Where does music fit?
Monday, March 16th, 2009
My life has been crazy this last year.
Last May, Greg Bell and I started a company called Orange Peel Media. It was an exciting time, because I have always been an entrepreneur at heart.
At that point in my life I made the decision, to let my music take a backseat to my career. At the time, Adrian Glynn and I had been doing a monthly gig at Backstage Lounge, where I enjoyed some of my favourite shows as a performer. I will always look back on those times as exciting. However, because of my career, I started to find that they were becoming a chore. I didn’t have the time to put into them like I used to. So, after two years of good times at Backstage, Adrian and I decided to give it a rest.
For a few months I put my guitar in a corner (the first time in about 8 years) and didn’t even think about it. I even really enjoyed the time away from it.
Anyway, in the last few months, I have picked it up again and have made a few passes at writing some new songs.
Nothing seems to be working though: I have one rhythm, and that’s all I seem to know how to play; I can’t come up with a half-assed lyric for the life of me; and I’m far too stuck to know what’s wrong.
In a way I feel like I’ve just sobered up and realized that I was never a very good songwriter… well, not really, but that’s what I tell myself to get depressed so that I can write.
When it comes down to it, like most songwriters, most of my best songs have come out of depression and melancholy moods. It has always worked for me because I’ve always been depressed in one way or another, but now things seem to have changed. It’s not because I’m blissfully happy… because I’m not. And it’s not because my life too good to be depressed about it… because it’s definitely not. But I am just too busy to be depressed, and I just can’t afford to be melancholy!
Now that I’m quite sure that I know what the problem is, I’m not sure I want to go there. It makes me wonder if a songwriter can really put out good music without the manic lows, and fleeting highs…
So the question is: where does music fit in my life now?
4 Responses to “Where does music fit?”
urbansloth says:
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 pmI’m depressed just reading this. Maybe I should go write music? Then you’ll also be depressed and can start writing some tunes.
But seriously… Where does music fit in? I think music is, was, and will be a passion of yours, but sometimes life plays against our passions. I hope your life makes room for more songwriting eventually. I wait for the next derek kehler tunes like I do any other talented, inspired artist.
Laura says:
March 30th, 2009 at 6:49 pmI know how you feel. I hate it when I write one really good chorus, and then draw a blank for weeks on the verses.
Is there somewhere you have your music posted on the web? When I heard folk, I was very interested.
Keep at the music. It will come to you :)
derek kehler says:
April 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am@urbansloth,
well put. I am working at it, my friend, don’t give up on me yet. Also, I heard a song that you wrote, remember? And I liked it, so stop it with the “I suck” bullshit!
@Laura,
That’s exactly it, I’ve got about 10 songs in the works right now, but none even close to done :(
You can stream my tunes on MySpace: myspace.com/derekkehler
Or, here’s a link to download all my songs: http://derekkehler.com/songs/DerekKehler-DownloadAllSongs.zip
urbansloth says:
April 8th, 2009 at 4:14 pmand now my “business” seems to be picking up, (don’t know why I put business in quotations, part of my “I don’t take anything seriously” persona) so my piano is now sitting at the far end of the room and I hardly ever touch it, I don’t spend enough time on it to learn anything new let alone write anything. Seems like you can only have one thing in your head if you want to write music, a very pure sense of the inspiration that put pen to paper in the first place. Which is almost impossible for me if life is busy. For me though, as long as I’m not doing things that are too repetitive I’m happy.
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