Oddly Awesome Rock

So The Music Mama’s own Tiffani (a.k.a. Sound Check Mama) suggested that I post something about my songwriting process – the ritual of coming up with ideas, putting them down on paper, etc. I’m so glad she asked because my writing routine is super efficient and highly foolproof. Want to release as many as four songs in just 20 months? All you have to do is follow my patented 15-step process, and before you know it, you too could find yourself at the L.A. Coliseum, watching one of your favorite bands.

1. Grab your guitar.
2. Sit down somewhere quiet where you won’t be bothered.
3. Tune your guitar.
4. Now go to your computer and see who wrote you back on Twitter.
5. Come back and start playing some random chords until it starts sounding a lot like La Macarena.
6. Spend another ten minutes wondering if you should do a cover of La Macarena.
7. You’re hungry now, but you don’t want to interrupt your creative flow. So quickly grab some trail mix from the kitchen, but don’t eat the M&Ms. You’ll want to count those later to see which color wins. Then eat the M&Ms in the order that the colors appear in the rainbow.
8. Say to yourself, man, I really should get started here. Play around with a few more chords. Check the time to see it’s 3:44.
9. Do a little drum beat on your guitar and then stop to wonder when you last watered the plants. Then think about Robert Plant. Then think about that one guy in 6^th grade who dug Robert Plant so much he renamed himself The Plant. Check the time to see it is now 5:10 and wonder what the hell just happened.
10. At this point it is very important that you go to the computer and look up Robert Plant on YouTube. See what he is wearing in his In the Mood video and try to remember if it was a requirement for people in the ’80s to hitch their pants up to their shoulders.
11. Now sit back down and play some more chords. Sing aloud to see if you can come up with a cool melody. Start feeling good about actually being onto something before realizing your new song sounds just like one of the tunes in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.
12. See how close you can come to sounding just like Michael Crawford singing “Music of the Night” in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.
13. Get up, go to the bathroom mirror, and see how close you can come to making yourself look just like the Phantom of the Opera by plastering Cherry Chapstick on your lips and making a half mask for your face out of wet toilet paper.
14. Now answer the phone and tell your friend no, you can’t meet up because you are writing.
15. Return to step 1 and say to yourself, this time I will really focus…

Now in return for this sage advice, why don’t you add yourself to my mailing list and check out my new album Girl on iTunes!

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