TomFlannery.com

Here’s how it happens.

I’m working on a new song. As usual, I’ve got most of the lyrics written first, and I’m searching for a melody. It won’t come.

I’m sitting on my ratty office couch, playing an E chord and a D chord. Back and forth. Like a metronome. Something pops into my head. I start to hum. Then my daughter yells down the steps. It’s time to take her to basketball practice.

I dutifully get up, walk halfway up the steps, and realize that if I don’t record the little snippet I was just humming to myself, it’ll be gone.

So I spin around on the 6th step, and head back downstairs. A peek at the clock tells me I’ve got time. At least a few minutes. So I plop back down on the couch, grab my lyric sheet, dig out the old hand-held wave recorder that my dog has nudged between the cushions, and play the E-D combination again. I get to the 2nd to last line of the verse. An A chord is obvious. It fits. I sing the entire verse into the recorder. It’s simple. But it works. Much of the new record is based on the E-D-A progression. It’s as old as “Gloria” and as adaptable as a politician facing a voter’s revolt.

In the middle of the recording is my girl yelling for me from the top of the steps saying she’s going to be late.

I need a bridge for the song though. Now what?

You know what. The bridge will have to wait.

It’s the order of things.

In a bit…

–tf