Liner Notes – Writing Prompt

“Foreign Moon”

I usually have much less trouble coming up with music than I do creating lyrics. What I do to help with that is to give each album a theme. Hope is the theme for “what it is.” Japan is the second record's theme, obviously, and the idea of abductions and a hostile takeover of the planet earth by an alien species which looks very much like us is the theme for “The Five Word Album Title.” I'm not kidding. When I have new music that I like and I don't have anything in particular that I want to write about I'll lean on the record's theme.

“Foreign Moon” is a snapshot of a female alien who has wordlessly somehow sort of befriended the song's observer. Her original mission was to be a scout for the hostile takeover, but she has shunned her mission because of a crisis of conscience; something her ruthless species is not known for. This is the moment when she knows she has been transformed, she's abandoned her people, is looking at a strange night sky, and she will never see home again. The trick to creating interesting lyrics was to have this narrative in my head, but never actually mention it in the song directly.

I also gave myself a writing assignment for this one as well. A cool character named Sky King runs an open mic down the road and I'll go and play a 15 minute acoustic solo set maybe once a year. My stuff does not translate very well into the acoustic environment. I know that, but I play it anyway because it's fun to see people who would like to hear “Brown Eyed Girl” yet again looking at me like I have three heads when I play some weird chords. Sky always teases me about my goofy stuff. So I decided to try something.

My assignment was to write a song using only those boring, hackneyed chords that you see in just about every country song; G, C, D, Em, and Am. This song actually does translate into the acoustic environment and my buddy Sky will indeed be surprised if I decide to play it when I next appear at the open mic. Here's the thing though. Just like I never mention the back story in the lyrics, I also disguised the chords by never actually playing them in their obvious forms. I only hint at them. I use a fair amount of inversions too. There is a buried backing guitar track that plays the chords but it's used to fill in the production, not to stand out.

The solo section I let go of the rules I had imposed and allowed it to get weird if I wished. It's a song within a song, really. That's a peek into the process. I have no idea if any of you will find that interesting. It certainly is firmly in musical nerddom territory.