by
[Music]
it was February the 1st of 2016 and I
was working on my resume I had been a
full-time self-employed
singer/songwriter for all of one year
for the eight years before that the
entirety of my adult life I’d always had
a day job and just played music on the
side but after one year striking it out
on my own I was already looking at the
bottom of my bank account and I had to
do something
to make some money but I couldn’t bring
myself to send out my resume so I opened
an email from my mom and my mom was
saying this musician we know is offering
to record covers of love songs for
people to give to their sweethearts on
Valentine’s Day maybe you could try
something like that and I thought well
that’s a great idea but what if I took
it one step further and I offered to
write and record original love songs
that way maybe I could charge a little
more and I’d have a better chance of
making my rent for the next month never
mind the fact that I’d only written two
songs the year before I quickly dove in
and I spent my night making a
questionnaire people would fill out to
tell me about their sweethearts and
setting up a part of my website where
people would place their orders and on
February the second with two weeks until
Valentine’s Day I launched song for your
sweetheart offering to write and record
ten original love songs for Valentine’s
Day so I wasn’t sure if anyone would
take me up on this and I didn’t sell any
songs my first day but on the second day
word got around and the orders started
to come in and by the 10th of February I
had sold all 10 songs and I was being
invited to speak on local radio stations
about my idea so I added another two
songs to promote on the air and I sold
those right away and somehow as if by a
miracle on Valentine’s Day I had
succeeded in writing and recording
twelve original love songs in eleven
days making it the most productive week
and a half of my entire life as a
musician so how did I do it well at the
time I was reading the book lean in by
Sheryl Sandberg and in it she mentions
this mantra done is better than perfect
and that became my motto in writing
these songs I didn’t have the time to
second-guess myself and people had paid
upfront so if I didn’t deliver I wasn’t
to make my rent the next month so I had
to make it work and the more I did the
easier it got it was really just one at
a time so lucky enough the first one I
was writing was for a friend of mine so
that took some of the pressure off and
I’m gonna play it for you but first I
want to tell you a bit of what I learned
in the questionnaire so my friend met
her husband when she was a student and
he was her teacher and it was love at
first sight they declared their love for
each other on the waterfront and
Kamloops BC so I looked up the picture
of what that looks like because I’ve
never been there
and she told me he has these ocean blue
eyes and his favorite piece of clothing
is his Levi’s jeans and he makes her
laugh so hard it feels like her heart’s
always bursting they have this
light-hearted head-over-heels kind of
love and she’s a bit of a sassy lady so
I knew I wanted to write something fun
upbeat and a little bit risque so every
what a song called teach me again
[Music]
we prefer live down by the water with
the mountains looking on even when
you’re gone because you’re always on
[Music]
to those ocean baby won’t you teach me
again you know how to make me laugh so
is always bursty these years together
[Music]
let’s do first to those oceans we had a
lesson it was all about devotion baby
won’t you teach me again
[Music]
baby won’t you teach me again baby won’t
you teach
[Music]
baby won’t you teach me
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you so my friend was kind enough
to agree to appear in a cbc video
interview talking about what it was like
sharing that song with her husband for
the first time and how they laughed and
cried and danced around their kitchen
and the video actually ended up being
broadcast on CBC television across the
country so in the week of Valentine’s
Day my inbox was flooded with requests
from people who wanted a song for their
sweetheart and it was then that I was
finally able to put away my resumes and
instead start a ledger to keep track of
all these requests so in this day and
age is no surprise that it’s difficult
to be an independent musician with the
advent of the internet and home
recording it’s never been easier to get
your music out there but it’s never been
harder to cut through and stand out add
on top of that the fact that we’re
mostly consuming music via downloading
and streaming so for your recorded music
that costs you thousands or tens of
thousands of dollars to make you’re now
earning only pennies or fractions of a
cent on each transaction so in order to
stay afloat financially you need
different sources of income
aside from downloading and streaming
you’re gonna have CDs and merchandise
you’ll have live performance fees
royalties for radio airplay and if
you’re lucky maybe I’ll get grants or
the occasional paycheck for a song being
used in a TV show or a movie but the
trouble with most of these things is
you’re very often waiting for someone to
offer you work whereas with this idea I
was able to create work for myself
in my own field that was really
meaningful that I could feel good about
doing I mean when you think of the
things we give to our loved ones for
