I did it!

For the fourth time, I wrote and recorded an entire album in the month of February. It went so well that I've decided to take the basic tracks to the studio for a "proper album" that will hopefully be released in the fall.

So since this is just the early version of another album, it's only $5. Pretty cool, huh? And it has the early, rough, intimate versions, which people sometimes prefer.

This album took a lot of different twists and turns before its completion. "Ghost of a Rose" was the first song I wrote for it, and I assumed it'd be the anchor track. I did end up writing a few other songs in that vein, and it was mean to be the opening track to set the tone. It might be for the actual album. 

But during the last recording session - on the night of the 28th -  "Long Gone Days" just came alive. It had to be the opening track, which changed the dynamic for the whole album. We'll see what happens when I release the real deal.

For now, I'm dang exhausted. This album has basically consumed me the last two weeks. I'm going to bed.

Special thanks to Marshall Nystrom, my musical partner for years, who worked really hard to make this happen. 

As promised, here's an early mix from the sessions! I'm very pleased this song, but I have to figure something better out for the mixes. They're a bit cluttered and I'm not crazy for the sound of the vocals.

"Walls and Bridges" is one of the songs I wrote during the blizzard last week. The lyrics are maybe one of my favorites ever. I feel like they successfully say something clearly without being either too overt or too obscure. Plus they are influenced by my favorite thinkers: Hemingway, Chesterton. Walls and Bridges is the title of a John Lennon album, so he also gets some credit. 

Below are the complete lyrics. Only a few days to go! Will have some sessions with Marshall as the month ends to add things and tidy things up. Hopefully I'll get one more blog in before it's all said and done. 

As always, thanks for the support!

Walls and Bridges
You don't love what you won't fight for
You don't love what you don't defend
In the end it's all we have

There is room for walls and bridges

There is a bridge you wouldn't cross over
There is a bridge that you would burn down
And try not to make a sound as you run away

There is room for walls and bridges

There are so many walls between you and me
Why don't we tear them down?
Only then we'll see

Let's raise a toast to all of the good times
Then throw the glass against the wall
It's last call

There is room for walls and bridges

So I've decided to change the name of the album.

I love Ghost of a Rose, and I chose it because I consider that song to be kind of like my "Imagine" (only less preachy and more self-aware). It was something special. However, it started sounding kind of pretentious to me. Also, Richie Blackmore from Deep Purple had an album with that title. At first I thought that was kind of fun, but then it started seeming kind of lame.

So as of right now - and it could change again - the album is called A Moveable Feast. There are several reasons for this. The most obvious is that it shares the title with an Ernest Hemingway book, and he's one of my biggest influences. But it also touches on something I've always loved about the Catholic Church: the understanding that people need to feast, to celebrate. The rules for "movable feasts" (Hemingway added the "e" so I'm keeping it) are based on the cycles of nature, so there's also the dual aspect of reverence of nature and that rules can be a good thing. 

​As I've already said, this project is shaping out to be different than any of my others. These songs are a combination of light and shadow, of bleakness and optimism, of straightforward meaning and clear, simple metaphor. They are folk songs with pop progressions. Verses and choruses. The songs take their time to unfold. There lot of major and minor chords and moods. 

Part of the album is about the contemporary struggle for of soul, meaning, and truth. Part of it is reflection about feeling lost, about trying to find your place in the world, even as it feels like you're losing everything. There's a lot of optimism though, too, at least a little in every song. "Long Gone Days," which I wrote for my friend Connor Hammergren, is funky and fun. "Things Aren't So Bad" isn't as upbeat as the title suggests, and "Alone" isn't as sad as the title suggests. 

I'm now up to 15+ songs that I've written this month. Eight complete songs will go on the album, along with two instrumentals. Two of the songs just don't fit, although they're better than some of the songs on the album, they'll probably be b-sides (maybe for a Ghost of a Rose single/EP). A couple of them will be grafted into other projects, most likely the overhaul of my discography that I'm working on. 

