Sparks from the Fire

I’ve always loved Christmas songs.  Who hasn’t?  They are iconic references and symbols of one of, for most of us, one of the real highlights of childhood – and then we get to repeat it all in a slightly different fashion as parents years later.  These songs take us through these enchanting times and play in the background like a movie score.

Previous to this month I had only ever written one Christmas song – a song recorded by the Jenny Burton Experience called Christmas In My Soul.  They say, in the music business, that the month of June is the month to write and begin one’s Christmas album, the preparation of such to be around 5-6 months.  Who can write Christmas songs in June?  What a silly notion.

This year the Missus has come up short in her search for the perfect Christmas song for her Christmas Day performance in church.  She had decided to employ a terrific Boston harpist and together with her organist, Bryan Ashley, keep it small and delicate in accordance with the spiritual implications of the morning.  Last year she used a brass quintet plus the church four manual pipe organ and blew the roof off, so this year she wanted to do something completely different.

But no song came to mind to fit the criteria.

While watching her go through her turmoil, I happened to mention one day several weeks ago that perhaps I could write one for her.  This was said in a fit of compassion for her plight while I was in the middle of the mad dash of the final throes of my own CD, Goin’ Home.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, she grabbed at the offer and signed me up.  At first I thought, “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?”  Where would I ever find the time to do this? (more…)

When I was a kid, my brother and I used to lie in bed at night and make up stupid lyrics to popular songs and giggle into the night.  One was:

My body lies over the ocean
My body lies over the sea
My body lies over the ocean
So bring back my body to me

I warned you that they were stupid.

Now today I’m writing lyrics on the same subject – hopefully with a little more content.  Here’s one drawn from a previous blog post on Sparks From The Fire.  The content, as explained in the post, has been capturing my imagination for months now and it finally all poured out in song form this past two weeks.

Both song and orchestration are now finished and will be presented in Julia Wade’s forthcoming CD, Silk Road, due to be released in early 2012.

Not her usual fare?  Perhaps, but watch for some fascinating new directions from this most special vocalist as she branches out and develops this new Classical/Crossover genre.

This song will be a guaranteed eye and ear opener.  Enjoy!

My Body
Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

I am not my body
My body is not me
I mean to live beyond it
In some capacity

I believe I’ve lived before it
Though memory fails
I cannot ignore it
Everything else
Pales in comparison
This wondrous invention
Of flesh and bone technology
Only belongs to me

Ladies choir

Temporarily

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Here’s a song in demand before its time – if that were possible.  If there was ever a time in our nation’s history for a shot of inspiration, it’s now.  Leadership seems to be stuck in a very unfortunate place ruled by ego and greed.  No matter what your political affiliation or taste, you can’t be liking what’s going down out there in Washington, D.C.  It seems like we need some new ideas, some new inspiration perhaps – something beyond the human will.  Here’s where Inspirational music can definitely help.

Last week in her church service (which gets broadcast around the world on the Internet) the Missus performed a new song fresh off the presses.  It has received tremendous feedback, the kind of response that makes all the blood, sweat and tears of this industry totally worth all the effort.  I’ll have to admit that we were not prepared for this response.  Who knew that this national occurrence would come?

Julia Wade (The Missus) chose the song to fit the sermon of that particular Sunday over a month ago, but it turned out to be the right panacea for the moment.  The trouble is, it is a new song that she has been working on for her new forthcoming CD, Silk Road, due to be released this coming Christmas season.  We have no single completed; we have no sheet music to sell – yet.

So we’re going to rush this one out to you ahead of its time.  We’ll release it as a single and its sheet music in the next couple of weeks.  I guess it’s just a song that demanded its own time – not on my schedule or Julia’s, but on its own schedule.   Like a baby who comes early – once it’s born, you simply have to stop all else and deal with it no matter what.

Here are only a few of the comments that we’ve received:

“We had the great good fortune to hear you perform “Even Now” in the Mother Church last Sunday.  We were traveling and just happened to be there in Boston. We both wept, it was SO gorgeous… even my husband cried — who is a Methodist!

Is there a recording of that song available?  My husband is an accomplished guitarist and he loved the guitar music so much too. Of course your singing was a gift!

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful singing with all of us.  We will never forget how special that was!” –Carolyn (more…)

Wouldn’t it be great if, before we pass on to wherever we go next, we could transfer our knowledge base from our brain hard drive to someone younger’s brain hard drive?  That way the things we discover and the skills we acquire in this life would not be lost upon passing.  Wouldn’t the human race evolve much faster if this were possible?

Unfortunately we humans have not been built with a USB port located just behind our left ears.  Instead we have to put up with a slower form of data transference called “teaching”.