Valentine’s Day especially you think of
things like wine and flowers and
chocolate maybe dinner or an appliance
of some kind but these things are all
very temporary they break they wilt they
fade they have calories but a song is
very different it’s something that can
last forever they might try
for the rest of their lives even their
children or grandchildren could learn
how to play it it reminds me of
something the philosopher jean-paul
Sartre said he said you can break the
record
you can tear up the score but the song
would still exist it lives in the realm
of ideas and nothing that happens in
this physical world of objects can
possibly touch it so when I first
started getting pressed for this idea I
thought oh no people are gonna steal my
idea now but then I thought actually
that would be kind of nice because no
matter what no two songwriters are gonna
write the same song about a story and
given how transformative and beneficial
this has been I really do want that
experience for other musicians aside
from it being really meaningful work
that keeps the roof over my head
it’s had a lot of other great benefits I
was recording all of these songs myself
and that’s something I hadn’t done in
about 10 years
so my skills and my equipment and my
programs were all really out of date but
with the time that I had not working a
day job and with some of the money I was
able to earn I could invest in taking
some courses and upgrading my gear so
now I’m a lot more self-sufficient and I
don’t need to hire an engineer every
time I want to demo something so that
has made me a lot more productive and
it’s made me a lot of new fans too nine
times out of ten when someone’s
requesting a song it’s someone I’ve
never heard from before and being a
small independent artist I kind of know
the names of all of my superfans so it
was really surprising to me to see that
people are just interested in a song for
their sweetheart and it’s something that
they’re willing to take a chance on a
new artist for but the best aspect has
been how it’s helped my songwriting as I
mentioned I only wrote two songs the
year before and it had become a part of
my work that I really dreaded doing it
would take weeks or months to finish a
song I never knew what I wanted to say
and after sitting down with my guitar
for a couple of hours and coming up with
maybe one or two lines of music I would
get discouraged and walk away but in
working with these questionnaires I had
a limited set of information to work
with and within those boundaries I could
be as creative as I desired and I
believed that there was a song in there
somewhere so a pattern began to emerge
where the most poetic line that jumped
out at me would become my chorus and the
story of how you met your
and where you are now and where you’re
going would become the logical
chronology of the vs. and basically what
I was doing is creating a worksheet
which is something the song writing
teacher Pat Patterson at Berklee College
teaches his students to do and in
adopting this technique before I had
even heard of it just doing the practice
and finding what worked best for me I
was able to transform something that I
had no confidence in that took a long
time to complete into something that was
a joy to do and that I could feel
confident that I could sit and write a
song in an hour or two so now I have
thirty two of these love songs that have
written by request
that’s enough material for three albums
and their songs I love and I play them
live all the time and it’s opened up
another source of income for me in that
I can actually play wedding gigs now I
used to struggle to play weddings
because so much of my repertoire was
about unrequited love or it was maybe
too political or not family-friendly
enough for a wedding and now I don’t
have to second-guess myself I have a
book of songs that I can play so I can’t
really think of a better way for me to
have improved my songwriting and
improved my livelihood and it’s for that
reason that I think it’d be wonderful to
see other songwriters considering
adopting this as part of what they do to
keep the roof over their heads I’m gonna
play one more song for you and this one
is written for a couple who does a lot
of traveling in particular it’s a song
for the wife and she’s very quiet and
shy her husband is more outspoken so she
keeps him grounded he told me of all the
exotic places they’ve been in all the
places they still want to go and he told
me he’d be lost without her and I
thought it was most poetic when he said
I feel so lucky to have someone who
loves me so unconditionally so I worked
backwards from that to write a song
called your unconditional love
[Music]
it was started one very cold night I
wrapped my arms around you tight while
we waited for the girl to take you home
all those years ago
[Music]
my life
[Music]
I see the world with you
there’s so much left to do so many
places we’ve been I wanna go to misty
woods and snowy
[Music]
they don’t give in
[Music]
your condition always
[Music]
thank you so in closing I just want to
encourage all makers of art and all
creators out there to occasionally bite
off just a little bit more than you
think you can chew there are so many
good ideas out there and great stories
waiting to be told and you’d be
surprised what you’re capable of
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
