Bruce Madole, Writer

So. You're moody. That's strange. And you call yourself a musician.  What kind of a mood is it? A songwriting mood? Well, most of them are. 

What to do?  Play something. Sing something. Write something. Listen to something. Any of the above.  All of the above. Try to impart a little "forward motion" to your mood by engaging your own active, personal musicality.

Momentum applies, in particular, to boats and to songwriters. The more you get something moving, the easier it gets to do something worthwhile.

Sometimes a mood is just a mood.  But sometimes ... it's an opportunity.  It's the voice of your muse, prompting you to "Rise up out of Egypt (or the couch) and go -- NOW."  (Or translated into songwriting terms: grab a pad, and a pen, and a guitar, and GIT!!! )  

You will learn with time and experience when and how to be attentive to those inner creative promptings. When and how to find some peace and quiet so you can cultivate the opportunity to listen to the voices in your imagination. But you can plug into another dimension, the world of possibilities, in which stories are lurking like fossils buried in a rock, and there's you, with a hammer and chisel. Or pen and paper.

You might forget the pen, or the paper, or the instrument.  But the one thing you -- the one vital, irreplaceable thing -- that you always have with you is ... YOU.  You are the centre of your music.  Go for a walk. Sing to yourself. Talk to yourself. (That's normal, for musicians.) Pray, even. But if you're in a mood, "git on up, get outta Egypt" (unless you happen to be, you know, in Egypt), and listen to your muse.  

See what you find. 

When I was a workshop coordinator for the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) we used to organise "Publisher Critique Nights" in which a music publisher would come out and critique songs for our workshop participants. It was a rare and valuable opportunity for aspiring songwriters to hear about how their material would "measure up" against what the publishers were seeking.  Invariably, these were also the most heavily attended sessions by members of the general public -- writers whom we had never seen in the workshop sessions would crowd into that little school library, filling up the sign-in lists.  Most of them had the eager, expectant look of a songwriter who is mere minutes (or an hour or so) away from having their genius discovered. They were frequently disappointed.  However, the publishers were generally kind, and perceptive, and remarkably tolerant:  much of the music they were hearing ... needed work. But the publishers were gentle but honest, pointing out the major flaws, but always stopping short of brutality.  The more brutal the song, the less brutal the critique -- and where a writer showed signs of really promising material, the publishers were more detailed, more specific, and harder on the song itself. Because it was close, and they knew that the writer would probably pay attention to real constructive critique.  This brings me to one major lesson I took away from that process.

As a writer, I tend to go through several different phases about stuff that I write.  When I'm writing it, and if I've just "finished" a lyric or a song, I'm usually quite thrilled with it.  It's a beautiful baby.  But give it a little time in the drawer (or guitar case), and start looking at it with fresh eyes ... maybe not so much.  As I notice the flaws, I'm trying very hard to learn to distinguish between two different attitudes, one helpful (This song needs more work) and the other, immeasurably destructive (I'm a lousy songwriter).   In my better, more rational moments, I know that I am neither as good nor as flawed as those extremes would suggest.  

I am trying very hard to learn how to be hard on the song, but not the writer --  learning how to cut myself some slack, as a creator, and concentrate on improving the song.  Because attacking oneself, as a writer, does absolutely nothing to advance your craft, whether in general or the particular instance of it that may be staring back at you from the page.  If you want to be hard on something or someone, be hard on the song.  And if this one's not working out entirely as you might have hoped, carry on. Keep trying. Come back to it, if necessary.  Some songs can take years. Songwriting can be a long, slow curve to improve, but if you allow yourself to persist, you WILL improve. The more you focus on improving the songs, the more you will progress. 

Cut yourself some slack ... and go write your songs.  

I wrote this song -- called Boy In The Window -- with my friend and co-writer David Joseph, after several long conversations about the basic idea (and some of the inspiration for it). It was his original hook idea. Sadly, it's too much rooted in reality -- but we really wanted the song to be more reflective and contemplative. And positive. We were really aiming for positive.

