Writing: Part 1

Aaron and Tyler are happy

For many, the concept of creating a new piece of music is a bit of mystery. This holds true for us (the band) as well. Sometimes I'm baffled by the creative process that results in songs and, eventually, whole albums. I suppose there's an infinite number of permutations but here are the most common ways in which our songs are born:

The Seedling: Sometimes one of us will have an idea from which a whole song expands. It can be as simple as a few chords or a rough drum beat but ultimately this tiny starting point is what kicks off a whole song. We're at the stage as a band where we're all comfortable in bringing in the most half-baked, poorly-formed, shreds of music for consideration. Nine times out of ten, the rest of the band can make something out of these nascent sounds. Bright Keys was a drunken drum beat Mike had stumbled on (perhaps literally) one late night in our practice space.

The Strawberry Jam: It should come as no surprise that we're not an improvisational jam band. While we all appreciate groups who can creatively expand their songs in live settings (local luminaries Apollo Sunshine) without falling into mindless and boring circles (West Coast hippies and drug aficionados, The Grateful Dead), it's just not our thing. That being said, some of our best songs have come from free-form messing around. Mars Vigila was basically an instrument swapping end-of-practice jam that later coalesced into a pretty tight rock song.

The In-Flight Entree: We all write on our lonesome. I think all of us have a collection of pretty polished song ideas floating around and every now and then, we decide to deliver a piping hot serving of near-complete music to the rest of the band. Here's To Waking Up was an old tune Tyler had kicking around that found new life in Thick As Thieves. I Heard A Pin Snap Loose was a more or less finished instrumental piece Aaron had written on acoustic. The nice thing is that even the most complete songs are subject to changes when the whole band takes them on. What you start with is never exactly what comes out at the end.

The Frankenstein Stitch-Up: You write enough songs and you end up with a collection of parts that don't make it or don't get used. Sometimes the recombination of these odds & sods can yield far more interesting results than whatever their initial direction was meant to be. This requires a certain level of self-editing; just because two parts are good on their own doesn't mean slapping them together will create a double-good song.