it was February the 1st of 2016 and I
was working on my resume I had been a
full-time self-employed
singer/songwriter for all of one year
for the eight years before that the
entirety of my adult life I’d always had
a day job and just played music on the
side but after one year striking it out
on my own I was already looking at the
bottom of my bank account and I had to
do something
to make some money but I couldn’t bring
myself to send out my resume so I opened
an email from my mom and my mom was
saying this musician we know is offering
to record covers of love songs for
people to give to their sweethearts on
Valentine’s Day maybe you could try
something like that and I thought well
that’s a great idea but what if I took
it one step further and I offered to
write and record original love songs
that way maybe I could charge a little
more and I’d have a better chance of
making my rent for the next month never
mind the fact that I’d only written two
songs the year before I quickly dove in
and I spent my night making a
questionnaire people would fill out to
tell me about their sweethearts and
setting up a part of my website where
people would place their orders and on
February the second with two weeks until
Valentine’s Day I launched song for your
sweetheart offering to write and record
ten original love songs for Valentine’s
Day so I wasn’t sure if anyone would
take me up on this and I didn’t sell any
songs my first day but on the second day
word got around and the orders started
to come in and by the 10th of February I
had sold all 10 songs and I was being
invited to speak on local radio stations
about my idea so I added another two
songs to promote on the air and I sold
those right away and somehow as if by a
miracle on Valentine’s Day I had
succeeded in writing and recording
twelve original love songs in eleven
days making it the most productive week
and a half of my entire life as a
musician so how did I do it well at the
time I was reading the book lean in by
Sheryl Sandberg and in it she mentions
this mantra done is better than perfect
and that became my motto in writing
these songs I didn’t have the time to
second-guess myself and people had paid
upfront so if I didn’t deliver I wasn’t
to make my rent the next month so I had
to make it work and the more I did the
easier it got it was really just one at
a time so lucky enough the first one I
was writing was for a friend of mine so
that took some of the pressure off and
I’m gonna play it for you but first I
want to tell you a bit of what I learned
in the questionnaire so my friend met
her husband when she was a student and
he was her teacher and it was love at
first sight they declared their love for
each other on the waterfront and
Kamloops BC so I looked up the picture
of what that looks like because I’ve
never been there
and she told me he has these ocean blue
eyes and his favorite piece of clothing
is his Levi’s jeans and he makes her
laugh so hard it feels like her heart’s
always bursting they have this
light-hearted head-over-heels kind of
love and she’s a bit of a sassy lady so
I knew I wanted to write something fun
upbeat and a little bit risque so every
what a song called teach me again
[Music]
we prefer live down by the water with
the mountains looking on even when
you’re gone because you’re always on
[Music]
to those ocean baby won’t you teach me
again you know how to make me laugh so
is always bursty these years together
[Music]
let’s do first to those oceans we had a
lesson it was all about devotion baby
won’t you teach me again
[Music]
baby won’t you teach me again baby won’t
you teach
[Music]
baby won’t you teach me
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you so my friend was kind enough
to agree to appear in a cbc video
interview talking about what it was like
sharing that song with her husband for
the first time and how they laughed and
cried and danced around their kitchen
and the video actually ended up being
broadcast on CBC television across the
country so in the week of Valentine’s
Day my inbox was flooded with requests
from people who wanted a song for their
sweetheart and it was then that I was
finally able to put away my resumes and
instead start a ledger to keep track of
all these requests so in this day and
age is no surprise that it’s difficult
to be an independent musician with the
advent of the internet and home
recording it’s never been easier to get
your music out there but it’s never been
harder to cut through and stand out add
on top of that the fact that we’re
mostly consuming music via downloading
and streaming so for your recorded music
that costs you thousands or tens of
thousands of dollars to make you’re now
earning only pennies or fractions of a
cent on each transaction so in order to
stay afloat financially you need
different sources of income
aside from downloading and streaming
you’re gonna have CDs and merchandise
you’ll have live performance fees
royalties for radio airplay and if
you’re lucky maybe I’ll get grants or
the occasional paycheck for a song being
used in a TV show or a movie but the
trouble with most of these things is
you’re very often waiting for someone to
offer you work whereas with this idea I
was able to create work for myself
in my own field that was really
meaningful that I could feel good about
doing I mean when you think of the
things we give to our loved ones for