I got the guitar and vocals done today. This week I also had a session with my frequent musical partner Marhsall Nystrom, where we tracked the two instrumentals that'll be on the album at his studio. I hope to get basic mixes of the songs to my friends soon. With any luck, I'll have a mix or two of a couple more songs up next week. 

It goes live on March first no matter what shape it's in.

There's not much to do when you're stuck at home in a blizzard. Okay, so there's a lot of stuff to do. Cleaning, listening to music, reading, TV watching, etc. Since I do a lot of work on my laptop, there's also that.

But during the blizzard today, I disregarded all that and wrote four songs. Somewhat incredibly, I'm very pleased with each. I'm not sure I've ever written that many songs in one day that I've liked a lot.

The four songs are (in the order I wrote them): "Things Aren't So Bad," "Walls and Bridges," "Chesterton's Last Words," and "Bleak Dreams." They all seemed to pour out of me. Those songs are the best. I felt more like a conduit than the person writing them. Although they bear the stamp of my influences. Walls and Bridges is a John Lennon album title, but the lyrics borrow from Hemingway and G.K. Chesterton.

Speaking of Chesterton, "Chesterton's Last Words" is based on the philosophy of that enormous thinker. He was only a poet, philosopher, journalist, artist, literary critic, and theologian. "Things Aren't So Bad" is written for those who think things are worse than they are, not those who actually have things badly (although many who think they have it badly actually don't, and that's sort of the point). 

Throughout January, I kept having what I eventually referred to as "bleak dreams." They weren't even in black and white, they were in a brownish/gray sort of color. They were all at places and times that mean a lot to me: the fair, Christmas, the baseball field. Although I love them, the dreams made them drab and meaningless, although not irredeemable. The title for "Bleak Dreams" comes from that, but it's a more straightforward song about the sinking feeling that you aren't going anywhere. But, like most of the songs on this album, there's hope: "there's a light/that cuts right through the dark/that ancient inner spark/that always shines."

Looking to track guitar and vocals on Friday so my friends can add their parts next week in time for the deadline. We'll see. That plan is malleable. 

It's 2 AM and I'm still awake - what's wrong with me?

I remember the good old days, back when I'd stay up this late for no reason at all. And I didn't even drink coffee back then, weird. How did I survive?

Now I usually sorta force myself to do the "early to bed, early to rise" thing. So there must be a good reason why I'm still up this late.

Believe me, there is!

I realized tonight that it'd be fun to ask some people who have meant a lot to me to add some instruments to this project. Two of them have gotten back to me and I couldn't be more thrilled! I'm not going to fill you in on the secret of who they are, but one is an internationally recognized drummer. I'm hoping that my other friends pull through and want to help, as I'm really feeling some accordion and pedal steel for a couple of songs, and I can't play either one.

I was so excited that my drummer friend agreed to help me out that I wrote a song just for him to play on. Since he'll be adding percussion, it's more groove oriented than my songs usually are. I went to high school with him, so the lyrics look back on the past affectionately. It's called "Long Gone Days."

Although my other friend hasn't let me know if he'll have time to help me out, I was on such a high from writing "Long Gone Days" that I wrote the basic outline for two more songs that are specifically made for some accordion. 

I ended the night by making a basic outline of what the 10-song tracklist might look like and which of my friends I want to play on each song.

Things are really starting to come together!

Here it is: the first taste of a song from The Ghost of a Rose!

I suppose I shouldn't speak too soon, there have been times when completed songs for these projects have been left off the final album. But I feel great about this track.

"Alone" has been rolling around in my head for a long, long time. Honestly, I'm surprised I haven't done anything with it sooner, as it has a cool feel. I used to refer to it as my Paul McCartney song, but only because it was sort of poppy and melodic. 

