Lo-fi pop songwriter • producer • engineer • keyboardist
Have you ever put an “Easter egg” or obscure reference in a song that only few people might pick up? If so, could you share what it is?
I’ve done lots of these over the years, too many to remember. I’m a sucker for gimmicks. Off the top of my head: there’s a song on the still-as-yet-unfinished-but-I-promise-one-day-it’ll-get-done-no-really third Optiganally Yours album where, as usual, I made an initial sketch, sent it to Rob [Crow], and he sent back a vocal contribution. Again, as usual, I started adding melodic keyboard parts, and for some reason I heard the main theme of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” as a bassline in the chorus, so I played that in using a pipe organ sound. It was only after I’d done that that I actually listened to the lyrics Rob had written, which was all about a Phoenix flying too close to the sun…! So I dunno, maybe that connection makes the easter egg a bit more obvious, like I’d heard the lyrics and shoe-horned that melody in there to be clever, but that’s not actually how it happened.
What’s the biggest challenge for you in your writing?
Whenever I get a chance to talk to famous artists who I respect, I always ask the same question, which unfortunately I don’t have a succinct wording for. Basically, it’s the issue of, how do you take some vague ideas in your head – ideas that, not being in concrete form, are free to sort of swirl around, change shape, and remain mysterious – and start to pin them against the wall and set them in stone as a finished product without inevitably killing off a good deal of the mystery and potential of the original idea in so doing?
I have project ideas that have languished for years because on some level it’s more satisfying for me to leave them as abstract, undefined, hazy bits of aesthetic perfection swimming around in my head, rather than staple together crude mock-up versions that are, at best, a rough approximation of what I’d intended. The trade off, of course, is that I can share the concrete version with other people, but I also have to deal with the frustration of trying to explain that “this is only sort of what I meant…!”
I guess that’s why so many artists work with a fairly limited palette- it’s not that they’re making new pieces all the time, it’s more like they’re trying over and over again to get that one great idea right.
What’s the songwriting trick you wish you knew when you were starting out?
Well, I still don’t feel like I know how to write a song, but I guess one thing I’ve picked up over the years is the importance of simply getting down to work and just making stuff, and not being overly critical of everything you do. It’s OK if nine times out of ten your songs suck – it’s worth it to get that one good song. But you have to slog through the other nine songs just the same. It’s important to commit yourself just as much to finishing the bad songs as you do to the good songs.
Tell me about the track that’s featured.
This is an untitled instrumental demo that may or may not end up as a song with vocals on the upcoming Optiganally Yours album. In keeping with the production concept of the album, all the sounds were extracted from the Optigan master tapes. In this case, it’s all keyboard sounds except for the drum loops. This started out as a simple sketch I had put down using some other keyboard sounds, and while digging around one day, I came across it and thought it might work as the basis for an OY song. Rob hasn’t added anything to this yet, so if it does end up on the album, it’ll likely sound a bit different than this.
Listen to the featured song!
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(Photo credit: Chad Thompson)
