Saturday, January 20, 2018

Day 19: Farewell To New Orleans



I wanted to write my friend James Griffin an Irish drinking song about New Orleans, and that's what this is supposed to be. It took only about 4 hours to write it, but recording it... *ugh*. Comments and constructive criticism is encouraged.

Boring Details: I went for a walk and the first thing that hit my brain was Irish music. I tried to fight it for a bit, but eventually decided to go with the flow. I wanted to do a goodbye song of some sort, and once I thought about my friend James (who loves Irish folk and punk-rock), I thought it should be about New Orleans, because he was living there back in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit.

I'll admit, I'm not remotely confident about this song. I've never been to New Orleans, so I did a bunch of online research as I was writing the lyrics. I suspect it doesn't sound remotely authentic, and I'm somewhat worried that it may irritate my friend instead of providing him with a heartfelt lament. The solution to that may be to revise the song with him in order to get more real-ness in the song (what do you think, James?).

The most aggravating thing about this song was the process of recording it. I just couldn't get through it. If it wasn't the French lyrics, it was the chord progression in the chorus. But I finally got it recorded with "acceptable" mistakes. Like I keep saying, this is a songwriting project, not a performance project-- I can craft a better performance later.

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