http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html Beth DeSombre: Blog Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:05:43 -0800 http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/first_two_fawm_songs
For my first song of the month I intentionally chose something I already had an idea about — a birthday song. It was inspired by a one-off song I wrote for my grandmother’s 90th birthday, which was all about the history of her life, but had a kind of sea-chantey repeating set of lines. I kept those lines from the original version (modified slightly to work in a new context) and wrote the rest anew, adding a repeating chorus and thinking about how to write lines that would be meaningful but generic enough that they could apply to the celebration of anyone’s birthday.

I’m actually quite pleased with the result, and can imagine singing it to people on their birthdays.



As with all songs I’ll write this month, I suspect there will be some editing to do after the month is over; my goal is to get to a completed song I can post, and one that has no glaring problems with it. But since I need to move on to the next song pretty quickly, some of the fine-tuning of lyrics will probably wait until I’ve made it through my 14.5 songs.

The second song came from taking up an idea I found in an old songwriting notebook — something inspired (I vaguely recall) from a dream. The line was “I should’ve checked the contract on my dream,” and I remembered something about there being a lot of extras in the dream. I’d also previously jotted down “sell-by date on love.”

So I decided to see what that song could become. I wrote a first verse about not realizing that I’d have to pay the extras in my dream union scale, and a second verse about not having realized that our love was supposed to have expired long-ago. It was at this point that I had to remind myself of my resolution to finish songs I started for FAWM and only decide if they’re worth keeping AFTER they’ve been completed. This was looking like a cute song that wouldn’t go anywhere.

But then I wrote a bridge, and when I got to the last two lines (“I didn’t read the label on my unsuspecting heart; I didn’t buy the warrantee on you”) it started feeling like it wanted to be a real song after all, and gave me a direction to go in finishing it. The draft needs some polishing, especially now that I know where the song decided to go. But I think it might have some potential after all, and that’s the advantage of pushing through and finishing before I give up on a song.





There’s still a long way to go this month, and unexpected things in my life that are making this month harder than planned, but getting two songs drafted in the first two days is a pretty good start.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/first_two_fawm_songs Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:05:43 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/songs_in_the_queue
Here are a few ideas I have that I’d like to try to take up:

 A birthday song that’s an alternative to that horrible (and copyrighted!) dirge that everyone sings, built off of the idea of a song I wrote for my grandmother’s 90th birthday.

 A song that could be on an album entitled “The Passionfruit Hypothesis” — largely because that was the working title of my second CD long before it was a CD (mostly as a joke, but doesn’t it seem like a cool album title?). But in order to title an album that, I’d need to have a song that mentions it somehow.

 My favorite suggestion when I asked people a week ago for songwriting assignments (it’s not too late for you to submit yours!) was Dan Tappan’s instructions to write a song about a stapler. I have no idea how to approach it, but that’s part of why it’s intriguing.

 Songs with spam lines in them. For awhile, a few years ago, the spambots were including real words in odd combinations (often as subject lines) to try to fool spam filters. They were often weirdly poetic, and I kept a collection of them for future use. (a few from the list include “down-payment generation,” “jump-rope housewives” “irreverence passionately” and “trinity infiltrator” but I have a much longer list; they’re pretty fantastic.)

 A song with the phrase “mail-order mandolin” which I thought of but never wrote back when I was in Florida for a semester, missed my mandolin, and ordered a cheap (and ultimately, alas, unplayable) mandolin through the mail.

 I kept trying to write a song awhile back called “letting go of leaving” and it never got anywhere.

 A song inspired by a musicians-for-Obama concert about how you make real change in the world. (Also one I’ve tried to write before and failed. But maybe the upcoming election will help?)

A few others I’d like to write (but have no particular ideas about how to bring about):

 Another funny song. It’d be great to have a second one (to go along with Resolution) in my repertoire, but I have odd criteria — it can’t just be funny, it has to have some broader significance.

 Another environmental song. Given what I do in the rest of my life (and also the reception that Bigger, Faster, and More has gotten) I’d really love to have another song on an environmental topic. It’s hard to do it well, though.

 In general, story songs are my strongest. So I hope to write some in the next month. But I rarely start out knowing where a story is going (or even knowing that there is one), so it’s not always clear that that’s something I can plan.

