Lyrical invention and the Inevitable Need to Move On

The inevitable high of finishing a project, of actually getting everything done and getting it out there is at some point followed by the thud on the head that it is most likely to go no further. There will be no worldwide promotion or tour. No ads during sporting events or on buses to support what desperately needs to sell or we're all out on the street. And much as it sounds like a great time, no mega-ego to sooth and massage. Nor will I be the subject of speculation on where the new songs fit into the constellation of my most recent romantic adventures.

No, unlike Taylor, the only path, save for a performance here and there, is to move on to the next project.
On the plus side, there's much to do on that end and to those of us not destined for international fame and fortune, it is the rites of creation that are the thing, the muse, the reason to exist!

So it's on to the Primitive Desires and Winter projects.

However, since Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) is still a fresh and vital work, I thought it would be interesting to expound on what the hell I was thinking when I wrote a particular lyric, which in this case is from The World Won't Let Me Go, a song of memory and time and the foundational song in the song cycle that is Whispers. You can hear the song at mrprimitivemusic, it's this week's song.

The premise of the lyric revolves around the image of an old man in the place of his birth, of the place where his most formative memories were created. It begins:

Free me from this troubled longing
That drives the hunger in my soul
Take the light that shine all above me
Save me from the darkness down below

The lyric starts with the idea of loss, from outliving those you knew and loved; of not wanting to remember yet not wanting to let those memories die; of tiring of life, but fearing the destruction of memory by letting go.

All the houses now are empty
All those lives have come and gone
Ghosts, they stop and share their stories
Of a time when they belonged

The second verse is the echoed past, the sights and sounds that you hear in your head when you revisit those places that inhabited your past. I think it's inevitable that when you find yourself back on familiar ground there is the call of all the memories you have from having been there before. You see it both as what it was and what it has become as well as what you were and what you have become.

The flowers won't spare the grieving
The only thing I care to know
Please don't tell me you love me
When the world won't let me go

The chorus speaks of two things, the power of grief and the need to grieve for what is lost and of being left with only memory. Tokens such as flowers do not relieve the grief anymore than pronouncements of love.

Buried down inside these canyons
Rolling up along the hills
All these memories long forgotten
Yearn that they might be remembered still

The third verse is about those forgotten moments that capture you when you least expect it. I grew up in the burbs of Denver and for a very long time I rarely returned, so that when I did I found myself grappling with images and memories that I had forgotten and I was surprised by the power of some of them.

Children stare at me in wonder
They put their hands upon my clothes
They won't follow as I leave them
To a place they'll never know

The final verse is in some ways about the malleability of memory. The children are the original moments forever locked in their time. The idea of the verse is that you will change and that in that change they cannot go with you, that your younger self will be fascinated by the self you've become, whether for better or worse. That and the older self must reconcile himself to what he once was, hence the grieving.

Perhaps the more interesting aspect of my lyrical approach is that I don't analyze them till much later; in other words I didn't actually think these thoughts as I was writing the lyrics down. The lyric was writing fairly quickly then left to simmer on low. Usually the most immediate concern is do they work with the chords and melody I hear in my head. rarely do I write lyrics with a guitar in hand. I do consider the premise and the symmetry as I construct the lyric but not so much the meaning which is implicit to me because I already know the general theme.

Fun huh!

The Creative Process, Two Examples

With a new album coming out, I thought it would be fun to use 2 songs as examples of how I come up with this stuff. the 2 songs are The Day and The Eyes That I See, both from Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory). 

The songs can be heard here, mrprimitivemusic.com, just click on the This Week's Song ( yeah, I know, there's nothing like a little self-promotion).

The first song, The Day, came about while I was goofing on a descending A-minor chord. I've always liked finger picked songs even if I didn't do many if at all in the past, but when I picked up the guitar again back in 2010 I decided to mix it up a bit. I don't have an actual explanation or reason for any particular chord progression I hit upon other than I think it works, or to my ear, sounds good. Chord-wise, it's pretty simple, Am, E7, F#, G, D, and A. The lyrics came one day as the song was playing in my head and I thought it would be fun to have to verses that could be cross-sung at the end. Throw in a couple of bridges and there you have it. I know how that sounds but after all this time doing this that's really what happens.
The lyrics are meant to evoke a sense of endings and renewals; of the cycles that govern life and death; you know, upbeat stuff.
The production is also fairly simple. Two guitars, left and right, one through a chorus pedal, the other through a delay. On the workstation, which is a fancy term for a keyboard that does lots of different sounds and rhythms, I added a cello and vibes. For the intro and outro, a bright steel stringed acoustic guitar. On the vocals, I sing on the right and Nancy on the left; during the bridges, I used both of Nancy's recorded tracks to give us stereo Nancy.
The overall production was meant, as does the whole album, to be an homage to the sounds I loved from the 60's and 70's; think sensitive singer-songwriters.


The Eyes That I See, was a product of an impulse buy, a Seagull dulcimer.

I thought wouldn't it be fun to have one of those!

I didn't have an actual need for it and had no idea how to play it.
The dulcimer is tuned to D (DAD high to low with the high D double stringed). Playing it reminded me of Celtic music and after a while the melody that would become the song presented itself to me. I was intrigue by the idea of doing a song with a spritely melody and anguished lyrics. At this point, I knew that the album's theme was memory and how it interweaves itself into our daily lives. In this instance, and because I had the idea that Celtic music could be about a love promised that ends too soon. What I ended up with is a song of regret and longing for a lost love.
The production, like The Day, is fairly simple; the dulcimer, a Dobro left and right (also tuned to D), synth bass, and a Cajon, tambourine, and floor tom for the percussion. Vocals are a single voice as lead vocal and a building chorus as the song progresses with a new voice added following each of the verses and adding to the bridges. It starts with the beat, the Cajon, that represents the beating heart, then the Dulcimer, then a single voice, then the Dobros, the tambourine; always insistent. The chorus represents a building sense of loss and finality till at the end they are just an echo of lost promises and lost lives. It builds till there is nothing left but remorse.

I really liked how the songs turned out.


Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) will be released on Nov. 10th, 2017.