Back in Baby's Arms

I'm not sure when I threw myself under the bus. I do it a lot so it's hard to remember when I did to myself musically. I was trying to learn how to write for pop, for Nashville (ugh) and it seemed like if it sounded like a show tune, that was bad.

Part of the problem was if you have a singer with vibrato, or a song with fancy chords, it bounces out of the ears of music industry folk and becomes unacceptable. Industry people are genre nazis. It's gotta fit into some box, or a box they just dreamed up so they can say the song doesn't fit. It's understandable: industry people are up to their eyeballs in possible songs every minute of the day, and they've got to narrow it down somehow. And vibrato sounds like the person who wrote it grew up belting "There's Got to Be a Morning After" (well, yeah) and that's very uncool.

Anyway, when I first just wrote how I write and started letting industry people hear it, I got "it sounds like it could be in a musical" a lot. A lot. And I figured I need to write songs that were more ... less. Less chords, less changes, less singing. I learned to do that, it's good, I'm not a dinosaur. I hope. 

But when a high school drama director asked to do one of my old shows, and I knew I had to rewrite parts of it, and I rewrote the whole thing, (it's a long story) I could come out of the closet and write show tunes again, wow. I'm not gay and I don't really know what it feels like to be gay but this was coming out of a closet for me, and it was a rainbow of relief. Just to relax, and sing, and write, and be. Ahhhh.

My studio engineer looked at the Melodyne histogram of all that vibrato when we recorded the soundtrack, and was a little alarmed, and I said "leave it alone." Because the high school kids who sang that soundtrack were really good, y'all. It was a joy to get their voices into my songs. And joy is what my musical life needed.

Fast forward to last fall, when I started writing "Raven," and I have been so satisfied and happy. I like pop, (and I'm secretly planning a solo pop project, I guess that's not a secret now, but who cares, it'll take me forever, you'll forget I mentioned it by the time it comes out) but Brrroadway! is my thing.

So along came an opportunity to submit to a "Night of New Works" cabaret thing, and I did, and they chose one of my songs. The song they chose, "Minnesota," is not from a show, it's from my life. I think my "it sounds like a show tune" problem/gift is that the song is the show. It's a little bitty story. (link below)

I feel vindicated, I feel like I tapped on a door and it flew open for once, I feel so happy to be writing showtunes again. I'm back in baby's arms and it's okay that I left, I learned a lot, but it's good to be back. I'll be getting on a plane to go hear some Broadway diva sing my song at 54 Below in New York City in September.