Valentine’s Day especially you think of
things like wine and flowers and
chocolate maybe dinner or an appliance
of some kind but these things are all
very temporary they break they wilt they
fade they have calories but a song is
very different it’s something that can
last forever they might try
for the rest of their lives even their
children or grandchildren could learn
how to play it it reminds me of
something the philosopher jean-paul
Sartre said he said you can break the
record
you can tear up the score but the song
would still exist it lives in the realm
of ideas and nothing that happens in
this physical world of objects can
possibly touch it so when I first
started getting pressed for this idea I
thought oh no people are gonna steal my
idea now but then I thought actually
that would be kind of nice because no
matter what no two songwriters are gonna
write the same song about a story and
given how transformative and beneficial
this has been I really do want that
experience for other musicians aside
from it being really meaningful work
that keeps the roof over my head
it’s had a lot of other great benefits I
was recording all of these songs myself
and that’s something I hadn’t done in
about 10 years
so my skills and my equipment and my
programs were all really out of date but
with the time that I had not working a
day job and with some of the money I was
able to earn I could invest in taking
some courses and upgrading my gear so
now I’m a lot more self-sufficient and I
don’t need to hire an engineer every
time I want to demo something so that
has made me a lot more productive and
it’s made me a lot of new fans too nine
times out of ten when someone’s
requesting a song it’s someone I’ve
never heard from before and being a
small independent artist I kind of know
the names of all of my superfans so it
was really surprising to me to see that
people are just interested in a song for
their sweetheart and it’s something that
they’re willing to take a chance on a
new artist for but the best aspect has
been how it’s helped my songwriting as I
mentioned I only wrote two songs the
year before and it had become a part of
my work that I really dreaded doing it
would take weeks or months to finish a
song I never knew what I wanted to say
and after sitting down with my guitar
for a couple of hours and coming up with
maybe one or two lines of music I would
get discouraged and walk away but in
working with these questionnaires I had
a limited set of information to work
with and within those boundaries I could
be as creative as I desired and I
believed that there was a song in there
somewhere so a pattern began to emerge
where the most poetic line that jumped
out at me would become my chorus and the
story of how you met your
and where you are now and where you’re
going would become the logical
chronology of the vs. and basically what
I was doing is creating a worksheet
which is something the song writing
teacher Pat Patterson at Berklee College
teaches his students to do and in
adopting this technique before I had
even heard of it just doing the practice
and finding what worked best for me I
was able to transform something that I
had no confidence in that took a long
time to complete into something that was
a joy to do and that I could feel
confident that I could sit and write a
song in an hour or two so now I have
thirty two of these love songs that have
written by request
that’s enough material for three albums
and their songs I love and I play them
live all the time and it’s opened up
another source of income for me in that
I can actually play wedding gigs now I
used to struggle to play weddings
because so much of my repertoire was
about unrequited love or it was maybe
too political or not family-friendly
enough for a wedding and now I don’t
have to second-guess myself I have a
book of songs that I can play so I can’t
really think of a better way for me to
have improved my songwriting and
improved my livelihood and it’s for that
reason that I think it’d be wonderful to
see other songwriters considering
adopting this as part of what they do to
keep the roof over their heads I’m gonna
play one more song for you and this one
is written for a couple who does a lot
of traveling in particular it’s a song
for the wife and she’s very quiet and
shy her husband is more outspoken so she
keeps him grounded he told me of all the
exotic places they’ve been in all the
places they still want to go and he told
me he’d be lost without her and I
thought it was most poetic when he said
I feel so lucky to have someone who
loves me so unconditionally so I worked
backwards from that to write a song
called your unconditional love
[Music]
it was started one very cold night I
wrapped my arms around you tight while
we waited for the girl to take you home
all those years ago
[Music]
my life
[Music]
I see the world with you
there’s so much left to do so many
places we’ve been I wanna go to misty
woods and snowy
[Music]
they don’t give in
[Music]
your condition always
[Music]
thank you so in closing I just want to
encourage all makers of art and all
creators out there to occasionally bite
off just a little bit more than you
think you can chew there are so many
good ideas out there and great stories
waiting to be told and you’d be
surprised what you’re capable of
thank you
[Applause]
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