Bad Moon Rising
I know Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival all my life. So, back in the 1990s when I started to make a living as a working musician, it was a logical move to put some C.C.R. songs in my repertoire. Proud Mary, Down On The Corner and Susie Q. (written by Dale Hawkins and now one of my most viewed videos on YT) are always a save bet at any party up to this day, but Bad Moon Rising (here one of my tries to connect with the song) never really connected with me. For me the music didn’t fit the lyrics. That’s why you hear me trying on that video to bring a bit more Rock’n’Roll to the folky original. The song seemed too bright and ‘happy’, at least to me. Therefore the song slipped slowly and quietly off the top of my repertoire list. Decades later I heard the American singer/songwriter Beth Wimmer perform that song at one of her concerts.
Minor Blues it was
That made me think about the song again. Despite that reminder of Beth I still couldn’t connect with the song. But a couple of years later, one morning with all the news on the radio and online (I quit watching TV or as we say, the monkey box - without wanting to offend any of the fascinating and hilarious monkeys on this lovely planet - back around 2011) Bad Moon Rising seem to fit the moment for a makeover on my ‘Start Your Day With A Song’ series on YouTube, where I perform daily a song from my repertoire without any playbacks, loops or special recording gadgets with my guitar or piano. Everything was set and just with my phone, my guitar and the determination to make this song my own, I thought of a minor Blues and started to sing and there it was. After 25 years it clicked immediately and within ten minutes I recorded it. It’s one of those moments, where you feel like it was not your idea but rather something passed through me, which sounds kinda weird when I write it like that. You can hear and see in the video, how I picked different options right on the spot out of thin air to create that first basic version.
In 2022 when I restarted to produce my new recordings, Bad Moon Rising was on the Top 10 list of songs that I wanted to record. Parallel to that I recorded other songs of my repertoire including original material. For me, all the demos and pre-production sessions are quite similar. You record a basic structure and then the ideas and thoughts are starting to circle around the session, always thinking about ‘serving the song’, accepting happy accidents (a Bob Ross classic) and recognising something special when it drops in your lap. With this manual for success - hmm not really - I switched between different tracks and songs until the timing for Bad Moon Rising was here.
Falling off cliffs
I piled tracks upon tracks of ideas, guitar riffs, drum sounds and even adding loops to help me find the right mood for the song. Changing arrangements, falling off cliffs to the left and right. Going back to older versions and redirecting this project down a different road. Just as much as I added, I also muted off after I finally knew what avenue would work for me. A good recipe that I can recommend is, to hop on your bike and enjoy a ride through the fields to the local bakery and while doing so, your thoughts can wander off to the horizon.
Rockonteurs stories
I listen frequently to the Rockonteurs podcast by Gary Kemp & Guy Pratt, where you can hear fascinating stories from loads of musicians and other people from the music business. And it’s pretty obvious that nowadays we take too much time to record, mix and finish a song or an album. Back in the days, studio time was way too expensive (it’s still not cheap). If you were not working at a studio, profiting from the empty hours, you had to pay hard earned bucks to make it happen. So you better be prepared and ready to go. (Nowadays, although your laptop makes it much easier, the 259th mix or arrangement won’t make it that much better.)
Deadlines & butt kickin’
But a creative environment doesn’t always like the pressure of time, even though the reminder of a dead line can kickstart your pulse. Because when you treat the creative process like a nine-to-five office job, things will start to happen and there’s no bigger boot to kick your ass (allerwertesten - have fun googling that german word) when a deadline is closing in. David Arnold (film composer - Independence Day, Godzilla, James Bond movies) said on the Rockonteurs podcast, that if it weren’t for the dead lines, he wouldn’t have written a single note in his life.
With that in mind, I set myself a dead line, September 1st 2022, without even knowing the procedure of all the things you need to know for producing, mixing, promoting and releasing a song. Encouraged by the stories on the Rockonteurs podcast of industry people who started out in a band, at a club or at a record label without having a clue what they were doing. Learning by doing with YouTube videos helping with some of the issues along the way sounded great, although in that notorious video jungle, you are pretty quickly ending up diving into that glorious rabbit hole of checking out concert clips, dogs riding skateboards or the latest movie trailer. Jumping into the cold water was not a bad approach, because you’re starting to listen to your gut when you don’t know Jack. Just do it and go create!
I should print a t-shirt with my motto on it:
You live & learn - You crash & burn
But hopefully you see the light at the end of that famous tunnel after that, because so did I. And once you made it through the first song without blowing more that one tyre, you are eager to see if you can do it a second time and third, and a fourth…
Enough said and only a short note on what will be my next song to release. It’s a song by a musician that left us way to early back in 1996. The rest you’ll find out this October. Stay tuned and let me know what you think about all the babbling I do here on Substack and thanks for listening to my music and showing up at my concerts.
Have a great weekend…