Songwriting

Songs are the heart of music, and songwriting style can easily fall into two types. The serious songwriter/musician will usually focus on the skill of playing and craft of writing. (Basically, it takes years of skill and dedication to approach music in this way.) The DIY songwriter usually just grabs an idea and runs with it. It doesn't matter if you don't have a great voice, great skill on a particular instrument or the best recording equipment. You just roll with it.

My affinity with indie music and indie culture stems from the equality of this approach. In many ways, anyone can do it, if you have the drive. Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) said he prefers music made by non-musicians over real musicians. If you take a close look at indie rock, you'll see what he means. The approach can really go all the way from Talking Heads and The Ramones, to Pavement, to The Bicycles. If it's done right, it always rocks.

So, putting stuff together for Egger gave me a chance to put my money where my mouth is. I recorded a lot of stuff on my own, and then brought some of that into the studio to record with the guys. The process of doing end-to-end demos on my own was a really great experience, and it really gives you a chance to find interesting ideas that you never would find any other way. It is basically the exact flipside of the same cool discovery process you get when you write and record as a band, and the group creates things you never could. Throw the DIY approach on top of everything, and you end up getting stuff like this:

Egger - Street Fighter Demo

This is the last demo that I did for the album, where I played and sang everything. It is always so cool to see where you can go with this kind of thing. Rough around the edges, but I love the spirit.

Even better is when you get a chance to go into a studio with that same demo and record with a bunch of hot shots to get a final result like this:

Egger - Street Fighter - 2005