Maple Blues Award Best New Artist nominee and harmonica player, Son Roberts stopped by the Song Talk Radio studios with guitarist John Crosbie and had a fun and wide ranging conversation about writing blues influenced tunes.
What a delight to have Peter Light in the studio and hear some down-to-earth songwriting. I Let Her Go was a unique take on “the one that got away”. Charlie’s Playin’ the Blues was a cool tongue in cheek visit to the world of traditional blues – done with great craft and artistry.
Scott B Sympathy returned to Song Talk Radio to talk about how his songwriting process has evolved over twenty years, why you should write everyday, and why every song doesn’t need a bridge. He also played Downhearted live, and played back Come & Go from his Massey Harris album.
Songtalk Radio welcomed multi-talented artist The Sun Harmonic (aka Kaleb Hikele) back to the studio for a second sharing of his song writing skills. “Born (I Have Awakened)” is a stream-of-consciousness, spiritual/traditional style a capella song that captures the losses we all endure as we grow up. “When the Well Runs Dry” switching from 4/4 to 2/4 and back again, prompted lots of discussion among the hosts about its meaning. Here’s a hint – it’s something all writers fear – have a listen! “I Will Sleep Again” was written on a long commute and sung into a cell phone. Its powerful bridge near the end is just one of the highlights of this song.
For our third holiday special, it was the Song Talk Radio family only – Bruce, Neel, Phil, Janice and Etain (on tech).
Phil shared some interesting holiday song trivia and a Christmas jingle from his old punk-pop band, The Parkdale Hookers. Bruce shared a childhood memory of the holiday season with the Beatles, and Neel shared a quirky musical number from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Bruce and Neel also took up the challenge to write a song under 60 seconds in the days just before the show. Check out Neel’s blog post about the songwriting process, and his demo recording.
Mark Martyre is a Canadian writer and musician. His prolific song writing has produced 3 full-length studio albums since 2012: Down, Record (2012), London (2013), and Red Letters (2014), as well as several live records, and bootlegs. His music and lyrics have garnered critical acclaim and attention both nationally and internationally. Mark is currently working on his fourth full-length studio album, as well as a book of poems and short stories, to be released in 2016. On December 8 he filled our studio with a laid back set of three tunes. With “I know What It’s Like” he plays with simile very effectively… – “like a story”, “like an old deck of cards”, like a movie”. His lyrics flow in an almost spoken style on top of solid rhythmic guitar work. On “Long Goodbye” listen for surprising images (“sleepy trees”), tasty harmonica fills, and cool bridge. “I Never Knew” traces the musician’s process and resonates for anyone who ever set out to play gigs only to discover it was a lot harder than they thought. Mark is an accomplished songwriter worth checking out at any of the links listed!
Neel Modi is a multi-talented songwriter, drummer and keyboardist with an eclectic collection of recordings from the quirky to the imaginative. On this show, he presented “Depend on Me” – based on a challenge to write a song about a car accident from the brake pad’s point of view – it’s a “brake-up” song ;-), and “Nature’s Lullaby”, a collaboration with singer/songwriter Sonja Seiler, a touching poetic take on the interconnection between all things in the natural world. The third song was “I Never Write Her a Song”, a catchy response to a request from Neel’s spouse. She loves it!
Topics of discussion ranged from anthropomorphism to collaboration and descants,to the power of modulation to lift a song to a whole new level of energy.
In our first Apps Review Show, we take a look at Idolumic’s Rhyme Genie and Harmonic Sense’s Chordmate Apps.
First up was Idolumic’s Rhyme Genie a fully cross platform (PC, Mac & iOS) program that boasts over 330,000 rhymes and more rhyme types than you’ve ever heard of. The desktop versions are brilliant and much better than any online rhyme services I’ve found (it even give you Feminine Pararhymes – so you know, there you go).
A great interface too. It lets you select “similarity of sound” of the rhymes, gives you filters for adverbs, adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc, and lets you select how many syllables the rhymes have.
Singer-songwriter and occasional co-host of Song Talk Radio, Eric Sorenson, returned to the show to showcase tunes from his upcoming EP, Directions Home, and a crowd-pleaser from his live shows. Eric was joined by his bandmates Liz Jaremyn and Andrew Ages.
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