storyteller
PROMPT: Write a song with two chords.
If you’ve seen me perform, you know I have one of these and you might also know that I usually use it to start my set because it’s less stressful to play. Who knows, I may get another starter-song out of this prompt.
SONG OF THE DAY: Memphis Tennessee
This Chuck Berry song has two chords. He does does a lot with those two chords, though.
PROMPT: Learn a Tom Waits song.
If you don’t know who Tom Waits is, and you’re a songwriter, you’re in for a treat. This dude has been writing songs since the 1970’s (maybe earlier) and has a huge range of styles and subject matter to delight his listeners. He can be tender and outright frightening. His songs have been covered by everyone who is anyone in the singer/songwriter field.
He’s kind of like Bob Dylan (who also gets covered a lot) because his voice is not exactly what we would call pretty but his songs lend themselves to all kinds of voices. The man just writes wonderful songs–songs that invite anyone to reinvent and play with what’s already, well, a solid piece of music.
For instance, if you’ve watched THE WIRE, you will recognize that each season begins with a different version of Tom Waits’s, “Way Down in the Hole.” High five to the person who complied all the versions into a single Youtube video:
Season 1: Blind Boys of Alabama
Season 2: Tom Waits (himself!)
Season 3: The Neville Brothers
Season 4: DoMaJe
Season 5: Steve Earle
My favorite Tom Waits album is called Mule Variations. I think it’s a good place to start if you’re not too familiar with his music.
SONG OF THE DAY: Chocolate Jesus
This is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Kim Taylor, covering a great Tom Waits song.
Get ready, people! We’re writing a song today.
PROMPT: Write a song with the same four chords repeated over and over.
People who write songs tell me that they either start with words or melody.I decided on this prompt because I want to see if I can start a song with the melody before the words. I usually write the words first.
SONG OF THE DAY: High and Dry
A fine four-chorder for your listening enjoyment. The BENDS is my most favorite of the Radiohead albums–probably because it’s the most singer-songwritery. I’m pretty sure that without this song, there would be no Coldplay.
(Still deciding if that is a good or bad thing.)
TODAY’S PROMPT: Learn a song usually sung by someone who is not like you.
If you’re a black woman, learn a Rufus Wainwright song; if you’re a white woman, learn a John Legend song, if you’re a male of either race, sing an Aretha Franklin song, etc.
This prompt comes from my days in Bangkok singing in a cover band. If you didn’t know I did this, well, now you do. It’s a great story and hopefully it will be an essay one day, a famous essay, so you all can read it from some famously wonderful source.
When I first joined the band, the guitar player (named Lynchee) gave me a stack of 1990’s, early 2000s alternative/pop songs that were all sung by women. “Don’t Speak” was in there, for instance. So was “Top of the World” and “Zombie.” The whole covering other people’s music thing didn’t really click from me until I started singing U2 songs, or until I covered “Creep” by Radiohead.
The explanation was simple: I had more freedom with these songs. As soon as the audience recognized the song and then understood that I, a not-bald man but curly haired white woman, was going to be singing “Losing My Religion,” they dropped their expectations about how the song was supposed to sound. I think they liked that one the most because my version of it was, well, really different.
TODAY’S SONG: Always Be My Baby
David Cook knew exactly what I was talking about when he covered this song on American Idol years ago. For me it’s like, middle school meets whoa.
TODAY’S PROMPT: Learn a song, any song, just because you like it.
Today, songwriting month is as easy as you make it.
I’m probably going to learn a Harry Nilsson song today because I love him and have no idea how to play any of his songs.
TODAY’S SONG: Think About Your Troubles
This my favorite song a lot of the time. Not just favorite Nilsson song. Favorite song.
It’s the 9th! 9 can be divided by 3. We’re writing a song today, is what I’m saying.
TODAY’S PROMPT: Take a well-known character, historical (real) or fictional (fabricated), and reference him or her in a song.
You can choose the point of view. You can write a first-person song, where “I” is the subject, from your own perspective or the perspective of the character. Like the Johnny Appleseed song, “The Lord is Good to me…”
You can write a song to the character, so that the character is “you” (second person).
You can do what Bruce Springsteen does with the Ghost of Tom Joad, and retell the person’s story in the third person.
Famous examples include:
John Henry & The Battle of Davy Crockett (Traditional)
Candle in the Wind (by Elton John was originally about Marilyn Monroe but got re-appropriated Princess Diana).
Kryptonite (Three Doors Down. Remember? From like 1997?)
Sam Cooke has songs about two of my favorite Bible ladies: the woman at the well (Jesus Gave Me Water) and the bleeding woman who gets healed by touching Jesus’s clothes in a crowd (Hem of His Garment).
Drunken Ira Hayes (Johnny Cash).
Buffalo Bill (Jeff Wilkinson).
Hurricane (Bob Dylan).
Wonderful (is about Stevie Wonder by India Arie).
Sabu (The Elephant Boy–by John Prine).
*Special thanks to my dad for helping me come up with these examples.
SONG OF THE DAY: The Ghost of Tom Joad
Because I love, love, love, The Grapes of Wrath.
TODAY’S PROMPT: take an old poem, without a copyright, and put a tune to it.
