About songwriting..

Iron Maiden's Dave Murray

Yesterday, Josh compared me to Dave Murray (Iron Maiden). Apparently, Bruce Dickinson says that his songwriting can be compared to "trying to give birth to an elephant". He writes a song once every few years, which is kinda like me I guess. The last song I wrote the melody for was The Night Witch. It wound up being a favorite by a lot of fans, so I'm really proud of that. Whenever I write, I have a certain "style" in mind. For The Night Witch, I wanted a Danny Elfman (Nightmare Before Christmas, Oingo Boingo) feel. Well, Wednesday night, as Josh and I were coming back from a show around 1am, we were listening to Dio's The Eyes and having been up since 6am just like every morning, I was exhausted. This seems to be a pretty good combo, for me. Whenever I'm heavily exhausted, I think too much. So here I am, listening to Dio and thinking too much and boom! A song pops into my head. I think about it for the 4-5 hours I could sleep before waking up at 6 and still thought about it. I thought about it in the morning, on my way to work. I thought about it while I put away newspapers and greeted the morning's guests. I thought about it until FINALLY, I could get some lyrics down.

But unlike a lot of my sets of lyrics, this time I knew exactly how I wanted this song to be sung. I sang it while writing it, I sang it in the gym, and I sang it walking to the Metro on my way to a short band practice. And then, HELL YES WE WROTE THAT SHIT. Because it felt good, and it felt right.

And that, my friends (all two of you!) is how I write a song. I have it squishing in my brain, begging me to release it, until finally.. FINALLY, I force it out. Songwriting. YEAH. Look for it on CD 4. I'll squeeze it in, somehow.. e_e