Songwriting

Songwriting is something I think about a lot. I think about it way more than I actually do it, which is indicative of how complex the process actually is (or how lazy I am?). We've had a couple days off the road in Houston, before heading to Dallas tomorrow, to relax and think about new music. Just like a lot of art, songwriting is a universe of dualisms and unless one can free their mind of these competing concepts, songwriting can be very difficult.

The main dualism has to do with who, or what, the art is being created for. Most artists will agree that they produce their product from within, for themselves. Then again, if the artist is the only individual who enjoys the result, the artist will die of starvation and certainly not make any more art. However, if an artist focuses solely on what her audience might want, she will become disconnected with her art form, eventually disillusioned enough such that she ceases to create altogether. Quite the conundrum, no? This equation is the source of terms like "tortured artist" or, more applicable to music: "starving artist".

I cannot really speak to how other art forms are created (my drawing skills operate around a 3rd grade level and any attempt to write something longer than a blog looks like a diagnostic test for A.D.D.). But, I can say with some level of certainty that most of the music in the world is created without any outside influence on a conscious level. It is simply too hard to visualize a crowd of people and ascertain what they would theoretically want to hear. Such knowledge can only come after the fact, after playing lots of music in front of lots of people, lots of times.

This isn't to say that no outside influence is present in songwriting. Whether they like it or not, songwriters will always operate in the framework of the collective human music consciousness, even if their goal is to write something completely new. Nothing new can be written without first having a complete sense of what has been done already in human music history.

Of course, these are all aqueous, esoteric concepts; probably more useful for you to ponder yourself than to read my blabbering. So, I'll close with a poem about our hitchhiking buddy and his dog, who I wrote about last post.

Turquoise necklace and orange energy vest
A dog and a backpack, on a mission
For herbs in the Ozark heights
Deep in the mountains, a moon-cycle of medicine
Miss Wilbur, Shaman of the Night
No human thinking, don't think too much
Discover the dog light
Miss Wilbur, Shaman of the Night

Miss Wilbur

The last few days of tour have been more enjoyable since we discovered the solution to our ongoing Tourmobile saga. If the starter won’t turn over, one simply must lie on their back under the car’s engine and tap on the starter box while another turns the ignition. It’s a dirty and loud way to start a car, but it's fine because the electric shock from the starter only makes its way up the hammer to your highly conductive fore-arm about 1/3 of the time! Nothing wrong with a little shock under the belly of your Suburban in the morning to start the day's drive off right...

In a much less electric Tourmobile scenario, we had a great experience picking up a hitchhiker on our way out of Santa Fe, going toward Lubbock, TX (where we had a raging show with the Red Raiders Thursday night). Mom, I know what you are thinking and trust me, we don’t normally pick people up from the side of the road. But the minute we saw Aaron standing in the hot desert sun with a turquoise peace-sign necklace and his trusty sidekick, Ms. Wilbur, on a leash by his side, we determined he didn’t exactly fit the description of those psycho-killer-axe-murdering types you'd like to avoid on the interstate.

Helping Aaron make his way down the road turned out to be a truly enlightening experience for the band. The energy we had observed about him as he stood patiently in the sun manifested itself in conversation after he ran to catch up with our waiting vehicle. He began by telling us that he had been on the road for around 7 years, “not really being a apart of anything”. Many would paint someone as a bum or hobo after hearing a statement like that. However, just because our new passenger was on the road and sleeping outside, sun-infused wrinkles on his face, didn’t mean he was unemployed or lazy by any means. At a gas stop, Aaron actually bought us a gallon of milk to go along with some delicious [and economically efficient] PB&J sandwiches.

It turned out that he and Ms. Wilbur (one of the friendliest dog-souls I have ever encountered), travel from Oregon to the Ozark mountains in Arkansas every year to help create all-natural creams and tinctures, organic medicines for sale (www.healin-hollers.com) .

Aaron rightfully stole Ms. Wilbur from an abusive owner, taking her into the woods for “two moon-cycles” (months), without laying a human hand on the dog. I could sense an energy of relief and love for Aaron in the animal, as she slept for the whole ride to Lubbock with her head on my lap.