Writing songs on the piano influenced me to take another look at this one. It might be the first song I ever wrote on piano. Like most of my songs from my early days as a songwriter, the early versions are about twice as long and thus a lot harder to get into. There is an old recording of it that might include the most overdubs I ever did on my old cassette four-track (12-string guitar, lap steel, bass, organ, harmonica, maracas, vocal). 

I hope you enjoy it! I also hope that there's more to come. 

I did it: I wrote some songs!

So far I've combined two different approaches that I was considering. First, I took the fragments of dark, straightforward lyrics I've been writing lately and put them into a few different groupings. They included some song-ish outlines with titles and choruses.

Then I went with another idea: writing songs on the piano. I sat at the piano for awhile, playing some chords that sounded nice together, and then worked for awhile on a melody. I opened my lyrics to a grouping of lyrics based on a line I particularly liked: "the ghost of a rose." Some of the lyrics fit perfectly, others I riffed based on words from unused lines. 

I'm not usually super high on my songs, especially so early in the songwriting process, but "The Ghost of a Rose" is special. It's kind of like my "Imagine" only more self-aware and without any slight of hand condemnation.

The next day I tried the same approach. To my surprise, it worked almost as well, and I wrote another song in the same vein: "The Wheels" (chorus: "don't be surprised to find/at any time/the wheel can fall off").

Writing these helped me discover something: I love writing songs on the piano! It's more time consuming, and what I write tends to be more ballad-y, but the melodies are far stronger than most songs I write on guitar. It certainly fits the subject matter of the lyrics.

So I guess that's two down, eight to go. Although I do still have to get them past the demo stage.

​I have some ideas for other songs I'm going to do, and even some different approaches, but I don't want to spoil the fun by spilling the beans so soon in the month. Stay tuned!

Deciding to write and record an entire album in February is the easy part. Deciding how to do it is a bit tougher.

I usually go into these albums with some idea of an approach. For 2008's Bluegrass the idea was to just get 10 songs done. I piled up ideas by writing what I called 'sky songs' almost every day: I'd just play chords and sing over them without thinking at all what I was going to do next. I got some ideas that way, but I soon realized that having more definitive ideas would have worked better.

So for 2009's Sketches of the Sun I had more of an idea of what I wanted to do going into it. The idea was to write shorter, punchier, catchier songs. I also wanted to write some songs with riff, as I had rarely done so up to that point. I succeeded to a degree, as five songs were based on riffs ("Drifting Apart," "February Rain," "1234," The Desolate," and "You Were the One") and the songs were a bit catchier.

Because forcing ideas is never a good thing, and it only makes sense to do what's natural, through the month I also wrote more "Erik Ritland" type stuff. This included songs about drifting and the apocalypse ("Wandering") and straightforward folk ("Breaking My Own Heart Tonight," "Woke Up This Morning Feeling Blue," "True Love Wins in the End"). A couple janky rock songs that are really like nothing else I've ever written ("The Desolate," "(I Wanna Meet The) Girl in the Black Dress") rounded out the set.

Last year's Kid Winston was the least work I've done for an RPM album. Since all the songs were based on my earliest attempts at writing, the basic outline of each track was already there. All I really did was tweak. It felt good to finally go back and finish those ideas though. I wrote a lot of songs, especially when I was 16-18, that had good ideas but I never completed successfully. Most included typically cringe-y lyrics for that age. I had tried a few times to re-write some of them but it never felt right. I was finally ready for Kid Winston.

The question is: what should my approach be for this album?

Usually during January I think about some different ways I could do an RPM album if I decide to go for it, and this year was no different. Here's a rundown of the basic ideas.
​
Dark recent lyrics
In the last couple of months I've written fragments of lyrics that are darker and deeper than anything I've written in awhile. They also have the same overarching themes (light and shadow, cultural and personal criticism, detachment, beauty and ugliness, bleak dreams). Making them into something of a concept album might make sense.

Recent lyric exercises
In addition to these fragments, I've also written almost 20 complete lyrics without melodies or anything in the last couple months as well. I don't usually do that; it was almost an experiment to see if I could. Putting them to music could work. 