This performance was taken live from Source of the Song 27. It's just me and a guitar (and a little bit of Ken Whiteley on percussion.) 

If you like it, please share it with someone else you think would like it.  Let the song do some good.

Best regards

Bruce Madole 

Hello all:  There is news ! 

I will be host and MC for an evening songwriter's circle at the Nottawasaga Inn, in Alliston, Ontario, on May 7, from 7-9 pm. Joining me in that lineup are two fabulous songwriters and performers:  

• the legendary Dan Hill (hit songwriter, performer, author), and 
• Grainne Ryan (first name pronounced "Grawn-ya"), Celtic singer/songwriter  

Tickets are $20, and more details available at the website: www.cast-canada.ca 

cheers,

Bruce 



 

Well it's been an overly eventful month or so, with Christmas and New Year's and ... oh yes ... no heat or power for a few days thanks to a surreal ice storm that dropped almost an inch of ice on our neighbourhood (as with so many others).  It was just ... strange.  And disorienting. I've seen violent thunderstorms, tornados (and near-tornados) and blizzards and even the tail-end of a hurricane or two, but never seen anything like the damage caused by that ice storm.  It was just rain, a gentle rain, that kept falling, and freezing, and falling, and freezing -- and then there were trees collapsing, exploding, everywhere, and the electrical transformers blowing up, and whole world subsiding into a frozen darkness.  Our beautiful old neighbourhood, heavily treed, has resembled nothing so much as a brush-pile over the past few weeks, as the debris was getting shuffled together and cleared away.  Never seen anything like it. Such damage. 

And so, of course, I'm trying to write a song about it. Struggling with that one, a bit, since I don't like what I've come up with. And about the snow that just keeps coming. (That one, I've made better progress.)  But that's what we do as songwriters, isn't it?  Take the content of our lives (and other people's lives), and try to make some sense of it, or how we feel about it, in song. OK, that's what I do, anyway. Some people write hits. 

And we're organising a couple more of the Source of the Song concerts, with some more great special guests. Keep an eye on the events page, and please sign up for the mailing list, if you would like to be kept informed ! 

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a small but attentive group of fellow songwriters on a snowy night in Guelph, part of the Guelph workshop of the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC).  It's been a few years since I used to do this regularly, so I prepared for that meeting by jotting down a few notes -- conversational nuggets, really -- that I could reference in organizing my thoughts. Afterward, I realized that in the process of doing so, I had really taken a real step forward.  Not so much with the 15 pages of notes, but just in getting started.  In print.

You see, for several years now I've been telling myself, and others, that I would finally get started on my own songwriting workshop.  And I didn't. I wasn't getting started ... I was just talking about getting started. Maybe, persuading myself that I could start. Or maybe, giving myself permission. 

No shortage of opinions:
It's not that I'm short of opinions on the subject of songwriting.  Far from it ... get me started, and see if I will ever shut up.  I'm passionate about the subject.  However, I've also tended to be somewhat reticent about putting myself forward as any kind of authority, without a history of writing hit records. Still don't have that. Maybe I never will, and what then? Should I never share any of the things I have learned, or experienced or felt, because I have not yet qualified as a hit writer? But that's not where I'm coming from anyway -- I'm just trying to be a tad helpful to my fellow songwriters. 

Stepping out:
If we wait for fame to tell us what to think, who to like, and what to support, then all of life becomes one massive "me too" ... and where does the creativity and originality come from then?  

Useful resources:
Let me tell you:  there are some great writers out there, and some of whom have written books about it, and some of whom are offering workshops or mentoring and teaching:  Ralph Murphy, Harriet Schock, Steve Leslie, Steve Seskin, Jason Blume, James Linderman, to name but a few whom I know and respect. By all means, track their work down, and learn from them.  Sheila Davis' book on The Craft of Lyric Writing, and Ralph Murphy's book Murphy's Laws of Songwriting are two very excellent works that I strongly recommend. 

