A New Song

In addition to the novels (some published, some not), screenplays, short stories, and essays I’ve penned over the course of my life, I’ve also written hundreds of songs.

From the time I got my first guitar, at 13-years-old, I wrote songs. Some of them good, some of them terrible. Some making me proud, others making me cringe. Many of my favorites were with a band called Woofing Cookies, and all of them had two things in common: They were written on the guitar, and they had lyrics.

As I grew older (and older and older) and my creative focus became rooted in prose, I found less inspiration to write songs. My musical muse had abandoned me.

Enter the piano.

I grew up with a 1971 Yamaha Upright Piano in my house. This was the workhorse of the Yamaha line, meant for use in schools, built to be beat on by children. Kristen and I have that piano in our house today (where our kids routinely beat on it), and beginning with the onset of the pandemic two years ago, I started to play it.

That’s not really accurate. I had always made time to play, but it was sporadic. A few minutes one day, half an hour a week later. I was a casual hack of the first order. With the pandemic, I played every day. Sometimes for an hour at a time, sometimes more. I learned songs by Elton John, the Beatles, Jackson Brown, Styx, and Meatloaf. My fingers grew nimble, and my understanding of how the chords and notes fit together grew exponentially.

And then, one day,  something clicked. Or maybe it’s better to say a barrier disappeared. That’s what writing can be sometimes…the removal of an obstacle, the creativity final able to flow.

My hands started playing something between a rhythm and a melody that caught my ear. I played it every time I sat down, adding to it, subtracting from it, until, before I realized what was happening, I had written a song. Not an especially great song, but I liked it.

I dragged my recording gear up from my office/studio, and captured the tune digitally. I sat with it for a few weeks before opening the file in Logic Pro and building on it. The result, replete with horns and guitar but no vocal, is below. What good is a song if you don’t share it? I’d love to hear what you think about it.