DKG will be performing as part of a community Christmas concert at 7pm on Friday, November 21 in the Showcase Theater on campus at Seward County Community College. Admission is by donation and supports the local community theatre.

Songwriting Challenge #13 and an update

Here's lucky Song 13, and it will probably be the last of the (supposed to be) 30 Day Challenge.  Between these 13 songs, the 4 songs I recently wrote for a church Christmas musical (and the 3 reprises that go along with that), and the 5 songs written specifically for Lovelight, I've written 22 songs in 2 months.  It's the highest level of productivity I've ever had, and I'm happy about that.

My other concern is that if I try to write another 17 songs, a) quality will suffer, b) I'll have too many songs to actually do anything with, ending up with songs that are never performed, and c) even if I wanted to push some songs onto the next album, they wouldn't match up with whatever I write in six months/a year from now when I start thinking about another album.

I'm actually extremely satisfied with my songwriting goals.  Remember that this whole ride started off as a goal to write three original songs, and now I've got twenty two under my belt.  I believe that equals (or at least comes close to) my songwriting output for my ENTIRE LIFE up to this summer.

In any event, because we're now in November, I'm turning my attention toward Lovelight and getting the songs learned and recorded in time for that January release date.  When I started this project, I had no band, and while the band was an important part of the goal, I fully intended to multitrack this album solo and then put together a band to play the songs.  Since I now have four other people involved in the recording process, it's become a little more complicated.  I'm working hard to make sure things are organized well enough to get the tracking done before Christmas.

I am still hoping to get a Christmas album tracked, mixed, and released, but that will entirely depend on the progress with Lovelight.  I also have the backing tracks for the Christmas musical to finish before I can look at anything else.

30 Day Tardy Slip and Album Update

Some of you probably noticed that I've been failing miserably at the 30 day challenge.  I made it up to Day 12 on October 12, and here it is October 23 and I haven't posted ANYTHING over the last ten days.  Well, first let me assure you that I am healthy and well.  The fact is that I knew this month was going to be a difficult one to do this challenge.  In my teaching job, the month of October is arguably the most busy month of the entire school year.  I've spent seven of the last ten days on the road, gotten insufficient sleep, and in general am exhausted.  I knew when I started that I would probably not be able to write during this two week stretch, and I'm okay with that.  The important thing, particularly when pushing yourself to break habits or build new ones or to approach things differently... is just to start.  And I did that faithfully for twelve days.

Well, now life is finally starting to slow down a bit, so I'm going to pick up where I left off - Day 13 should be coming today (fingers crossed).  When I can, I'll do two songs a day in order to try to catch up.  This means my 30 day challenge will probably take me into November, and again, that's OK.  I will write these thirty songs.

On the album front, I'm now remembering why I put an early January deadline on finishing recording.  October is ridiculously busy!  The band hasn't even met for over a week, and that's simply driving me crazy.  So, for the time being, there is no album update, but I hope to have some good news for you soon.

For what it's worth, I'm very excited about a lot of the 30 Day Challenge songs making their way onto Lovelight, and would love to hear feedback from you as to which ones you'd like to see fully produced with a band.  Comment below and we'll return you to your reguarly scheduled songwriting challenge!

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 12

Yet another late night creation. Trying to do something really out of the box and... found something pretty cool inside the box as a result.

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 11

I like parts of this one, but not the whole. Something just feels... off about it. Finished it anyway.

Lyrics:

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 10

Woo hoo! Double digits! I decided to celebrate by writing today's song on my daughter's guitar. With a broken E string. And accidentally tuned up a half step.

Yeah, I celebrate hard.

Lyrics:

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 9

The 12-bar blues tune is the musical equivalent of the limerick.  It has a standard form, pretty easy application, and unless you're ridiculously good at writing it, it just comes across as cheesy.  And yet here I am- ridiculously tired after a long day and ready to crash.  So we get a blues tune.

In case you're not familiar with the convention, you start a blues tune with a specific line that can get repeated a lot (ie, "I woke up this mornin' and my baby was gone").  Then you repeat that line, either verbatim or with minor changes.  Next you add a rhyming section that's different (ie, "She threw all my clothes out on the lawn,") and that's the end.  No problem.  I decided to use a variant on this formula, though, so here we go.  Hope you enjoy Day 9.

Lyrics:

Heaven is coming down to the earth
Heaven is coming, coming down to the earth
People get ready for the world's rebirth
I said it's coming down

There's gonna be angels singing his name
There's gonna be demons, they be doing the same
People get ready cause this ain't no game
I said it's coming down

I'll be falling to my knees at my Saviour's feet
I'll be falling down to my knees at my Lord and Savior's feet
You know I'll be ready, the praises will repeat
I said it's coming down
I said it's coming down
It's coming down.