Piece This Star Together
Episode #205:\xa0 Piece This Star Together (Song starts at 4.45)
\nI find it endlessly fascinating, thinking about where a song might come from. 'Piece This Star Together' came from something my grandfather, Harry, said. My mum passed it on to me, when I was a youngster (bit of wisdom, I think):
\n\u2018We\u2019ve all got a little piece of the star within us all and we\u2019ve just got to piece this star together\u2019.
\nIt resonated in me and it remained in me. Years later, in Melbourne, Australia in 1998, the phrase/ concept popped into my mind, and I thought \u2018Aha ! I\u2019ll write a song about this\u2019. It became song #437.
\nHaving fun is such a key to getting into the creative zone. As I record these episodes, I find my \u2018entertainer self\u2019 switches on. An \u2018up\u2019 sort of a vibe happens. To be creative, you have to believe you can. The key is to have fun and see where the moment takes you. This is \u2018being in the moment\u2019.
\nThis is the sort of feeling I had as I let my hands wander on the keys in 1998, As I looked a the lyrics of 'Piece This Star' and composed the music.
\nI had in mind a sort of \u2018up\u2019 acoustic guitar driven band song. It can be a tricky thing to come up with on the piano, but if I get a feeling to go down a certain track along the creative way, I don\u2019t block the idea.
\nI\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t block it. 'Piece This Star Together' is\xa0an up, happy song.
\nThe demo on this episode was 1 of 14 songs, which I recorded with Paul Dredge and Earl Pollard, in Earl\u2019s garage, in NZ one afternoon in 1999. We recorded the songs back to back, using minimal gear.
\nIt was such good fun. We\u2019d never rehearsed these songs together. This demo remains the one and only take. I\u2019m glad we recorded it.
\nI will release the 14 songs as an \u2018archive\u2019 sort of album. (I did a small release of 100 CDs back in 1999, but it \u2018wasn\u2019t quite there\u2019, so a few years ago I re-recorded the vocals - there were too many squawks from my mother\u2019s budgies in the original recording. Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with budgies, but they have their place. They can be noisy birds at times! Perhaps, more to the point, your mother\u2019s kitchen may not be quite the place to record vocals for an album!
\nI\u2019m an optimistic sort of bloke. In my 20s I was hoping to make a positive difference by releasing my art and music into the world.
\nThat basic plan hasn\u2019t changed.
\nMy art and music has helped me so much along the way. In fact it has turned out to be the way.
\nThis podcast is a great vehicle to give some songs a bit of air, it\u2019s an opportunity to talk about how a song might come together - but more than that, it\u2019s turning out to be a lot about: how ideas all seem to come out at once, some seemingly unrelated, but if we I\u2019ve them a voice, a chance, often they\u2019ll turn out to be interrelated and suddenly you discover and underlying theme or purpose and away you go.
\nThe creative process is a mysterious like that. It\u2019s doesn\u2019t necessarily unfold on a timeline as you\u2019d expect.
\nOn this episode you\u2019ll hear me winging the beginning of a song, I didn\u2019t block the feeling. It seemed right. I\u2019ve listened back and I think there\u2019s definitely something there, something to knead like a piece of dough, a bit more, nudge it gently into\xa0shape. It\u2019ll be a song - I can tell - if I give it a bit more time and energy.
\nI can talk. Let\u2019s face it (there is now more than 100 hours of me talking about creativity, the art of song writing, the art of being human on this podcast), but sometimes the best way to illustrate a process or a concept is to just demonstrate it. So having my piano at my finger tips as I chat really works for me.
\nOk, here we go: another fully \u2018winged\u2019 episode. I never have any show notes and before I push the record button, I have no idea about what I\u2019m going to focus on. The song leads the way. As I\u2019ve mentioned, the entertainer within me comes to the party. Each episode is a half hour performance,