Music at a Distance

I don't think of myself as a musician at all. 

At best, I've got a middlin' voice and can murder a few chords on my baritone ukulele. But I enjoy writing lyrics, and I seem to have a knack for coming up with melodies that the Real Musicians I know find interesting.

When the pandemic began I had just started playing open mics with some friends, and I  loved the feeling that we were all going someplace together... that I was the one taking us there. 

Then came covid.

I decided to write a song a week for a year, post them all to my YouTube channel, and see if that might be a way to stave off the insanity. Some of my Real Musician friends dug what I was doing, and that year I made songs with a local rock and roller pal,  a violinist in Michigan, and an Irish-Brazilian from Portugal who I met on Reddit.  

One week I'd be writing a song about death, and the next about punching myself in the testicles. I was all over the map, musically speaking, and it was great. A folk-rock guy I know in Alberta, Canada was down to experiment with his first ever Dance Song. I wrote another depressing one with the Portugal guy. I did. not. stop.

I finished the year with fifty two songs, then got a local Arts Council grant to re-record one at a legit local studio run by a buddy of mine: booked some musicians, fancied it up - the works.

Eventually, when the pandemic waned, I found some local pals to jam with, and we ended up going back into my buddy's studio for a live-recording session with a few favorites. I'm most partial to a super dark one called, "I Could Change the World (if I could just get out of bed)," but here's one about hope that I think might be a bit more cheery:

I still don't really think of myself as a musician, and I've stopped writing songs in anything other than a "muck-about-while-driving-a-car" sorta way. 

It was fun, though, and proof that creativity is a muscle that, when fit, can be used for a lot of fun stuff.