SONGWRITING FOG

On Friday i played my regular fortnightly gig at the beautiful Under the Willows (incarnation 54d - in joke). My set was after the sweet and relatively new sounds of Amelie Mayr, and one of SL's best known, AcousticEnergy (AE). Max Kleene followed me. It is always such an honour to play at the same shows as these people. See the pic advertising a very special night of shows at Under the Willows this coming Friday - i'd love to see you there :)
During my intro to one of my newest songs, EAST OF NOWHERE i was explaining how i can lose confidence in a song sometimes and that this can delay my debuting of it in my shows and how often i sing it once i have. AE commented that this happens to him too. This is reassuring news and has prompted this blog entry.
Some songs are quickly written and others take an amount of trial and error to finish. For some songs i may been singing them to myself for hour after hour as i work on them, and then somehow, just as they are about complete i lose my feel/confidence for them. It is hard to explain - but have you ever said a single word over and over to yourself and discovered that the word loses all meaning somehow? If you have then this is a bit like how it is. If you haven't then it's impossible to explain. Try it :)
This confidence loss happens even though the people who i use as crash test dummies for my new songs are telling me that the song is ok/good/wonderful. I have blogged before about how Experiment has played this part in my songwriting with incredible accuracy over the years and while i trust his feedback i am the one who has to sing them and i can't sing them unless i believe in them.
Later in the day at my gig at the Colour Factory i decided to put aside this songwriting fog and to debut my newest song, ENDLESSLY and to bring back into my show another new song, THE STING IN THE TAIL OF LOVE that i sang twice a month ago and then dropped from my set list. I am happy to say that they appear to have been well received :)
Sometimes it is simply a matter of singing them live in a show that brings me back closer to the song (something that can't be replicated in my studio at home), and of course the feedback from the people at the show makes so much difference to me and every performer in the world. Thank you sweet peoples :)
So today sometime i am going to take a lesson from all of this, again and finish another song or two that have been languishing in the fog.
WHEEEEEE.
Thanks for reading and getting this far.
Hugs. Bright