Those of you playing along at home know that I’ve signed on for February Album-Writing Month, in which I attempt to write 14.5 songs (the extra half song because it’s a leap year) in the month of February. And so far I’ve stayed on track, finishing one song every two days. I’d like to get a little bit ahead of the game, but since I currently have a massive headache I figured I’d write about my two most recent songs rather than diving into the next one. I’m pretty pleased with song #5. I tackled it having no idea where it would go – the fragment I started with was the phrase “mandolins for scientologists” that I found in the songwriting notebook that I keep beside my bed to scribble middle-of-the-night ideas into. I have no memory of where it came from, but it seemed just weird enough that it might inspire a song. Writing this song was the epitome of what my last blog post was about: waiting for a song to catch the wind. There are really two moments for me when I song takes off. The first is when I can imagine it becoming a song – when I figure out what kind of a song it’s trying to be – what the story or the point is. When writing this song that part came as I thought through the different instruments different religious traditions could be playing, in a “pan-religious bluegrass band.” But the second part is even better; it’s when something else takes over and the song really starts to fly. It feels like the moment when it becomes a “real” song – and not all songs I complete get there. (And the ones that don’t rarely stay in my repertoire for long.) There is usually a phrase or two – rarely that I consciously create; they just come out – that makes that transition happen. In this song the line that first did it came in the first verse (although I’d already written part of the second verse, so it didn’t proceed in order), when I came up with “So the afterlife they’d prayed about/ and their chosen promised land/ was no more than a rehearsal for/ the pan-religious bluegrass band.” The other piece that made it take off for me was the bridge (you’ll have to listen to hear that). It’s certainly a funny song and it’s meant to be one . . . but it has a deeper underlying point, which is what I like in a song. This one still needs a little editing, but with the pace of writing this month I’m leaving the finer details until I’ve made it through my quota. Here’s the song:

Song #6 hasn’t quite made it yet, in my book, but I think it has the potential to, with a rewrite. I posted on FB about not knowing what to write about and various people made suggestions, several of which had to do with my dog’s recent brain surgery. Which already inspired Song #4 (my favorite of the bunch so far), so I didn’t think I’d do anything with that thought. But then I also started thinking about my father’s brain injury and surgeries a couple years ago, and I remember imagining that if I were in his situation I would simply want someone to sit with me (which I did, for weeks on end). So I wrote the chorus from that and then added some verses – it’s trying to be simple, which is hard to write well, and I don’t think I’ve quite got something that works, but I think it might be worth working with later. The fact that I found myself singing it in the shower this morning is probably a good sign. Here ‘tis: And, yes, that puts me needing another song by the end of tomorrow, so stay tuned.