Music for Cold Weather

January 25, 2008

As a songwriter, I was much more prolific between 18-24 or so. Back then, the very fact that I could write songs, really drove me to create. Many of the songs didn’t survive, but some of those that did made it on to my first album.

After that, I stopped writing songs for the sake of writing songs — I wrote more when something demanded it. It wasn’t as much a self-expression as it was a problem-solving tool.

Coming back to Minnesota is going back to my roots on many levels. This was the place that inspired that drive to create, and looking out at mid-winter scenery, I can sort of see why.

Rock music, the kind I like to create, is born out of desolate landscapes, out of coldness instead of heat, it aches and burns from within, instead of outside in.

You know, music serves different occasions. Party songs, road songs, wedding songs, funeral songs. Looking at the world around me now, I am starting to get a hunch as to why I came back here. My music fits this landscape better.

Technically speaking, there are ways to invoke “coldness” in music. For example, echos created by harder walls — those that sound clearer — sound colder than those by softer material, which sounds “warm.”

But even beyond that, guitar tones, lyrical content, sentiments, gestures — all these elements make up the impression, the sense of specific location of a song. Most songs are not for all seasons.

I feel like making up a new song when I’m cold and lonely. It’s the yearning that forms the desire, not contentment.

Yes, I have come to the right place.

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