And do let me know if you have specific ideas/suggestions; I’m going to need all the inspiration I can get to knock out 14.5 songs in the next 29 days . . . .]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/songs_in_the_queue Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:04:22 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/a_new_dave_and_tracy_cd
That’s partly because lyrics are the most important part of the song for me (I tend not to seek out instrumental music), and because there’s so much you can do with them if you write well. Nobody writes better than Dave. Some of his songs have fun with words (236-6132, The River Where She Sleeps; I mean, c’mon — the man rhymed “orange”), and most of them weave rhyme so seamlessly and intricately throughout the song that you don’t even know why you are carried so inexorably through it, or why everything fits so perfectly, because he doesn’t call attention to them. The song I think of as the most perfect example of songwriting is When I Go, and the internal rhymes in that song are the Sistine chapel of songwriting.

Dave died nearly 10 years ago. In the couple years before he died I saw him play (with Tracy Grammer) more times than I can count; I would get myself to anywhere I could reach where they would be playing. There has been a lot of Dave’s music around since he died. Tracy is touring and goes through phases when her set is largely Dave Carter songs. And there was new music that came out in the years after he died. Tracy’s first solo CD was almost entirely unreleased Dave Carter songs, some — but not all or even most — I’d heard them do as a duo when he was alive. There was a CD they’d recorded (or re-recorded; it was originally his first solo CD, which I had) that was released with two new songs, after he died, and then a CD of Christmas songs they’d recorded for some other purpose when Dave was still alive that was brought out later.

And I’ve had exposure to far more Dave Carter songs than are in the public Dave and Tracy repertoire; I’m close enough to the inner circle of Dave fans (and friends) that I’ve heard demo tapes of songs that were never formally recorded; I’ve heard Tracy play songs from deep in the catalog at late night festival campfires and the occasional tribute show.

There area a lot of great unreleased Dave songs still out there. I probably can think, off the top of my head, of 10 of them that are not slated at this point for any particular public playing. I have a couple Dave songs I play regularly at home that almost no one has ever heard and they’re the equal of anything that has been officially released. And I bet there are another dozen that exist, completed, somewhere but that I don’t even know about, and that’s even apart from forgotten fragments on scraps of paper somewhere. My distant dream is that some day songwriters can be individually invited into the Dave Carter archive in the same way that they are to the Woody Guthrie archives. Imagine working with a piece of a song written by Dave Carter to complete it and introduce it to the world.

So when I miss Dave it’s usually his songwriting I miss — unlike many songwriters, his songs, which started out pretty great, were continually getting better. He left behind a graduate course in songwriting, and I never tire of listening to, playing, and trying to understand his songs.

Thursday night by luck of timing I was one of the first people able to buy the new Dave and Tracy CD, Little Blue Egg. It was made of demo recordings they did before Dave died, and that Tracy unearthed and cleaned up enough to release. Only two are new to me (although many will be new to all but the most hard-core Dave fans) and those aren’t the best on the disc. There are some great songs there — September Sea is a perfect duet, with counterpoint melody and lyrics; Better Way is achingly beautiful and sad; Three-Fingered Jack is great cowboy poetry (if cowboy poets wrote in 11/4 time). And some of ones Tracy has done her own versions of, like the song (Hard to Make It) from which the title comes, and Any Way I Do, are among the best Dave wrote.

But what really struck me as we put the CD into the car stereo on the way back from the show was how much I’ve missed Dave’s voice. It almost brought me to tears to hear it in a new context. I hear and play his songs all the time, and absolutely love it when Tracy plays them. But Dave’s voice contains his character, his soul, and perfectly conveys those songs. And Dave and Tracy together, especially on a song like September Sea, reminds me why I fell in love with every part of their music way back when. It was like being reunited with an old and dear friend.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/a_new_dave_and_tracy_cd Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:45:35 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/preparing_for_february_albumwriting_month
One, obviously, is to look through old songwriting notebooks; there I jot down song ideas or potential lyric lines, and many of them never go anywhere. There are probably some interesting ideas that never got taken up. Likewise, I generally make sure there’s a notebook on the table beside my bed, so that when I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea or a phrase I have somewhere to write it down, because I know I won’t remember it in the morning. That one will be a bit more challenging to mine for ideas; not only are any song fragments interspersed with notes reminding myself to pay the electric bill or send a thank-you note to my aunt, but they were written in the dark when I was at least half asleep — I can’t always make out what I was intending to convey. But still, it will be interesting to see what ideas might be lurking in those places.

