I really like narrative songs, but I wonder if that's a thing for some people. Once they've heard the story, do they really need to hear the story again?
Songs need to have a secret, cryptic, thematic thing about them, otherwise they are just messy and all over the place.
The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.
Once you write and record a song, it becomes everyone else's song.
I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven't been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet.
I play keyboards and sing. I've written a couple of songs too.
Sure, I can sing a country song, but so can a lot of people.
And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow / When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself / It's best to compose a poem, an honest verse of longing / Or a simple song of hope.
All those experiences were a chance to learn more about music. Playing with the Valley band is like such a "live" band. I mean, really, in many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio, we build the songs that way. Whereas Mystic Valley Band was the exact opposite, where everybody knows what they are gonna be playing on the song and there's sort of a general stylistic approach, and then it's just plug in and play.
I do have a favorite Zeppelin song, Larry, Black Dog.
I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.
I really tried to push every genre that I could into this record. I wanted every song to have this feel, where as soon as the listener tunes in, they say "That's CoJo, that's Cody right there." That being said, it is a little different. There's Americana, there's Bluegrass, there's some rock, there's some really George Jones-style stuff on it, slow-style Ray Price country elements, there's some modern country, a little of this and a little of that. We tried to push a lot for show versatility, because I grew up with a lot of versatility in my music.
I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.
I can write a song and a thousand people could hear it and there will be countless different reasons why those people get something out of that song. But they're all there for the same reason, which is to enjoy music and to let it help dissolve those problems or those rough days or to give a reason to keep putting the boots on. So to see ideas come to fruition and for someone to get something out of it is a beautiful thing.
We can use music as a tool to overcome things. It was a beautiful age and realization for me, an awakening. I felt like my eyes were opened. It was like, you mean to tell me that I have the opportunity when I'm bottling stuff up, wanting to smash windows and breaking down walls, I can put that energy into a song and wake up the next day with that weight lifted?
Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.
I'm recording freely, and if I make a song, I release it immediately, so I'm more likely to believe in one song at a time as opposed to albums.
You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.
I am the Alexander Graham Bell of the phone company, the Christopher Columbus of America because after 'The Twist' everything changed, .. Watch the films from 1958 up to 1959, and watch American Bandstand during that time. After the song came out, everything was different.
This is what I wanted to do from the very beginning: write songs and make records and tour them with a good live band.
Glorious the northern lights astream; Glorious the song, when God's the theme; Glorious the thunder's roar: Glorious hosanna from the den; Glorious the catholic amen; Glorious the martyr's gore.
My songs are self-explanatory... somebody pointed out to me that... my songs pretty much speak for themselves.
I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that-stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders...I think domesticity certainly doesn't make it easy to write, you know, because you've got a lot of distractions and I think a writer is always looking for distractions.
If you want to put out a song that you wrote yesterday tomorrow, go on Twitter, type in a new URL, and give it to the people!
The band and I were leading at a Youth Specialties convention. We were asked to back up Matt Maher for one of the sessions. Matt handed us the chord charts and, with less than 5 minutes of practice, we were playing it live. I fell in love with this song immediately. You can't hear the message of God's sufficient grace too many times. Matt is a great lead worshiper and is a part of Life Teen, a growing worship movement in the Catholic Church.
