One of the linchpins of our touring party is the great Aaron Redfield. Not only is he stupendously good at the multi-limbed hitting of things (like drums and stuff), but he’s a pretty dang great photographer. We’ll be faithfully uploading photos from the shows here, but Aaron is going to cover the in between bits for us – vans, airports, streetwalking, cafes, vintage trawling, spontaneous break dancing competitions, etc. Enjoy!
Here are a few perviously unseen photos from the studio taken during the making of Flags. Enjoy! 
I am a not-so-closet foodie. Food and music are closely related. A beautiful dish has rhythm, notes, harmonies that work together in the same way a good song does. Eating is one of the great joys of my life so I thought I’d do a few food blogs to break up the tedium of my “I’m-making-an-album-no-really-I-am-it’s-coming-I-promise” blogs.
Here’s my favourite top 5 desserts in L.A. I deliberately included a couple you can get outside of this here crazy town too, ‘cos it’s not fair to tempt you with this otherwise. ☺
5. Ice Cream Sandwiches at Diddy Riese in Westwood
Hey blog-reading-people,
I finally got my web team to sort through your questions so I could answer some of them. There were some random questions in there! I enjoyed reading them and getting a glimpse into your brains. Anyway, here is a glimpse into mine. I couldn’t answer all your questions and I tried to keep the answers brief, as I didn’t want this to be encyclopedic and I have an album to write!
Most of the answers to your questions re: songwriting/my process are in my songwriting blog series, but here’s a few more specific things you wanted to know – anonymous questions are ones asked by several people:
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ELEMENTS OF SONG
This first part will be boring or interesting depending on how interested in the legal identity of a song you are! But push through – the blood and guts stuff starts in a few paragraphs time…
In Australia/NZ songwriters are represented by the performers’ rights collection agency, APRA (in the U.S. there are two, ASCAP and BMI; in the UK it’s PRS and I’m unsure about other regions). Every songwriter should join and have their works registered with one of these agencies (it’s free… read more here: www.apra-amcos.com.au/MusicCreators/JoinAPRA.aspx).
Where a music publisher’s job (a company who you can assign your songs to under a specific contract) is to actively promote your music and get it placed in advertisements, TV/film etc (these are called “syncs”) and then collect the income on your behalf from reproductions of your music, organisations like APRA deal with collecting money from performances of your music – radio and TV play, venues, restaurants etc who are legally obliged to inform APRA of what music they are playing on air or in their venue and pay them a fee, which they then pass to you.
Interestingly, when you register a work (a song) with APRA, they consider the song 50% lyric and 50% music, and you are required to report what percentages of these components you composed. A subject of constant debate nowadays (and lawsuits) is what exactly the 50% music element is comprised of (i.e. if a session musician plays a solo guitar line and this becomes an identifying feature of the song, should they be considered part composer?).
The old school view (which I personally side with) is that the basic elements of song are melody and lyric. I’ve always viewed melody and lyric as the X and Y chromosomes of song (or X and X if you prefer) – they are at the core of a song’s identity. Your song sinks or swims on these two components. Someone said something to me as a 15 year old that has always stuck with me… “a great song is one that is just as powerful sung acapella around a campfire as it is through speakers with a full band”.
Hey my friends…
I am taking forever to finish the next blog because frankly, between when I started writing it and now I’ve changed my mind about a bunch of things. That’s creative liberty I suppose.
To tide you over in the mean time, read this brilliant piece Jon Foreman wrote for the Huffington Post: “Goodness Precedes Greatness: A Call For New Heroes In Troubled Times”.
Jon is one of the most talented and prolific songwriters I know and also a supremely good human being. This article doesn’t just make some great points, but is a little glimpse into the well from which Jon draws.
Enjoy!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-foreman/goodness-precedes-greatne_b_322551.html
Brooke
