Songwriting. It’s a conundrum…or a quandary…well, one of them at least. From over here, this is what I see. Many may agree, many may not, and many don’t care, (but, regardless, I’m right, lol).

Saw a post yesterday on Facebook from a songwriter and it said the instruments don’t really matter, the song and the message are conveyed by emotion. I get that, especially for the person performing it, and especially even more if it’s a true tale from the performer’s history. But, the music part of the story, (otherwise it’s a poem) is the conveyance, and there may be plenty of emotion, angst, heartbreak, or elation, or any of a long list of “feelings” in a performance and still not come off to the listener as emotion. To sing with emotion may feel good, but the listener may need more to get them there.

The object of a song or poem, or anything artistic, especially in a capitalist setting, is to engage someone with the story and engage them enough to instill emotion in them. You may have the best lyrics ever written and a pleasing melody in mind, but if your damned guitar is out of tune, or you sing flat or sharp, the emotion gets lost on the listener, so the main objective of the art is defeated by technical woes.

Take a look at the big-time songwriters. Most of them play musical instruments and are very good at it, they also sing well. And go back to the first rule of playing music. Practice. Hours of learning. Pain…and sometimes an intense glow as some new level of achievement gets reached. Take Darrel Scott for instance. He’s been around for a while, you may know his name, you may be a fan. He’s had hit records for numerous big-time artists. But go check him out on Youtube. He may be one of the best vocalists on the planet and is certainly in the top one percent of musical instrument players. And he is the epitome of writers of emotion filled stories that can make you cry from joy or intense sadness, make you laugh out loud, or even listen again because it sounds so damned good. And that is the point.

Or look at Tyler Childers. He has a way with words, they convey feelings behind the story. They are also intriguing. In his song Feathered Indians, he says:

“Well my buckle makes impressions

On the inside of her thigh

There are little feathered Indians

Where we tussled through the night.”

This song is a love song. It is about his intense love for a woman and these are the opening lines to the song. There is not one line there, nor are there in any of the other lines of his songs, that does not convey at least one or maybe more meanings and/or emotions. You might call it vague, but I think it is more provoking of thought, questions, and feelings in the listener. And he seems to be able to engage by making me curious as to where he’s going. And by the way, Tyler can play guitar. He’s not a super picker but he is very proficient, makes clean chord changes and does little fill lines pretty elegantly. His singing is very definitely emotion packed and he has a stellar band, though his solo performances are what got me interested and got me to find more.

Certainly one of my songwriting heroes is a man named Eric Taylor. He’s one of the Texas songwriters of yore. He hung out and traded licks with guys like Townes Van Zant and Jerry Jeff Walker. Eric is the consummate story-teller in his songs and his preambles between songs, and though I’ve never had the opportunity to listen, I bet he bullshits really well around the campfire. And he is a very accomplished guitarist and a great room-filling voice. He is well-practiced.

I’ve been in a few songwriter groups and I’ve been to classes held by some big commercial songwriters. The emphasis is on the “hook.” And I get that, something catchy to get you to listen more, but for me, the hook may catch me, but if the first verse tells me how someone left, and someone cried and it’s not couched in intriguing terms with more than one possible meaning, I won’t listen anymore unless there is some stellar instrumentation. A love song does not have to be a love song. Sometimes it needs to be a life story or a history lesson, or a roadmap. And a truck in the cornfield with the girl, the boy, and the shotgun carrying dad, better be a true story from the heart or it must have the trickiest guitar riff in history for me to listen to it. I can tell if it’s true. If it’s on the radio on a radio station playing the new country or the latest pop music, it was written most likely by someone sitting in a cubicle measuring words and phrases to fit the hook. And it’s not true. It better be more than good or I won’t listen.

Personally, I have never consciously written a “hook.” My song stories are for me. I perform them and people seem to like them. My prose tales are more about me identifying my life in my own head than to entertain or engage, people seem to like them. I’m not an expert and don’t really have many capitalist leanings to my writing. I don’t care if anyone buys it. I only hope some will listen or read. But the most important part to me is the technical part…play my instrument as well as I can and work to get better, sing as well as I can, and work to get better.

My emotion is defined by the performance. My songs are very emotional for me, and I think the emotion is evident in the performances.

But, in my case, I play almost exclusively in bands, groups, and acts with other people, and I do a lot of gigs. Many of those gigs are two or three or more hours of music. It’s exhausting. I wouldn’t trade doing it for anything, but, probably, the only emotion I’m going to be showing in the last set of a full day and night of playing my mandolin and guitar for a good 6 or 8 hours, packing up crap, packing out crap, packing in crap, sound checking, whining about the sound, sound checking more, and then just bitching about the sound under my breath will be longing for this to be the last note, the last utterance, and the last bit of feedback until tomorrow. And that is real emotion. The emotion of my song Big Book is lost and becomes just a mechanical memory of how to play it and the words to sing. It is no longer a drinking and losing song. Sometimes that song actually makes me tear up,  but never at 11:45 PM when the first note I played was at 10 AM.

But at 11:45 PM I still expect to play my instrument as well as I can and sing as well as I can. And the emotion, if carried at all, is the result of practice and my physical endurance.

That’s just my take. I think, for me, my performance with the tools I use is as important as the emotion I pour out and I think when it all works together I might measure that success with a long stick.