OK: for the folks who want to know a bit more about the songs or the processes of writing them, here’s a little discussion of the songs I wrote for February Album Writing Month this year and how they came to be written or what I appreciate about them. 1. The Water Is Rising. This song was written largely in response to a songwriting prompt I dreamed up (literally), just before the month started. The prompt (from a songwriting workshop that was happening in dream) was to write a song about a certain population of people responding to either a flood or a fire, and have a chorus or refrain with nonsense syllables. I started with “Woh-ho The water is rising” and went from there, and decided to throw in some subtle references to climate change. 2. When October Rolls Around One of the ways to get song ideas in FAWM is to sign up for challenges. I agreed to participate in a “year of songs” challenge, in which each participant was given a different month of the year. I got October. Under the best of circumstances October feels bittersweet to me, and the fact that my beloved pup died at the end of that month this last time around also colored the way I thought of the month. Wanted to tell this “story” almost entirely through images but also have an implicit story of loss come through at the margins. I like a lot of the lyrics here. 3. Nightingales Will Gather I didn’t have the faintest idea what to write about, but had a little time to get started on a song. So I just started noodling on the guitar, hoping I might come up with a riff to use in an upcoming song. Instead, I came up with this really cool guitar part that then suggested a melody to me. And then I was stuck: that’s not how I write songs! I had to figure out what kind of song the melody and guitar part suggested. And it was so peaceful that I figured it had to be a lullaby. I set out to figure out what aspects were in a lullaby, and that led me to write these lyrics. 4. The Love of a Traveling Man I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, to write down ideas that arrive in the middle of the night, which happens even more often in February than the rest of the year. (My muse rewards – or tortures, depending on your perspective – me when I’m actively engaged in writing.) The morning I wrote this song I awoke to find the line “Like mama, I’ll never be pretty” in my notebook. That had to be a song! I knocked some lyrics about, figuring that such a line had to go in something traditional- (or at least old-) sounding. 5. When We Fall One of the challenges you can participate in via FAWM is a “morph,” in which people are put into a chain. The first person in a chain writes a song. The next person takes that song and writes a new song that uses half (however defined – lyrics, topic, music, chords, etc.) of the previous song, and so on down the chain. This is the second year I’ve done a morph, and most of the people who participate in this particular songwriting game tend to write songs really stylistically different than mine. And my goal this year was to not write any songs that couldn’t be keepers in my repertoire. So I took this anarchic-sounding song called “where are the nuns?” (which turned out to be a morph of a preceding song called “where are the nuts?”) and tried to transform it into something I could plausibly play/like. I stuck (mostly) with the weird chord progression because there wasn’t much else I was likely to keep – except that I started with a nun (and kept the religious theme going). As I was playing through the chord progression, the first line that popped out was “Sister Mary Agnes said that I would go to hell.” Which came out of nowhere, followed shortly thereafter by “when she saw me kissing Michael as they rang the recess bell.” I couldn’t imagine where such a song would go (and it was certainly different than most I write), but I decided that I’d keep it going, and wrote the first verse and the chorus – and then needed to figure out what else could be going on in a song with that as a first verse. I love it, but it’s the most polarizing of the songs I wrote this month, judging from reactions of people I’ve played it for. 6. The Glory of Another Day I always want to write songs that sound traditional, and traditional folk-gospel, especially of the sort that could be a sing-along, is the gold standard in my book. So this song was an explicit attempt to do that in a way that an agnostic like me could get behind. I tried to pull from lots of the standard tropes from such a song (and I’m a sucker for a hallelujah song, so I wanted to see if that would fit, too) and write a traditional-sounding lyric. Haven’t played this one out yet, but I like it. 7. One True Friend Song #7 began the fearless songwriter week, running concurrently with FAWM, in which we sign on to write a song a day for seven days. The real advantage is that each day begins with a prompt, so I had a place to start. The first day’s prompt (from Bob Franke) was “non-human love” and the first thing that popped into my mind was a story I remember seeing about a friendship between a dog and an elephant at an elephant sanctuary. So that’s where I decided to go with this song, but I wanted to make it more general (and not beat people over the head with the “this is a dog and elephant” element, though have it there for people paying attention). I ended up writing a bridge I absolutely love: “An elephant always remembers/ What some of us sometimes forget/ When destiny deals you a forever friendship, hold onto it.” Also when I wrote the last verse it actually made me cry, which I took as a sign that I was onto something. 