TLDR: I participated in a seven days, seven songs songwriter challenge. Spoiler: I made it. The songs are still pretty rough, the recordings are full of mistakes, and I’m half out of tune half of the time, but I made it all the way through, damn it. If you want to have a listen at the outcome of my week of profligacy, there’s a YouTube playlist here.

SYRWTWS:*

*[“So you really want the whole story?”]

So of course I came back from Song School all buzzy with inspiration, and it’s in those buzzy moments that you make impulsive decisions. I mean, I’d been on the road for a few weeks neglecting both the farm and that danged software project right in the heat of summer, and of course getting knocked sideways by COVID on my return didn’t help any.

But it was okay, because I had a plan, and I had a schedule for carefully juggling those responsibilities day by day to get myself back on track and…did somebody say “squirrel”?!?

Because out of nowhere, Song School veteran Timmy Riordan posted his annual August Fearless Songwriting Challenge. Just like he did last year, and the year before, and… Who would have seen it coming?

I mean, I knew about it, but it’s kind of a ridiculous challenge: every day for a week, Timmy would post a prompt, and whoever was foolish enough to play the game would have just that day to compose, record and post a brand new song on the theme of the prompt. Because the next morning there would be another prompt, and the next morning another.

I understood that there were songwriters who could do this sort of thing. I’ve seen it, live, when Eric Hutchinson wrote and sang a brand new song, on the spot, about – gosh, I don’t remember, but it was an audience suggestion, something like “Riding the Google Bus” and I know the requester wasn’t a plant. But me? I take months to write anything. That last one I posted, that we performed at the Maritime Festival? Three months. Just finished one that I started in 2022. Song a day? Hah.

So of course I signed up.

Spoiler alert: I made it. But Day Six was a close squeeze.

In one respect, it wasn’t technically one “day” per song, because just before going to bed on Saturday evening, before the official Sunday start, I popped onto the Facebook group for the challenge and saw that Timmy had posted the first prompt: “Paint on the Wall.”

Well, so I hummed a few bars that might include that phrase, hummed a few more while brushing my teeth, and a few more while turning over, getting comfortable in bed. Ooh, that one actually sounds good. I’m sure I’m going to remember that when I get up tomorrow. Right?

No, wrong. I’ve made that mistake way too many times to lose another tasty acoustic hook to Morpheus’ whims. I’d taken the precaution of stashing my phone at bedside, and could find the voice recorder app with my eyes closed. Just hum it into the phone, drop it back into its cradle and go back to…oooo, I bet if I brought that last phrase up a fourth, it could turn into a separate melodic B part! Grab the phone again.

By morning, when I got out of bed and grabbed the guitar, I found I could convincingly hum a couple of lines that sounded like the beginning of a verse, and another that ended decisively with “blah blah blah blah blah blah paint on the wall.” Yeah, that works – now I just need…oh heck, three verses about something?

Again, remembering my usual drawn out process, it kind of astounded me that, three hours later I had a whole little sweet love song put together. And after another hour of missed takes, I’d recorded something passable on my phone and posted it to the FB group. A not entirely in-tune take, with plenty of mistakes. And granted, some lyrics that didn’t actually make sense, but hey, it was 10 am, and I’d just written an entire freaking song on demand. I was, as they say, chuffed.

And so it went the next day (prompt: “Your Whole House”) which turned into a bitter snarky political thing, and the next (prompt: “Too Hard to Love”) which started out as another sweet love song and made a sharp turn somewhere in the morning to get really dark. Each day I was certain that the previous day was a fluke, and I’d used my last wish, and would choke on the next prompt. Part of what kept me going was the disbelief that I was actually managing to keep up.

But the real thrust came from the community of everyone else who was doing the same thing: Beth, Jay, Dave, Brian, Theresa, Jack, Sarah, Lawrence and the others. Every evening I’d go back to the group and watch and listen to the songs everyone else had written. Some of the songs were…fine, but more often than not, they were breathtaking, heartbreaking, funny, inspiring – just things it was hard to imagine folks had popped out of their brains on demand on a few hours notice (I did feel compelled to ask Rabbi Joe Black to confirm that he wasn’t actually a folk version of Jack Malik from an alternate universe).

