The MUSELETTER of SONGCRAFTERLIZ

Anyone who’s listened to a country music station for more than two seconds in the past ten days has heard my newsletter’s “title track,” in which singer Eric Church challenges country music to get real. If you haven’t heard it yet, don’t worry; you’ll be hearing it in restaurants, waiting rooms and department stores for many years to come. That’s a good thing.

(If you’re just dying to check out this song you can scroll down the page right now, but frankly I’m hoping you’ll actually read my newsletter. I’ll try to make it worth your while.)

I receive requests with some frequency from musicians asking if they might alter the lyrics of my songs in some way. Without exception, all of these requests are thoughtful and thought-provoking, motivated by large and important questions. Because I am hopelessly addicted to large and important questions, I find myself responding to all of them.

Once when I was a graduate student, I told a composition professor that I was completely rewriting a two-year-old piece. He responded: "Always look forward, never back!"

A few years later, a fellow composer shared a similar story. "Quit picking at it!" his teacher told him. "You'll make it bleed."

So when I decided to revisit some of my older pieces before authorizing third party dealers to sell them as print-on-demand editions, I was not surprised when several composer colleagues counseled me to just focus on my new music.

When I was growing up, my house was filled with sheet music, with everything from Mozart piano sonatas to Broadway songbooks. We bought most of it from Childers Music Center, a small storefront run by Dan Childers, a.k.a. “Dandy Dan the Music Man.” In addition to running the store, he supported the County 4-H program and the Civic Forum Spelling Bee.

If you asked me a decade ago what I wrote music about, I would have given you an exhaustive (and probably exhausting) list of themes.

I receive requests with some frequency from musicians asking if they might alter the lyrics of my songs in some way. Without exception, all of these requests are thoughtful and thought-provoking, motivated by large and important questions. Because I am hopelessly addicted to large and important questions, I find myself responding to all of them.

Twenty years ago, I renovated a kitchen for about $1500. A quirky do-it-yourself job, it involved stripping 1970s wallpaper adorned with no fewer than ten varieties of fruits and vegetables, painting the cabinets Sherwin Williams Bunglehouse Blue, and commissioning my artist friend Annemarie Zwack to paint a whimsical mural illustrating my favorite life motto:

Last February I was asked to give an informal talk at the Pacific Northwest Unitarian Universalist Music Festival, where I was serving as guest composer/conductor. I surprised myself by deciding to sing part of a song I had tried to write in high school. I'd never before shared that song with anyone -- and by that, I definitely mean anyone.