Day 8: A Place Where You Belong (written with Theresa Brodzinski)

 

Day 8: A Place Where You Belong (written with Theresa Brodzinski)

Part of my song-a-day writing project for January 2024. Also Day 2 of this month’s The Fearless Songwriter challenge.

Lyrics:

Standing in a line
Waiting for our turn to go inside
Got a fresh piece of plastic
With a fake name in my pocket
And the doorman's been
Giving us the eye
What do a couple kids have to do
To have a good time

Rejected, turned away again
Now the car won't start
But we can pretend
There's a bus of freaky people
Lettin' loose and singin' tunes
Waiving for us to come on in
They say, "Hey, come on board, now
"Where have you been?"

We will take you to a place
Where you belong, where you belong
We will take you to a place
Where you belong, where you belong
You belong

At the end of the washboard road
Is a place where the colors explode
Free kitchens, open doors
And bellybutton people
Eager to welcome you home
No lines, no bouncers saying
"Do as you're told"

Fire spinning all around
The dance floor is on the ground
Bonfire drums, wildlife songs
And a disco ball moon
A crescendo of a collective howl
In the echoes of the ether
The answers will be found

We will take you to a place
Where you belong, where you belong
We will take you to a place
Where you belong, where you belong
You belong

Circles replace the lines
No need for clocks
'Cause we don't keep the time
Trade in your plastic
For a nickname and a tribe
Forget about what's yours and what's mine
Forget about what is yours and what is mine

We will take you to a place
Where you belong, where you belong
We will take you to a place
Where you belong, where you belong
You belong

***

Details: I met Theresa Brodzinski last summer/fall at the Noco Songwriters Series where she was performing, and I really enjoyed her stuff. We talked about getting together to collaborate sometime, time passed, and then Song-a-day January arrived and I asked her to join me for a co-write.

It turns out that Theresa has done the Fearless Songwriting challenge before, so I mentioned that it was happening this week, and that the prompt for today was "Open All Night". This immediately had us thinking about a dance club, but I wrote a song about a dance club situation just last night, so I didn't want to repeat that exactly.

Theresa started thinking about other things that are open all night, particularly natural settings. That got me thinking about juxtaposing a dance club with nature. Theresa also has been to Rainbow gatherings in the past, and that gave a lot of insights to what a party in nature would be like.

We spent a lot of time hashing out the story about some young adults being turned away from all the clubs because they weren't quite 21, then making their way to a Rainbow gathering in the forest.

Theresa has a very different angle on rhythmic phrasing of lyrics. I kept getting hung up on the number of syllables in the lines, but when she sings them, they all sound completely natural. My recording doesn't quite do the lyrics justice.

The verse progression was mostly hers, and the chorus progression and melody mostly mine, and we went back and forth on the lyrics quite a bit. All in all, we spent 4 hours on this song, which is a long time to ask someone to co-write, but I really like what we came up with, so I'm happy she was willing to stay that long. She did have to take off before we could record a video together, though, but that just something for the future.