I WRITE THE SONGS
As part of our ongoing feature, we asked several songwriters and bands to discuss how they write songs and the creative process in general. This installment is about the band Jasper and their collaborative songwriting effort.
We write as a collective. There is no dominant songwriter, for better or for worse. There are some of us in the band that would like to be the dominant creative force, but the collective won't allow it. It has been that way since the beginning and we've kept it that way for sanity's sake. We never wanted the band to reflect the artistry or conscience of just one person in the group. It was easy to involve everyone in the beginning because no one was really motivated to be THE MAN at the start - we were a cover band and writing original material was not something anyone considered or wanted to attempt. But you can only go so far as a cover band and eventually we started to put our toe in the water. And then someone pushed us in and we had to sink or swim. Can we fit any more cliched metaphors into this paragraph?
The model we set up and still follow is that every song is written by the band, regardless of the actual individual content. We will all eventually have our say about the song, so we all take part in the songwriting, so we should all benefit from the publishing. It was a business decision more than a creative decision, but it makes sense. We also play all the instruments on the songs ourselves, with mixed results. We could go out and hire horn players or find someone better to play strings, but then it wouldn't be us playing. We don't look down on people who include other musicians on their songs, but it isn't for us.
The basics of our songwriting cycle are pretty simple. Someone has an idea and we hash it out over many days or weeks and at the end there is a song. Seriously. Typically, we have the music before the lyrics, but not always. One of us might have a couplet or phrase that is stuck in our head and we'll build around the words. We have written songs in minutes and we have pieces of music we are still trying to sort out years after its inception. Every band is probably like this, we think, so we don't consider ourselves unique.
Where does the music come from? Everywhere. We steal from everyone and everything. Most of our early songs were attempts to sound like someone, or we re-wrote a song we liked, poorly, with different lyrics. Over time, we've stopped stealing so much, or we have become better at hiding who we are stealing from. Our influences have broadened, but at the same time, we still sound the same, just different. We haven't decided to make the country album, or tinge every third song with some ska or punk elements. We just try to be us and do what the song needs to sound good.
The rhythm is the centerpiece of our songs, from a construction standpoint. Then we concoct some riffs and scales and voila, music. We try to vary the tempo, because 120 beats per minute can become repetitive. Our fast songs are not that fast, our slow songs not that slow, but we try. Once we play the music the same way twice, it is an official song. We don't do instrumentals, so we need words to the music. Plus one of our best instruments is our singer, so it would be ludicrous to leave her out.
Writing lyrics is easy if you don't care what they mean or want to say something. If you want to just string words together to fit a beat, anyone can do that. We try not to write powerful, provocative lyrics because that skill is beyond us. The lyrics we write skew more towards the simple and straightforward - what we ate for breakfast, our favorite color, reading books in a dim light outside. Write about what you know, the experts tell you, and we obey. There are a few songs that we wrote that had a meaning and are very personal and that's okay. We have a rule that no one laughs at lyrics. You can't be afraid to bring a musical idea or lyric to your band if you think someone is going to laugh at it. It's all business and constructive criticism - we don't want to refuse any good idea. That's why bands break out into side projects. We barely have the energy to keep one band alive, let alone keep multiples alive just so we can play Willie Nelson covers. We play Willie Nelson covers in our band and everyone is happy.
People rarely ask us what a song is about, because it's pretty evident or they don't care, which is fair. We know we aren't great songwriters and we don't believe that tell us otherwise. When people do ask us about a song's meaning, we tell them. We don't want to spoil anyone's memory or deflate a mood people may have about a song, but we don't want to lie. A song is not about the meaning of life, it's about not knowing what to eat for lunch. A song is not about finding true love, it's about finding your missing socks. We try to tell people nicely that their imagery of our music is wrong, but we cannot tell a lie.
That's the sum of our parts. Music, words, a little production sheen and presto, a song is born. Then we get to charge people money to listen to the song or see us play the song live and in person. It's a pretty neat scam, if you can keep it up.
