How To Artistically Own Your Songs
Monday, September 15, 2008 at 08:27AM I performed at Mama Hillybeans (www.mamahillybeans.com ) in Tehachapi last Saturday night. I had almost twice as many people as the first time and the audience was a complete delight to play for. They got all the jokes and they liked all the songs and they picked up a ton of CD’s.
That being said, I was amazed to discover that I wasn’t as prepared as I had believed I was. Nor was I as warmed up as I usually am. I prefer at least an hour of uninterrupted playing and singing before I go on stage for a concert. For some reason I had it down in my calendar that the show started at 8. Because I always arrive about around 5, I thought I had plenty of time. Wrong. 
The show started at 7 pm. Be sure and read your contracts before you take off for a gig.
But I digress.
As I was saying, I must get an uninterrupted hour of playing and singing. If I do that, then all of my gifts are available to me. If I don’t then I essentially warm up on the audience. I really recommend the extensive warm up to each and every one of you.
Regarding the preparation, I was doing songs exclusively from the New Traces of the Old Road, which, as many of you know, is a re recorded, remixed, resequenced and remastered CD that I originally put out in 2002. I just always had some things about it that weren’t right to me, so I decided to fix them. So I did.
And I thought because I had played many of the songs so many times, that I was on top of them. I thought I owned them like I own the songs on The Eternal Contradiction, which I toured behind all of last year, or All Wood and Stones (www.allwoodandstones.com) that I did with John Batdorf (www.johnbatdorfmusic.com), several years ago.
I was wrong. Because I ran out of the CD’s last year, I haven’t been performing them. I figure if someone can’t get the CD, I will sing them something from a CD that they CAN get. Makes sense to me. But back to the topic…
Even though I played these songs well in the dressing room (well, area) and I thought I was ready, when I got on the stage, I faltered. I did not have them inside of me and that’s what I want to talk about today.
Before you go on stage to play a song, you must own it. And by that I mean know them so very well that you can play them in your sleep. That you can land on every note vocally and can play every lick and keep up the groove; simply make the song happen when you perform it.
When I was in college, studying orchestration and arranging, I had a piano class and, of course, we had to play classical pieces for the instructor. It was always very stressful because you couldn’t improvise, finesse it or fake it. You had to play each piece exactly as it was written; exact notes, exact tempo, exact dynamics. It was all written out and you had to reproduce it exactly.
One of the tricks that I developed to aid me in owning the music and to approximating the stress of performing it, was to play it three times in a row without a mistake. Not one mistake.
If I played it through twice with no errors and then made a mistake on the third time through, then I had to play it three more times. The deal is to get through it three times in a row flawlessly. Otherwise you start all over again. No matter how many times it takes.
Believe me, if you do that, you will begin to feel the stress as you come up to the third time and that is what you have to deal with on stage.
So if something is giving you trouble, or you just don’t own it like you should, try this little technique and see if it doesn’t put that song squarely in your pocket.
Reader Comments (2)
Now *that* is an old picture! But I digress, too...
Not that you need a plug on your own blog, but I would like to discuss "New Traces of the Old Road". Frankly, I wondered why you were re-doing this, James. Almost seemed to me like re-visiting the past. And I have always loved the CD as it was. I worried that tinkering with a good thing would make it too perfect - take the soul out of it. Make it too sterile and remove the heart. And what I have always loved the most about "Traces" was its heart.
But I ordered it anyway, because, well, I order everything you do. I needn't have worried.
From the first note, I knew that you had done the right thing. You managed to improve the musicality without losing any of the heart or the soul of the incredible songs. Before, it was great. Now, it is right - and still great.
From just the title of this post I immediately was reminded of a struggle I am currently going thru...Thirty some lyrical pieces that have no melody to them no music...on the other side of the coin I have all of these melody lines with a lyric fragment attached to them...i started a few months ago to remedy this situation after I had written a song with melody attached to it...and becos of the way I write lyrics I have to do some editing without losing the lyric...
So after that I sat on the rest of the lyric pieces...i was very intimidated at the process of putting music to them...i knew once I started I wouldnt be able to stop...and by that I mean I would have the drive and the want to continue...but I was still intimidated so I did nothing...I just wrote more lyrics...
now to back up abit in my teens I would write and the songs would come whole...I would go back and edit some...but it was minor tweaking of the way I phrased things or put in or out a "the" or 'and" etc
now my lyrics are more complex and so are my melodies...they are very lyrical melodies...so instead of the lyrics bowing to the the melodies as such happens in most of the crap on top 40 radio...and the American music scene at large...with a mediocre melodic hook and throw away lyrics...The melodies I'm writing have to follow the lyrics...it was scary to start but now that I have I am into it..not quite in the groove yet but I'm working on a song and it doesnt turn me off...it energizes me to go over it till i find the right notes for the words...
Now like I said in my teens I wold learn the songs automatically as I wrote them...but now i have to learn them as if they were someone else's...to own them I have to memorize and study...the songs are better so for me this is the trade off...but to own them i'm having to learn them separately from writing the songs...It's a new journey but a welcome one