A second approach is to give myself challenges. I love having assignments (as I’ve mentioned in many previous blog posts); you need a starting point for a song (or anything you’re writing) and an assignment or a challenge narrows down the universe of possibilities. I’ve found that narrowing expands creativity, as ironic as that sounds. (It actually makes sense when you think about it; specificity is key to most successful writing, and you need to have something to be specific about.) I also like being made to focus on something unexpected, weird, or hard. It’s the challenge of it — how can I make this work? — that engages me; it’s fun to do something challenging and much less fun to do something easy or banal.

So that’s where you come in. It’s been said that you can’t tickle yourself, and I think it’s similarly difficult to give yourself a writing assignment, especially if the goal is to assign something unexpected. I’ll do it (heck, I’ve got 14.5 songs to write; it’ll have to involve telling myself what to do), but it would be great to have others give me assignments/challenges/suggestions.

There’s a trick to doing it well. It has to be specific, and unusual. The first song I wrote in my current period of songwriting was an assignment from Bob Franke to write a response to Dave Carter’s song Cowboy Singer. Another song was a challenge to write about “where they don’t belong.” Either of those is much better than a challenge to “write a song about autumn” or “write a love song.” A good assignment could be a topic (“write about your first pet”) or a title (write the title track for the “Passionfruit Hypothesis” CD), or some other things (“write a song that uses the words “lemon” “staircase” and “Lithuanian” in the same song”; “write a song about a train in the form of a letter”) — weird is good. Please — I’ve turned comments off on this blog because of spammers, but you can post on my facebook fan page (or regular facebook if you’re a “friend”) or even email me directly. I’d love to hear your assignments/challenges.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/preparing_for_february_albumwriting_month Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:42:08 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/if_you_want_to_be_an_independent_musician
So I went to the site to discover that you can’t simply decide to join; you have to send in materials for them to consider whether you are an appropriate member (a perfectly reasonably approach). And I noted that one of the things you need to send is a link to a video of you performing. Now it’s true that I have plenty of videos posted on youtube, but some of them aren’t great, and others of them feature much more of a band than I’d likely have with me at a house concert. So I figured — since getting a better video presence is also a good goal for music promotion — that I’d just quickly make a video from my most recent live performance, which I managed to capture on Flip Video. Luckily I’d already downloaded the video onto my computer, because that process takes forever.

I’m not a technophobe, and I find most Apple products intuitive, but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of iMovie. In fact, the newer form of iMovie I find even more puzzling than the previous version, so I managed to keep an older version on my new computer that also has the newer version. In the old version, at least, I’ve learned how to snip off bits of the video until I’m left with only the parts I want. So I did that.

But I thought the useful addition this time would be to add information on the screen (a title). I’ve spent the last two and a half hours trying to figure out how to usefully add a title to this video. After it wasn’t intuitive, I read help manuals and searched the web for info from other users (made harder by the fact that I’m using an old version and most of Apple’s help info is for the current versions; I even briefly decided to learn instead how to do it in the new version, but for some reason couldn’t figure out how to import my clip into the new iMovie, so that was another wasted half hour). I’ll spare you the details of what I couldn’t figure out, although the short version is that I wanted the title to appear on the screen while the video was in process. While I could get it to do that in a test clip, when I tried to add that actual title to the clip it would do that, but then add that clip on to the beginning of the video so that it would stop when the title stopped, and then song would start AGAIN from the beginning.

It’s not about the details (although if anyone wants to offer expert advice, feel free to contact me!) but rather about the fact that I just spent two and a half hours of my life unsuccessfully trying to make a video with titles vaguely the way I wanted them. I finally gave up and put the title over a black silent screen before the song itself plays; that will have to do for now.

But it reminded me of why I need to make resolutions about doing one piece of music business a day: this stuff is hard, it takes time, and it’s not the bits I enjoy about being a singer-songwriter. But if I want to be able to continue to be a singer-songwriter (at least one who has anyone to sing my songs to), these are the things I have to get myself to do.

]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/if_you_want_to_be_an_independent_musician Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:39:55 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/fear_of_fawm
But this year is different. I’m not running the annual conference for my day-job professional organization, and the conference isn’t even taking place in February. Instead of teaching two courses this semester, I’m only teaching one (for the first time ever). I’m not running a national job search. If there were ever a time to do it, this year would be it. February even has an extra day this year!

