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"Sycamore Tree" live video

Here's a new video of my song "Sycamore Tree," performed with Josh Dekaney on percussion and Tim Burns on harmony vocals at the Words and Music Songwriter Showcase on 1/23/10.



The studio version of "Sycamore Tree" is now available digitally at CD Baby and on Facebook.

Brandi Carlile on writing the songs for Give Up the Ghost, 2009

"I’ve been made aware of the fact that it takes a band their whole lives to write their first record, and then they’ve got a matter of months to write their second. Nothing happens between the time they put their first record out and the time they put their second record out, and it’s boring. On your first record you have so many life experiences to draw from—coming of age and love and loss and heartache and all of these firsts—and it’s really hard to write an album of seconds. So I wanted to transcend what is happening right now in the moment, on our tour bus, on the road, and not make an album full of highway songs, because I just think there are enough of them in the world.

"So we did a lot of songwriting exercises where we took a good hard look at things in our past that we hadn’t made peace with and ventured into the vastness of the future. We kept dream journals and wrote from a place of consciousness."

From an interview with Brandi Carlile published in Acoustic Guitar, May 2010. Read the full article here.

Rick Moody on music and prose, 2009

“I would say that music making and prose writing are very analogous, allied activities. Prose, after all, has a musical dimension because it’s made out of sound. I think that great prose writers often have some kind of attachment to music--look at James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Playing music emphatically makes me a better writer. It makes me listen better and think more clearly about how prose sounds.”

From an interview with novelist Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) on his band the Wingdale Community Singers. Read the full story in Brown Alumni Magazine here. Listen to the band here.

Note to John Lennon Songwriting Contest voters

Many of you were kind enough to vote, early and often, in the online vote that made my song "Fly" the Lennon Award winner for the top country song of last year. You may have noticed lately that Fretwire and other music marketing emails are showing up in your inbox--this is because of submitting your email address during the contest vote. FYI, at the bottom of these emails there is a small "Manage your subscription" link that allows you to unsubscribe with a couple of clicks. I just wanted to make sure you see there is a way to opt out...

Thanks again, everyone, for the support, and happy 2010.
JPR

Alternate Tunings: A Reader's Guide

The 20th anniversary of Acoustic Guitar is stirring up some fond memories of arcane little stories that we editors put together to amuse ourselves (and, we hoped, readers). Including this one from the December 1997 issue:

Have you ever noticed that some guitarists refer to specific open tunings as if they were words—talking, for instance, about D A D G A D as dadgad and D A D E A D as daddy-ad? Those unfamiliar with the way the guitar is tuned may have heard such lingo-infested conversation and wondered, “What is dadgad music anyway? Is it from one of those new countries in the former Soviet bloc? Maybe the guitarist’s last name is Gadd and it’s a piece dedicated to his father.” Here in the Acoustic Guitar office, a little joke about Mike Marshall’s tuning C F C F C F (see below) inspired this list of tunings for specific people, places, or events. As for the musicality of these tunings . . . well, you’re on your own.

For fathers of small kids: D A D D E E

For an abusive father: B A D D A D

For the world’s greatest father: F A B D A D

For a hip-hop father: D E F D A D

For a tough New Yorker: B A G C A B

For a talkative taxi driver: C A B G A B

For a Grateful Dead fan: D E A D E D

For C.F. Martin III: C F C F C F

For a caffeine addict from Boston: C A F F E E

For a former caffeine addict: A D E C A F

For a police officer: B A D G E D

For a file clerk: A B C D E F

For a dominatrix: B E D G A G

For Old McDonald: B A A B A A

For anti-government types: B A D F E D

For a big guy: B E E F E E

For a guitar named Lucille: B E E B E E

For the Gibb brothers: B E E G E E

For a chatterbox roommate: G A B G A B

For your old mattress: B A D B E D

For a hippie: B E A D E D

For an Irish musician: C A B A G E

For a guitar magazine that doesn’t know when to stop: A G D E A D

Indian rock revisited

Interesting to see that my story on the Bangalore-based rock band Thermal and a Quarter, which aired on NPR's All Things Considered in 2005, is still reverberating. This article just published in the Times of India talks about how Thermal and a Quarter and other Indian rock bands are using the Net to promote their music...

Derek Sivers on promoting music online, 2009

A lot of musicians these days think that networking online is going to break their music, yet real-world gigs and interactions with people haven’t become obsolete. In some ways maybe they’ve become more important.

SIVERS I’d say more important. The more valuable thing is always going to be the more scarce thing. So when everybody’s lives are led online, then having a great live performance is going to help you stand out from the pack so much more than being one of the one million musicians with a great Web presence a click away.

I think about that stuff a lot: What is the road less traveled? What is the thing that most people are doing, and therefore what is the thing that few people are doing? Whatever few people are doing is where the greater value lies. If a whole new generation of musicians is spending much more time clicking around MySpace to add new friends than they are practicing their scales and arpeggios, then if you are one of the few who puts in an hour or two a night to practice your scales and arpeggios and chord voicings or whatever, it’s going to make you that much more of a standout.

From "CD or No CD," an interview with CD Baby founder Derek Sivers published in Acoustic Guitar, January 2010. Read the full article here. More about Sivers and his current projects here.