As we talked, I marveled at how composed and articulate Aaron was, despite the transient and uncertain nature of his existence. At least uncertain in contrast to my admittedly protected suburban upbringing.

But as a musician on the road, I cannot have anything but respect for a man that attaches himself to very few material objects (a key tenet of Buddhism), and is just as organized and content as anyone operating in what most of us would call, “the real world”. The absence of materialism in his life seems especially appropriate this week as we are watching the demise of financial markets in the US, brought about by greed and overzealous borrowing for material objects.

As we said goodbye to Aaron and left him on one of the hundreds of highways he will travel in his life, we observed an elevated mood in the Tourmobile. The dude was truly a kindred soul, and had a wonderful nomadic, warm presence surrounding him. He wished us Frogs the world in our travels and we agreed that we hope to see him again, somewhere down the line.

Trouble in the Desert

After opening for the NOLA-funk of Big Sam's Funky Nation on Thursday in Denver, Frogs Gone Fishin' headed out on the road yesterday. The band woke up around 6:30a and shook off a great night jamming with the band from New Orleans, and headed out. Tour never stands still, and nothing was proof like our adventures in getting to Flagstaff for our first gig last night.

Everything was going smoothly on our 11-hour journey south, cruising at 65 mph, the plains and mountains rushing by on either side of the Tourmobile. Everything gets flatter as one heads into New Mexico from Colorado, and by the time we reached the Arizona border, we were confident about making the night's gig.

Shortly after crossing the AZ border, we stopped at Exit 333 (1/2 of 666, the devil's digits), so Mark (drums) and I could switch places. Jumping in the driver's seat, I turned the key of the Suburban... and nothing happened. The ignition wouldn't turn. We were stranded 130 miles from our gig, 4 hours before it was to begin.

The band jumped into action. After calling AAA we grabbed only the necessary items, the bare essentials to play the show and replaced the back seat in the car with our equipment. Leaving the trailer locked and out of sight, we commenced a cramped two-hour ride with our tow truck driver, Mike, and marvelled at his overpowering and wholly unnecessary use of A/C.

We emerged freezing, but somehow on-time in Flagstaff and played to one of the more enthusiastic audiences we've had since our last tour ended a couple weeks ago. Flagstaff is really an awesome scene and town, and the boys in FGF sincerely thank The Green Room for their hospitality and accommodating staff, especially in our time of hunger and stress about our ongoing transportation dilemma that is Leslie, the '94 Suburban.

Today we travel back to the devil's exit, to rescue our trailer.

Music and Personality

I recently stumbled upon an article while reading BBC News, claiming that a psychology professor in Scotland has linked a person's musical taste (by genre) to aspects of their personality.

Unfortunately for this prof, I play a lot of music, like a lot of different music, have a psychology degree, and immediately see multiple problems with his work. Before I drop some scientific method in your face, let's take a look at Professor Adrian North's weighty claim.

The study in question consisted of surveying 36,000 individuals with 104 questions about different types of music and aspects of their personality. The results state, among other things, that classical music fans are introverts, while jazz listeners are outgoing; reggae audiences are gentle, while those who listen to dance music are not gentle; hard rock fans have low self-esteem, while those who enjoy Top 40 Pop have high self esteem. Pretty interesting stuff which makes sense, initially. I do have to hand it to professor North; 36,000 participants in a pysc test is a very large number, and should provide a high level of reliability in the study. But for those of us who think critically about psychology, reliability is not the same as validity. In other words, a study can be very reliable, and wrong. Reliably wrong.

The first problem with our study here, is that over-generalized claims are being made, without any specific data to support them. This may be a bigger problem with the media than with science, but it is incorrect to say that "If you like heavy metal, you have low-self esteem". One could claim that 96.8% of heavy metal fans have low self esteem, but blatant over-generalizations are bad for science and people's perceptions alike.

Second, the personality aspect of the study is relying on self-report data. If I am taking a survey the day after getting fired, losing my mortgage, and finding out that my wife wants a divorce: of course I will self-report that I have low self-esteem! Similarly, on a normal day, most people want to portray themselves as outgoing and positive, regardless of the study's implications. A participant will either make themselves look good, or find reasons to make themselves look bad, very rarely being objective and honest about their condition. This is known as participant bias, or the demand characteristics of a test.