Starting from Silence:
In a recent blog, I suggested that a national songwriters day ought to be preceded by a day of complete silence, if only to drive home the point that music is a relief to silence, like birdsong is a relief to twilight.  But there’s more to it than that.

To me, silence is a well to drink from, as well as a page to write on. It’s the deep breath before the song starts, or starts to take form. It’s the moment before the strings are caressed or the keyboard struck, or the ink begins to flow.  Maybe it’s the moment where you wave a lightning rod at the approaching storm, and pray for more than lightning bugs (thanks to Samuel Clemons) to answer the call.  It’s also the asking of a question:  how do I feel? What do I feel? Who do I feel like becoming today? 

Typical introvert – I often don’t know what I mean until I’ve written it. So for me, the process of writing is often about the process of watching some kind of meaning (and story) emerge and unfold.  But then, writing is more than “channeling” – it’s about using craft to shape what I’m doing.  Storytelling is more than story-finding.

So if we start from silence, we still move forward with craft, and deliberation, and a passion to let the world hear how we think and feel, and what we have to say. 

Cheers,
Bruce 

PS ... Life is short: write your songs ! 
    

If I had my way, a national songwriter day would be preceeded by a national Day of Silence. No music of any kind allowed. Just to kind of ... make a point.

It's amazing how many people used to take offense when I described myself as "just a songwriter".  It is as as though, in using those words, I was speaking ill of this great profession, demeaning my own passion.

What I meant to say, what I generally mean by that, is that "I am not also a recording artist. I do not regularly tour, and visit radio stations, and do all of that work also."  

I sit at home, in the early morning hours, listening to the clock tick, waiting for the kettle to decisively whistle so that these grounds will become coffee, and a waiting sludge of thoughts, inarticulate intentions and seething memories may begin to take shape as a lyric. Or something else.

The guitar is still safely under wraps. My sweetheart is soundly sleeping. If the lyric is not good, no one will see or hear it, unless I deceive myself into thinking it's good, and write a melody, and then play it for someone.  Just to see. 

I could just as easily say that I am "just a lyricist", if that were true, though it isn't. I'm mainly a lyricist, and though I do write melodies, I love it when I can partner with melodic, musical genius, to relieve me of that additional challenge.  I still tend to think of my own melodies as plain, which isn't always true.

What is true is that I seldom see myself clearly, as others might. Or I see too much else, remember too much, fear too much. I lose focus on the fact that words can move people.  Words can hurt, but they can also help to heal.  They give us the power be fully human and expressive.  I want you. I need you. I miss you. I love to see you. You hurt me. All simple expressions of humanity, with songwriters looking constantly for a richer, more lasting form to say those things.  Something original.

There's magic in it, done right.  Lasting magic. It can be hellishly difficult, it can emerge like a sculpture out of chiselled stone, or it can drop onto your page shocking as a spider off a roof beam.  But there is nothing "mere" about it. 

So ... go ahead. Break your radio. Toss the iPod. Destroy all your speakers.  See how much silence you can stand before you begin to hum something, or whistle, or start to tap out a sloppy paradiddle with your fingers.  Sing nothing that you haven't written yourself. .... Or ... just think about all the music in your life and how somebody wrote that, starting with a blank page, the intimidating static of their own brain, and the urge to say something to the world. 

Cool, isn't it. 



 

Are you going to write the songs that matter to you, with your own unique voice?  Or will you create something that is only commercially crafted, chasing the perceptions and needs of some music marketer’s fondest demographic fantasy, and having the lasting literary value of a grocery jingle?I understand there’s been some controversy of late, down in Music Row, about the nature of the music being released as “country music”.  This is scarcely news, any more than it is news that parents will disapprove of how their adolescent children choose to dress.  (You’re not going out like that … ) But I’ve been reading comments from various artists who are polarized about the outcomes of these recording decisions. 

