Yes! And now it’s time for #FAWM (February Album Writing Month)… check it out at http://fawm.org and join in if you want. My profile is over at http://fawm.org/fawmers/tracyshaun/ and I’ll be attempting the 14 songs in 28 days… but this year it’s 14.5 songs in 29 days

The first is one is up and you can go listen to it and read the lyrics… this one’s kinda special because I have finally broken through and written the first complete song from scratch in almost 9 months. Yes, 9 months! It feels like such a weight has lifted… feeling so good.

As part of my songwriting process, I regularly improvise song structures and record the sketches within a half hour of inventing it. This piece is a little different than normal in that I wrote a few different pieces (a couple of melodies, synth background, some minimal drum tracks). I usually just do a simple acoustic track of guitar and vocal. This one came out pretty good some I’m releasing it into the wild and will beging to put more out there for ya. (I have several waiting in the wings that I’ll release over the next week or so)

I want to be able to keep this creative process going. Let me know what you think. I would love some feedback!

a typical view on my walks along Corte Madera Creek

It’s mid-October here in northern California. I write this from my little studio set-up in a small downstairs room in an old house in Marin County. It’s close enough to Corte Madera Creek that I get to walk along its banks with my dog and watch the movements of the tides from day to day. Mt. Tamalpais keeps watch over Ross Valley.

All this to say… I’m reconnecting to my daily songwriting and rehearsal schedule. It’s been a long time since I last completed a song. Over a year, in fact. I wonder sometimes if I hit that “sophomore slump” that I’ve read about from other songwriters. Typically, a songwriter would burn through a lot of new material when first starting out. Songs would come easily as one moves through various latent emotional states that have been waiting to find their expression within some creative vehicle.

I had the same experience back in the mid-90′s when I started writing poetry seriously. I wrote a *lot* of stuff in those first couple of years but then they didn’t come so easily once I had “gotten it all out”.

Now that I have a sizable chunk of music written (and some of them recorded), the new songs are there, but they’re hanging out in the background and seem a bit shy. Whole song structures and melodies can come out in a single night… sometimes several of them. But it’s the words now that are failing me.

Or is it me failing the word?

My recent 3:15 experiments and journal free-writes are helping to reignite the language. And, resurrecting this blog and writing about these struggles feels like the right thing to be doing right now.

Stay tuned as I figure out how to reconnect to my once very vibrant creative process…

I am not a secular man, but in moments of crisis I turn to agnosticism for the comfort it gives in freeing me from superstition.

— Charles Bernstein

Not every one needs to have a leader with clear demands. That’s the old way of launching revolutions. This revolution is run by the Internet generation, with egalitarian ways of looking at things, and an inclusive process of getting everyone involved. That’s the magic of it.

— Washington Post