FAWM 2010: The Home Stretch

Posted on February 27, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

"The children, our sweet children..." from "Keep Me Wanting More."

Wow!  This has been a month.  While I’ve written literally hundreds of songs throughout my life, I’ve never taken the time to write a complete, coherent album on my own.  Not only that, I’ve never written this much music in a single month.  So far I’ve got 12 songs written (about 45 minutes of music), two fairly complete ideas to use still, and three studio tests which I’m really proud of.  I’ve begun working out the final album structure, moving songs around and listening to how all of it fits together.  It’s really interesting to see how these songs are beginning to relate to one-another as I look for ways to connect the dots.

One interesting theme that keeps popping up is peace and reconciliation.  One reason why I started writing a Motown-ish album was that I had learned Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All” to play for the Songwriter Showcase and I was so impressed at the feel and message that I wanted to keep working in that same vein.  While I’ve stuck to many of the pop themes that classic Motown songs used (love, heartbreak, city living) I also keep coming back to the struggles people live with today: a military wife waiting for her husband to come home, a kid growing up in East L.A. with gang life all around him, the tragedy of Haiti, and the poverty and apathy in our own neighborhoods.  I didn’t want to write a political album, but as I dove into the library of Motown music from the mid 60s and early 70s, I couldn’t help but pick up the undertone of discontent in regards to civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and the breakdown of urban communities.  The stories I’m telling aren’t the stories of black America from that time – they’re my own and they’re relevant to here and now – but they’re also timeless in the sense that the situations we’re living with right now are so similar.

Amy and I are working out some way for me to record the album in the next few weeks.  I think we’ve come to a deal that will get the album finished with the possibility of an album release party soon.  Stay tuned for more!

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Post Songwriter Showcase – February 2010

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

Due to double booking at Homebrew Coffee, the Showcase was moved to steve Guiles’ (the organizer) home studio where a room full of musicians and songwriters packed in for a night of both originals and covers.  I spent a good chunk of the evening sitting on the floor.  Others were on fold-out chairs, footstools, drum thrones, and futons.  It felt very punk rock.

There were a couple of new musicians that really surprised in both their talent and age diversity.  I think that’s one of my favorite things about the showcase – it’s truly an intergenerational sort of thing.

There was less of a FAWM orientation than I expected.  I think Steve and I were the only people playing songs from our FAWM work, but that makes sense.  I mean, if you’re writing an album in a month, you probably want to make the most of every weekend you’ve got.

I ended up performing “Little Bird” with Rebecca Best on lead vocals (holy moly, that woman has pipes!) and then “Caballeros” with various percussion playing in the room.  Amy had suggested I play “Caballeros” and while I wasn’t sure at first it was the best song to play, I’m convinced now that it’s not just one of the best songs from FAWM so far, but it’s also one of the best for live performance.

Here are the video and photos from the performance.  It was pretty dark, so some of the video is hard to see, but the music came through well.

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Songwriter Showcase

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

Here we go again, friends!  Come join me at the Songwriter Showcase at Homebrew Coffee in San Dimas, February 20th at 7:20pm to see local singer / songwriters perform original material.  I’ll be singing two of my brand new songs written for February Album Writing Month.  If you can make it, make sure to grab of the new FrazierTunes postcards!

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Rockin’ the Bendaroos

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

I woke up this morning and sat down to finish out song number 8 for February Album Writing Month and noticed that something was rattling around inside my guitar.  After fishing around in it for a minute I pulled out a wad of Bendaroos.  They’re these stringy pieces of wax that you can use to model all kinds of stuff, covering your hands in a weird goo in the process.

I wasn’t surprised to find them in the guitar.

Anyhow, you may be wondering what’s been going on with the songwriting.  I’m keeping up with the process and have 8 songs that I’m really proud of recorded to the iPhone and in constant rotation during my drive home.  ”Post them!” I hear you say.  Well, not yet, and here’s why:

I had the feeling that “Just Three Minutes” wasn’t getting across the feeling I wanted when I recorded it.  I remember playing it for Amy and thinking, “This sounds more like ‘I’m Walking on Sunshine’ than The Supremes…”  So when Jon Shoemaker said more or less the same on Sunday I decided to head back to the drawing board and rework my effects and instrumentation to get more of the sound I was looking for.

Fortunately, this has left me with more time to actually write music rather than just track it, and I feel great about what I’ve pulled off so far.  Here’s a list of the songs I’ve written and generally what they’re about:

  1. Little Bird
  2. Walk on By
  3. Just Three Minutes
  4. Falling in Love – A Four Tops style stomper written around something our preacher said during his sermon.
  5. Keep Me Wanting More – Alternating between sweet ballad and bouncy pop, this is a love song to my wife and kids.
  6. Los Caballeros – With a little bit of a western feel, this sultry song is about the men who raise and train the horses along and in the San Gabriel river.
  7. Jubilee – A slightly angry call and response about debt relief and the people of Haiti.
  8. Wisdom of the Fool – A sappy breakup song with images of Balboa Island and the days when Amy lived right on Newport peninsula.  Good times.

I’m expecting to get some tracks recorded before too long here, so hopefully I’ll have something up here for people to hear soon.

