Feature
Sep 8 2016: Howdy from Nashville!
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Howdy.
That's like Aloha in Nashville. Like, in reality people, you don't say that here. They know what you mean. It means you're trying too hard. They do drop "y'alls" at every opening and it's hard not to adopt the phrase-- it'll be part of a speech impediment for me in the next couple weeks as I roll up to New England for shows.
I'm writing this week in Nashville, I'm just diving in hard and deep- it's always nice to hang with other people, especially in other cultures, genres, and see how they process ideas, choose chords, and phrase lines.
I'm sitting across a coffee table from some monster hit makers in country music, and I'm from as far north as a highway can take you and from a genre that tries it's hardest to be non commercial. But that makes for the partnering synergy to be wild and divergent-- for all parties. We aren't writing a "Blowing in the Wind" but under the right circumstances you might scratch onto a journal a "Sunday Morning Coming Down", and wouldn't that blow my head right off my shoulders. I'll walk out of here with six songs from three days, and a couple of them will step on stage with me-- and you won't know the difference.
I'm heading up to TCAN in Natick, MA on Saturday with Shun Ng, followed by my Tiny Living Room Concert on Concert Window. Hope you can tune in!
--Ellis