Writing Songs In Saskatoon

This past week, I was in Saskatoon at the SWANA Northern Lights Chapter Annual Conference.   We had started a tradition in my hotel room a few years back when we held the conference in Edmonton.  A few of us bring our guitars and jam.  Our good friends Izzy and Dick now bring their sound system and last year the annual informal jam was a big hit.  This year, several delegates kept asking where the jam was. 

Izzy set up her sound system in their hotel room on Sunday, so that's where we jammed.  Apparently some other guest in the hotel weren't entirely happy and the hotel security shut us down sometime after mid night.  On Monday, they let us play until 11 pm.   On Monday night we had about 4 guitar players and Dave was playing his accordion.  The room was jumping.  At one point I turned at looked around the room.  It was packed shoulder to shoulder.  Someone brought in 2 kegs of beer and the party was on.  a few got to dancing. 

Monday was banquet night and the organizers included us on the evening entertainment schedule.  Played on my own music.  There were a few folks there that wanted us to play top 40 covers.  I'm getting to the point in my music where I don't even know how to play cover songs any more.  Lately, I've only been playing the Magpies music, so that's what I played. 

Now, for the real important part of this story.  Izzy has been working on writing songs and since she doesn't play an instrument - her instrument is her beautiful voice - she hands me her lyrics, and sings a few lines.  Then somehow with her singing and me playing guitar, we work out the music.  Last November she had a song called "Scotch Flavoured Kiss" that we put music to.  On Sunday evening, she showed me a partly written song called "Waiting at the airport".  By the time the evening room party began, we had the music worked out and she finished the lyrics.  It is a great tune, as is Scotch Flavoured Kiss.  Of course, Izzy's great voice makes these tunes a hit with everyone who hears them. 

Songs From Dreams

I haven't said much lately about my progress to write 20 songs by the end of the year.  I'm still on target.   I do have a couple of tunes in the works.   If I can get focussed, I'll be ahead of schedule

One has started to take shape.  I woke up in wee hours of the morning with this idea and the first verse.  Weird!  Song about a guy waiting at the train station for the 'noon train'.  but its 12:35.   Still trying to decide if I should make it a happy ending or a sad ending.  Maybe I'll write two endings - could give me some options.  That would be interesting! 

The other song came about in the middle of the night.  So far it is only an idea with a few guitar bits and even fewer lyrics.  Idea is about turning on the TV at 3 am and what I see as I flip thru the channels.  

I get lots of song ideas that come to me in middle of the night - probably out of some dream sequence.  Usually, by morning I don't remember much about these ideas.  I did have one song that came out of a surreal dream about floating around on some object.  I woke up with the music and some lyrics that really didn't make any sense.  By morning, those irrational thoughts evolved into a song called "My Dream Automobile".  One of those songs that I didn't think much of at first, but my friends like enough that it is one of the songs we play often.