Flying by the seat of your pants, playing a miss-assembled guitar (like the one left) and generally just doing as you please for the sake of it is something we are less inclined to explain as we get older. Of old I would write and edit and edit and edit work before I would let anyone see it and yet recently I posted a Christmas story straight out there flaws and all. And though I haven't ever felt too troubled by such things, this week I did something I have actually never done before - though it relied on the cooperation of another. On Sunday I wrote a brand new song, on Monday I let my colleague and friend Hannah Curtain hear it and on Friday we played it live after one rehearsal half an hour before we went out - just like that. Hannah sang it with a wonderful soul voice and to be fair was superb (and indulgent of me) though I played fine, even if I say so myself. So ok, a small creative risk in real time and no one gets hurt. I did similar in the summer and played a song at the 'Make Every Word Hurt' pre-symposium evening at the University of Winchester, which I hadn't just written, I'd had the tune and chorus for a while it was just a case of finishing the verse. This new song was brand new, the tune the words, the hook on the chorus all fell together in around ten minutes in my study last Sunday and it went down very well indeed. Given time I will work on the lyrics, maybe change the theme a little but that's for another day. I also played a song called Dance With Me, a version of which I will post below and a song called Hold Me which Stevie Simkin played lap steel on - what a treat to hear. That song has been around for a while too - and its actually on someone else's album (Maraid O'Donnell and Lorna Bird as Loobie) but that's another story. Its just a note to remind myself how much I enjoy playing. It was right for me to stop, my kids took all the time in the world but now they are off, and now I have a new Martin D16 which for me is the perfect guitar. It has all the feel and sound of everything I like in a guitar, right down to the matt finish. Not much of a post for a Sunday morning I guess, but hey ho, there you go. This is not the new Martin, I will post a clip of that in time - happy Sunday:
