The One with the Sonic Boom

There was a period of roughly ten years of my life when I was writing lyrics and making songs like crazy (by my own standards anyway). I tried to write down words on paper as fast as they popped up in my head, and tried even harder to capture melodies that were fluttering by my ears. This was the season of my life where I thought I was going to be a prolific songwriter and lead vocalist of a (world!) renowned band. It was a desire that had been burning in my heart for a long time.

Over the course of that ten-year-musically-infested span of time, I have met some of the most gifted guitarists and songwriting collaborators who have helped unleash the flood of creativity that have been held back by the dam of solitude and boredom. If I were a flickering lyric writer at the time, my guitarist friends were the high-octane gasoline that lit me up brighter than a wayward bush fire.

We would play music together like there was no tomorrow, and write songs like our lives depended on it. When I came prepared with words, my lyrics would become more vibrant once set to their riffs and rhythms. When they came armed with tunes, their sounds would open up my cache of words, which would flow freely onto the music they made with their instruments. When we all came with nothing, we would pluck songs from out of nowhere, and put our hearts and souls into them like they were newborn babies handed down to us from the delivery room.

I remember collaborating with Johan. Back then, he was a college professor with a wide musical exposure in the city. He had gigs with other groups and we would occasionally meet to hammer out some songs. One such instance was on the roof deck of the newspaper company I used to work for. He and I were trying to make the most of my lunch hour mashing up my words with his chord progressions. We came up with a lot of forgettable tunes (because I couldn't actually recall what those songs were like) and a handful of gems.

From intermittent time spent with him over the years, we came up with No Other, Automobiles, and Good. I want to share them here because I believe I just got another shot of lyrical and musical inspiration today, which I'm hoping will last much longer than ten years. And if it does, this will serve as a preview of greater things to come.