2021: Writing and Recording a Song Every Week

At the beginning of January 2021, I joined Peter Mulvey’s Patreon page. He is running a virtual songwriting community, every week we receive a prompt, we write a song, record a demo, and share it with people. At the end of 2019, I started re-engaging with the singer/songwriter part of my creativity. It was a long journey back to this part of my creative self. For a long time I thought of singing and writing songs as a thing I did as a teenager and was kind of embarrassed by. I was a ‘serious composer’, or at least that’s what academia taught me. (I may have been paying attention to the wrong lesson at the wrong time.)

In 2020, I started to play open mics again, (miss you 443 Club, I can’t wait to drink your beer and play on your stage again) and started to gig a little bit. For all the obvious reasons, any momentum that I started to muster was undercut by the pandemic. I’ve been writing songs throughout the pandemic, but that energy has been intermittent and unfocused. Fast forward to joining Peter’s group in January 2021.

It’s only been a few weeks, and already it’s been an amazing ride. Having a deadline and a curated audience has been invigorating for my songwriting. “You’ve got to finish a song, it’s due on Tuesday!” I’ve already become more ambitious and less precious, which feels like a good combination. I’m going to share my songs as I write them and some of the stories behind them.

Peter has been super gracious and is allowing me to share the prompts as I tell the stories of my songwriting process. You should listen to and support Peter Mulvey. His music is fantastic. In pre-pandemic times I saw him 3 different times in a year (or so) in Syracuse. He’s a real life troubadour. If you want to know more or join the songwriting group, check out his Patreon page.