Third and most importantly, no correlative direction can be assumed in any study such as this. In a statement that probably urged me to write this post, prof. North says:

"If you know a person's music preference, you can tell what kind of person they are, who to sell to."

This is simply outrageous. To "prove" that a person likes a certain type of music because of their personality, or that they have certain personality traits because of the music they listen to, is preposterous. As scientists, all we can say is that X percentage of rap fans are X personality, and refine our hypothesis for the next study. That is the scientific method itself. The fact that North then brings in music marketing, claiming record labels could use his questionable claims to target consumers, leaves me stunned and slightly sickened.

Psychology aside, North's results don't make much musical sense, either. I know plenty of people who like jazz and classical, but according to North, these reflect opposite personality types. If reggae fans are gentle, dance fans not gentle, then what personality traits are present in fans of "dance-hall", a music that combines reggae and dance influences? Top 40 fans apparently have high self esteem, heavy metal fans low self-esteem... but I know plenty of hard rock songs that make it to the Top 40 charts!!!

The problem is, I want to agree with professor North. In all areas of life, it is much easier to come up with stereotypes because it helps us define and navigate the world we live in without really thinking about it. In reality, all music fans are individually different and while we can come close to generalizing, we must provide statistics based on unbiased data. Until Mr. North can do that, I suggest he take a hard look at the science he is distributing to the media for popular release.

I'll close with some unrelated statistics, and unlike North, let you interpret the results:

We depend on wind and solar research to show us how to break away from our "addiction to oil". Congress has voted 8 times this year to keep giving tax subsidies to the companies involved with this research. Barack Obama showed up and voted yes, 3 of these 8 times. John McCain showed up exactly zero times, including one occasion where he was in Washington, and the motion failed, by a count of exactly 1 vote...

What kind of music do you think John McCain listens to???

Cool Websites or The Evil Witch of the Right

I've discovered several new websites which could serve as major tools or resources for music marketing. And by discovered, I mean I just found out about some cool websites, only after a couple million people before me. I'll list these sites below, along with some helpful examples of how they might be employed.

www.stumbleaudio.com
This site is an even more eccentric version of Pandora Radio, which has already introduced me to dozens of artists I've never heard of.

www.twitter.com
Twitter operates on the same concept as a blog, although posts are limited to 140 characters and designed for mobile consumption. For example, if I text "Show tonight @ The Go-Go bar... a benefit concert for the Sarah Palin Is The Craziest Gun-Wielding Wench in Politics Foundation" to my Twitter account, then everyone who has set their account to follow mine will receive the update. They can all come to the show, see my band, and support the above cause!

www.mashable.com
Mashable is not a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook, but a news service that is dedicated to coverage of sites like these. I understand how geeked-out this sounds at the outset, but part of music marketing, or any marketing for that matter, is staying on top of the breadth of options to promote your product.

www.playinghere.com
One thing that impresses me about Playing Here, versus other online concert listings, is that Frogs Gone Fishin' shows up at every major venue we are playing at, without anyone in FGF updating or submitting anything. I especially like the tour map that pops up, so even I can know where we are going to be in 3 weeks... Props to the people at Playing Here for making musician's and fan's lives easier!

ping.fm
This is a site that I don't even understand how to use yet, but it looks to be the cat's pajamas of social networking. Apparently, ping.fm lets you update all of the sites you have an account with, without visiting each site individually. So if I post, "It is appalling that the GOP would choose a candidate who is completely unqualified to be the VP, yet perfectly suited to capture the vote of the religious right..", then the comment will appear on my Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Blogger pages. If anyone out there has some instructions as to what to do with the beta code ping.fm gave me... please help!

You can see that I am by no means competent with (most) online sources. I do know that overlooking these newer sites or old staples like Facebook/Myspace, would be musical marketing suicide. Internet usage will only be going skyward in coming decades, so those of us entrenched in the archaic poster/handbill/word-of-mouth way of doing things might as well embrace what's coming. Then again, nothing will ever replace the impact that word-of-mouth has. Like when words come out of Sarah Palin's mouth, the impact is truly nauseating.

I'm excited to play music at Wash Park Grill in Denver tonight. The gig will keep me away from one more minute of vomitous politics and keep me around what matters: funky music and funky people.