Songwriting Workshop for Action Week
Oops I accidentally wrote snog rather than songwriting but that goes to show the Freudian passion I have for this work!
Yes so as a follow up to the first pilot workshop I carried out at Endell Street a few months ago I was asked back by Matt Catlow, who runs the music recording studio in the basement in Endell Street to provide another workshop with the wonderful songwriting tutor Chris Gregory.
This time we had a brief to create one song with the entire group, trying to incorporate everybody’s tastes and styles of music in one song as well as everybody’s writing.
We had a rough plan which then developed into a full blown idea when we started each writing lyrics and then decided to do a Bowiesque cutting and pasting.
It was such an amazing day. It was very hot in the little room, and we had an injured seagull chick in the corner.
My incredibly talented and beautiful friends Caz and Jez from the band Yeah and She Has Red Lips Too came to help put the song to music and they actually helped sing one of the verses and Jez lent us his guitar skills. www.myspace.com/yeahandshehasredlipstoo
We spent a day writing and coming up with the melody and the next day in the recording studio. We consumed a fair amount of Percy Pigs sweets, strawberries and copious amounts of water and coffee.
I’m not sure days get much better than these workshops. Maybe they do but I find it hard to believe.
There’s this ephemeral energy and comradery. This solidarity or liminal euphoria. I don’t know I’ve spent a fair amount of time in anthropological books trying to find the right combination of words. None of them really fit. All I do know is it cements bonds between everyone in that room and at the end of it you have a song to listen to to remind you of it all. And to share with other people.
Go to this site and have a listen to it:
Written on the Streets – St Mungo’s Opening doors for homeless people
I’m very moved by this workshop and everyone involved. Their humility and patience and pure enthusiasm and energy for it are what make it so indescribably magic.
Thank you. x