Rhyming is so out of poetry-style these days that if you can find a poem that rhymes, you’re likely to be safe. But just in case the song you half-create today is amazing enough to hit the airwaves and/or you just want to be careful, here is a website of poems in the public domain. It’s not hugely expansive, but it’ll get you started. Also, the site has nine Oscar Wilde poems on it. I didn’t even know he wrote poems. Doh.
Give it a shot!
SONG OF THE DAY: Richard Cory
Paul Simon is a poetry buff, if you haven’t noticed. He’s one of the most poetic lyricists we’ve got. This song, from his Garfunkel days, springs out of a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson by the same title. Read the poem and you can see that S&G took a lot of liberty, i.e. rewrote and updated it. You can do this, too! You can do anything and everything you want to interpret and own the poem you’re working with.
RICHARD CORY
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
TODAY’S PROMPT: Learn a song in a style that you’re not too familiar with.
I’m about to learn a reggae song today, I think. I know none, so it’s going be a challenge. What does Nora sound like singing reggae? Time will tell! At the very least, it will be a chance to learn a new strumming pattern.
I’m very interested in the styles that people choose, if they choose to do this prompt.
SONG OF THE DAY: Vietnam
My brother is a huge Jimmy Cliff fan and he put this song on a compilation CD he made for me while I was living and working in Thailand. Music in English that wasn’t terribly popular, or at least, world famous, was hard to find in Bangkok. My friends and brother knew this and sent me a lot of music while I was there. This was before I had iTunes. I still listen to the majority of that era’s tunes (I learned to love Lucinda Williams during that time!), and this Jimmy Cliff song is no exception.
TODAY’S PROMPT: Write a Ballad
Wikipedia says that a ballad is a narrative set to music. By that definition, you could have the prompt be simply “Tell a story in a song.”
Before the 19th Century (I’m getting most of my info from the wiki site!), ballads were, as I mentioned in a previous post, a form of HBO-type entertainment. They spread news stories across oceans, they compelled listeners with riveting suspense.
In the 19th Century, the definition of a ballad became “a slow popular love song.”
So, write a narrative song or a slow popular love song. Up to you! This month is totally your oyster.
I’m going to be working with traditional ballads today, though, because those are some of my favorite songs to sing and write. I have a special fondness for new music that sounds old. (This is why the band Over the Rhine tends to be my favorite.)
If you too want to be traditional, make sure you kill someone off in your story and structure the lyrical rhythm to go a little something like this:
BaDAH baDAH baDAH BaDAH
BaDAH baDAH baDAH
BaDAH baDAH baDAH BaDAH
BaDAH baDAH baDAH
And try to have no less than six verses. The longer it is, the more impressive it is until it gets too long. But the longer you can hold the audience’s attention with suspense, the higher quality the ballad.
Here’s another challenger: the refrain, in a good ballad, changes meaning in context of the verses.
News stories make good ballads. Deaths (as previously stated) make good ballads. Lost love makes good ballads too. Keep it dark, people.
Or don’t. If you’re not dark and you have no fascination for the old-timey, do this assignment the post-19th Century way and write yourself a powerful (slow) love song.
SONG OF THE DAY: Boots of Spanish Leather
Bob Dylan loved him some ballads. Here’s one that Norton anthologized as one of the greatest poems of all time.
If you know me at all you knew this day was coming.
PROMPT: Learn a blues song.
The blues ranges in difficulty from three really simple chords to hot damn. It’s also got a lot more diversity in styles than people tend to realize.
We normally think that blues songs are all sad but trust me, they aren’t. Have you heard BB King’s version of the “Catfish” song, for instance? Or Taj Mahal’s “Cakewalk into Town”? Then there is the gospel blues. The Holmes Brothers own this style, I think, though Eric Bibb plays my favorite songs–these are gospel songs in the blues style. They are about ugliness and redemption and they are awesome.
Here is my favorite gospel blues song:
I like the porch blues the best—I guess that’s officially called Delta Blues? I like Mississippi John Hurt’s style. And Leadbelly’s. If you like Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy, that means you like Chicago Blues–less rustic, more showy. My favorite blues singer, Elmore James, plays both Delta and Chicago.
I first came to love the blues about a decade ago when, in that fair time when Borders was still alive and well and in Ann Arbor, I decided to spend an afternoon listening to CDs they had on display. Remember when we could do that? Le sigh. Anyway, that was the day I first listened to The Very Best of Elmore James—he had me at the first squeal of his slide guitar in “Dust My Broom”. I melted. I bought the CD. I have been obsessed with the blues ever since.
The blues has a lot to teach us about honesty, self-awareness, grit, and, ultimately, joy. I get a tremendously joyous feeling when I listen to the blues. I’m hoping to pass some of the joy on today with the prompt.
Okay, so …
If you don’t know any blues chords, this site might help you get started. There are plenty of people all over the internet who would love to teach you how to blues out. Youtube has several instructional videos about this. Just google “How to play the blues.”
SONG OF THE DAY: I’m Bad Like Jesse James
John Lee Hooker is a Detroit bluesman. His songs are violent/sexy. He growls a lot, is what I mean. He is my second favorite blues musician, next to Elmore James.
Nora Bonner 