In 2006 I wanted to focus on learning to write songs. I was already a professional musician, but I only played other people's music. I wanted to make my own, but I really didn't want it to suck.
Most people aren't born experts at anything, and the only way to get better is to keep trying. So I set up a deadline for myself: I would try to make one song every week. Or if not an entire song, I would at least work on an idea or a sketch.
To keep myself accountable to this deadline, I decided to publish my attempts on the internet.
I kept to this experiment from March of 2006 through the end of that year.
Some of my work was pretty lame. All of it is archived here.
I found that making songs week after week helped me figure out what I wanted to say and how and I want to say it, and there were enough songs I was proud of
that I decided to record them properly. The result is my first solo album, Saints of the Lost Cause Saloon, and another full length album which I'm finishing up now and hoping to release sometime in 2010.
All this album making has distracted me from song writing, so I am planning to get back to the weekly habit and post a new sketch once every week. I'm starting on
Friday January 1, 2010.