Recommendation: Song Work
Listening to music almost constantly, and pulled by the yen of making creative work, I decide to try writing a song every few weeks. I usually give up. I love playing my simple form of guitar and belting out songs that others have written, but I’ve only ever written two songs in my life, both a long time ago, both about cowboys or pirates.
When I sit down to write, I make it through a couple of rhymes. I ask what should this song be about? I question what any song is about. I wonder why anybody would try to do this, then finally I just play some more SHOVELS & ROPE songs that already, thankfully, exist.
Joe Pug is a name I’ve heard for a long time, yet for whatever reason didn’t delve into his songs. But on the strength of his name I started listening to his podcast THE WORKING SONGWRITER. These interviews thrum with the energy of conversation between a natural connector and his fellow singer-songwriters. He can, with the background of personal experience, compel his guests to expound upon their music, the course of their careers, creativity, and craft the way that someone from the outside couldn’t. The results are organic, honest, engaging, charming, inspiring. Pug is as likely to gush over a particular song as he is to ask big-picture questions about art and commerce, family and freedom.
These conversations humanize sometimes-mythic figures while also shedding light on the grit that it takes to make a creative living.
Since becoming a podcast listening, I’ve become a Pug listener. His folk, like the podcast, are heavy and light, pensive and human.
Some podcast highlights:
The interview with Joe Ely sparked my imagination. One morning, I recorded the hot song LORD OF THE HIGHWAY with a guitar on my phone and sent it to Adam without warning.
The Milk Carton Kids are as frank and thoughtful as you’d expect.
Slaid Cleaves is the epitome of a working artist.
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