Project Together

Project Together - featuring Keb’ Mo’ & Lauren Lucas

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Project Together

Project Together

Keb’ Mo’, Lauren Lucas, Bob DiPiero, Pat McMakin

I don’t always know when my music is truly making a difference in someone’s life. We write and record songs with the intent of moving people, but after we throw these creations out into the world, we rarely know whose ears they’re hitting or if they’re moving anyone at all.

From time to time, I’ll get an email or direct message on my socials saying, “I played your song at my wedding.” Or there was that one time I was invited to sing a song live as a proposal (true story! And she said, “yes!”). Those are moments when I know, without a doubt, that something I was a part of hit home.

I got to experience a life-changing musical moment recently. I want to tell you about it.

A few months ago, I was asked to record a duet for an international marketing campaign for Canadian National (CN) Railway Company. This was a dream gig in so many ways. For starters, my duet partner was one of my musical heroes: multi-Grammy award winning blues/Americana artist, Keb’ Mo’.

I’ve been a fan of Keb’s music since college and even performed one of his songs for my senior project to graduate from Belmont University. I’ve heard it said you shouldn’t meet your heroes. Meeting Keb’ Mo’ did not disappoint. He was as kind and authentic as I expected him to be. I loved getting a bird’s eye view of his recording process, but most of all, I enjoyed our conversations in between takes.

Ocean Way Studio A

Lauren Lucas, Keb’ Mo’ & CN Employees

Getting to record a song written by hit-makers, Bob DiPiero and David Kalmusky, in historic Ocean Way Studio A wasn’t a bad deal, either. Pat McMakin, along with David, manned the ship in the producer seat, with Mills Logan engineering.

Here’s where the real magic starts to happen: CN, a company with over 23,000 employees spanning across North America, held auditions to find 14 musicians to help us record the song. Most of these folks had never met each other. Very few had ever been to Nashville, and even fewer had stepped foot into a recording studio.

Given the bad press lately about derailments and spills, it’s easy to forget how integral trains are to our every day lives. I learned that one triple-stacked train car replaces 10,000 eighteen wheelers on the road. I also learned that more women work in the railway company than I expected, including the CEO and many of it’s engineers. Two women train engineers joined us for this recording.

It was heartwarming to see these 14 strangers connecting over 2 commonalities: a love for music, and pride in a company where their jobs are demanding, isolating and often times dangerous. They bravely sang or played their solo for each other while being amplified (some for the first time), and with video cameras up in their faces!

Taillight TV documented the entire studio experience. They even traveled to all 14 employees’ hometowns to get B roll footage.

What you are about to see in this video is stunning scenery of Canadian countryside, footage from our studio process recording the song called, “Together,” behind-the-scenes interviews from employees and Keb’ Mo’, and the huge hearts that guide the spirit of CN.

Just a few weeks ago, several of these CN employees had to evacuate their homes due to wildfires. These 14 people, once strangers, now see each other as brothers and sisters because of their shared bond in Nashville. They sprang into action, sending train loads of supplies and doing anything they could to help.

The CN employees saw first hand that no matter where you are, or how autonomous the working conditions, business and life mean more when we do it together.

Heck, Pat, David, Keb’ and I could have recorded this song and sent it to CN to enjoy. But it wouldn’t have touched them the way this experience did.

It only matter because we did it together. Push play below to enjoy the song and video of Project Together.

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Credits:

Recording Team

Mills Logan, Pat McMakin, David Kalmusky, Lauren Lucas

Executive Producer: Pat McMakin

Song Producers: Pat McMakin, David Kalmusky

Guest Artists: Keb' Mo', Lauren Lucas

Production Coordinator: Bridgette Slater

Audio Team Engineer: Mills Logan

Asst Eng: Katelyn Prieboy, Wolf Robinson

Mixed by: David Kalmusky

Songwriters: Bob Dipiero, David Kalmusky, Marc Pavlica

SESSION MUSICIANS Leader and Drums: Chad Cromwell

Keyboards: Jeff Roach

Bass: Marc Rogers

Electric Guitar: Sol Littlefield

Acoustic Guitar: Bryan Sutton

Electric Guitar: David Kalmusky

Video Team —

Video Producer: Matt Houser

Video Director: Justin Key

Production Coordinator: Taylor Campbell

Director of Photography: Tyler Oaks

Camera – Steadicam: Trent Millspaugh

Camera – Broll: Maria Valetta

1st Assistant Camera: Kenny Herron

2nd Assistant Camera: Quentin Lesser

Camera Utility: Sheila Dunaway

Gaffer: Barrett Depeis

Key Grip: Kitt Fresa

Swing: Luke Lamar

Audio -

Doc Crew: Hunter Vickers

Production Assistant: Patrick Tyler

Production Assistant: Kristen Herbert

CN TALENT:

Anuoluwapo (Anu) Adeola Brian Chojnacki Claire Levesque Eugenia Kefallinos James (Jimmy) Mitchell Jeffrey Aitchison Jonathan Moorman Mariah Lambertus Mark Girgis Rick Laboucan Ryan Whittle Sneha Cherian Timothy Evans PROJECT TEAM: Mark Seland Bridgette Slater Sunny McKechnie Marc Pavlica Alessia Longo Cathy Stojak Sheila Bourque

Recorded at: Ocean Way Nashville, Addiction Studios, Curb Studios

How to Write a Song When You’re Out of Ideas

If you are a songwriter, then you have a problem.

