Alcohol and Songwriting

  • Thread starter Thread starter ChickenStomp
  • Start date Start date
Heartbreak is my drug of choice....

I come up with my best stuff when relationships are crumbling... and they're not always about the relationship either... just better stories, better lyrics, more interesting music. Haven't written a good song for quite some time now actually.... the price we pay!
 
smoking pot definitely does "something" as far as mixing goes... I cant put my finger on it... you will mix differently smoking pot vs. without it...

*shrugs* since I compose on a computer, and hear changes in "real time" as I add/delete/move notes, and add tracks and lines... I guess naturally smoking pot would force different choices, as I am "sorta" doing light mixing while writing the music...

a glass or two of wine is no impediment to writing music, and might be beneficial, but... gettign wasted certainly does me no good...

I should like to clarify too, I mean a puff or two of weed, not rolling up an entire eigth into one giant cannon, LMAO...

since I hit 30 or 32... I noticed one good PUFF does what a whole joint used to do when I was young, lmFao...
 
I'm not talking about getting shit faced-black out drunk. I just mean a couple shots to get buzzed or so
 
ChickenStomp said:
Does anyone else come up with great sounding songs/parts of songs while under the influence? Do you think it just sounds better because you are intoxicated or if you're actually coming up with better sounding stuff. I find that when I drink, my songs are more complex and original sounding I guess. Like some of the chords that I create/find are really cool sounding. I know I'm not the only one that drinks here
Click to expand...
Going for a walk works best for me. In a former life I'd open or light up something and marvel at all the great ideas that came . . . and went. I'm no more talented than I was before, just better focussed.
 
I like my weed but don't much care for drink. However, slide guitar is best played using the bottle from which one is currently drinking.
 
Many years ago I had reconstructive surgery on my hand and the doc gave me a 24 tab script for morphene. The few times I'd ever had anything stronger than aspirin made my head too cloudy to think and I'd put up with the pain instead... This time my wife made me take one to make me sit down and not do anything for a change.... About 30 minutes after taking the first one, while watching tv, I realized that while I was hanging on to every word in the movie, I was also going over the catchy opening line of a song I had tossed around in my head some ten years before. I had tried to recall it forever... thought it was long-forgotten. Within what seemed like just a few minutes, I had all three verses and the chorus locked in my brain and sang it to myself over and over till it was locked in. Even my son who was a 14 year old headbanger liked it. But it didn't get committed to short term memory - and although he wrote down the words for me, they got tossed in the trash when a drink spilled later that evening. Next morning when I woke up, I barely remembered that I had written anything... About a month later, the words finally began coming back to me, and eventually I sat down and worked it out. It's one of my favorites.
Title: Postmark St. Nowhere (c1989 Hamilton Bermuda) Chorus: "Some days I can sit and play, for ever... songs that always seem to pull me through.... with clever lines that bring it all together.....and take me back to days I spent with you.." Nothing like that ever happened to me before or since.
 
It's a razor's edge, the bottle is...

The warm glow of confusion is lovely as long as you can get it with just a couple/few bottles.
When you get to the point of not eating much and slamming down shots of vodka just to get to the Happy Place, you know creativity is the least of your problems.

I have written some good, dark lines that came to me as a combination of booze and creativity, but drink makes you a sloppy performer or engineer in many cases. I find the glow didn't last long enough for me to get a rough demo done while I was in 'the zone.' The lyrics are still there, but not in finished form.

I'm dry now, and I find I can actually still write.

CC.
 
I don't know. I had to think about this one for a while. Yep- alcohol is essential for writing the blues, for multiple reasons. First, it puts you on the path of the great masters, who, by and large, drank themselves to death. Scott James is a special case. He was actually killed by a bottle of poisoned booze given to him by a jealous bartender. I'm not sure if that counts. Secondly, the blues is all about being depressed, and alcohol is one of those rare drugs that people take *because* they're depressed, and it makes them *more depressed*. What's not to love? Thirdly, writing the blues sucks when life is good. It's like when someone asks you, "So how's life treating you?" They don't really want to hear the answer, they're just making small talk. Let's suppose you really told them. Alright, life is good- so you say, "Well, I did the pool maintenance. I took the cat to the vet, and she's fine. My colonoscopy was negative. I got my 3% annual raise, so we went out for Chinese..." You get the picture. Hell, B.B. King could barely make a blues song out of that! Now- let's say your life *sucks*! Then you can say, "Well I shot a man over a card game in Louisiana, but the Feds caught up with me. My woman left me. I went to prison and they took away my truck. I was so lonesome that I found Jesus and signed a 5 digit recording deal with the 700 Club. But then I couldn't stay clean and I'm under indictment. I got the clap from Lindsay Lohan, and it's on the front page of the Enquirer..." See? *Now* you are a world famous blues master! And it all happened because of that miracle drug, ethanol. It's guaranteed to take a life that is good, and make it suck. Not only that, it gives you a convenient excuse for whatever crime you committed. I'll leave it up to y'all to decide whether it's a good thing. or a bad thing, that you can't remember shagging Lindsay Lohan in the courthouse bathroom. Hell, without alcohol, blues would just be a I-IV-V progression. And does weed help? Of course. It takes the edge off the shakes from the alcohol, at least until your liver goes.-Richie
 
