Songwriting

I've often heard it said that the songs you write are like your children. You always have an attachment to them, but sooner or later you have to let them go. It's true. When you're in a band you quickly learn that once you present your work to the rest of the group it becomes every one's property and once you set to work on arrangements, there's nothing to be gained for the writer by hanging on to his/her work too strongly.

I first started writing songs by default. I'd joined a band in 1996 called Audacity as a founder member. The band was working out of the West Midlands of England,  and when we started out we knew we would have to play shows pretty soon to bring in money for the Saltmine Trust, the Christian organization we were a part of, but aside from a few covers and one or two songs by Jon who was the band leader, we had nothing.

Work on arranging covers continued, but it was slow progress, and although we had some good songs worked up, we really wanted originals, so I embarked on what was probably my only "written-to-order" song project to date.
To explain further, I don't really like writing with a time pressure (and certainly not when I'm told what to write about - my mind just doesn't work that way). For me, a good song has to come out of an experience, a thought, and emotion, or once in a blue moon, sheer divine inspiration.

The first two songs that I can really remember appearing out of this period in early 1996 were totally different in subject matter and in style. I had been thinking about self image and how we can hide our real selves from other people, often with great success, but when it comes to God, He of course can see right through us. "Just Can't Hide" told a story of a week in the life, so to speak, and began life as a mid paced thoughtful song. As it developed over the next 12 months it actually became more sparse and acoustic.

Although in retrospect it was pitched too high for our vocalist I would someday like to go back and tweak it as I still believe it has potential. Sadly I don't have any copies of the lyrics now, and I am not aware of any recording that exists of the song, even though we did demo it once.

The second song from that era was a different beast altogether. I suppose you could label it a comedy song, although it wasn't really conceived that way. "Welcome To Tracy Island" was about building up false realities - hiding again, I guess -  and used the examples of superheroes and how they were not always quite what they seemed. We all have an achilles' heel. This song was a huge live favourite and always fun to play, although we only played it live for around a year. Again the song was demo-ed, but has once again vanished into the ether. No recorded version that I am aware of exists.

The third song from the early '96 era that I wrote is one that I am still very fond of, and has been through huge changes from its original incarnation. "Can't Touch My Soul" took it's inspiration from the verse Matthew 10:28 where Jesus is sending out his disciples for the first time, and says to them "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul..." I liked the thought that whatever anyone might one day do to me, everything in my soul was safe, untouchable.

The song started life as a loud defiant funk rocker, but about a year later when we got some new personnel in the band, we just decided one day to take the exact OPPOSITE approach and play it very sparse and quiet, just a piano and some guitar. The song remained defiant, but was infinitely more powerful. As we developed and refined the arrangement the song just grew in power and was played live (where it was always used as a set-closer) right up until quite close to the end of the band's life in 2001. The version on the Audacity CD "Entertaining Angels" was further refined for the album sessions, but is very much as it was the first time we decided on the quiet version, although the synth coda, which I love, was added at the time of tracking the album.


With the onset of the new personnel in 1997 I started writing in collaboration. "Power" was originally a  complete song of mine that we rehearsed but never played. The music was completely re-written with guitarist Calvin Hollingworth, while another song I'm still very fond of, called "You Can" was written from scratch with Calvin providing a gorgeous score to my lyrics based on the final chapters of the book of Job. Both those songs can also be found on the "Entertaining Angels" CD.

Since leaving the band, songwriting opportunities have been few and far between, although I have collaborated with a few people. I've been thinking recently how I'd like to get back to it in some way. I actually quite miss it, painstaking though it can be. Maybe I'll put the audio of "Can't Touch My Soul" on Youtube one of these days.

The "Entertaining Angels" CD by Audacity is still available from the Saltmine Trust website. If you're interested, visit www.saltminetrust.org.uk and click on 'Resources'