The bigger question is why even think of doing it? For me, that’s an easy answer. I appreciate challenges and I’m good at rising to them — challenging myself to do something, giving myself an assignment, is a good way of focusing on it, and actually getting it done. When I write books (non-fiction) I usually give myself a daily writing quota, and having that quota helps me focus and prioritize — I have to arrange my day to make sure I get it done, and the more you write, the more you have written (and the more you have written, the less the amount that remains to be written seems intimidating). Songwriting is the writing I most want to be doing, but it’s hard to carve out the space to do it in the middle of the rest of my life (not only my day job, but the rest of my music career — booking, publicizing, playing shows). Having a month where I focus on songwriting and hold myself to a challenge, is a way to do that.

So yesterday I went to the official FAWM website where you can read up on the challenge and officially declare your intention to participate. And I got scared. In my mind I’d characterized it as “write enough songs for an album,” which, these days, is about 10 (although my first two each have 13). But FAWM officially defines success at the challenge as writing 14 songs in the month . . . and this year, because of the extra day, they’ve declared that success is actually 14 and a half songs. Now, of course, I don’t have to do the official process, or take the organization’s definition of success . . . I don’t even need to succeed (the website points out that many people who fail to write enough songs still are happy to have written a lot of songs).

But the thing for me is that if I sign on for a challenge I want to do it for real. If I ever run the Boston marathon (something I probably will do some day) I want to run it officially, with a number, not run the course alongside the registered runners. If I make a resolution to play music every day, I play music every day, even if I have to haul a guitar to Costa Rica. In some ways it’s precisely taking on the full tasks that creates the significance. I can’t fully explain it, but if I take on this challenge, I want to take it on for real, in its existing parameters.

But I also realized that it’s not the idea of 14.5 songs — 13 or 10 seem pretty daunting too. My February may be clearer than it’s been in years, but it’s far from clear. In addition to teaching a completely new course and mentoring several new faculty members who are teaching for the first time (and directing the program I’m in), I’m revising the book manuscript finished last summer — that also has to be done by the end of February. And a whole host of other things (many of them music-biz related). An average of a song every two (or three, or four) days is a scary proposition.

It’s also a scary proposition because I’m not a fast writer. I spend a lot of time getting songs right, thinking, editing, even researching (as in Crawfordsville). Even when I’m writing regularly, the idea of a song every three or four weeks seems fast; one every other day is unimaginable. And the bigger issue is whether songs I write that quickly will be worthwhile. Sure, I can revise them after the month is over, or finish bits that don’t get finished, but if there isn’t a core of quality there, will it be worthwhile? I was thinking about this issue last night at the We’re About 9 concert; Brian Gundersdorf is one of my all-time favorite songwriters. He’s not a fast writer and his songs show it — every word is the perfect one and a song is a work of art. Is it worthwhile to write songs quickly?

On the other hand, I know myself well enough to know that this kind of analysis is a defense mechanism. I’m scared to do it precisely because it’s easier not to — it’s easier to take my life as it comes and not prioritize writing. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m any good at songwriting if I don’t write; I don’t have to worry about whether I’m up to the challenge if I fail to take it on. But I’m happier when I’m writing — and I write better, and write more, when I’m writing regularly. The whole point of FAWM is that it’s hard. It requires you to get out of your daily habits and making songwriting the focus of the month. So while I’m terrified, and I haven’t taken the plunge to sign up yet, that’s precisely why I should.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/fear_of_fawm Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:53:48 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/music_out_of_context
The context in this case was a trip to Costa Rica in which I was representing my school at a meeting of a study abroad program. It was a great trip, featuring adventurous academic types (who signed on for cold showers and bunk beds and bug bites); we got to see some interesting local sites and hear a lot about the broader program. I brought a guitar because, well, I like to play music, and also one of my new year’s resolutions is to make music every day.

But as befits a site with cold showers and bunk beds, there wasn’t a lot of privacy or sound-proofing where we were staying. And I didn’t like the idea of subjecting people to my music who hadn’t voluntarily signed on to hear me play. So for the most part I wandered to out-of-the-way places on the property to play. There’s a lot to recommend, actually, in playing out in the middle of nature, with no one else around.

