My songwriting partner, Davey Hazard has left the country for Scandinavia and without him, I'm having writer's block already.
Since that fateful jam session roughly 3 years ago, Davey and I have never spent more than a couple of days apart. We don't always see eye to eye when we're working together and we definitely annoy the shit out of each other at times (me with my incessant gloom & doom outlook and he with his germophobic tendencies) but now he's gone for two weeks, and I'm having trouble even completing this blog... He told me that he'd FaceTime me every day, but I know that's not realistic and even if he did, we would just stare awkwardly at one another and make weird sounds until one of us lied and said we had to go. I understand that it's time to loosen my lead-singer leash, and just let him have a good time.
When Davey and I met, I was in a very dark spot, creatively. I had released two solo albums of songs I thought were brilliant but never achieved any critical acclaim and I had written a score for a movie that was never released. I was incredibly jaded with the music industry and honestly thought that I may never write again. But Davey Hazard, with his Ken Doll smile and his positive whimsey, plopped himself down in front of me with a guitar and a notebook and proved me wrong. It turns out I actually do have more to say...
Up until that point, I had taken lyric writing so seriously that I would let it become a roadblock. If a lyric wasn't perfect, if it didn't blow the listener's mind, it just wasn't good enough. Davey came in and taught me not to overthink the process. Sometimes it's more about how a phrase rolls off the tongue than the meaning behind it. He showed me that you can write a song in 20 minutes and it can actually be really good! Granted, not everything we've written is album worthy, but it's funny how often the two of us sit down for a writing session, and our nervous energy is suddenly harnessed and converted into a cleverly crafted little musical gem. Some of the gems need more buffing than others, but we have about 40 songs under our belts now and enough to keep Dr. Joey Caustic busy recording us for years!
So Davey, if you're reading this, go enjoy yourself out there in Scand-land, but know that I'll be counting down the days until we can get back to work, get back to creating, and get back to annoying each other. ;-)