How do you know when you’re about to step over some line that you can barely see, and which varies from person to person?  Well … it’s your line. If you step over it, step back in a hurry.

A lot of what we’re hearing these days is the product of a country music industry that has learned to parody itself:  its voice, its messages, its clichés, its own sounds and rhythms.  And yet, at the same time, it borrows its clothes and its clues from a more popular sister – from rock, or hip-hop. These are not “fusions” or “influences”, but the brazen attempt to sneak into a public consciousness using borrowed ID.  However, it may be that the market these chameleons are chasing doesn’t really know what it wants. It’s sure a long way removed from Harlan Howard’s “three chords and the truth”.  Because they seem to be having trouble with the truth part.

You have songwriters writing about front porch swings, moonshine, and fishing with cane-poles (when your basic bass fisherman of modern vintage goes out with enough technology to make NASA smile).  In fact, Pam Tillis released “Betty’s Got a Bass Boat” back in 2002, more than a decade ago.  So … cane poles?  Really? 

We need to ask ourselves if the current market for country music is the same as the market for Clearasil and teenybopper apparel? Whose reality do they think this reflects, anyway?  Just because Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber began stellar careers while they were very very young, has it escaped notice that even they, the teenage wonders, have turned into grown-ups?  That Hannah Montana turned into Miley? And is twerking the new line-dancing? (Don’t tell my part, my achey-breaky part?) 

Those sure aren’t the realities I’m writing about.  And as a songwriter, I’m looking to mine the realities that touch me, or that I can observe and write about at least somewhat truthfully.

On the other hand, doesn’t pop music freely ignore such “precious” concerns? Maybe it’s ok to just simply rock out, to entertain, to have a little fun? Even for the country or roots artist. I’ve written my own share of songs with no greater intent than to make folks smile or laugh.  Maybe that’s what music is about?

Except, except … if you wanted to write the next “Live Like You Were Dying”, or “I Hope You Dance”, or “Where’ve You Been” or “When Fallen Angels Fly?” or “Whiskey Lullabye” or "Whiskey and Wine"… and oh how I wish I’d written any one of them … you’re probably going to have to dig a little deeper than cane poles and front porch swings.

But here’s the other point …  even with a ditty, I’m trying to be truthful with it.  Trying to be creative, even if I don’t always succeed. Anything else is insulting to an audience, and demeaning to the artist. And it’s a wasted opportunity.
 
 
Bruce

Life is short – write your songs!

Take your favourite songs of the year so far -- or the past month, even -- and ask yourself:  Who wrote that song?  Of course, in some genres of music it's mostly the performer/artist.   But ... do you know ?  Awareness is everything.  

Songwriting associations, like Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) or the Nashville Songwriters Association of Canada (NSAI) keep on making the point that popular music begins with a song.  But ... I recently saw a poster promoting a show about "The Music of Glen Campbell" , which is a great concept for a show -- but I couldn't help but notice that Jimmy Webb didn't get mentioned.  You know, the guy who actually wrote a good many of those songs.  Today's commercial music industry does all that it can to build the profiles of the performing artists, and the general public goes through life often without knowing that a songwriter was at work behind the scenes. So be it. 

I once conducted a campaign of correspondence with a music video network, asking them to list songwriter credits at the end of their music videos. They did it too, for a year or so ... before the ownership changed.  And I heard, via the grapevine, that the network had designed contracts to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the failure to acknowledge songwriters, among other issues. If an indie video was going to be aired, without credits, there would be no come-back to the network. 

Our Source of the Song concert series was originally created to make a small change of emphasis:  somebody wrote the songs, and sometimes, you've not heard their names.  

So ask yourself, whenever you hear a song that you really love, that really moves you:  who wrote that song?  

Every day can be National Songwriters Day ! 