One evening, though, as I was walking back in to the dorm with my guitar someone on the porch asked “are you going to play for us?” So, with that invitation I did. Only a few songs (again, shared space — didn’t want to impose for too long). And it went over extremely well. One of the songs I played was Bigger, Faster, and More (an obvious song for a set of folks at an environmental study abroad site), and later on the trip the person who directs the (fisheries-related) program center in the Turks and Caicos asked how she could get a copy, saying it could be the theme song of her program. Others asked how to get recordings (and seemed surprised/impressed that my music was available, among other places, on iTunes) and indicated interest in seeing me perform back in the US.

Which is all nicely reassuring, but brings up the broader question of how to handle such situations. In this case it worked out okay — I played because people saw me with my instrument and asked me to play, not because I was foisting music on them. But I need to think more broadly about how to navigate that kind of interaction. I’m a musician, and so presumably I want to play for people, and the way to build audiences is to introduce people to my music who haven’t heard it before. Should I be trying harder to say “hey! Would you like to hear me play?” It seems like folks who self-promote actually do better in both my fields (academia and music). But I often don’t like such people, and so I probably err (again, in both fields) on the side of reticence, probably to my detriment.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/music_out_of_context Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:32:03 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/what_academia_has_taught_me_about_music
Both music and academia are extremely self-directed. Yes, when you’re teaching something you need to show up to actually teach or you won’t have a job for long. But what you teach in a class (at least at the level at which I teach) and how you teach it is up to you. And the rest of it even more so. What’s the next book or article going to be about? (is there even going to be a next book?) When it is done? Write songs! Record CDs! Get them out to radio! Book gigs! All these things have to be done to have a successful music career, but there’s no one there to give you a schedule and a due-date and require that you do them. You need to get yourself to do those things, and since, sometimes, they’re not easy and sometimes they’re not enjoyable, you need to find ways to create deadlines or habits or rules to get yourself to do things even when you’d rather not. Because if you don’t do those things, you won’t actually have much of an academic career or a music career. And that’s ultimately, your choice.

A corollary to that first observation is that you have to be willing to let go of what you’re working on and send it out into the world. It (the article, the book, the song, the CD) will never actually be perfect and if you spend all of your time working on it and worrying that it isn’t good enough (or isn’t as good as the first one you wrote/made) . . . well, it won’t be, because no one will have seen/heard it. I suspect there are as many musicians with only one CD as there are scholars with only one book . . . the second big project is the real hurdle, and being willing to send imperfect work out into the world is a necessary part of the endeavor.

But also, you need to get used to rejection. And then get up and put yourself out there again. You submit things to journals that don’t take them, apply for jobs you don’t get. You send CDs to radio stations that don’t play them and submit to gigs you are not chosen for. There is probably more rejection than there is success, for all but the most accomplished people in these fields. And that’s just part of the endeavor. If you allow fear of rejection to keep you from trying, or actual rejection to keep you from trying again, you won’t have the chance to succeed.

It also means that the most important thing you can do is make friends in your field. When I was first introduced to the concept of “networking” I ran the other direction, because I hate self-promotion, am basically an introvert, and find people who did what I thought of as “networking” to be slimy. But in both academia and music I’ve learned that what successful networking is differs from that image. Find the people whose work you respect and with whom you would want to hang out. And then hang out with them, support them, bounce ideas off of them, tell other people that you think they’re great scholars, teachers, songwriters, performers. Do good things for them without expecting a quid pro quo, and there will be other people who do good things for you. There are people you’re genuinely happy to see at conferences (either academic or music conferences), and hanging out with them, exchanging ideas, collaborating . . . that counts as networking, and it’s actually enjoyable and useful

Finally, you’re never off-duty. Unlike a 9-to-5 job, you can’t leave it “at the office” and there’s no point in time at which you’re “done.” It’s one of my pet peeves that people outside of education don’t understand that part about academia — not just that the amount of time you’re working isn’t just (or even primarily, or even close to) the amount of time you spend in the classroom, but that once you have a research career there’s never a time when you’ve finished your work. Even when the book has been written, it needs to be edited, page proofed, etc. . . . and then when it’s out and published between covers you start on the next one. The same thing is true with writing songs or making a CD. You’re never done, you can never stop.

