The other day I was going through some old music files on my hard drive when I came across some songs that I had recorded over a decade ago while we lived in Europe. Listening to old recordings of yourself is a little bit like leafing through your high school yearbook. Song styles and recording techniques change like hair styles. These songs were definitely mullet-era. I wrote different kinds of songs back then. I wrote and played while looking through a different grid than I do now. Back then I wrote rock songs mostly. Anthems even. I liked the huge guitars and the take-no-prisoners groove patterns. I even remember occasionally jumping off speaker cabinets and stuff. There was also a bit of recklessness in how I wrote. Now that there are more lines around my eyes I choose my battles and my chord changes, a bit more carefully. Hmmm.
One song in particular caught my interest because it really took me back to a time, a place and an emotion. Almost like a taste. A taste worth remembering. In the summer of 1998 we had traveled in our van from Germany to a small village on the coast of the Black Sea in Romania (In those days that was a 4 day journey due to bad roads in Romania). We were there to see our friends Mark and Coreen Biech who were (and still are) heading up a humanitarian project there. We had a sound system with us and a full band entourage and we were doing concerts as we went; just spur of the moment concerts really. We would set up in a village square (or a pub if the owner let us) and play. Our Eastern Europe Spontaneous Combustion Tour! Usually we had a large crowd form very quickly. Back in those days if you lived in a Romanian village you didn't see a lot of people from the west. Especially rock bands from Canada/Germany who did free, loud concerts in the middle of your town!
At one point I broke a string on my stratocaster so I turned to Eric Funk, our drummer and told him to just jam on a groove for awhile while I changed the string. He started playing this cowbell latin feel and the rest of the band joined in. While I was changing the string I started singing along. Making up the song on the spot. By the time I got back to the microphone I had a brand new song that we ended up jamming on for almost 1/2 hour. The audience loved it. It was the best song of the night for sure. It was reckless and unorthodox. Even unprofessional some would say.
I remember doing stuff like that often back then. Off the top of my head, spontaneous, jam-based, joyful moments that included both audience and band members in the creative process. I think my songs are better crafted now. More eloquent and graceful (thank God). They also are passionate and reflect my current stage in life so I do believe I am on the right track and offering something genuine. But this old recording reminded me that part of good art is taking risks. Sometimes it's not as important to be perfectly on pitch and in tune than it is to be exploratory (I realize this is not fresh news to most artists from Pete Townshend to Niel Young to .. I don't know..Taylor Swift? ) There's some joy in that and I want to keep that joy and I think, to a certain degree I think I have. Otherwise I probably would have hung up the guitar awhile ago.
We recorded that song later that year. Take a listen on my songs page. It's called I am A Temple. The Romanian project is still alive and well. Check it out http://normstrauss.com/romanian-project
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