8. The Life Work of Daisy Gatson Bates Prompt for this day was from Nerissa Nields: “write a song for a minor holiday.” I went immediately to a website listing holidays throughout the year and on that day discovered that it was Daisy Gatson Bates day in Arkansas. So I decided to find out who she was, and she turned to be a really cool person who was active in the early civil rights movement (and school desegregation) in Arkansas. I read a few websites about her and then articles, and discovered that my library had her autobiography. So I got and skimmed that, and came up with the details for this song – taken from her life. I think it was the chorus, assembled (mostly) from lines her father said, that made me believe I could write a song about her. And I put it in the first person, because I thought that was the only way such a song could work. I’m really pleased with this one. 9. I Don’t Remember Prompt for the day was from Tracy Grammer: “Write a song about something you don’t quite remember.” I woke up with the structure of the song, asking a question followed by “But I don’t remember” in my bedside notebook, so I went about the process of writing it. Having a history of my father’s brain injury and the (mostly but not entirely temporary) memory issues that resulted drove the subject. This one (though I might delete the first half of the last verse and replace it with an instrumental) is definitely a keeper, and I’ve already played it out. 10. Let it Go Prompt from Vance Gilbert was “shadowboxing.” Had no idea where to go with this one and tried a number of dead ends, but then decided to think of Jungian shadows – the side of yourself you try to keep hidden – and use that as a topic (including a box to be sure I was living up to the prompt . . .). I’m pleased at how I implemented the complex structure of the song, but this is the most likely song from the month to never make it to my repertoire. 11. I Remember (Bus to Manzanar) Prompt today was from Brian Gundersdorf and involved finding a photo of a non-famous person and telling that person’s story. I had a really hard time finding a photo; I tried looking through magazines I had the night before when the prompt was posted, but few of them had interesting looking photos. So I didn’t know what I was going to do. And then first thing in the morning I opened Andrew Sullivan’s blog, and he had posted this photo . It’s a little girl sitting with baggage waiting for the bus to a Japanese internment camp during the second world war. It’s such a compelling photo, and the kind of thing I like to write about. So I wrote the song telling that story, keeping it focused on the time getting ready to head off to internment, and on her perspective. I also wanted it to occur gradually to listeners what was happening in the song. I’m really pleased with this one too, and consider it to be in the “definite keepers” category. I’m seriously considering editing it down to all fit within three verses/choruses, however. 12. Never Gonna Stop a Moving Train Prompt today from Maura Kennedy: write a song the Supremes would have sung. This is not a song the Supremes would have sung, but it did result from listening to a lot of Supremes songs that started me off in direction different from what I would have usually written. But when the song decided to head off on its own way, I decided to follow it, rather than to hew closely to the actual prompt. I also had written the night before in my bedside notebook “never gonna stop a moving train” and “not the one that’s bound for glory.” So I started there and wrote this traditional-sounding song (again, taking pains to keep it plausibly traditional sounding). I love this one and have already played it out. Plus, I got a train song out of the deal! All folksingers should have train songs in their repertoires. 13. When the Sparrows Sing Prompt for today from Cary Cooper, following the RealWomenRealSongs project, was “hopeful.” Most of the hopeful songs ended up somewhat melancholy. There are parts to this song I like (especially some lyric lines), but this is also on the might-not-be-a-keeper list. There are so many other better songs from the month that it doesn’t seem worth the effort to revise this one to make it better than it is. 14. As the World Turns Round This is another one that came from a dream. No prompt this time (fearless week was over) and I dreamed that I was learning a song. When I awoke from the dream I did my best to capture what the melody sounded like, and a few scattered phrases. When I started writing the first line that seemed to want to be in the song was the first line of the last verse: “One more cup of coffee, then I’ll be on my way.” And I also had a powerful vision of an older man sitting in a coffee shop or diner. So I had to figure out who he was and why he was drinking multiple cups of coffee in this place. I let it roll around in my mind for a couple days, thinking about what his story might be. Eventually this is what I came up with. Another of my favorites of the month; I’m pleased that I’m telling a story within a story, and I like the simplicity of the lyrics but the depth they’re able to convey. I’m also really happy with the bridge.