Beth DeSombre: Blog

As those of you checking in on my Facebook Fan page have already seen, I’ve gotten a good start on February Album-Writing Month by writing two songs in the first two days of the month. I know myself well enough to know that whenever I’m facing a big scary project getting a good start on it is essential; it seems less scary when you’re making progress, and momentum sustains itself.

On the eve of February Album Writing Month, I’ve been thinking about possible songs to write . . . especially because I want to get a jump on my songwriting in the first few days of the month so I get a few songs under my belt and don’t feel so daunted by the ones that remain to be written.

Here are a few ideas I have that I’d like to try to take up:

Dave Carter has been my songwriting inspiration ever since I first heard his music. His songs span an unimaginably broad set of topics, and even if he found inspiration for them in his own life, the stories in them are anything but pedestrian. His melodies and arrangements (because everything is carefully planned out) are beyond compare, and his songs are perfectly calibrated to a wide range of styles, but for me what stands out is the lyrics.

I signed up to do February Album-Writing Mont. Fourteen (or 14.5, officially) songs to write in the month of February. It’s daunting, to say the least. I don’t write songs quickly, and I’m going to try to write a lot of them in a short period of time. So although I can’t start writing the songs for this project before February 1st, but I can start to gather resources.

. . . you have to develop a skillset that goes far beyond writing good songs and being able to play them compellingly in front of people. Case in point: today’s piece of music business. If you’re playing along at home, you might remember that one of my new year’s resolutions this year was to do something productive for the business of music each day – it doesn’t have to be submitting materials to be considered for a gig (although it could be); it could be writing a blog post, doing publicity for an upcoming show, or other related things that contribute to my broader ability to have a music career. Today I thought I’d do something relatively minor: join the organization “Concerts In Your Home,” which is an organization that connects house concert producers with musicians who want to play house concerts.