Devachan Music - Community Room

Another influence on my approach to writing for other people is my long career as an accompanist, mostly in Irish music. Accompaniment is an art unto itself, but it involves a spirit of receptivity and support. You create a beautiful frame to highlight another musician's playing which is the focus of attention. You work with the elements that are not receiving direct attention. But this is a powerful sphere in which to operate; because people are often more affected by what they are hearing indirectly than what they are focusing on. This is a great responsibility too, because it can be invasive. You must treat people with respect and not manipulate.

Writing songs for others to sing can feel, energetically, very similar to accompaniment in some ways. As the writer, you stand behind the singer; they are your mask, as it were. It involves a certain sacrifice, viewed in one way, but is an incredible freedom in another way. This relationship is intensified if you actually write a song with a particular singer in mind, which I have only done a few times.

At its best, I have sometimes felt that I have listened to someone's singing enough that I am writing a song with and not just for them; that I am letting myself be a mouthpiece for something they need to say, and can sing eloquently once written, but cannot directly put voice and music to themselves. Working with them on final shaping of the song, or even co-writing, flows naturally out of this kind of energetic relationship with their voice and performance. It's a little like being a tailor or an architect.

Of course, I don't write songs to pre-ordered themes; so some idea has to come alive for me to seed this particular dance. It may be a song about my relationship to that person in some symbolic sense, or my view of something in our two lives that resonates in sympathy. This is how I wrote the two songs that Alison Krauss recorded, and also how I wrote "Sleepy Eyes" after hearing Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum play a local concert.

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