TomFlannery.com

Well, I finished it. And before the post-lunch whistle blew. Just slipped in under the wire. The last verse sums it all up…

So as I stand here and address you today
not knowing where my baby lay
rest assured my will is strong
to cry out loud and all night long
I realize this may not inspire
men to reach for something higher
but then every man is on his own
when his baby’s heart turns to stone

Such is the State of the Union

Need to demo it now to see if it’s any good. Looks alright on paper but the ears don’t have much in common with the eyes.

I used to write all my lyrics at the keyboard. Now, I do everything by hand with legal pads. Not sure what prompted me to go all retro, but there’s something about the feeling of pen to paper….it’s like bleeding. Much more personal than tapping away like the average cubicle dweller.

Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

In a bit…

–tf

Gotta use time wisely. Have a song title. “State of the Union”. Just jotted down two verses. Need two more. Then a rousing chorus of some sort…with a short mid-section to break up the monotony. And then….well…..music would be nice. I do have a guitar in the office though. Imagine that?

Must hurry. No time for food at a time like this. And the clock is ticking. Jobs are hell on songwriters.

In a bit….

–tf

No shortage of ideas. The difficulty is in maintaining the discipline (and the brains) to weed out the really bad ones. Easier said that done….especially when you possess the attention span of a 5 pound bag of fertilizer. I get extremely bored extremely easy, so I rarely, if ever, will not write a song in one sitting. If I can’t complete it in one go, I usually ball it up and throw it away. This is an astonishingly dense thing to do, of course. I know that some quality stuff has been shredded along with the dreck, but I still can’t force myself to pick up today what I left off yesterday.

This goes for recording as well. The thought of doing ten takes of the same song fills me with Kurtzian-like horror. Actually, the thought of doing two takes of the same song fills me with Kurtzian-like horror. But recording with a full band….I know this one-take attitude has to change…..especially with my penchant for making up arrangements and/or lyrics on the spot, while tape is running. Drummers and bass players are notoriously touchy about such unscripted detours. I’ll change keys. I’ll change tempos. I’ll add an extra few bars here and there. I’ll add a line. I’ll delete a line. In other words, I’ll behave like a folk singer.

Must change. At least this once.

In a bit…

–tf

One of the problems with making records is that it costs money most guitar players do not have. That’s a given, but then our homes cost money we don’t have too. Why should making records be any different? The trick is to find a studio that accepts credit cards. Simple. Problem solved.

But the lack of time is even thornier. I have to work for a living, poor sod that I am, so all this pretending-I’m-Noel-Gallagher stuff needs to happen after-hours. When the bars are closed as it were. And sometimes you get so tired that what you think is a bolt of insanely catchy inspirational lightning is instead, in the brutal light of day, simply the regurgitation of a riff found deep in the bowels of “Exile on Main St”.

It can ruin your day, quite frankly.

But, alas, we push forward. Hell, even Keith Richards regurgitates riffs found deep in the bowels of “Exile on Main St”, which is why the Stones are today about as relevant as Romper Room.

In a bit….

–tf

The plan is to use this blog to document (for myself anyway) these next few months, as I write and record demos and try to get ready to record the new album.

Recording a full band record this time, so the songs are a bit different than the usual solo-acoustic gloom and doom from the tomb variety. Actually, I’m trying to write songs that sound like Oasis getting into a street fight with the Ramones and being saved by the members of Cheap Trick. No small feat….but then my idol has always been Pete Townshend and my current favorite band is Slobberbone/The Drams.

So as I write and ruminate and second-guess the living shit out of myself, I’m gonna jot it all down here. Right now I got 12 songs written and demo-d, but I keep wavering on all but a few of them, which is sorta a red flag. Or at least should be.

I once described this new record as trying to re-write “Can’t Explain” 10 times without getting sued.

In a bit…

-tf