The purpose of this blog is to try to track and record something of what I do and what I want to achieve with my work and my project and eventually my thesis and company…..but sometimes the best things are the ones I’m most loathe to disgrace with words.
I don’t have photos. I should have at least taken some of the process and the recording of the songs made that day but I was too wrapped up in the moment so I have to try to get you there by these means alone.
So on the 31st of March I organised a pilot songwriting workshop.
I had been told by a colleague about a tutor at Crisis Skylight, Chris, who was keen to do a songwriting workshop at St Mungo’s. I contacted him, initially thinking he was a volunteer but discovering that he was a paid tutor…spanner in works, money an object, this is becoming a repetitive pattern in this work.
Anyway, I convinced the manager of Work and Learning Services this would be a one-off and could we please have the money to try it. He say “yeah” I say thanks and carry on.
So now armed with tutor and plan to do workshop for the day and then record in the evening in the recording studio in the basement. I get Marc (he of The Dash www.myspace/the_dash) who’s already done so much for these projects to turn up halfway through the day to help put music to whatever songs we come up with.
I sort some discounted pizzas from the very sweet Mohammed of Cafe Mode on Endell Street (gotta do a link for him bless him he’s been feeding me for years www.cafemoderestaurant.com) and two residents Jonny and Alan turn up for the workshop. Jonny plays bass and Alan plays drums and they play in a band with resident Hugh, all of them feature in the hostel gig photos below. Neither Jonny nor Alan, however, have ever entertained the thought of writing a song despite their musical ability. Neither of them have ever sung either.
The day starts at 11am. The tutor, Chris, is sweet and approachable and plays us some songs and gets us to listen to them and think about what we expect songs to be like. Then he gives everyone a few words on a piece of paper asking us to pick one word and write a song based on it. Alan comes up with a song about his Lies that chokes us all up including him (I have to read it because he’s too emotional to do it himself and of course I choke up but just about spit out the words). Jonny writes something about 24 hours, of clucking in an airport waiting for an epic flight to Australia.
Then we listen to more songs then we are asked to write again, this time about a moment or place in the past that has some meaning. Alan again writes about his past, again very moving. Jonny writes about Kilburn High Road which he seems to fondly hate (line of the day: “well it’s a toilet”) and again we read them to eachother afterwards.
Marc joins us for pizza and we choose one song by each of the residents to work on. Alan melds the first one with a verse from the second. We all vote Kilburn for Jonny and he and Marc take off to a separate room to work on it, Jonny with his bass Marc with his guitar. Alan stays with Chris and his guitar to work on his song. I leave them to ferment for a while like beer in the tub.
I return with hot cross buns and we sit and munch and listen to the fully formed songs they’ve both come up with. At 4.30 we head down to the basement to the studio. Alan, in spite of his strong wish not to sing actually has a lovely warm soft tone to his voice and sings in spite of the rising tears his very touching song about the life he had and has lost. Chris plays guitar Alan sings.
Then Jonny’s song. This involves Alan on the drums, Jonny playing bass, Marc doing an impressive single take on the electric guitar -we were really short on time; Jonny and Alan are a bit like kids in a sweetshop and did spend a lot of time just jamming in the studio. The rest of us surmised that we could leave them in there with food and water and they’d emerge 3 months later not knowing how it became summer – and Jonny doing his Ian Drury/Phil Daniels style vocals of the perils of Kilburn High Road. There’s an excellent recorded moment at the beginning where Jonny asks how close he has to be to the mic.
Pretty safe to say we would have spent a good remaining portion of the night in the studio but poor Matt the excellent Sound Engineer and manager of the studio had to go at 7pm. So we ended it there. Jonny’s song will be finished with a little sung chorus by Marc and a little street backnoise. Alan wants someone else to sing his song so any balladic volunteers please do come forward.
I don’t think I’ve had many days in my life as good as that day. What meant more than that fact alone was that everyone else seemed to feel the same. Jonny and Alan both told me they’d had one of the most unexpected great days. Marc was also infused with that strange, existentialist euphoria I keep trying to find a way to write about without sounding trite. Chris and Matt were also moved and impressed with the quality of the songs we came up with in that one day.
And that’s where it ends. For now. I fedback to the manager of the hostel. She, Matt, and the manager of the studio agreed the value of these workshops in various areas and that we should have more.
So now I’m sitting here trying to think how to word the proposal I need to send out to the powers that be. How to get funding for another five workshops like these so that we can have one a month for the next 5. This will form a 6 month pilot which hopefully will give me enough to send forward a more substantial fundraising application through the fundraising team. Bloody hope so….the biggest come down you get after a human-made high like that is the thought that it might never happen again….
I will try to get these songs on youtube in the next month or so so that they be shared with you all.
Now go listen to a song for me do x
