You Read A Book (I'm Writing An Album)

The holidays are long over, winter has worn out its welcome, and it's time again for February Album Writing Month. The idea is to write an album worth of songs, 14 of them, over the course of the shortest month of the year. It started out in Madison, WI in 2004 and now has participants from all over the country, as well as different corners of the world.

For me February has always seemed like the ideal month to do something like this. Fight or flight kicks in around this time of year with the incessant winter weather of Minneapolis, and FAWM is the perfect distraction. Of course winter tends to work its way into the lyrics. 2005 was the first year that I participated and my lasting song from that year is called "Snow From A Window." Write what you know, I guess.

I've always written songs in batches, sometimes with long periods of inactivity between those creative spurts. I still get those moments of inspiration throughout the year, but I seldom finish a song during those times. Instead I grab a tape recorder and try to get as much of the idea down as possible, knowing that come February I'll probably finish it up. Or at least get it to the demo stage. Sometimes I have a large collection of song fragments, like in 2005, when after neglecting songwriting for much of the previous 3-4 years, I was finally able to take those "song starters" and finish them up. 2006 I wasn't so lucky. I had very few song fragments and had a very busy February. Only one song got finished and it isn't one of my best. 2007 I skipped completely. But 2008 I was very productive. Maybe because I had a couple years worth of song fragments again, although most of the songs that I recorded that year were written from scratch.

This year will be a bit of a challenge. I have a couple of uncertain things going on in my life, so the time issue could be impacted. And I don't have that many fragments this time, but I probably have a clearer idea of what I want to do. Of the starters I think I have 2-3, but I'm sure I'll find more as I go digging. That's part of the fun. And of course I can always go way back and try rewriting old forgotten songs. 14 is the goal, but last year I almost quit after 10 because I felt like for me, I had done what I set out to accomplish, which was to write a body of songs. This year I'll certainly try for 14, but if I was to write 8-10 songs that I was happy with it would probably be enough for me.

Check out my FAWM progress or register yourself at www.fawm.org.