Sharing The Same Stage
A friend, and H4Life singer, Tina Pluchino is releasing a lovely album of mainly, self-penned songs, with some co-writes from songwriting friends, including yours truly.
Producing an album still remains an exciting thing for any songwriter to do. In terms of commercial possibilities though, most of us are happy if we manage to cover costs.
Most songwriters and performers would much to prefer to focus on the creative side of things, and I’m always impressed with those, some of whom play on our online shows, who manage to keep spun the many plates needing spinning, in order to earn a living from music. And yet they still remain incredibly creative! Amazing.
I personally used to shudder to hear my songwriting described as a hobby. It felt far more than that to me. But recently I have embraced that label, and consider myself lucky to be able to make music, but not depend upon it for a living.
I believe Homesong gigs have the wonderful facility to cater for both the professionals and the hobbyists. And the various in between stages. And yet all of us playing on the same stage. Not distant from the audience, or each other, but making our music together, out of love.
At the end of the day, a good song, is a good song.
Support The Supporters
One of the nice things about the online experiment we call HomeSongs4Life has been the support given by artists to other artists.
When our focus is, understandably, on attempting to find a new audience who GET our music, it is possible to see things in a negative light when the room is full of known faces or other artists.
But those known faces are still an audience who choose to listen. Sometimes very dedicated ones. The “low hanging fruit” is still fruit.
We shouldn’t take any supporter for granted.
Changing The Normal
It’s not always easy to cross the threshold for a gig in someone else’s home.
Some people find it difficult to go to a house, even that of somebody they know, for the purpose of listening to music. Sometime’s it’s because of shyness, and sometimes it’s simply the fact that it is still a culturally unusual experience. Why leave the comfort zone of your own home?
There isn’t always an easy solution.
For naturally shy people an invite from a friend can help.
But culturally, it won’t feel normal….until it’s normal.
Not For Profit
Homesong is a building site. We’re trying to build a way of networking home gigs.
It doesn’t really matter to me whether individual Home gig venues are part of that network or not, as long as they happen. It does matter to me that Homesong is, and remains, a not-for-profit affair. We all need money to live, but when money is the main motivation it tends to have a corrupting influence.
So we encourage music to happen in homes with people from the local neighbourhood in attendance, and for artists to be suitably recompensed for their efforts. And we encourage music lovers and community orientated people to start using using their homes to welcome people in for this purpose.
I’m excited that all of that will soon start happening again.
That’s it.
Less Digital, More Physical
There are some ugly things that happen at football tournaments, outside of the football. And, sad to say, as a fella from England, often when England fans are around.
But one of the nicer things that happened at the recent Euro’s was the adoption of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, as the anthem of the English fans. It was quite moving to be honest, leaving aside the right’s and wrongs of football fans being allowed to have such close contact at this time.
And I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the words leading up to the main chorus are the ones that stand out, and caused the song to take off in this way.
”Hands, touching hands
Reaching out, touching me, touching you”
We’ve missed being able to get close to people, and a new appreciation of that sense of touch is a good thing, I think.
A little less digital, a bit more physical, will do none of us any harm in the long run.
Make It Happen
This is how it could happen:
You get the urge to hear some live music after one too many youtube vids.
You find that there is an original singer/songwriter, in fact lots of them, all wonderful in their diverse ways, who would like to play at YOUR house.
Then you put a page on our Homesong website just like this one (No Charge!).
Next thing you know, live music and lovely people in your front room…and hopefully the chance to gradually, and of course as safely as possible, move away from a world of digital screens and face masks.
Why not make it happen.
Wherever I Lay My Hat
We watched a film, Nomadsland, last night, about the growing culture in the US of folk ditching the house of bricks and mortar (often because of the costs and living expenses ) and choosing to live in motorhomes and vans. RV’s, as they call them in the States.
The central character was accused at one point of being homeless. To which she answered: “Not homeless, just placeless”. It struck me as a both a great retort and an ageless truth about what a “home” really constitutes.
It’s also paraphrases the Paul Young song Wherever I Lay My Hat (that’s my home). Which is a nice chilled song for a Sunday morning, I think.
