THOM DAUGHERTY

LYRIC-WRITING: A START

I am jealous of Owen. I am jealous of my friend KP from The Band Perry. I am jealous of my friends Jason and Philip, who formed their own little #7in7 group exercise in ATX (7 songs in 7 days.)

They are writers. They write often. And they write really well.

What they write oftentimes rips me apart: 1) Owen’s story-telling in “The Bastard’s Son”, which you’ll probably get to hear in about, oh… two weeks. 2) KP with a simple line like “Most of my friends will live and die in this zipcode.”

Any songwriting I’ve done in the past 10 years has been relegated to riffs, chord progressions, instrumental hooks, etc. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve actually written lyrics (fully finished.) I’m going to stop being so lazy though; I’m pushing myself to start penning lyrics.

Why? I’m not going to say that I need to write because it’d be “therapeutic” or “I need to express myself” or “I have no idea what I’m really thinking until I sit down and write” or any of those reasons that I usually hear people give. I just want to. Something tells me that I’m missing out.

Tonight, I got an idea, and fleshed out a song start-to-finish in about an hour and a half. We’ll call this a rough draft. I’m well aware that it’s not any good. You’re welcome to give feedback about anything I’m doing right, and also about other ways in which you think I can improve. Or even if you want to say that it absolutely sucks, I’m prepared for that, so you’re allowed, but… I’m still coming after you and it’s gonna hurt once I catch up with you (most likely a Colombian Necktie followed by a good cudgeling.)

I’m kidding (maybe.)

I’m committing tonight to write at least 3 songs a week every week for a whole year. If I’m not cranking out anything halfway decent a year from now, I guess you’re welcome at that point to tell me to hang it up, but even then, I’ll probably just ask for another year, and then… I’m coming after you to inflict harm (will involve comprehensive razorblade work and then finishing you off by throwing you into a giant pool of rubbing alcohol.)

Yep. Bad news. Be careful; be nice.

Alright… here’s what I came up with tonight. (A first draft that I’ll revisit and tweak in a few weeks. If nothing else, it just felt like great mental exercise.)

Cheers,
Thom
_____________________

SHORT-SIGHTED

V1
All the girls that I dreamed about.
All the wasted pining when the lights went out.
A lot can happen in 10 years,
Now I’m thankful that I never got to go that route.

V2
‘Cos they don’t seem as smart as they used to.
They don’t bring me to my knees like they used to.
They post pictures of their kids instead of themselves,
‘Cos they know they can’t disarm me like they used to.

CHORUS
It was hard to know what would really matter,
The things that I would want later on.
Stuck inside the layers of a high school strata,
You try to move up, and you try to belong.
But 10 years seems to be more than enough,
It’s all too apparent to me, (that)
Everything I thought within the first 18,
Was a little short-sighted of me.

V3
All the girls that I turned away.
All of their notes that I discarded everyday.
A lot can happen in 10 years,
Now I wish that I’d given them a say.

V4
‘Cos they don’t seem as plain as they used to.
They don’t make me turn away like they used to.
They post pictures of themselves without a second thought,
‘Cos they know that I’ll regret what I gave up, too.

CHORUS
But it was hard to know what would really matter,
The things that I would want later on.
Stuck inside the layers of a high school strata,
You try to move up, and you try to belong.
But 10 years seems to be more than enough,
And now it’s all too apparent to me, (that)
Everything I thought within the first 18,
Was a little short-sighted of me.

BRIDGE
And who knows where I’ve still yet to go,
And who knows what I’ll take with me there,
Another 10 are gonna change the status quo,
And of all of this, it’s hard to say if I’ll still care.