Q & A: Why do you write songs, anyway...?

Q. Why do you write songs, anyway? When did you start? What was your first song about? How many songs have you written, total?

Maybe I do it because songwriting is a lot cheaper than therapy.
I'm about half kidding.
Sometimes I do it to get my mind off of something else.
Sometimes I do it because I CAN'T get my mind off it, so I write about it.
Sometimes I do it to laugh and that usually works.
Sometimes I do it rather than just weep but I often wind up doing both.
Sometimes I do it rather than kill somebody. That's worked pretty well.
So far.
Mostly there's something I want to say, or need to say, or a story I want to tell and a song is how I do that.

I read someplace that, in the way-back-when, wandering minstrels singing for their supper carried around epic chansons de geste (tales of knights and chivalry) set to music to help remember everybody's favorites.
Apparently they had a top-40 THEN, too...


According to unreliable sources, I was always making up little songs and singing to myself even as an infant, but I don't remember that. It's probably baloney.
I wrote my first actual song when I was 13. Same year I played in my first band.
That first song was about unrequited love.
Looks like that's what my last one will be about, too.
Some people never learn.

I still have that tune around someplace, in an old notebook. I keep it for perspective.



How many tunes?
I have no idea.
For a decade or so, I wrote at least one song every day. Sometimes a couple. Sometimes a couple of variations on the same idea, figuring out where to go with it.
A lot of what I whipped up, I ripped up. Idea too small to keep, had to throw it back. But maybe once a week or so, I'd pen something I thought was worth keeping.
Sometimes I was right.
Not often.

Now, I don't write as much, but I keep more of what I write.
Quality over quantity.
At least, I hope so.

I guess YOU can be the judge of that. :)

SJ