Serving the Song – Inspiration & Genre
As a musician, the best compliment I’ve ever been given is, “Dude, you’re my favorite guitar player to play with because you don’t play any notes that don’t need to be played.” I’ve been fortunate to have been told that twice, with different bands.
That has always been my approach as a guitar player playing other people’s songs and it’s always been my approach with my own music as well. The question is, what does the song need? On the song “Rock & Roll” by Vice Tricks, the major pentatonic riff I am playing under Jeremy’s vocals in the verse was inspired by Pearl Jam. They would probably hate me for telling you that, but when we recorded it at Sneak Attack Studios in Lexington, I heard him and our engineer talking about how much they loved my riff. It just felt right. Pearl Jam and Vice Tricks, other than a love for the Dead Boys, don’t have much in common, but it worked.
Many songwriters talk about inspiration as if it is this mystical thing and we’re just conduits from some other sphere for the song. I think that’s a bit new age for me, but while I don’t think it’s mystical, it is a bit mysterious. Why does a chord change, melody or phrase kick start a period of creative obsession? Why do I take a line from a film that means one thing, and write a story that means something completely different from it?
Which leads me to the question every musician gets asked by everyone: What kind of music do you play?
Well, it depends.
How do you make something sound like something on purpose? How much is just marketing? In the 90s, Shania Twain released the same song in two versions to pop and country radio. One had synths and guitars, one had fiddles and mandolins. I don’t inherently have a problem with that, but I also am not particularly interested in that either. I don’t ever ask myself, “how do I make this more punk?” or “how do I make this less punk” or whatever else. All I ask, is “where does this go from here?”
Therefore, I end up with the problem of having to change my image and my artwork every time I release something because the music changes. With Mountain Climer, I’ve gone from pop to pop punk to post punk to the next batch of songs which sound like they could go with early Gaslight Anthem, Ryan Adams or Lucero with a little Primal Scream and Jesus and Mary Chain thrown in. What do I do with that? And that’s just Mountain Climer, which is why we had to create dbcooper.
It doesn’t matter. Just because I don’t think I’m answering some mystical call doesn’t mean I’m in charge of it completely either. If it feels like it needs a slide guitar, that’s what it gets. If it needs my Les Paul Gold Top cranked through a JCM900, then that’s what it gets. It’s been decided, I just have to figure it out and then execute it to the best of my ability. That’s where thousands of hours of study and practice come in – it’s giving yourself the toolbox to take a piece of marble and make David, or Venus deMilo come out of it.
Okay, that’s a bit braggadocio, but you get my point.
Maybe sometimes, when you’re Dan Wilson and you write “Someone Like You”, you have to be humble enough to say, “This song needs Adele.” And Adele takes that song across the finish line for you.
If you serve the song, you at least have a shot at it being timeless. If you chase a “sound” because you want it to get heard, well, even if you are successful you’ll find your records in whatever the 21st century version of the bargain bin is. No one wants that.
Serve the song. At all costs.