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Just Three Minutes

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

This song is sort of a departure from the genre and feel I’ve been going for, but it’s fun enough that I’m not worrying about being 100% period accurate.  It’s the story of a musician who, upon looking out in the crowd, sees a girl that catches his eye.  He ends up playing his heart out just so that the girl will notice him, but in the end… well… you’ll just have to listen to find out what happens.

This is song number three for February Album Writing Month (FAWM).

Just Three Minutes

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Two More Songs!

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

"Snack Time" by Amy Frazier

While planning for February Album Writing Month (FAWM), I came up with a bunch of strategies to help me keep up with writing a new song every other day.  I researched genres (deciding to go with soul / mid-60s Motown), studied album structure, song titles and topics, collected links to rhyming and famous quote sites… yes, I geeked out hard on the prep.  But I always had this niggling sense that when it came time to write, nothing would happen.  I’d sit down with my guitar and the laptop and… nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  No ideas.  Amazingly, the opposite has happened.

I’ll admit, the iPhone memo recorder trick has played a huge part in helping me capture ideas when I have them (which is more or less all the time now) and has forced me to avoid the trap of trying to produce a completed song while writing, but I think the inspiration has been less tech oriented and tied more deeply to the fact that I’ve owned up to the fact that I can write songs.  Period.  I’m a songwriter and I can do this.

So the last three days have been a pretty cool ride.  Each time I sit down, I work through a number of the ideas I’ve collected on the phone, playing them over and over (with headphones), singing possible lyrics on top of bare beats and bass lines, jamming with the guitar (side note: when I’m just singing, I sing in F#.  Always.) and working up possible hooks.  And then it just comes.  The whole song writes itself in about 30 minutes or so, I play through what I’ve got with Amy and see if it makes sense, head to the bedroom (the closest thing in the house to a sound booth) and record a couple of takes to the phone for listening.  And it’s done.  And it works.

So I’ve got two more songs written (I’ll track them and anything else I write this weekend) and I’m really not worried about being able to knock out 10 more.

(Niggling voice in my head…) Hopefully this keeps up.

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Walk On By

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

This is song number two for FAWM 2010 and I’m working again on that Motown sound.  This is your classic break-up song – guy done wrong by his woman and trying to get over it.  I wanted to use the line “one bitten, twice shy, walk on by.”

Walk on By
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Little Bird

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

Song number one of the 2010 FAWM is here!  Other than Summertime, this is my first attempt to get a recognizable Motown sound and generally I’m happy with the product.  It’s a happy song about finding joy in the song of the world around you.

Little Bird
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Song One of FAWM Written!

Posted on February 3, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

My first song for February Album Writing Month (FAWM) is written!  I was worried that all of my prep and planning would go to waste when I sat down to write for the first time, but the song just came.  What I didn’t expect was how I’d go about writing the song…

In the past, when I’ve written songs, I’ve started out sitting at a keyboard playing around with progressions and percussion programming.  I’ll usually record 10 or so 8 bar ideas before I hit on something that becomes a song.  While getting myself ready for FAWM, I realized that I was learning a lot about production and recording with this process, but I wasn’t really writing songs.  This left me with almost nothing to show for my work.  I needed to change my process.

Yesterday, while updating my iPhone, I flipped to the first page of apps and was reminded that the phone has this cool memo recording app.  I’ve used it at concerts to record songs I really liked (FREEBIRD!!) but I’d never thought of using it to get down ideas for songs.  So this morning, while getting ready before work, I tried recording a the tune I’d been playing around with for the last couple of days.  I tried out a couple of hooks and hit on one.  The song writing process began!

On the way home from work, in the car, I just left the recorder running and sang through a couple of ideas I’d had.  I was experimenting with different progressions, hooks, lyrics, and I was moving through them really quickly.  While walking the dog I ran through the recordings and the ideas continued to develop.  When I finally sat down to write, I knew exactly where I wanted to go with the song and just needed to fill in the details.

Because it was so easy (and because I didn’t want to have to drag out the mics) I ended up recording straight to the phone again.  I’ll be able to listen in the car, on walks, in the office, all the time figuring out how to refine the song and build out the final arrangement.

FAWMing?  There’s an app for that.

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Summertime

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Christopher Frazier

The first song I ever performed competitively was “Summertime” by George Gershwin from the opera Porgy and Bess.  I was playing the song on trumpet and had never (yes, never) heard the song performed before.  Needless to say, I had no idea what I was playing, what time signature I was in, or how to even approach a song like that, so when the adjudicators came back with a mediocre score, I felt like I’d been hijacked.  What kind of a trumpet tutor has his student play something like Summertime?

Well… now I feel a little better about the whole incident.  In fact I feel a little proud that my teacher would think enough of a 5th grader (yes, 5th grade) that he would give that 5th grader one of the most important operatic / jazz tunes of the 20th century to play for his first time out.  I’m not going to pretend I was all that good… I just think that my teacher thought I might “get it,” which is very cool.

This version came about for a number of reasons.  First, recording other people’s songs is a great way to get ready for writing your own, and I’m all geared up for FAWM.  Second, I’ve been listening to a ton of Sam Cooke over the last few days and his version has stuck with me.  Finally, this actually started out as me trying to play “Oops, I Did It Again” which then became Summertime and then “Fever.”  Perfect medley for the Dan Band.

I’ll probably revisit the vocal, but I need to get used to putting stuff out as quickly as possible.  So here it is: Summertime.

Summertime

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