A Spontaneous Song

I was at Randy's place Monday night and spotted the guitar he keeps in his living room which reminded me of the night Ted Blegen and I wrote the song Ants.



Randy was hosting a games night in early 2006. His games nights are all about playing board games and enjoying Chicken Pad Thai from Thai Sookdee in Evanston, IL (the best Chicken Pad Thai in the Chicago area).

During a break in the board game action, I grabbed the guitar and started noodling a bit when Ted said "Hey let's write a song." So I started playing the chords that became the song and Ted started his "speech" about Ants. It all happened right there on the spot. Luckily we remembered the entire song and we were able to capture it in the studio the following weekend. It even later became a video:




This story illustrates one of the things that I love about the experiences we had making 365 songs. There's a story behind every one of them - a story about collaborating with highly talented people to create something new. I've occasionally been asked what I got out of The Song Of The Day or if it "paid off." For me, memories such as these are the payoff.

What is Honest Love?

One of the more amusing things about running TheSongOfTheDay.com is to see the search terms that end up dropping people onto our site. While some arrive there after searching for our band name (usually something like "the beatnick turtles") a lot of them show up because they wrote a phrase from song lyrics, or a song title. For example, as of this blog post, we're on the first page of results in Google for the term Bunsen Burner.

Today, we had someone get to our site after searching "what is honest love" in Google. They arrived at The Honest Love Song. We're in the first page of results for that search as well. Normally, I'd tell people not to take advice from us; but in this case, I'd put our answer against the others on that first page any day.

Fighting Time

Now that we've successfully completed our 365 song project, I've been reflecting on my experience of the past two years. One of the things that stands out for me doing a project where constant creation has a deadline, is how it became a fight against time.

We started 2007 with songs mostly complete through May - 5 months of songs. January 1 was the most comfortable I would be with our song calendar for the entire year. In February, we did the RPM Challenge which resulted in 13 new songs for The Song Of The Day and our new album All In A Day's Work, but the overall SOTD schedule slipped a bit. RPM took a lot out of me and I rested too much afterward and lost a little more ground. In the month of May, I wrapped up production for June - mastering and uploading the entire month in one big batch, which wasn't bad, but it seemed like a close call at the time. At this point, I started to feel like we were fighting the calendar. July was the same story - one big batch upload and still fighting the calendar. By the end of July, only half of August was done and the calendar fight intensified. Once late August hit, I was working week-by-week. Some weeks were touch-and-go, getting songs completed just a day or two before posting, and other weeks were easier - getting done in batches over the weekends. By the time October started, I felt like I was no longer fighting the calendar - I was fighting the clock. This fight intensified as the year wore on and from October through December, it was a race against the clock to the finish. On December 23rd, I uploaded Santa Don't Speak No Spanish at 11:57pm - only 3 minutes to spare. By the end of December I think I actually told someone that I hated clocks and I want to chuck them all out of my house!

This fight against the clock had its side effects. Clean laundry never got put away - it was always a big pile on the floor that I pulled from every day. I ended up paying some bills late - something I NEVER do because those late fees are such a screw. I didn't sleep much - a six hour night was a good night. Visiting friends and family was out of the question (aside from holidays, even though I REALLY could have used those holidays for song production!).

This all sounds really horrible. It wasn't. The experience of the project was the most worthwhile way I've ever spent a large chunk of my time. Would I repeat the experience and do a whole year of songs for a second time? Probably not. If I could go back, would I choose to do that first year again knowing what I know now? Absolutely! Plus, I did get a song out of this. I wrote I'm Fighting Time based on the theme of never having enough time to do all the things you really want. Contrary to what the song is about, somehow I did manage to find the time for this very challenging, extremely tiring, but fantastic project. It was worth every minute.

Open Mic Night

The open mic at Cullen's last night was really mellow, probably due to New Years and very cold weather. It was a 5 song night which is alway fun, though. I managed to play That's What She Said, Two Twenty-Nine, I Don't Want To Work Today, Mason Rocket, and thanks to Simon (open mic regular) for requesting Under The Radar. Under The Radar is always fun to play! Check out the live New Years Day recording of the feed (see previous post) to hear Under The Radar with Jason playing the Casiotone rhythm! I have to get him out to an open mic sometime with that Casiotone...

An Unusual Gig

We played our first internet show today. Why did we decide to do an internet show? We love to play live. Over the years, we have played traditional live shows in the Chicago area and I'm sure that we will do more in the year ahead. In fact, I play at a (mostly) weekly open mic at Cullen's on Southport Ave on Wednesday nights to exercise my performance chops, hang out, listen to, and support the rest of the open mic performers. It's a great crowd and always a lot of fun. But we decided to try this experiment today for a couple of reasons. First, those of you who listen to our music on a regular basis are highly geographically spread out. We'd love to have all of you come to Chicago to see us play live, but of course that's not the most practical expectation. Second, touring is not in our immediate future. Daily work and family life precludes the possibility of getting everyone in the band to hit the road for a tour. It would be fun - a LOT of fun - but unlikely that we could truly make it happen anytime soon. So, we decided to try and bring a live show to you the same way you get our music on a daily basis - on our site.

Today's show was an experiment to see if the technology would support a live A/V feed from a location like the living room at our Studio North facility in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I have to say the experiment not only proved that the technology worked, but it was also a LOT of fun! After the show today, we decided to do more of these kinds of shows in the year ahead. If you missed the live stream, you can check out the re-run here:





Unfortunately we didn't hit the record button until after the first song (lesson learned!), but most of the show still got captured.

Now I have to figure out what to play at tomorrow's open mic at Cullen's. If you're in Chicago and around the Southport area tomorrow night, stop by to listen and say hello (or if you're a musician, get up and play a couple songs). Cullen's is just north of the Music Box Theater and the open mic starts at 9.

Practice Time!

Tomorrow (New Years Day) at 3pm U.S. Central Time, we will be performing a set from our "Studio North" facility, streamed live on the internet. We've been having a lot of fun looking back at our new inventory of 365 songs from which to choose, figuring out which ones we can tackle. Unfortunately, Pizza: The Rock Opera is a bit too complex to put together for this show, but maybe someday...



We'll post a link to the stream at TheSongOfTheDay.com, so "tune in" and check it out tomorrow at 3! As you can see, we're doing some serious practicing.

Coming Up For Air

Wow. The Song Of The Day 2007 is done. I feel like I've surfaced after spending two years under water writing, recording, and producing songs for The Song Of The Day. This freedom seems like a whole new experience: I awoke this morning (actually afternoon) after many hours of sleep without thoughts of "oh man, we have to get the drum mics set up and had better get started recording because we have 30 songs to work on." It's strange - the entire two-year experience seems like it was a dream and right now I have no idea how we did it.

We are at our Studio North location in Lake Geneva for New Years - the first time in a long time that we are here not to record songs, but just to rest, relax, and celebrate. Oh yeah - and to practice for and perform our live New Years Day internet show (tune in at 3pm Central Time at TheSongOfTheDay.com).

I can't wait to see what 2008 has in store. We have LOTS of ideas and I expect this period of rest to be very brief. After all, you can't stop a creative freight train like the one we worked so hard to get rolling.