Which means that you have to, in some ways, both love and believe in what you’re doing, even when there’s rejection and exhaustion and parts of the job you don’t always enjoy. So my final observation is that both are meaningful endeavors that permeate your entire life -- they pretty much have to be. And I’m extremely lucky to have two such careers.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/what_academia_has_taught_me_about_music Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:33:34 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/re_making_the_music_room
The first flood happened from a frozen/burst pipe (leading to the discovery that there was no insulation between the pipes and the outside, something we’ve remedied). A couple instruments and a lot of CDs were lost in that flood. Since then we’ve had a swath of “regular” floods from poor drainage, something we keep taking new steps to address each time the basement floods. We’ve put a drain in the driveway and one in the area where the water gathers in front of the basement door, among other things; all of these meant that, although some of my music stuff (but not the most important instruments) remained in the basement, it really didn’t feel like a usable space.

And then we were hit with three floods in August, one of which happened moments after we were out of town for more than a week, and resulted in a mold problem so bad that we had to get rid of all the furniture and rugs in the basement and hire someone to tear out (and then someone else to rebuild) the walls. We also finally got wise to the fact that we’re unable to completely prevent water from coming in, so we installed drainage inside the house in the room where the water enters and, most importantly, a sump pump. And a dehumidifier.

The sump pump should provide the final protection against the sort of large-scale flooding that make the basement unusable on a regular basis, and the plan has been, having put so much money into fixing and re-doing the basement, that we would make it a space that we actually use again. That includes re-making the music room.

That’s particularly important because for much of the time we’ve lived here I’ve actually lived alone for three-quarters of the year; that’s not true anymore. And while I have a willing audience for songs I know how to play or those I’ve already written, a lot of the creation of music involves a messy stage. Passages have to be played over and over, nonsense lyrics or phrases or melodies need to be tried out on the way to a finished song. And I need privacy to be able to fully devote myself to doing that.

So we’ve taken a number of trips to Ikea recently to furnish the place, and I ”˜ve been working on ways to simultaneously store and display the instruments (to make it easier to pick up and play a given instrument without it being a big production of hauling the case out from behind or underneath other things). Soon I’ll put some music-related art on the walls, and I have a portable CD player and a little desk for writing. I hope it can become a haven, where I actually want to spend creative time.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/re_making_the_music_room Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:25:00 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/music_resolutions_for_2012
1. Play/sing every day. Even if it’s just a little, even if I’m otherwise busy. Playing and singing makes me happy, even if I don’t think it will.

2. Cover my friends — learn to play more songs by others; it’s good inspiration, and it’s fun — I need to play music not just for music career reasons, but to remember why I love it. And it’s good to introduce people to music they might not have heard but should have.

3. Write a song every month. Woody Guthrie’s resolutions in 1942 included writing a song every day. If he can try for that, I can try for one a month. It’s okay to write songs that aren’t brilliant; it might even be a necessary part of the process.

4. Participate in February Album Writing Month. Since I first heard of it, my Februaries have been unusually committed, but that’s not true this year, and I want to give it a shot. Even if many of the songs aren’t keepers, it’ll get me writing regularly.

5. Do something for music biz every day. It can be as simple as a blog post, or updating my website, but I need to get back in the habit of having music business be, well, habitual. I should, relatedly, do better at getting video taken and presented, and improve my website. All those would count in my “do something every day” plan.

6. Focus on publicity. One of the things I got from NERFA this year, when I couldn’t sing, is the how-tos, and importance, of publicity. This is the hardest thing for me to do — I’m not a natural salesperson, especially when the person I’m selling is me. But I need to just suck it up and do publicity for my shows — really turn people out.

7. Make the music room into a haven. I’ve started (and an Ikea delivery on Monday will hopefully take me much of the rest of the way there). Now that I don’t live alone, I need to have a place that’s mine for doing music stuff, and making that basement room into a place that is comfortable enough — and set up in the right way — to do that is an important step.

8. Blog regularly. I’d like to get on a schedule — posting at least twice a week.

9. Do stuff right away -- thank yous, inquiries, recording info/stats after shows. It’s easy at the beginning and gets harder later.

10. Prioritize music. Set aside music time (especially writing time) on a regular basis. Put it in my schedule and don’t cancel it for other meetings at school. Take on less academic stuff and don’t write a book this summer. I work too hard in my day job and I need to stop doing that (and also work more efficiently there, so that time I waste can be re-allocated to music.) Most importantly, though, recognize that everything is better when music, and songwriting, is a core part of my life.]]> http://bethdesombre.com/blog.html/music_resolutions_for_2012 Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:52:16 -0800 New songs that spring from old traditions - Beth DeSombre - Blog