Songwriting Workshop

[rickidoo]

dramey, Do you have a chorus lyric in mind? I'd say that would be the best place drive home the story. This is where you could pin it to a particular city, or make it more general, e.g, Big Tobacco Country USA, etc.... or whatever you want to frame as the central place of this song. Rick

[Mikeo]

This is a song about Winston-Salem, NC. I've had this title in my head for years and keep meaning to do something with it. A few weeks back I'm doing some grocery shopping on a Sunday, went to put a six pack of beer in the cart and realized that they couldn't sell it to me as it wasn't noon yet. The hypocrisy of not being able to buy a 6 pack (for later I might add) on a Sunday morning because the local government thinks I should be spending that time in church learning about how Jesus turned water in to wine pushed me towards working on it a bit. I really hate this town. Right now I'm just at the random lyric stage and a little brainstorming. I'm still trying to figure out the tone of the thing. I've got 3 pieces of music I could go with for this. One is a piano thing I threw together in EZ Keys, one is a folksy acoustic bit, and one is a harder rock song. I keep going back and forth between all of them, I could use a little more humor in the rock version, but I'm not sure I want to lose any of the bite. I see this as being my "Walking in Memphis" except nothing cool ever happens here, ever. The Maya Angelou line is true, I went to her house about a month ago to look at some flooring issues, and we shot the bull for 15 min or so. She is a cool old bird. I was this close to telling her that I was a bit of a poet myself... but then I chickened out. The City That Cancer Built We got outlaws, and we got blue laws. On Sunday we roll up the side walks A half a million hypocrites I count myself amongst. We got preachers, we got hookers Hell I got one in the trunk It’s the city that cancer built Babies are born and blood is spilt And if your not sitting on a pew come Sunday morning We’ll just call the devil and tell him your coming. Selling beer on a Sunday morning carries a heavy fine. You should be learning about how Jesus turned water to wine. I met Maya Angelou at her place out Bartram way She writes prettier words than me and lives in this same god damn ugly place. We got Hanes mall named for a guy that made socks And thought if he sterilized the poor and the black, the world would be better off. We got a skyscraper down town, that’s a little more phallic than most. I worked on it a little when it was built, and I heard all the jokes. 40 miles south of Mayberry, a town that was mostly make believe. If we cant kill you with the cigarettes we'll kill you with the Krispy Kreme's Wake Forest bible belt Dell comings and goings Tobacco farms old salem Twin City City of the arts Camel city R. J. Reynolds Moravian stars

I don't if you ever heard this one [video=youtube;laFfx6hPes0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laFfx6hPes0[/video]

[LCK]

Wow. That's some crazy pickin'! I love this: "Alabama's grand (the state, not the band)..." LCK