 

1. Prepare to be inspired

I don't know where inspiration comes from.  In my experience, I have to listen for it.  And I have to prepare to listen for it, too.  Inspiration does not always come clomping into the house like a kid wearing Daddy's work boots.  But it's no good scurrying around looking for pen and paper or recording device while some great and luminous idea grows increasingly dim and shapeless in the imagination, like grey dishwater circling a drain.  I need to be ready for it. 

Once a great idea is neglected, other lesser ideas come muscling in, with louder and more populist voices, like importunate pan-handlers and those me-too guys you've probably run into at business meetings. Pretty soon, you find yourself pouring a drink (of something) and wishing the first idea would just come back and explain itself again, while you promise to listen more closely.  Please. 

2. Be Responsive

Great ideas are more like hummingbirds than vultures -- they visit quickly and they tend not to circle around my head waiting for me to die, or pay them some attention.  You may experience things differently.  

So, inspiration. Take a deep breath.  Try holding it. You can't help breathing out ... but responding to the idea is as undeniable as the need to breathe in or out.  Jot something down, so you don't totally forget. 

I always feel like a bit of a fraud to talk about an idea, when I don't really know where they come from.  It's like, if some total stranger walked up to you in the street and handed you a winning lottery ticket, would you take credit for it?  (Apart from cashing the ticket?) For me, since I tend to think of songs as a form of story, most ideas when they arrive in my head are born naked, waiting to be clothed in details, and motivation, and back story, and emotion. 

3. An example of the process 

I thought, as an example, that I would walk through the process for a song that arrived as a gift.  And finished that way, as I will explain. 

The genesis and growth of the idea:  to begin with, when I was a very small boy, my Dad got me a small wooden sailboat, with a real linen mainsail, and a stand to put it on, when it wasn't sailing. That toy sailboat currently stands on its rack, on a shelf in our kitchen, where I could see it from the dining room table.  On the warm summer evening when this song was born, I was sitting at the dining room table, pen and paper before me, and I noticed how a breeze had caused the linen sail to stir.  

And then I had a passing idea:  what if, I asked myself, you could talk about the breeze that was gathered up from the last breath of every dying sailor lost at sea?  Too complicated, I decided.  And then, I thought, I should be working with a character, make him ... ummm ... a condemned man, who is going to be hanged, and who simply wants the wind to not blow until he has breathed his last breath.  And it would be a period piece, set in the age of sail. I needed to think of it cinematically, to provide a visual perspective. 

But, I asked myself, why would a listener care about a protagonist who did something bad enough to be hanged for it?  The answer, I decided, was that he had to have done something sacrificial, like killing to defend a lady, that could lend some nobility to his situation.  And that became the story:  all he wants is for the wind not to blow and not to carry the young lady away, until he has breathed his last breath in her cause.  In almost no time, an hour or two at most, I had a lyric that told his sad tale. 

Enter, a melody -- please: The melodic question had yet to be solved. This was never going to be a country song, nor a pop tune, nor a blues, or a bluegrass. The question then urgently became, what was it?  Inspiration stopped there, for many weeks, while I struggled with several melodic approaches.  They definitely didn't work. 

And then one night, my wife and I were attending a music event at Hugh's Room in Toronto, and I happened to bump into David Leask.  David Leask is a fabulous (and award winning) singer-songwriter, of Scottish heritage, and I had the sudden conviction that David could be asked to lend his Celtic wizardry to the song.  I said as much -- and he said that he would "have a look", to see if anything inspired.  Three days later, David emailed me a beautiful, haunting melody that gave the song wings.  We talked about a few lyrical tweaks, and the song was done.  David produced a lovely acoustic-vocal demo, with a touch of cello added by Kevin Fox.

I still can't explain where the ideas come from, or when they'll arrive, but this is the history of how one idea got written, and then co-written;  you can hear David's demo on this website:  While I Still Breathe (Madole/Leask).  

Best regards
Bruce