything you need to do to get to where you want to go. Don’t worry about how long it’s taking because that sucks the very life out of you and destroys the thing you love.

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In the coming weeks I'll be updating this site with more songs and stories from the album "Beautiful Frustration". Check back regularly or 'follow me' to get the latest updates.

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Eagles Wings

I must be a little slow or stubborn or both. I’ve been spewing forth ‘wisdoms’ concerning happiness and positivity lately as if I’ve only recently made this discovery. But seriously, this is kindergarten philosophy. This is stuff everyone knows because it’s something our moms and dads teach us.

I spent some time going over my accounts on CD Baby this morning. This year I’ve earned a whopping $34 and change from online sales of my music. I have to admit that although the number is small it still feels good. I noticed though that a lot of people were streaming and/or purchasing the song Eagle’s Wings. That struck me as a little odd because although I like that song a lot, it isn’t the one that I thought would be a standout ‘single’, mainly because it’s under-produced compared to some of the other songs on the album.

It got me thinking about the song though. I wrote it before most of the other songs on the album during my first year of teaching high school Biology. Teaching was the job I fell into after failing to find a job in my chosen field of study. I was hoping to get an awesome, well paid, research job at Merck, Monsanto, Johnson and Johnson or Unilever. I don’t mind telling you I was a little pissed off that after 3 degrees and 7 years in University I got stuck teaching.

If you’ve never been a teacher of any kind I’d like to recommend that you volunteer as a substitute for a week at your local high school. If every adult person did this, salaries for teachers would skyrocket. It’s not fun. There are a few blessed people on this planet who love to teach but I’m not one of them and so my job was a bit like a punishment of some kind. I hope you’re getting the picture I’m painting for you…It’s a self portrait of a miserable man. That was me.

I couldn’t help but notice though, from the bottom of the pit I’d dug for myself, that the young people who I was teaching were vibrant, excited, full of smiles and laughter and joy. I also knew that a lot of them were less fortunate than I, to say the least. Looking back, I realize that writing Eagle’s Wings may have been the point at which I started building myself a ladder to climb out of my hole of despair. Let me tell you it’s been a journey.

The song is about rising above the troubles and woes of life. I figured if my students could do it then I could too. Some five years later I finally start to really get what I was writing about back then. So yes…I think I’m a little slow and a lot stubborn.