I really agree about blues being the only form of music which is really enhanced by alcohol. But I think it's not only the sentiment, the self-pitying emotion, the depression, it's also the simple structure of blues which is so easily understood by everybody, and against which one can appreciate the variations, the departures from the pattern, of the performing artist. The pleasure lies in the disjuncture between the expected structure, and what is actualy happening on stage (or on record)
 
Personally, I find the blues, lyrically, to be among the most boring, predictable, repetitive, self pitying, moany form of music going. Booze or no booze, when hearing yet another boring tale in de blooze, I often found myself thinking "I'm glad your woman left you, the landlord was ruthless in evicting you and the cops beat you up and framed you ! None of that would've happened if you weren't such a drunken self pitying rube. If I was yer woman, I'd leave and pay the cops to beat you up !". If you're going to moan and wallow in self pity, at least be entertaining and inventive about it !
 
Grim- don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel! But see? How could such histrionic doggerel be created without- the wonder drug-ETOH? BTW- We *will* come to Merrie Olde England, probably next spring. We were in the middle planning stages for London in April, when your proto-royalty decided to get hitched and the paparazzi went ballistic. Hotel room? Ha Ha Ha...I'm thinking the gods have an issue with my going to London, but what the hell? I just *know* there's a blues song in there somewhere!
 
I'm not talking about getting shit faced-black out drunk. I just mean a couple shots to get buzzed or so ...

And then one night "a couple shots" just won't get it going so you have five or six, and on and on...

Want to know what a new Porsche looks like? Look up my nose...I put one up there several years in a row.

If somebody wants to drink or do drugs, it's their life. And if they try to rationalize drinking or drug use, it may well be a short one...
 
Ernest Hemingway said, "Write drunk; edit sober." That works for music if you have a method for recalling what you wrote, such as notation and/or sound recording. My experience has been that performances, as opposed to writing, are better done sober.
 
Grim- don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel! But see? How could such histrionic doggerel be created without- the wonder drug-ETOH? BTW- We *will* come to Merrie Olde England, probably next spring. We were in the middle planning stages for London in April, when your proto-royalty decided to get hitched and the paparazzi went ballistic. Hotel room? Ha Ha Ha...I'm thinking the gods have an issue with my going to London, but what the hell? I just *know* there's a blues song in there somewhere!
Click to expand...

I get what you’re saying about the blues. You start with:


Tried to take a trip with my wife to London
Tried to take a nice vacation with my wife to London
But now the young Prince is marrying that gal Middleton

I’m sort of sad, because I’ll have to wait until June
Yes, I’m sort of sad, because I’ll have to wait until June
Seems the paparazzi are booking all the rooms


After a six pack of Leinenkugels to surface all the intense pain and misery and inconvenience you’ve been through trying to book the trip, and a slight edit it comes out as …


My deadbeat daddy left us and my momma, she beat me
Oh that deadbeat daddy left us and my momma, she beat me
Oh Lawdy, I’m cryin’ this ain’t no way for you to treat me

Now here come dat demon woman naggin’ me every day
Yeaaaa, Now here come dat demon woman naggin’ me every day
Can’t take no mo’, I gots to find me a new place to stay


For the record, I think drinking only makes my music sound better, I don't think it makes it better. Cheers.
 
grimtraveller said:
Personally, I find the blues, lyrically, to be among the most boring, predictable, repetitive, self pitying, moany form of music going. Booze or no booze, when hearing yet another boring tale in de blooze, I often found myself thinking "I'm glad your woman left you, the landlord was ruthless in evicting you and the cops beat you up and framed you ! None of that would've happened if you weren't such a drunken self pitying rube. If I was yer woman, I'd leave and pay the cops to beat you up !". If you're going to moan and wallow in self pity, at least be entertaining and inventive about it !
Click to expand...
yeah ...... I'm pretty bluesed-out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top