Rob Roper had a proposal for me. He would send me a musical idea, I would listen to it and send him the first few words that popped into my head listen to his musical idea. And then we’d go off and write our songs. I knew it was important that I come up with some really good lyrical stuff for this song so the first thing I thought while listening to the music he sent me was “Don’t think Anything….” And thus our fate was sealed. (Very …

      Anna Maria wrote to me on Wednesday and said that she wanted to write from the prompt “I come from…” I wanted to work from it too. It’s the kind of phrase you can go just about anywhere with as many times are you want. It seems a lot like jotting down “I remember…” and just seeing what pops into your mind:       I remember…. sitting by the curve outside Coolidge Middle School with Taj who had just …

     Ellis and I talked a couple of days ago and she said she was writing a song for her Granny today. Did I want to write a song for her Granny too? Or perhaps for my Granny? Of course I did, though I had no idea what I would say, or how I would say it (nothing unusual for me, frankly). I was a little bit apprehensive too. I didn’t know either of my grandmothers terribly well. They both lived on the west coast and I didn’t see them often. My Dad’s mother died when I …

Jess shot me the mp3 file for her song “unprepared’ a couple days ago contradicting her song title but, what’s one to do?      We hadn’t talked about a specific theme but I loved the subject of her song. I have lots of experience with being unprepared and more over dreams where I’m unprepared. Mostly my dreams place me in a classroom without my homework, or with some test that I haven’t studied for at all. What have I been doing for the past few …

       So Ethan wrote to me and said let's write a song about a place of worship.  Something like "House of Stone and Light" or Tom Waits' "Come on Up to the House."  I'd never thought about writing a song about a church so I figured, why not?        I sat down and did my usual stuff.  Drank some tea, ate a cookie.  Did a quick word map where I started with the word curch in the middle.   I did a …