When I spoke frivolously about Bluegrass and Country being kissin’ cousins, turns out bluegrass is a subgenre of country: a kinda country if you will.

Knowing that may change the way you approach a form but it shouldn’t. Concentrate on mountain shacks and moonshine. Or bend your own theme to the hoedown.

Every genre has its subgenres with acid jazz and doom metal sharing the same musical planet with bebop and hair metal. The list is endless. Country morphs with the countryside, metal clangs to ponderous life, folk have common concerns but clashing credos that take greater precedence further down the road, rock as we’ve remarked before is capable of splitting itself so far that even its subgenres have subgenres of their own.

Do I think that there is much to take from this when writing the words to a song? This depends on how far you want to drill down. If you want a set full of sludge metal then there are songwriting approaches that will help.

To put this in perspective from my own songwriting journal. The pieces I wrote in the remainder of September (after I’d left the verandah) don’t show any signs of genre at any level. Regardless of size, some are poems and others lyrics but this isn’t always the upfornt intention.

It wouldn’t be wise to interrupt this process by pondering whether it’s hard rock

Here’s a rundown:

• Practicality 7-8 / 9 / 2015
• Probably Not 11-12 / 9 / 2015
• [revised setlist]
• draft piece with opening line ‘You look nice in that lawsuit’ 13 / 9/ 2015
• The Same Set of Questions 14 / 9/ 2015
• Returnable 17 / 9 / 2015
• Could You Commit to Deluxe 17 / 9 / 2015
• P.O.V. first version
• P.O.V. second draft
• P.O.V. third draft
• Exclamation Marks 22 / 9 / 2015

Now admittedly I’m not writing these with genre in mind. These are from my exercise book and were written on the train. I’ve got two later pieces I wrote a couple of days ago and there was a conscious decision to go with the flow to the point of not making (immediate) sense. As the lines appear on the page you wonder what the purpose is  lo, sitting up in bed I can see actual songs emerge in second drafts for both. Just like that.

If the Muse can lead you through then you’re free to go in all directions and, unless you’re wedded to alt country, you’ll get more from it

In my tattered notebook I have a couple of solid formal pieces, I have the freedom to scribble in thoughts on stuff relevant to songs and singing and past pieces that work, a vague polemic, a poem that doesn’t work (yes, there’s the odd one) before hitting a song and spending a bit of time on it, which was P.O.V which I wrote the first draft for on the eighteenth, chorus on nineteenth (I think that’s a first, writing the chorus the following day), second draft also on the nineteenth probably on the train home, and third and final draft on the twentieth of September.

For your delectation – this time just the finished song

P.O.V

It's in our line of sight
It's finally come to light
Three sixty degrees
Far across the seas
Sees everything seize everything

 
We're not blind to the kind
 or what we expect to find
in corners of the mind
Are they reflected 
witness protected

In a mirrored mirage
   Objects enlarged
The power of purview
 Ask after askance and askew

From every angle perception dangles
In every direction scene selection

Some folks focus is hocus pocus
as like as loco at that locus

Get obsessed with what is best
  who is blessed
and all that is left to detest

If you track the tried and true
  even truths that tried
          and withdrew
Their P.O.V
There P.O.V
[repeat]

The reason i folded blues into a discussion on the music forms that followed is because I have written my blues songs and don’t feel a need to go back to the genre and spoil things. Berko’s Blues was the habit of describing one’s own blues – and thereby the rules are particular to your own woes and circumstance – and Imaginary Blues could have started out as a piece using the novel idea of a blues that isn’t real but it became a solid story much in the tradition.

I did, however, write this piece when I had moved to muse over the blues so it counts. There are so many genres devoted to decay and putrefaction, to the yawning grave, that a song using death as a motif would be less likely to settle on the blues, which is more about the misery and tribulations of the living.

I wrote this when I read about the concept in our local gazette. The death café is a place where people can gather to mourn the dead as it is not usually a topic for social gatherings. Such good songwriting material could reap rewards even for the beginning wordsmith so I wasted no time; it was a quick recovery from some of the scribblings that preceded it. But I never lose any sleep over crummier or more difficult efforts. There’s plenty of good to be focused on but it’s not even that. The focus for me is always in writing the song that the concept or notion or idea or subject object suggest.  The rest flows from that.

death café

Cut across to where they're 
  cutting up croissants
In memoriam in an ornante font
Carried the coffin, pause for a coffee
Read back the preacher's notes
The procession is passing
Time to make the toast
at the death café at the death café 

This really does take the cake
Clear the tables and chairs
and try to stay a wake
Disguised disgust
well they were quite old
Will the will be discussed
before the body's cold
at the death café at the death café 

You better believe  brave the bereaved
always lilies and lollies at hand
Proprietor a picture of piety
Weeping upon demand

Only started this business
so we'd be a witness
Condolence  sincere regret
A welcome repast to those who have passed
Others still with us yet
at the death café  at the death café