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Basic Storyline Boy Makes Home, Boy Leaves Home, Boy Returns Home No Writers Block I've always wanted to write more songs about my hometown of Trenton, Michigan, but somehow I never got past the first few lines. Over the years, I kept coming back to the idea. Although I couldn't seem to get it to work, I never gave up on it. I don't like to call it writer's block, because that label is bad for the self-esteem, and because it implies that a person has temporarily lost the ability to write or to write well. The truth is that you can write all kinds of good things, if you can just change direction. When I get stuck on one project, sometimes I find I have to change projects until I can successfully come up with a more inspiring angle. After many years of working on other songs, I decided that the angle I needed was to avoid putting the name "Trenton" into the song's title. Instead, I decided to personify the town -- to treat my relationship with the town as though it was a relationship with a woman. Then I could use multi-leveled meaning and still have a simple song on the surface. The trick would be finding a girl's name that would help me to paint a picture of the town where I grew up. Elizabeth Park Trenton is a "downriver" community, located about 30 miles south of Detroit, on the Detroit River. At the town's edge, right on the river, sits the oldest county park in Michigan, Elizabeth Park. Its 162 acres were bequeathed to Wayne County in the early 1900s by the children of Elizabeth Slocum, a member of one of Trenton's first families. From the park's entrance, you bear right and follow the outer perimeter of the park in a circle, exiting where you came in. It's a beautiful place for photography, picnics, family gatherings or just playing hooky. One day while driving through the park, it struck me that "Elizabeth Parker" would make a likeable and believable name to use for a song's protagonist and title. Maybe this could be my new Trenton song. First Draft For my first draft, here's what I came up with:
Elizabeth Park's 3500-foot shoreline, while not a beach, adds a romantic touch to the storyline. "I wanna go round" refers to the circular drive surrounding the park. So while you're "going round" the park, you're also "going round" with the girl in the story. Unfortunately, I couldn't move the lyric any further in its current form. The structure was such that the first stanza was a verse with the title at the end, and after many weeks, I still wasn't inspired with music to match it. I put it away in my "Lines and Rhymes" file, where I keep all my unfinished songs for a later time. Changing the Subject Fast forward several months. Going to the movies on Sunday has been a ritual for me for many years. Along with reading, it's an activity which I really enjoy, and one that can be a tremendous source of songwriting ideas. In this instance, it wasn't that week's movie, but the overall mood of the day during my trip to the theatre that inspired me. I remember that I was going to see the movie "Winged Migration." That has nothing at all to do with the story, except that I remember my thoughts and feelings and even the title of the movie I saw on the day these lyrics came into my head. Also, since the movie was an independent release, I wasn't going to the usual mega-complex theatre this time. I had to drive to an art theatre that was new and different to me. It was raining lightly, yet it wasn't cold. As I drove, I watched the other people who were driving, the people walking, and the ways in which everyone responded to the rain. I've had so many conversations with people who have complained that rain makes everything bleak, dreary and depressing. I've never felt that way. In fact, because I have a few allergies that only challenge me on dry days, I've always liked the rain. I also love to sleep when it's raining. Rain isn't inherently bad, but you'd never know it from the way people talk. Anyway, I parked my car, walked through the rain to the outside ticket window, and went in to grab some popcorn and get a seat. As soon as I was seated, before the movie even started, a first line came into my mind:
A nice opening line. I especially liked the double-use of the word "Sunday." I pulled out pencil and paper and started writing. I came up with several ideas for the follow-up line, but none that I really loved. so I changed "ground" to "town," and wrote:
I thought that "a Sunday town" sound like a sleepy, normal, everyday town. At this point, I decided to borrow something I remembered writing in my Lines & Rhymes folder:
These lines were good, but by combining the last two lines into a single thought, the resulting line would be more original and concise. I tried this:
The new line implies not only that they're wasting their time in some way, but that they can't see anything except that which is directly in front of them--they don't see the beauty in the day. "Tunnelvision" is now acting as a fresh descriptive word for TV. My next trick would be to lead smoothly into the chorus. Unfortunately, nothing else came to me that day, except several possibilities for the melody and chords, which I wrote down in shorthand before the movie started. Per Verse After the movie, I got home, and pulled out my piece of paper from the movie theatre. I started thinking... "Sunday town." "Small town." "My town." "Trenton." Hey... These new lines could exist in the same song as the one I started a long time ago, called Elizabeth Parker. I started experimenting to see which lines I could use together. Often in my writing, I tend to do things in threes, because I think repeating a melody line 2 or 4 times is so expected. (I alluded to this in one of my early songs, "YYY," with the line "Do I have to say everything four times?" Now, it may seem boring to go over what I have so far in this text, but I've found that it's important to keep going back over things from the beginning, so you can keep your continuity and try to picture the lyric as a listener hearing it it for the first time. So I went back to what I had so far for a verse structure, and I found this:
Now I see that I've got a 5-line verse, and I'm not done yet. Even though I've grown to hate excessive repeats, I want my songs to be accessible. So I figured I'd better finish the verse in the next few lines. I thought about ending the line with my title, Elizabeth Parker. Could I do this in two lines? What are my strongest choices for rhymes? I chose "darker," "marker," and a few others which didn't thrill me, like "starker." I decided to try "darker." Continuing the thought about the people who are at home with their heads in the sand, I added:
