Starting with a song title – “Welcome Home, I’m Leaving”
What I really want when I’m writing a song is a title that does most of the work for me. Some titles just come packaged with a whole story waiting to be told, or more accurately, several story possibilities and all I have to do is pick the one I connect with most!
Sometimes I like to imagine that the song title is in the centre of a maze and I’m standing on the outside deciding which path to take. Some paths weave, some paths lead you right back to the start and some paths make a “B” line to the goal. Contrary to what you might think, some songs need to wrap around and bring you right back to where you started. Have a listen to “Rattlin’ Bog” to get an idea of a path that wraps around!
For “Welcome Home, I’m Leaving”, writing partner Annie Hendrix and I had some options. Is the narrator the person that is leaving? Are they telling a story or experiencing the story in real time? Is the narrator the “Bad Guy” in the story? It was during the deliberations of the latter question that Annie made an important point that I now consider with every song I write.
Is the Narrator an empathetic Character?
A fantastic question! I feel this question deserves an entire article to itself but I’ll sum it up quickly. I don’t want to sing a song that makes me look like a horrible person! Nor am I really interested in hearing someone sing a song about all the terrible things they’ve done!
So after these deliberations our path was decided. The narrator coming to terms with being an absent partner while chasing a dream. Chasing a dream is always admirable but failing to create a life of balance has ended in a familiar story of love lost!
Now that we have our path, what kind of metaphorical “bushes” or “benches” or “squirrels” do we see along the way? What are the objects and events that really put a person in the “scene” of the story. The industry term is “Furniture”! It’s always advisable to “write what you know”, so the narrator in our story became a songwriter. Opening the door to the struggling-songwriter story really allowed us to have a bit of fun. It was almost cathartic to unload lines that I would be devastated to hear said about my work! One line in particular that gave us a good laugh is in the chorus.
“I think you’re a drunk playing guitar, in a bar singing songs no one believes in.”
It stings just writing it! We’re very proud of that line.