As we gain knowledge and acquire skills, we owe it to the human race to pass that knowledge on to others.  “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.  ~Henry Brooks Adams

I’ve always loved to teach.  I’m deeply indebted to the great teachers in my own life – most of which were tough, sometimes scary and yet ultimately loving deep wells of vital information.  They passed that food of life on to me in a variety of ways and, thinking back on them, I realize now that each of them had that same central quality – they too loved to teach.

And so, we here at Watchfire Music recognize this necessity to communicate knowledge and have decided to create within the company a center for data transference – the Watchfire Music Learning Lab, a school of sorts, for students of all ages, where specialized professional music classes of a most interesting variety will be taught.

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OK, so I’m going to talk a little bit today in generalities.  OK, so there are still great songs being written, still great craftsmen out there who really know what they’re doing, still great records being made.  I’ll allow you all this right from the get go, but I think our industry, besides the death of the record business, is in a serious creative low as well.

Sonically, we’re at an all-time high.  The ability to capture the actual sound of the instruments in perfect, pristine quality has never been better.  Those who still grumble about the “coldness” of digital just haven’t been really listening lately.  The advancement of processing power and ram in computers has finally caught up and now the warmth of analog is back.

But much of the rest of the creative part of our industry is mired in mediocrity.  I blame this on humanity and our penchant to always try to attain perfection the easy way.   Nothing wrong with that except when it doesn’t work.

I just wrote a 7-part blog post (The IRA Awards) on great lyrics just to remind us of what could be, of the greatness of craft, of the delight of a well-lyricised song.  I write “remind us” because I think we’re losing track of a great tradition – the well written lyric.

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Irving Berlin - Playing the black keyes

Great songs have long been a deep and rich part of the American culture and consequently the world culture as well.  I can safely say that it would be any composer/lyricist’s dream to someday write a classic – a song that is so universal and so iconic that it becomes a part of the fabric of history and lives beyond its time.

This century’s, no make it this millennium’s Ira Award for Best Lyricist of classic songs goes to Irving Berlin.  Of course he was also the composer of these songs as well.

The story goes that Mr. Berlin, who had small hands wrote most of his songs in the key of F# because he preferred to play on the black keys of the piano where the stretch was not so large for his fingers.  Later in life, when he could afford it, he had Steinway make him a special upright piano with a large crank on the side that when turned, tightened the strings and thus changed the sounding key of his F# fingerings – sort of a guitar capo for the piano.

This man had his fingers not only on the piano but also on the pulse of America like no other lyricist since.  Among the many great classic songs he wrote were “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, “Easter Parade”, “White Christmas”, “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “God Bless America”, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody,” “Always”,  “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, and “What’ll I Do”.

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Welcome to Part 2 of the Ira Awards!  If you have no earthly idea of what the Ira Awards are, then go to Part 1 and find out.  Besides, who would start anything with Part 2?

Joni Mitchell-Self Portrait

If you’ve already read Part 1, then welcome back!  Tonight let’s start with Joni.  In Part 1 I opened with the expression “A poem doth not a lyric make”.  Joni Mitchell, in my book, comes the closest to writing poetry that works as lyrics.  It is her genius to do so.  Even though she can make it work sometimes, I still wouldn’t try it if I were you.  Joni Mitchells only come along once in a lifetime.

Joni writes a lot like Paul Simon – she paints an impressionistic picture.  She is a poet at work on a lyrical canvas.  She sometimes tells a story, but that story often just has splotches of through line and she leaves it up to the listener to fill in the blanks.  She is also, you may already know, an accomplished painter whose work often graces her album covers.

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I learned my craft as a composer/lyricist writing for the theater.  It’s probably why I write a lot of story songs.  I worked and studied as an actor and that also gave me my own interesting slant on song writing.  I try to write from my own particular corner on life, but sometimes I can write from a particular character perspective that is not me – though even in those songs there’s always an essence of me in them even if they are of another character.

Mary Magdalene-El Greco

I sometimes like to write from the particular perspective of the singer for whom I’m writing.  In the case of Julia Wade, my wife and Watchfire Music recording artist, this is particularly true.  Because I know her so well, sometimes I can get inside of her and see things from her point of view.  Before writing this kind of a song for her, I’ll usually discuss the moments in depth with her and glean from her feelings all that I can.  Then I know that when I’ve finished writing the song, she’ll naturally have a real affinity for it.

Julia’s long been fascinated with Mary Magdalene and has spent countless hours researching her life on line and reading books about her.  She was deeply into the discoveries, revelations and suppositions brought out by Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” long before the book came out and fueled the imaginations of millions around the world.

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