Putting the title in the end of the verse made the verse into a both verse and a chorus. The refrain is contained in the verse, which means I won't have to build a second chorus. I can return to the introduction (whatever that will be) and then go straight on to verse two. This was a good time to find out how well my new verse would hold up with music. I loved the way it read, but I had to be sure I would be inspired with a suitable melody before moving on. Otherwise, I'd be writing subsequent verses without knowing how the syllables were going to be stressed. Knowing some of the types of material I had already had picked out for a new album, I thought about what kind of song style I didn't yet have. I also knew I already had a lot of piano songs picked out, and a lot of slower material. So I decided to write a fast song on the guitar. I got out my acoustic guitar and I quickly chose a descending melody line for an intro. I immediately pictured a glockenspiel sound with an acoustic guitar. The song was writing itself now, which is the time I always look forward to in the writing process. I wrote the melody for the first two lines. When I got to the third one, I started out like the first two in melody and in the first chord, then I took it in a new direction. I instinctively knew where I wanted major and minor chords. I also could tell by the structure of the lyric that I would build tension starting at line three and resolve that tension by the time I sang "Elizabeth Parker." I also decided very early on that all or part of "Elizabeth Parker" would be sung with no music behind it, which would accentuate the title and add to the commerciality. I can't explain why I make the decisions I make, except to say that a songwriter is a product of the things she listens to. You draw from the hundreds or thousands of recordings you know and you build based on the kinds of things that move you. Once I had a melody for the first verse, I started writing another verse to match the melody and structure of verse one. Getting back to my own home town, I thought about how many people had moved away. I wrote:
Here I wanted to use the third line from verse one again, but chose a variation instead, increasing Elizabeth's persistence:
Some of the best lines are often born from either real conversation or something you thought you heard someone say. In this case, on the radio I had heard something that sounded like, "between ambition and reward." I feel so many people never have enough ambition, so they never feel any reward, which keeps them from pursuing something to its fruition. I liked the way that sounded, and turned it into "caught somewhere between ambition and reward." It was good, but I wasn't interested in rhyming "reward" in the part of the verse where I wanted to fit the line. So I flipped the two words, and came up with "Stuck between reward and ambition." That would fit nicely in line 5, so I needed a line 4, which would have to have the same rhyme. I used "superstition" to generate a rhyme for building its companion line, knowing that with small towns come superstitions. I wrote:
With only two lines left in the verse, and a refrain-style verse at that, my last line was already decided -- it would be "Don't go 'round with Elizabeth Parker." So I needed to use my other "-arker" rhyme, "marker." I also needed to continue my "small town" theme. I had just re-watched the movie "Jaws" on T.V., the story of which was also set in a small town on the water. I thought "marker..." "nautical marker." Since I've never used that phrase before, I looked it up using a web search engine and a dictionary to be sure I would be using it correctly. Then I wrote:
To tie line six in with the local superstition, I added a subtle change, like this:
I sang the first two verses with an intro before each, and knew I was onto something solid. Crossing That Bridge I now realized although I still had a lot of lines in my first draft which I really loved and wanted to use, they would never fit the current verses. So I relegated them to the bridge section. I threw out anything from the first draft which ended up in the verse, and that left:
Singing the lines with the guitar, and checking the continuity, I decided to switch the lines around, like this:
I was home free. Just one more verse to go. Verse Three: Specific Hometown References with General Appeal I decided to begin the third verse as I did the first verse, for familiarity, but with a change or two, to prevent boredom. I wrote:
This is a reference to Grosse Ile, a small island town near Trenton and across the river from Elizabeth Park. I also realized that Michigan wasn't the only state with towns that were located "down the river," so the appeal of the word "downriver" wouldn't be limited to just Michigan. Now to rhyme line two:
Many shorelines have river roads and piers, and ours is no exception. Except we also have a bar called "The Pier," at which I played many times as a young musician. (I still play there periodically as of this writing.) My favorite part of this line is the double meaning of "come around." It refers not only to returning to Elizabeth, but also to coming to my senses. Now to continue my line three theme, but strengthening it again:
Next, a tip of the hat to a favorite Robert Frost poem, one I've always related to and that I had heard very recently: "The road less traveled." But we're in a small town, so rather than quote precisely, I go with:
"I turned my heel" has a double meaning. In taking the more difficult road, I stumbled a few times. But also, each time the unraveling road takes a turn, my heel turns and points me in the new direction, somewhat randomly, but at the same time methodically and instinctively. (Kinda like songwriting.) I like twists, especially positive ones. I grew up on "The Twilight Zone" and Science Fiction short stories, and the surprise or turnabout ending appears in my songs often, even today. I realized right off when I wrote the title line in the first verse of "Elizabeth Parker" that one its best qualities was how easy it would be to turn it around at the end of the song. Instead of "Don't go 'round with Elizabeth Parker," I could say "Once more 'round with Elizabeth Parker." So my last two lines were easy:
The narrator has finally come to terms with his love for Elizabeth, and in doing so, he has stopped denying his small-town roots. Normally I don't like to use the same rhyme to end two different non-repeating couplets, but here I allowed "darker / Parker" to appear a second time, because it sounded much more natural than the alternative "-arker" rhymes, and because it flowed so nicely in story and meaning. Soon after completing the song, I recorded an acoustic demo, which was so completely realized that the finished studio recording would remain fairly true to it. I guess on this project I got a little reward with my ambition. Dave Caruso |
