Funny how all this works

Richard Stooksbury maakte tot nu toe twee albums: ‘Richard Stooksbury’ en ‘South’. Sinds een paar jaar onderhouden Richard en ik een soort correspondentievriendschap, waarin hij mij op de hoogte houdt van het verloop van zijn carrière. Het is interessant om te lezen hoe een goede, maar nog niet echt doorgebroken artiest zijn weg probeert te vinden. Vorige week schreef hij:

“So, i have a week under my belt as it relates to writing songs for a new record. to date, i have three songs that i feel are keepers and a new one creeping into the picture this morning on the walk in to the office. funny how this all works. so four songs in about a week and a half... that's not too bad, huh?

i am hoping to begin recording again by september... though i am currently ahead of myself. i expect to fall behind again and that it will be september and no later. i may start earlier, as i have some new ideas for the new record and i might want to utilize these as i think about them. especially since i have unlimited access to my own studio! perhaps there will be other musicians on this new recording? i can't say for sure but i do feel that with each release i am branching out a little bit... stretching.... either in songwriting or the recording process or some other aspect that i discover that i can figure out and make it a little better... a little bit more my own. i also am listening to more and more different kinds of music for my own personal pleasure. not so many singer/songwriters, or at least fewer that are in the same vein as me. i figure this keeps things fresher.”

Ik schreef hem terug: 'Funny how all this works', you wrote. I wonder: how does that work? How does it start? Someone you meet, some piece of memory, a few notes?

“I have no idea how it works. I keep notebooks with me at all times. Sometimes I write things down... often times not. I forget about it and it comes back (hopefully) later and I write it down then. I keep "fragments" of thought in these books and come back to them later to try to piece together a story or an idea that might have potential to be a song.
These "fragments" could be from the past or from the present... they could be significant to me or mundane, but whichever they have something that makes me think they might be of importance later on. I never really know. I also write poetry and short stories... sometimes the fragments are better suited to one of those pieces and not a song, so I take that route. I just like to write. I never know if it's any good... I just do it. If something gets stuck in my head and I like it after thinking about it 100 times, then I think that it's probably good enough to perform or turn it into a more "permanent" form.”

Zie ook een artikel over Richard Stooksbury op altcountry.nl. En luister naar Listen.