Relax. I’m not talking about Hemingway-sized alcoholic tendencies or crazy dark mood swings (although, many creative writers have those problems, as well). Your problem as a writer is a blank page. Our job as songwriters is to take the essence of an idea, marry it with emotion and make it rhyme in 15 to 20 lines of lyric.

So, how are we going to fill that page?

In my experience with co-writing and talking to my peers in the songwriting community, it seems no one finds inspiration the same way. Some people start with a lyric idea and don’t even consider melody until the lyric is written. Others vibe out on a melody and let nonsense words or syllables fall out until they turn into actual words. There are countless other ways. Let’s look at a few of my favorites.

I’m going to share with you 4 ways to find the inspiration you need to write your next song, even if you don’t have any ideas.

1. Make inspiration, don’t wait for it. Stop the scroll! Yup, you heard me. Turn off the smart phones, TV and laptop. Plan 30 minutes, an hour, 3 hours - whatever you’ve got. Discipline yourself to stay focused on creativity for that amount of time. What happens in this time doesn’t have to be active writing. In fact, it’s probably not going to be. The flip side of turning off all distractions is that you sit in a quiet room with an empty head waiting for brilliance to strike. If that’s your strategy, you’ll likely be waiting or a long time. Then, you’ll just get frustrated coming up with nothing.

   In the time you’ve set aside for yourself, do things that inspire creativity. You might strum your guitar, or brain dump into a journal. Perhaps you already have a lyrical hook burning a hole in your brain. So, maybe you take 30 minutes to write as many rhyming couplets as you can think of for that hook.

   If you do any of these things during your distraction-free creative time, then that would be a good day’s work. You’re teasing out inspiration. The more you set aside quiet time for creative play, the more often inspiration will appear.

2. Read. Let’s be honest, there are no new ideas. We’re all subconsciously “borrowing” from everything we’ve ever heard or experienced and putting our own spin on it. We need input in order to have output. A former publisher of mine used to tell me, “You can’t write if you don’t read.”

   Tom Douglas (“The House that Built Me,” “Little Rock”) told me that he reads the news, the Bible and a piece of fiction every day as part of his daily writing process.

   Hey, if it’s good enough for Tom Douglas, it’s good enough for me.

3. Dare to suck. This might be the most important step. It took me years to feel comfortable opening up to my co-writers with ideas or lines that weren’t quite perfect. Even now when I write by myself, I have trouble letting everything flow out without major self-editing. At this point in the writing process, it’s just a big ol’ brainstorm. And here’s the thing about brainstorming: there is no such thing as a bad idea. When you say (or write down) everything that’s on your mind during brainstorming, one of three things will happen: 

   1. Ideas build upon each other. Whatever you say will likely spark a new idea in yourself or your co-writer.

   2. Sometimes, you just need to get the mental cobwebs out in order to get to the good stuff.

   3. You’ll solve your problem and finish your song.

   I can’t promise you a hit song, or even a cut, but I can promise you the sooner you dare to suck, the better writer you’ll be.

4. Quit. Sometimes a song just won’t behave. The momentum dies, you’re frustrated and the meter or rhyme isn’t feeling quite right. Don’t force anything. Just quit! Not for good — for a few hours or maybe for the day. Go grab lunch. Take a walk. Movement is a great way to get yourself unstuck.

   Sometimes we’re just too close to the idea to see how the story should go. When your brain is fried, pushing through will likely just make you more frustrated and you won’t get any further. Or worse, you’ll start phoning it in just to make the line rhyme or the phrase fit. Give your brain the mental break it needs and come back fresh. You’ll likely see the problem and be able to fix it quickly when you revisit the song.

Every writer finds inspiration a little bit differently, and often no one finds it the same way twice. Do you have any tried and true ways of finding inspiration to write and teasing out new ideas? Let me know in the comments. I want to hear them!

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Vintage

Earlier this week, I received a text from my friend, John, telling me that New Country Brew is featuring Farewell Angelina's recording of, "Vintage!" New Country Brew is a radio show syndicated in 43 stations around the country and in the UK on CMR Nashville. How cool is that?! 

Many of you know that Farewell Angelina is a sisterhood I'm so proud to be a part of. Once an Angelina, always an Angelina. And I'm thrilled to have written three of the songs on their current EP. These women have worked so hard and are kicking butt on the road!

Vintage is one of my personal favorites that I've written with FA. Nic, Andrea, Lisa and I penned this tune with long-time friend and musical badass, Joe West. It was inspired by one word that Joe threw out as an idea: vintage. 

We wrote this tune at Joe's gorgeous home studio out in the country. His studio is built inside of an old barn with platinum records hanging on the walls and the random Grammy award sitting on the studio console. No big deal. 

The acoustics, lighting, and entire vibe of this place is conducive for songwriting magic. It took a while to wrestle the lyric down, but finding the lyrical angle is probably the most fun for me. Once we got a handle on it and a sweet guitar riff, it flowed like wine. I even got to squeeze a line in the chorus about my husband's '68 Camaro. I won some major bonus points for that one on the home front. 

Here's an acoustic songwriter take of the tune from yours truly. See if New Country Brew is syndicated in your area and crank it up! And, for sure, check out Farewell Angelina's studio recording of, "Vintage" off of their new EP.

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