Remote collaboration tips with Mike Rudquist and Neel

For this special episode, we talked about a collaboration Neel did with Mike Rudquist, a singer-songwriter he met at the At Home Songwriting group for a songwriting challenge.

Mike Rudquist is a songwriter from Red Wing, MN who writes songs in Americana, pop/rock, and country. He has a solo album called “Albuquerque in the Morning” and was a finalist in Dat Dog Jingle Contest and Great River Folk Festival Songwriting Contest, and semi-finalist in the Waggin Train Jingle Contest. Mike was also featured on NBT Records “Ride the Train” compilation with his song “Last Train to Lockerby.”

Download the lyrics and chords for Neel’s version of the song and for Mike’s version.

We talked about:

• Our songwriting challenge for 2025 to write a song in an odd time signature. Check out the webpage with added resources!
• How Mike and Neel collaborated over Google Docs, email, and Zoom calls
• The value of an object writing exercise
• How Neel got lucky meeting a new friend in his condo who also plays bass, and contributed the bass guitar track for the song. Thanks Kushal!
• How it’s important to not get caught up with songwriting decisions, and try to stay open during a collaboration
• How they struggled a bit with verse 2, but it came together by combining both their ideas
• How Mike took some inspiration from the Eddie Vedder song Rise
• How to tell when the songwriting is done (hint: deadlines can help)
• An advantage of remote collaboration in that you can step away and take a breath before sharing your idea