Family

I just figured out how to take old VHS tapes and convert the video on there into DV files that I can store on a hard drive. More to the point, that digital video can be used and edited in bits and pieces in Final Cut. But as I sat there in a nerdy haze creating content, I had to watch the tape as it was streaming in. My face hurt from smiling at the stupid antics of 5 siblings with their wives and children hole up in a cabin in 2002. The uncomfortable people dynamics and weird family jokes that aren't funny to anybody else but this group of people linked by genes and living together for a time.

This was the perfect project to do as I shift into hyper-songwriting mode. I've straightened the spare room/studio up a bit and started pulling out the microphones and headphones. All that family video got the creative plasma to start coursing through the writing muscles and I'm starting to think like a songwriter. Everything in front of my eyes is fair game as I make up little stories and fantasies using people I know and see as the characters.

Well, that's the plan, anyway, But it never really works that way. It's an organic thing, it is what it is. Watch this space - I'll post some songs here from my output at FAWM.

19 Days from now: FAWM

It is closing in on that time of year when an old man's fancy turns to writing and producing 14 demos in front of an eclectic community of songwriters around the world. It is a phenomenon called FAWM. February (is) Album Writing Month asks us to write and share 14 songs in the 28 days of February, (29 in leapFAWM), a task that gets easier every time that I do it. There is another challenge calle 50/90 that I have done as well (26 and 24 songs respectively), so writing 14 is pretty easy for me.

But it is a challenge, nonetheless, and I am looking forward to the collaborations and listening to the output of all my "watchlisted" friends there. - My FAWM page: phylo