Welcome to Torch Bearer # 3, one of three blogs about the second album created by Farmer Pablo at Stoney Lonesome Farm. Why three blogs? Why not! I am growing to love the maze of writing that can weave through the web, an adventure that enhances my experience of creating music, and one that may enhance your experience of my work. Consider these blogs an expanded inner cover of my albums...we have this technology that makes words so easily accessible on the web, and this can be helpful as a supplement to music. Written words can embellish the music, or not. I think that my non-lyric words about my music are best concentrated on the music creation process, rather than providing more detail on the specifics of the lyrics. I love writing songs because I don't have to explain lyrics, they can have multiple meanings and significance. I don't want to limit my songs, and I enjoy how the music takes a life of its own.
Much of my life, farming and gardening, is a methodical process, a fusion of short term and long term cycles, many overlapping levels of thought and action, human rythyms and earth processes. Blogs offer me a release from this methodical work- they provide a platform for creative brainstorm, and I enjoy this opportunity for free and open expression.
When I started the Babylon Outpost blog, I had a vision for something more refined, like a series of essays. The idea of Babylon Outpost emerged from a general feeling that our farm was on the periphery of Babylon- endless sprawl, poor quality of life, lack of community, lack of health, lack of a holistic vision for a vibrant future. I had also thought that Babylon Outpost would make a great first album title- I like what it says about my perspective and situation, and the title also gives listeners a very brief but effective introduction to the Stoney Lonesome Sound- where it is coming from.
So commencing on the Babylon Outpost blog, I had a sense that the blog would combine several efforts into one, and maybe guest writers, and lots of images, and the whole thing started taking off in my brain, but it only took one entry to realize that I
a) don't have the time to really push and work on such an all-encompassing blog and
b) actually what I enjoy about blogging is a pressure-free creating and sharing process, just like my approach to music. If someone said to me, go and create an album with all new material, here's some funds, here's a deadline, I would probably stare blankly into space for most of the time, and then FORCE the creative process and arrive somehow at music which I felt was mediocre. The measure I use for assessing the sound of a song is whether I really like it (if this song was handed to me by a friend, would I listen to it again and again?). If I really like it, chances are my wife Esther will like it (not always, and she's my best critic), and if she likes it, my family and friends will like it, and so on. If everyone likes it, perhaps that's a warning sign! But it starts with sounding good to me. That's all that really matters in my creative process.
So I realized that I if I were to Blog, a critical component would be that the blog was not a heavy undertaking- I have enough of that. Blog sounds heavy, like a five-gallon bucket of rocks. Have those. I want a place that doesn't feel heavy, that is uplifting for me. That's why I make music, and that's why I decided to focus my blogging on music, topics such as how I go about creating a song...
New songs, "eggs", come along perhaps a few a year. Sometimes they arrive in small bundles, two or three songs in a very close period of time- The Powerline Song, Sorrow, and Only You all pretty much came to me around the same time. I'm not sure how it happens. But it does. And it often happens when I'm not paying attention to creating anything, like sitting with a cup of coffee in my Mom's living room on a visit and just strumming around.
I've had musical lines come to me in the fields, on the way up and down the hills around the farm, or when harvesting. Many times great lines are forgotten, but return the next day in the fields. Then I rush inside while humming the tune and try to pin it down on the guitar, just that specific line, then figure out the chords, then strum, then a song.
Lyrics almost always come last. There is much trial and error, just flowing with the song, strumming it, and trying different lyrics. I'll come upon something I like, then work with that theme. The lyrics of the songs gradually evolve, which is why I hesitate to rush any official recording of a song, because the lyrics change. The general theme of each song, and the bulk of the lyrics, once fleshed out, tend to remain mostly the same. Sometimes I'll have a first verse for months, but no second, or I'll have a particular chorus, but no verses, yet some part of the lyrics of a song attaches to the music and stays, as the defining phrase that gives shape to that song.
As I play the song, I listen to it...do I like it?
This is what drives my music, creating something that I enjoy listening to.
Torch Bearer #3 is an expression I often use to hint at an anonymous or small role, deriving from some of the more obscure roles in Shakespearian theater. But it is a phrase that suggests multiple meanings- and while recently using the phrase, I thought to myself, "well there's really something more to this phrase." I began to think of Torch Bearer # 3 on a a piece of paper. If you walked into a room with this on a piece of paper on the table, "Torch Bearer #3"- what would you think? Something about this phrase fits my music, and I like a hint of humor in the phrase, it opens up musical possibilities for me. Some of my songs are serious, but some are fun. There's nothing wrong with that. We need to smile and laugh. I don't want to be pinned down. Is Torch Bearer # 3 a stifling role or one that is freeing? I don't need to answer these questions, but I do like Titles that change in their meaning with time, and with multiple glances.
Welcome to Torch Bearer #3,
In Strength,
Farmer Pablo
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