Three Years, One Month, 24 Days and Counting

Thoughts from Eric...
Have you ever had a favourite band post an announcement stating that they have finished recording and the album should be available in say, 6 months? In the past when I saw that I thought, "What is taking them so long? Why are they stalling?" I now think, "Wow! How are they getting it done so fast?"

I was curious to know what was our earlist recording that ended up on the album, so I shuffled through our early tracks, checking the dates. The earliest I could find are the guitars for Eastern Sky, recorded on Sunday October 5, 2008. We started recording in general before that date but nothing from earlier remains. What a process. What a learning experience. The guitars on that song have more noise than any other track, (which was intentional of course to give it that "in the midst of a great wasteland" feel). At that time we would only work on it for a few hours Sunday afternoon or during the holidays. From there we continued to get it wrong more often than we got it right but each time learning a little bit.

This last 6 months I have been working on it most days of the week, and Caleb whenever he could find time, and it is not done yet. I thought with the release on November 19 that it was finished, but we are continuing through the process of getting the physical cds and making the album available on other music distribution sites. Maybe when the cds arrive in mid-December we will be able to say emphatically, "We are finished!" I will not be surprised though if something else were to pop up, adding to our day counter.

Defining Us

Hannah-Lee...
Over the past several weeks I've been buried in paperwork, filling out applications for provincial and national arts grants, and entering some of our songs in songwriting contests and awards contests.  All of this involves carefully crafting words in answer to probing questions and making decisions about which songs in our repertoire could possibly merit an award.  We're hoping to fund some of our projects this way, and to promote our music in the listening community.  There are a lot of opportunities out there for the independent musician these days, so it is worth the effort.

One of the things I have found to be most difficult in this process is describing our sound.  We don't fit cleanly into any one genre of music.  This is generally a good thing for us; we like the idea of being unique, however when it comes to having to check off a box labelled with a specific genre, it's very frustrating.  Who are we?  We are definitely not pure folk and we are certainly not rock, though our music leans toward an edgier sound at times.  Folk-rock?  Um...okay...sort of.  Most forms for funding and songwriting contests don't offer that description as a category, and most of the time there isn't an "other" box to tick off.  

One contest, the International Songwriting Competition, came through for us, in that it had a category called "AAA", or "Adult Album Alternative".  When I listened to the winners in that category from last year, their sound most closely matched ours; folksy-ecclectic with some edge.  Brilliant!  If only all the forms I have had to fill out could have been that easy.

Hopefully our music will speak louder than my words in all of these endeavours.  After all, labels don't really matter.  Thankfully, in the end, it's the music that is under scrutiny.  We want it to be heard, noticed and appreciated for what it is.

What do you think?  Who are we?  How would you define our sound?  Help us out friends and fans!       

Capturing the Moment

Reflections by Eric...

Last night I received a call from my 8 year old niece in which she proceeded to tell me about her broken arm. The mixture of joy and disappointment, the words she used, the tone of voice, etc., made me smile the whole way through the conversation (which is strange for me because I do not like talking on the telephone). 

After I hung up I tried to recreate those moments for Hannah-Lee but failed. Later that night as I lay awake I tried to recreate it in my mind. I smiled and chuckled but definitely failed. The moment is a pleasant memory but will never be again. 

That started me thinking about why we create music. Each of us has these moments, and we try and capture them with video, pictures, writing, or recording. Writing and performing music can be about the sharing of those moments, or sometimes a song is a moment. A good song will hit you at some point, maybe the first listen, maybe the 5th or 12th, but at some point it will be a moment that you want to experience again. Maybe it just so happens that this is the time that it matched your mood. Some songs you will listen to again just as a memory of that moment, but others are written in such a way that it can hit you again in a different way creating another 'moment'. Those are the songs that become a part of our long-term playlists.

When Be Lyrebirds create a song, it usually comes from a jam session. We hit on something that strikes a chord, then we spend hours, days, months, sometimes years trying to write a song that captures and reflects what had moved us. The rare times that we are able to complete the song within a day or two the song is a stronger reflection of that original moment; others though, change and reflect different moments in time as we continue through the process of completing it. 

For example, because of recording issues, when it came time to mix Cold October Sky we had to re-record the second half, and in the process ended up changing the song to reflect what we were feeling at the moment of the second recording. 

So...something to consider: when you listen to a song and it moves you, part of that is because it is in response to the songwriter's real emotion and state of mind at the very time he/she wrote it; it is a snapshot of a specific and personal moment in time.