Bay Of Storms
I am writing to remember a local Kintyre songwriter and sometimes singer who sadly passed away in the last week. His name was Eddie Maguire. I got to know Eddie a little through the songwriting, a little through his vast knowledge about the birdies -he was a genuinely expert and respected ornithologist who ran the local sea observatory at Machrihanish - and a little because he was a regular at the local bar, The Kilbrannan, where I go to watch the futba with one of my sons.
He conveniently lived in a flat just across from that bar. The last time I spoke to him he shouted down to me for a wee chat from his first floor window as I passed by. You just never know when the last time is with anybody, do you?
Eddie wrote the kind of songs that reflected his love and knowledge of the local landscape. He didn’t often perform his songs, but he happened to perform at the local Kintyre Songwriters Festival for the first time, during the last festival we had before these lockdowns. I remember him asking me how he had sounded…it’s particularly like that when you don’t play so much….and I replied that he had sounded superb. Because he had. Just lovely gentle songs of the sea and the land.
Here is a beautiful one, Bay Of Storms, that he co-wrote with another local songwriter Davie Robertson. The singer is Ross Kennedy.
Rest in peace Eddie.
Shy Performers
I brought my guitar with me on this little camping trip, but aside from a little walk along the shore to get out of earshot of The Other Campers, I haven’t played much.
There are loud and proud players, and there are shy ones. And there are many places along that spectrum. I’m obviously towards the shy end.
Perhaps that’s one reason I like playing Homesongs, where there is an invited audience who are expecting, even wanting, to hear original music.
It’s a far more welcoming place to put the songs out into the world.
Bonny, Bonny Banks
I’m extremely lucky to have made my home in a very beautiful country.
Scotland.
At the moment we’re discovering another wonderful side to it. The eastern shores of Loch Lomond.
Beautiful woodland and hillside walks. Native woodland too, which sadly isn’t the case in many parts of Scotland where the ubiquitous deserts of Sitka spruce, earns a few squids for various anonymous landowners. I’ve had a few refreshing swims in the loch. It’s not that cold, honest. And of course those beautiful midges, which feed all sorts of wildlife. So we can forgive them for feeding on me. (But not my wife…she’s immune, the lucky Redhead!)
Today we’re going to be climbing a munro, Ben Lomond. And then back home tomorrow, after a wee coffee with a fellow Homesinger Dave Arcari, who lives very close to our tent, it turns out. LOL.
Life feels good right now. And you’ve got to enjoy it when it’s good.
Trust
The most trustworthy guy or gal on the planet might die tomorrow.
The most untrustworthy be born.
Meanwhile, the rest of us inbetweeners, the ones who really make the difference, have daily choices to make between becoming trustworthy. Or not bothering.
It won’t change the world, but I think it’s worth bothering.
Muscle Memory
Amazing what our bodies can learn to do in an automatic fashion. The very complicated processes those limbs achieve without any conscious effort.
And it is even more amazing if we consider how damned difficult it is, at the beginning, when we are consciously thinking about every single movement.
I’ve been learning a new picking pattern on the old geetar, and there is a well worn path to be trodden. But when the path is new to you, it certainly doesn’t feel “well worn”.
In the beginning, I, The Learner, resemble nothing less than an inebriated Brontosaurus Dinosaur attempting to embroider a daisy petal upon a silk negligee.
Very messy.
But it ends…yes, it will END….with fluent mastery. It’s inevitable, however Evitable it seems right now.
As long as I keep walking down the path.
As long as I don’t turn back.
Perspective
The big defeats in life are better shared as a team.
Likewise the big victories.
Perspective comes, in an empty room, sitting quietly on your own.
Yesterday
Yesterday I watched Yesterday. The film. I’d heard about it, and expected it to be cheesy, which it was. But, for me, a good one never the less.
If you haven’t seen it, the premise is that a young and struggling singer-songwriter (quite a humorous rendition of that particular experience I thought) suddenly finds himself in a different world where he is, almost, the only person who has heard of The Beetles.
After the initial sense of weirdness, he starts to recognise the possibilities and goes chasing the Fame and Fortune dream. But instead of focussing on his own, OK-ish songs, he uses those unknown Fab Four tunes as the vehicle to carry him to success.
Despite the gorgeous melodies and ubiquitous inevitability of the songs to most of our ears, the film does briefly touch on an awkward question. If written now, would they have taken off as spectacularly as they did in the 1960’s. Or even at all?
