LETTERS FROM THE ROAD: Roman Candle
Following in the Outlandos tradition of Letters from the Road, our guest post this week comes from Skip Matheny of my new fave band Roman Candle:
Dear Fanny,
I saw your band/show last night. Thanks for putting me on the list and asking for advice, critiques, etc…. I’m not sure what to tell you exactly. You all were great. In fact, I imagine you will be very popular, and maybe better — very quickly. I don’t have a critique in the world about your show or aesthetic. You all seem to have nailed that down pretty well. However I might say the same thing to you I usually tell any writer, including myself, which is: think in terms of “songs” and listen to a fair amount music made before the year you were born.
Off the bat, that might seem like a nostalgic thing to suggest. It’s not. It’s about finding and learning about good art. Your band’s songs are great but if you want to make records for the next 10 or 15 years, artistically speaking, you will likely find more substance in songs than in guitar tones. I think there’s a lot to be learned by realizing you are a writer in a long tradition that stretches back before your own time, even (way) back before recorded sound — and the “thread” or the common thing through all of that tradition is the form of the song. It’s an interesting and mysterious thing, and it repays the attention you give it.
If you go listen to any of the records that came out last Tuesday and then listen to, for example, Joni Mitchell,”The Gallery” or David Bowie, “Life on Mars,” or Stevie Wonder, “Do I Love Her?” you’ll probably hear some similarities (verses, choruses, 3 minutes long). In contrast to the new records which, for the most part, are a bit vacuous when it comes to being interesting songs. You can blame the music industry or whoever you like but the unfortunate thing is how anemic most current individual songs are. I’m not suggesting there’s no great active songwriters or that “the past” is the place to be for good music. There were just as many turd songs in 30′s-70′s as there are now. It’s just that great songs were a bit easier to find in those decades and maybe harder to find now. Which is no small bummer considering there is equally about 5 squillion more recorded songs today, than in all those decades combined. I don’t mean to tangent. I’m just saying that unless you all develop into a strictly noise-core act, the song is going to be the medium in which you all work. So I am suggesting you give it as much attention as you can.
Also there’s plenty of books to read — and here again, I would say don’t be scared of the very old ones, Geoffrey Chaucer, Homer even. Often they are more ‘modern’ in style and subject matter than anything on the NY Times best seller list. Words are an underestimated medium in songwriting and it helps if you read authors using them well. Hopefully, they rub off.
Please don’t think I’m presuming to have any big answers here though. Writing songs is not easy and the more I do it, the more mysterious it gets, so I’m not sure how qualified I am to be offering all these suggestions. You’re a smart one though and I’ll probably be asking you for advice sooner or later. Anyway, I hope your band makes a killing.
Skip
Tags: CUT THROUGH THE NOISE, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, KATE BRADLEY, LETTERS FROM THE ROAD, OUTLANDOS MUSIC, Roman Candle, Skip Matheny —
10/5/09
Categories: CUT THROUGH THE NOISE • KATE BRADLEY • LETTERS FROM THE ROAD • OUTLANDOS MUSIC
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