About me

When the first song-a-day project was put together by Chris Greacen, I was told about it be Derek who was still agonizing over whether to do it or not.

Some of the purposes for a project like that were to force the participants out of the creative ruts they might have found themselves in. Nothing like deadlines to produce results. 

My situation was the polar opposite of Derek's. He's been writing songs his whole life, just about, and has paid careful attention to the craft of songwriting (and the craft of recording, I might add). 

I'd never written a SONG in my life. I'd written a great deal of music, and even a small bit of vocal music, but that was in a "classical" music vein, for lack of a better term. The only pop songs I'd ever created were odd novelty bits that didn't count, at least in my mind. No, I had never written a pop song in my life.

So the decision for me was easy. I agreed to participate and off I went. On February 2nd I created and uploaded the first song of my life. I missed the 1st - it was hard to get started...

February 2008 finished and I had maybe ten or so things I rather liked.

Now in 2012 I took the project on in earnest once again and have produced more than ever before. I don't understand a lot of it myself, which means I'm not surprised when what I do is bewildering to others.

I studied composition in college and wrote some things I liked. This training did nothing to lead me into any possibility of a career as I had neither the interest not the aptitude - especially that second thing - to compose music with commercial potential. I was very interested in music that was spontaneous, fun, entertaining, and both intentionally and inevitably useless, at least from a commercial perspective.

Simultaneously I was studying voice and enjoying that a lot. I gave some performances I liked. Perhaps had everything in life lined up a different way I might have chosen a career as a singer. Among the barriers to that were the fact that I liked singing new music, avant-garde music, or in general music off the beaten path, and the notion of spending my life singing countless Messiahs and Puccini operas wasn't a happy one.

In spite of all the classical training I always loved rock music.