I've got songs I've written in less than an hour and others that have taken months. Most of my songs are in the tradition of Appalachian story tellers. If a story can be told quickly then it doesn't take long. I've sometimes spent months researching info for some of my songs. Sometimes I've written down an idea and came back to it years later. I think my record is around 20 minutes for my fastest song and I've also got one that I wrote nearly 20 years after I got the original idea. For me the key to writing a good song is in the re-write - taking out unneeded words or substituting better words, adding a bridge if necessary, etc, trying to make it as simple as I can without losing the vision I originally had for the song. Sometimes I'll play a song dozens of times, making slight corrections until I'm satisfied with the tempo, meter, clarity and overall prosody of the lyrics and music.
Saturday evening I'm being featured in a songwriter's showcase, playing 90 minutes of my original songs. I've been working on my playlist for weeks, trying to decide which of my songs to play, how to space out various types of songs and how to approach the whole evening. I plan to end the set with 3 songs that were written several years after forming the original idea.
At various times I've spoken or performed for some fairly large groups of people and am usually pretty relaxed, but I have to admit I'm pretty nervous about this event. I've never done a solo gig in which the entire 90 minutes is playing only my original work. Have any other Chordians done this? How did you handle it?
DE
I want to read my own water, choose my own path, write my own songs