The comments everyone left for each other, songwriter to songwriter, rang true, and were uniformly encouraging. We were each competing against ourselves, struggling to bring something new and beautiful into the world through an incantation and sheet will. We were a community creating, and witnessing, magic, in the truest sense of the word. Instead of a wand, we wielded our guitars, pianos, mandolins, ukuleles and…whatever it was Brian was playing on that last song. It was, I will say again, amazing to witness, and I kid you not, some of these songs actually brought me to tears with their beauty (I’m looking at you, Theresa and Sarah).

Throughout the week, I’d pick up the new prompt just before bedtime and try humming a phrase and drawing a picture in my mind. “A Perfect Design” became my reinterpretation of Song of Songs – that morning was D and my 30th anniversary, so it was nice to have that as a gift for her. “Lost a Friend”? Oh heck, I needed to lighten up. Judging from the timestamps on my phone, I woke up more often than I remembered, but each day I managed to churn something out. Some were things I’m pretty proud of, others are total throwaways. But there they were – little magic spells I’d created and put out into the world.

The only really rough spot was Day 6 (“Ember and Ash). I’d woken with a pretty good melody in my head, and even some words to paint a theme. But I had an 8:30 commitment, and wouldn’t be able to get back to the song until early afternoon. And when afternoon came? Nothing worked. I listened to my snippets from the morning and they all sounded wrong. I tried a different melody. I tried different chords. I tried starting from scratch, but at that point I may as well have tried levitating.

I blew the rest of that day trying to make that lost bit of melody work, singing myself hoarse, and playing until my fingers cramped. I’d learned my lesson: never never interrupt the magic.

It was almost 8:00 by the time I’d hammered together something that I wasn’t embarrassed to share – Fire Season – and I knew I had to record and post it soon, or I wouldn’t have the energy to. Worse, if I waited any longer, Timmy was going to post the next prompt.

When he did post that seventh and last prompt (“Small as an Apple”), I almost collapsed with relief. Somehow the song was already in my mind. I actually had to stop myself from writing it that night, but when I popped out of bed the next morning, it was done (modulo one last line I needed) by the time I got in the shower. Recorded it (after the shower), posted it to the FB group, uploaded a copy to YouTube, and suddenly felt two things at once. First, pride: I had done it. I had actually written seven songs – seven songs that I’m not actually even embarrassed to share with friends! – in seven days. And second, relief: I was finally going to get a solid night’s sleep, and could wake up the next morning without having to write another song.

I can finally get back to those things I’m supposed to do. Summer is even further on the wane, and the farm is badly in need of attention. And there are over 30 open issues and feature requests for OpenRVDAS, and aren’t I supposed to be doing a whole morning of lecture and tutorial about it next month at the big shipboard technology conference?

But ooo – there’s this melody that’s just crept into my brain, and I finally have an idea on how to finish that other song I started back in June…

I wish I could share some of the songs that my fellow songwriters posted – as I said, they were gorgeous, inspiring things. But because some of you are going to ask, here are mine. Note: I’m really not expecting anyone to soldier through these – they’re things whipped up in a few hours and recorded using my phone camera and mic in a couple of takes. I’m wildly out of tune for half of them. You have been warned. Again, the whole playlist is here, but one by one they are:

1. Paint on the Wall (prompt: Paint on the Wall)
2. Tumbling Down (prompt: Your Whole House)
3. Rattlesnake (prompt: Too Hard to Love)
4. Not the Perfect Design (prompt: The Perfect Design)
5. Lost a Friend (prompt: Lost a Friend)
6. Fire Season (prompt: Ember and Ash)
7. Sometimes Love (prompt: Small as an Apple)

There ya go.