This version of my life is meant to be a thumbnail sketch and is written for those who want to gain an insight into how my songwriting style developed. Sorry, no juicy personal smut revelations here.

I was born and raised in Vancouver and slid through the school system without learning much or making waves. I did see--from grade five onward--that there were far more engaging ways to present knowledge and inspire learning than what my teachers were doing. I realized the need for educators to address the question "Beyond passing a test, why should students care about this stuff?" I thought that if a teacher spent the first couple of minutes of each class "hooking" the students emotionally on the subject matter for that class, student interest would go up and discipline issues would go down. From that time on I wanted to be a teacher. I was always a voracious reader and by high school I began doing crossword puzzles. I used to cut out the daily puzzle, take it to school and work on it during class time when I got bored. I believe crosswords are valuable to songwriters because you get in the habit of searching for words that "work" and this skill is useful for both puzzles and songs. Solving cryptic crosswords takes the whole working with words issue to a much higher level.

Growing up on the west side of Vancouver made attending the University of British Columbia an easy thing to do. My home was a twenty minute car ride from campus and I was able to get an education without having to pay for room and board. Thanks mom and dad! It was the late 60's and U.B.C. had more freedoms and attractions than I'd experienced up to that time but the classes themselves (history, sociology and English) remained irrelevant to my life. Scholarships and bursaries paid my tuition and I earned spending money by selling cameras at a Vancouver department store. One day a representative from Kodak gave us new weekend employees a pep talk on selling and his presentation gave me a perspective that affected my salesmanship, later my teaching and also my songwriting approach. He divided the reasons to buy a particular camera into "red points" (technical features of that camera) and "blue points" (how the camera would make picture taking interesting). You combined a red point with a blue one when selling. Eg. "This camera has a top shutter speed of 2000th of a second (red point) it will let you stop a raindrop in mid-air" (blue point). The idea was keep up a steady stream of red points and blue points until the person said, "I've gotta have this camera!" It worked like a charm.

Once I began teaching high school I discovered that my insight about learners cooperating once they saw value--FOR THEM--in what was being taught was true. In fact, even if my students couldn't see value for themselves, the fact that I was trying to show them value in what I was presenting encouraged them to go along with the lesson. If most of the students believe you are a benign force then the potential "disturbers" go along without making trouble. Eventually, another social studies teaching buddy and I traveled to educational workshops around the province pushing this message in a workshop entitled "History is not just dates and facts". At the conclusion of every course I taught during my 18 years as a high school teacher I had students fill in course evaluation forms that re-enforced my belief in the value of hooking student interest before proceeding.

Eventually the "good groove" of teaching began to become a rut. The most important quality of an effective teacher is the ability to listen--I began to exhibit the great failing of talking more than I was listening. Besides, I had always lived in the big city and wanted to try life in the slow lane. The Okanagan valley is a five hour drive from Vancouver and I had been vacationing there for years and in 1991 my wife and I moved to a cottage on Lake Okanagan in the dreamy little village of Naramata. I knew that I wanted music to play a bigger role in this next stage of my life and when the Kettle Valley Steam Railway got running in Summerland in the mid-1990's I formed The Kettle Valley Brakemen (www.kvbrakemen.com) a folk/bluegrass act. I used my history research skills from teaching to develop KVR stories that (initially) I'd tell before the group performed traditional train songs. About the same time I began writing my own train songs and my philosophy for writing was based on what I'd learned was effective in both camera selling and teaching-- hook the listener's emotions.

All singer/songwriters who've paid their dues in bars and coffee houses love an attentive audience and my evolution as a songwriter is a "happy ending story" because I find myself playing intimate venues for people who really want to hear the songs. It doesn't get any better than that.

Songwriting

It's important at the outset for me to define the type of popular songwriting that interests me. There are some songwriters who express their emotions in such a powerful way that the listener is carried along on the writer's vocal quality and poetry--thus moved by the song. The flash of inspiration is important to the success of this writing style and many such songs are completed in one sitting. I read where Hank Williams dictated "Your Cheatin' Heart" to his second wife as he was driving away from the court house after divorcing his first wife. She wrote the lyrics down on an envelope. This is not the sort of songwriting I do. Mine are story songs. They are based on discovering a tale worth telling and developing an effective way to deliver it to an audience. These are "folk songs" in that I want "folks" to listen to the stories and like them. Flashy musical hooks and repetitive or incomprehensible lyrics--no matter how "mood creating"--aren't appropriate for what I do.

The focus of my approach to songwriting is more didactic than that of artists who pour out their hearts in music (a la Hank Williams) and includes three stages. Once I get that "this would make a great song" feeling, I let the concept roll around in my mind for a while. In this time I'm establishing exactly WHAT ONE THING must the song be about and from what point of view can it be expressed most effectively. I think of this as the "ideation" stage. There's no specific amount of time for this process but it ends when I feel compelled to pick up pen and paper and start drafting the first outline and sketch for the tune. By outline I mean what subject matter needs to go in each verse and what theme will be the focus of the chorus--or does it need a chorus? Would a bridge or key change increase the song's impact? Do I hear a waltz? Writing down--in sentence or point form --the ideas for each verse gives way to expressing those ideas more poetically and gradually the song sketch is born. Sitting down to simply RE-COPY my sketches always results in beneficial changes. To me, this sketch phase is the "ugly duckling" stage of songwriting. My sketches contain way to many words, are often watery in terms of focus and impact. I know this sounds weird, but in the process of grinding and polishing the sketch, an idea for a tune evolves in my head. This happens once the sketch progresses to the stage of me deciding which musical style (bluegrass, blues, folk, rock or gospel) would be most effective. The third stage is "polishing" and it consists of dumping the sketch into the computer, printing out the song and singing it several times a day looking for more effective wording and eliminating those "flinch factors" (any aspect that doesn't feel right). For me, this polishing stage can take weeks. As it goes on, the actual number of changes involved become fewer but--like the final small adjustments in focusing a telescope--they significantly increase the song's impact. I know this process is finished when I look forward to singing the tune and come to believe in it.

While the range of material on "No Train Today" is fairly eclectic, the philosophy behind the songwriting is consistent with my background as a heritage performer. The troubadour tradition stresses emotionally engaging the listener as immediately as possible. Establishing a reason for the audience to want to hear out the song seems like a basic of success. My other recorded material consists of train songs celebrating Canada's steam rail era. In other words, it's all history and while some might enjoy hearing a history song from time to time, a heritage entertainer has to quickly "hook" the listener. The history itself isn't good enough, the listener must become emotionally engaged.

Fortunately there exist guaranteed appeals for getting and holding people's attention. These appeals include: mystery, shock, humor, horror, sex, nostalgia and surprise. Blending a couple of these into songs is the key to success. No wonder stand up comedians tell so many "dirty" jokes, they are a blend of humor, sex and surprise. A sure fire winner in holding human attention. Similarly, people will sit through a long "shaggy dog" story because they anticipate surprise and humor as their reward. On "No Train Today" I've employed all of these techniques to try and hold the listener. In terms of personal style I prefer humor to horror, but in the song "When The War Was New", the subject matter demands it.

Finally, being an "indie" artist I've had the freedom to be playful with this CD. No suit from corporate dictated terms to me. Thus I can leave in a little studio talk and some sound effects have been added that--hopefully--add to the disc's impact. Enjoy!