In fact following through with that particular premise might have made for an even more interesting film: we live in a world of music often written by teams of people in a studio, and focussed far more on polished production values, and hooky rhythm ‘n bass grooves.
Would the old melody driven classics still take off today?
Anyhow, the film assumes that the songs will succeed. And hearing their pure beauty played, unadorned, on acoustic guitar, it’s hard to believe that wouldn’t be the case.
And so the film becomes more of an insight into the moral and personal value dilemmas faced by our song “thief”.
He does (spoiler alert!) successfully re-introduce the world to The Beetle’s fantastic body of work. And the inevitable love story woven in, is used to help to focus our eyes on whether the cost of Breaking Through is really worth it.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the film. Despite the cliches, it still contained enough believability and nuance to carry me through, without any sense of irritation.
And it did happen to contain some quite lovely music.
New Website
Here is the new Homesong website (if you’re reading this you’re on it) which is still a work in progress, but at least up and running. Many thanks to Kim Le Clair who has been a rock of creative help and support in moving forward with all of this.
To those who are familiar with the old site, there won’t appear to be many differences quite yet. But there are some key changes I’m wanting to make.
One, already here, is to provide hosts with a page they can exclusively link to for inviting their friends and acquaintances to any gigs they are hosting. It will look like this one, we are just starting to push for H4Lifers Rosie Nimmo and Norman Lamont. As you will see, for the first time I am trying to get donations paid ahead of time, in order to provide a bit more certainty and security for hosts and performers.
Secondly I want to have a place for those of you who have played Homesong gigs, or been part of HomeSongs4Life, to be able to profile yourselves. This is so that hosts are able to easily contact artists who are definitely interested in doing home gigs. That will hopefully get started over the next month or so.
None of this is rocket science, and the basic premise of hosting a home gig is simple, and doesn’t need me or Homesong at all. But all along I have felt it would be so much better if everybody interested in these kind of gigs was working together.
I know you appreciate that doing things right, to this end, takes time, and a LOT of mistakes! I really appreciate all the support received so far, and would welcome your input about any of this as we move along.
For now, if you know anyone who is already hosting home gigs and might like to make use of the Homesong website, please feel free to put them in touch with me here. Especially mention us if you are an artist who happens to play a gig at someone’s house.
I’ll be back here everyday writing something relating to music, life, and the lovely happenings we call Homesongs.
cheers
David Fee
ps. This blog will be coming from this site from now on, and not from my personal music website.
Keep Doing It
The world isn't short of advice for anyone trying to get better at something.
Mostly though, getting better at something, whether it be writing songs, performing gigs, hosting Homesongs...or rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time...comes down to one simple thing.
Keep Doing It.
That's my self-help book written, anyways.
It’s Coming Homesong
Today's Homesongs4Life is supposedly "competing" with the football.
But of course it's not. The football is watched by millions, and it's we who have to adapt our schedule, not the other way round.
And we can easily adapt. It can be advantageous to be small and flexible. It happens that the tiny mammals outlived those clomping, humungous dinosaurs.
Music is coming Homesong!
(I'll get my coat).
Talking To Yourself
"Of the making of many books, there is no end" - Solomon, Ecclesiastes.
Talking To Yourself
So what do you say, when it's all been said
The song been sung and the book been read?
But you've still got voices in your head
Giving it laldy.
Well, it's probably time to go to bed
With a glass of water and a slice of bread,
And lie there patiently, until your dead,
Or at least till Friday.
Alternatively
You could let those many voices out
Whether they whisper, scream or shout
And find out what they're on about
They might be lonely.
Just offer them some company
A bit of a blether, a cup of tea
And in a while you both will be
Arrested.
Probably.
by David Fee
Chilled
Recording a song is like getting yourself dressed up for a special occasion. A wedding or a posh meal perhaps. Everything has to be polished and proper. You are going to be seen. Photo's will be taken. People may even look at those photos in the future.
Do not go to these events with a dodgy hair-do!
On the other hand, singing live at a Homesong is more like a bowl of rice and chilli while you're slouched out on the couch. All about the fantastic taste and the moment. There may well be the odd splotch of sauce that misses your mouth.
But, unlike the chilli, you can chill.