Change Lurks

So this new song, the one I'm currently writing, has been haunting me for almost three weeks now. As I said before, I had nothing but the first stanza.

From that one stanza, I must have written about ten choruses.

Ten is too many.

between the cigarettes and bottles of wine, I should have given up.

but then the twelve string happened and new life was breathed into the dead horse.

But that was last week.

I wanted to write something funky, something with cool little key changes. But everytime I found myself dancing around the circle of fifths, I kept running into a perfectly sub-cool flowing pop line.

Today I decided not to fight it.

Throw out the circle of fifths and dive into the easy rock and roll one four five minor sixth. Or in this case, one, minor sixth, four, minor second, five.

Yeah, I added the minor second just to keep my street cred as an indie unknown.

Awesome.

Another change happened as well.

This was going to be a song about how my son has given up playing his guitar. And how much that broke my heart. And how much I know that I can't really foist my dreams upon him (as much as I wanted to)

But then I realized I wasn't writing about me and my son.

I was writing about me and my dad.

Wierd.

Years ago, when I began writing songs in earnest, my father went out of his way to get me some studio time. We recorded some demos, had a really great time and then I was done. He had much bigger dreams

Dad still tells this tale to his friends. He was crestfallen and didn't know what to do next. But like a good dad, he just let me go on and try other things.

So now the song has an unbeleivable amount of dimension. Its written from the point of view of my son, even though its about me and my dad.

I did however have to abandon the really cool key changes.

And possibly my unknown indie artist cred.

Wait.

I didn't have any of that to begin with.