Erik Ritland: Piano Man?
I usually write songs on the guitar. My songs on piano have a completely different feel: they're usually ballads, they're more melodic. It'd be tempting to write an entire album of songs on the piano, something I've never done.

Leftovers
I've written, recorded, and released 11 projects (6 EPs and 5 albums). While there are extra songs from each project, there is also a lot of material I've written between each one that never really fit on any of them. I looked through my old demos and, to my surprise to be honest, found 20 almost complete songs that I like a lot that kinda just got lost. This would be the easiest, but least fun and creative, option.

I guess we'll see how things go when I sit down to write. Maybe I'll go with some combination of the above. It isn't always easy to get to 10 songs, even if you have a lot of ideas.

The RPM Challenge made a songwriter out of me.

There's no prize for participating (as their website says, it's a challenge, not a contest), songwriters just do it to see if they can. The ambition and discipline of writing and recording an entire album in a month is exhilarating. Songwriting gets lost in the shuffle unless you have a deadline. 

When I've participated in the RPM challenge, I've thrived.​

RPM Album #1: Bluegrass (2008)
Bluegrass (2008) was my first RPM album. My goal was just to get it done. There was no overarching theme or outlook I was going for, I just wanted to do it. I did want each song to have different instrumentation so it didn't get boring, and I achieved that goal. It ended up including straight-up folk, a bluegrass instrumental, three full-band songs (I play bass and drums), some weird pop/folk, and a couple songs about the apocalypse. I was reading a lot about 2012 at the time. Highlights included "Firelight" (possibly my most popular song), "(I Can See The) End of Everything," and the title track. 

RPM Album #2: Sketches of the Sun (2009)
2009's Sketches of the Sun was a miracle album. By the last few days of that February I only had a couple sketches of songs (hence the title) and one recording that I didn't like. I knew I had to work the last few days of the month and wouldn't have time to get it done.

So one night I called off work for the next day, drank a bottle of wine and a six-pack, and wrote and recorded the entirety of the album from scratch. Most of the songs weren't even completed.

I worked from 10pm-7am, recording the vocals last, and you can tell. I was also sick. Not all heroes wear capes.

I had two songwriting goals for the album: to write more riffs and to make the songs punchier/poppier. I executed each pretty well. Then I wrote a couple folk songs that I threw in there too. Highlights and fan favorites: "Drifting Apart," "(I Wanna Meet The) Girl in the Black Dress," and "Woke Up This Morning Feeling Blue."

RPM Album #3: Kid Winston (2018)
I don't think Kid Winston is as good songwriting-wise as Bluegrass or Sketches, but it gave my songwriting a boost, and it might be my most meaningful RPM collection.

For the album I re-visited some of my earliest attempts at songwriting. I tend to overthink when I write, which makes me give up and get discouraged, but for these songs the pressure was off since I was completing old material. Thus, I re-discovered how to just "let it go" and write the damn song.

I also thought back to the albums and bands I was listening to at the time, the books I was reading, and where I was at philosophically. It was like getting inside the head of a fictional character, it's crazy. I'm not super thrilled that all the songs are solo acoustic, but they were all that way when I was writing the songs initially, so I suppose it fits the concept.

The monotony is broken by four instrumentals. Two of them ("Another Day pt. I (reprise)" and "Silver Apple") are bits of the first two songs I ever wrote. Meaningfully, I recorded them on my first guitar (that I wrote them on) in the house I grew up in. The other two were written and recorded on February 28 on a piano at my day job while I was supposed to be working. "Kid Winston" is named after what I used to call myself in high school, "Dumke and Kaprosy" after two of my influential high school teachers.

This Month: ?
I haven't definitely decided what I'm going to do for the album this month. I have a few different ideas, and I'll share them in a blog tomorrow. Who knows, maybe I'll have a few songs written by then. 

A few days after this blog was released, Erik decided to tentatively call the album The Ghost of a Rose, hence the title of the piece.