Mason's Children

First order of business: if you have a query that needs critting, get thee on over to Agent Carrie's blog, where you could get your query critted by an agent who knows her stuff, AND you could get your first 100 pages critted. Go, go!

Now on to the matter at hand. If you don't know I'm a Deadhead, you haven't been paying much attention. The hint would be the number of times I post a video here, or reference a song. Anyway, I've often been tempted to do a post titled something like, "My 5 Least Favorite Grateful Dead Songs." Why? Because it would be kind of fun, and because, quite frankly, it's a lot easier than picking my top 5 favorite songs. Favorites are changeable, at least for me. Depending on the time of day, the time of year, my mood, or what I'm listening to, the lineup of favorites can shift, with things moving up or down the list, or dropping off entirely. Least favorites, on the other hand, are pretty well cast in stone. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Anyway, I decided not to do it, largely because I figured it might only actually be fun for me, and, quite frankly, if any of you actually listened to something like Let Me Sing Your Blues Away* you might throw yourself off a bridge, and I wouldn't want to have that on my conscience (At this point, you might be tempted to follow that link. Don't do it. Or at least don't blame me if you do--you have been warned).

But one of those songs that's immutable on the bad list has been worming its way into my brain lately. When I sit down to write, I usually go to the Live Music Archive's Grateful Dead section and click "Shows on this day in History". January, 1970 was the busiest January in Grateful Dead history, and this song appeared in about half the shows. So it comes up a lot when searching this way. It's called Mason's Children, and here it is as performed on January 2, at the Fillmore East, their first song of 1970:


This period was an interesting one for the band, a time of transition. They were still jamming and putting together long blocks of music, but they were also writing more songs with maturing lyrics and, influenced in part by their friendship with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young) and their own interests in folk and bluegrass, their sound was changing. In 1970 they released two studio albums, about five months apart, that sounded nothing at all like their three prior studio albums. The stripped-down, almost country sound to Workingman's Dead and American Beauty stood in such sharp contrast to Anthem of the Sun or Aoxomoxoa (yeah, I don't really know how to pronounce that one, either) that they might have been recorded by a different band entirely. In a way, maybe they were.

The band recorded Mason's Children during the Workingman's Dead sessions in the spring of 1970, but by that time they had already dropped it from their live shows after 15 total performances. No one from the band ever said why it went; it might have been that it was too difficult to sing well, though that certainly never stopped them from performing other songs. I suspect the reason they dropped it is because, quite frankly, it didn't fit. Though it was written after songs like Casey Jones and Uncle John's Band, both of which ended up on the album and get radio play to this day, Mason's sounded nothing at all like their new material. It sounded, in fact, like something that belonged on their debut album (listen to this to see what I mean).

As writers, we often have a lot of stuff lying around, clamoring for our attention. The short stories that we intended on shaping up for publication. The novel that couldn't get an agent. The novel that did get an agent, but couldn't get a publisher. These are pieces that we often hold close to our hearts, personal stories, first stories, maybe, and it's always tempting to go back and revisit them--they're good, we think, they deserve to be shared. And maybe we think that when this next thing gets published and does well, we'll be able to leverage our success into getting these pieces out there--it certainly happens. Rather than spend a whole lot of psychic energy or precious writing time on those pieces, we really need to consider something: just as a singer's voice changes with time, so do our voices, and so do the things that matter to us. The themes and stories we were so driven to write about when we were 25 might not feel quite so important two, three, ten years later. The voice may be all wrong. Sometimes we can look at an older piece we loved and think, "That doesn't even feel like me!" Maybe its day has come and gone, and the best thing to do is to leave it alone. Move on to something new.

Have you ever left a piece behind because it just no longer fit? Do tell. Thanks, and have a great weekend!



*I feel the need to point out that, though this song is truly awful, I have nothing but respect for keyboardist Keith Godchaux and the amazing contributions he made during his years with the band.

The Voice

The high school had a fundraiser Friday night, a musical event in the school auditorium. In the course of some 2-1/2 hours, a number of acts, including students and teachers, performed a variety of mostly rock-based songs (perhaps the oddest moment was listening to the school's bandleader sing Stacy's Mom Has Got It Going On). Especially nice to see was the vast breadth of music embraced by current students. In my day, it felt like every band at our school's rock night played heavy metal. Friday night, we were treated to several songs written by kids, along with covers of the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and Neil Young; there was a group that played Celtic-style hard rock, a la the Dropkick Murphys; a current Top-40 hit whose name escapes me; two different Peter Gabriel songs by two different acts; and one from the Mamas and the Papas. The kids really covered the spectrum there, which is much better than at the  Cabaret Night a couple years ago, when every other girl sang an Adele song. I like Adele, but it was a bit much.

There was some skilled musicianship on display, and some clumsy, sloppy stuff, too, which is part of the fun. I have no doubt that some of these kids will be able to have successful careers as working musicians, particularly as their individual and ensemble skills improve, but I don't think any of them will be headliners, at least not as far as singing goes; the truth is, vocally at least, these kids just sound too much like everybody else. Of course, we can never predict these things with any real accuracy, but I don't think anyone there was likely to become the Next Big Thing.

In music, there are trendsetters and copycats. Looking back 50 years, the Beatles stood the music world on its head. Nobody sounded like them, and the world ate them up. That spawned the British Invasion, and the airwaves were inundated with copycats and sound-alikes. The Dave Clark Five, Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Searchers, The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, The Who, The Kinks – all were bands that had, at least in those early days, a similar sound and style to the Beatles. All were gobbled up by record companies looking to ride the Beatles' coattails to stardom and a big payday.

But while those bands had success, none of them could match the Beatles in terms of volume of hits, popularity, or cultural impact. In terms of groups, only the Stones and The Who came close in terms of impact, and we'll toss the Kinks in there, too, though they're really a tier below. The other bands hung on for a while, and a number of successful careers came out of that era (think Steve Winwood, Graham Nash, and just about everyone who ever played with the Yardbirds), but what separated those big three 'Beatles copies' from the rest? They developed a unique voice, a unique sound, a unique style, that separated them from the rest of the pack. They may have gotten signed because of some resemblance – real or imagined – to the Beatles, but they ultimately made it because they were different. And really, really good. This is a trend we see in the music business all the time.

As writers we hear a lot about 'voice'. Voice is a particular style, a rhythm and a flavor that belongs to you, and you alone. It's your vocabulary, it's the way you put words together, the way you describe your worlds, and it's something you have to find on your own. It's part of what sets you apart from the rest of the pack, and it's one of those slippery things that is hard to pin down. Is voice natural? Can you teach it?

Honestly, I don't know the answer to either of those questions. But voice is one of the things that separates us from every other person writing in our genre. We can't be copycats. If you want to stand with the greats, you have to develop your own style, find your own voice.