I am facilitating a blues songwriting workshop at Java Joe’s from 4:00 to 5:30 pm on Sunday afternoon, January 11th, prior to my gig there in the evening. The workshop is free and open to anyone interested in blues songwriting.
This is part of a project called “2015 – Year of the Blues Songwriter”. The 100th anniversary of Willie Dixon’s birth happens on July 1st, 2015. I am trying to fire up a grass-roots movement to commemorate Willie Dixon’s contribution to the blues and encourage musicians to write better blues songs.
In my view, nobody is more responsible than Willie Dixon for the surge in popularity of blues music in the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to his work as a songwriter, blues songs had mostly developed in the oral tradition where musicians recombined phrases and verses from existing songs to make their own versions. This formulaic approach remains common.
By the time Dixon was a staff musician at Chess Records in the 1950s, blues music had given rise to jazz, Broadway tunes and pop music. Dixon took musical elements such as bridges and choruses and resorbed them into the blues, creating what has become the modern blues tradition. In contrast with the formulaic approach, he wrote about novel subjects and used contemporary language to sing about city life.
I believe blues would see another surge in popularity if we wrote songs that dealt with our modern day-to-day life, using contemporary language and giving more weight to the basic craft of songwriting.
Bob Kieser, the editor of Blues Blast magazine told me recently, “I think few people listen to the words in Blues much anymore”. True. And when you consider that young people listen to word-intensive music (hip hop and rap) these days, it’s no wonder they don’t pay much attention to Blues.
Workshop Topics.
Historical perspectives.
- The oral tradition era of blues songs – examples of how blues songs developed as community projects, with each performer adding his or her nuances and twists on a familiar theme.
- Blues on the radio - the Willie Dixon era of blues songwriting.
- The modern era where, for the most part, lyrics and melody are a distant second to instrumental prowess and invention.
What makes a good blues song?
- What do the top ten most recorded blues songs have in common?
- Listening to blues songwriters who are writing and performing 21st-century blues songs.
- From the examples we listen to, identify simple songwriting principles that a good blues song should incorporate.
Critique session.
- Attendees can play (live or recorded) their original songs and receive feedback from the group.
My background.
I am a singer-songwriter who loves blues music, writes a ton of blues songs, volunteers as a Blues for Kids instructor for the Minnesota Blues Society, plays blues harp and guitar, but does not consider himself a “blues guy”. Doug MacLeod is a blues guy. Joe Price is a blues guy. I am first and foremost a songwriter, I go where the song takes me.
My most recent album, The Blues Is Personal, was released in July 2014 and has 12 songs that are all blues, as far as structure goes. But to many blues fans, it doesn’t come across as blues music because it sounds different to what we are used to hearing. Lots of words, for example.
Contact
nigel@nigelegg.com
(612) 747-0199