The First Song

I had always loved writing – writing stories was a way to be immediately creative.  You write the story, and it appears on the page in front of you, just how you want it.  I sucked (and still suck) at drawing, and I was still doing piano AMEB grades; so I hadn’t yet tapped into my musical creativity – yet.  That changed when I was 15, and my dad wrote a poem called “Remember Life” – an ode to the  Iraqi War of 1990.  My dad dared me to write some music for it in under 20 minutes.  If I could do it, there was $20 in it for me.  $20 for 20 minutes?  I was up for the challenge.

10 minutes later, I had finished the music for dad, and was $20 richer!  I really can’t remember the actual process of the writing.  All I know is that something shifted in me – somehow that challenge had released my musical creativity, and began a whole new ball rolling.  Suddenly, my focus shifted from wanting to do piano grades to write songs.  I also started to think about the possibility of combining my story writing with my song writing … which would shortly lead to writing musicals; something I had just recently been introduced to by my then high school music teacher, Mr John Healy.

The immediacy of songwriting, and the pure joy that it brought me, is something that has never wavered since.  That first song – well, first real song – was the catalyst for everything I’ve been writing for since.

Until next time (yes, my blogging will become a little erratic for the next 10 days due to being in Avenue Q every night …)

Blog ya later!

Drew

Discovering The Stage

Following on from my last DMMOML (man, that’s a crappy acronym!), is number 2!

The next key moment is my first stage appearance.  After being painfully shy in kindergarten, I found myself in Prep with one of my favourite all-time teachers, Miss Turner.  Miss Turner was a big fan of show and tell, and I decided to sing a song for the class. John Belafante’s “Jamaican Farewell”.  Yes, I realise that it’s a bit of a lame song – but I was 5 and my mum was a fan.

Anyway, Miss Turner liked the song so much that she suggested that I do it for assembly.  Now that I think of it, I must not have realised how big the school was – especially for a primary school.  Some 500 students and 50 odd teachers were part of the school, not I knew that at the time.  So, Miss Turner arranged for 5 of the girls from my class to do the hula behind me while I sang the song for assembly in front of the entire school acapella.

I don’t remember a lot of it, but I do remember the feeling that no one could touch me while I was up there.  I remember how the applause captivated me.  And I remember being carried around by the year 6′s, sitting on their shoulders and singing the song during lunchtime.

That’s when I realised, not so much the “fame and fortune” bit, but more about the power that stage had 1) to overcome my own shyness, and 2) how it could hold an audience.  That’s when my love affair with the stage started. Sure, it was from a performance, but 10 years later, it would shift from performance to actually writing for someone else to perform.

The change from performer to writer would be sudden, drastic and (almost) permanent.

Until tomorrow,

Blog ya later!

Drew

The Love Affair Begins

Throughout my life, there has been key moments that have helped define my artistic direction.  They stick in my mind and are things I often think about.  So I thought that I’d share some of them here.  Hell, why not?

The first key moment is when I was four years old and in kindergarten.  I was a very shy kid.  I don’t really know why – I just was.  I didn’t like hanging around with other kids, nor doing the normal kindergarten activities.  I would cry – lots.  The only thing that would placate me was music.  My kindergarten teacher would let me sit in her office, and I would listen to an old tape deck with the headphones on.  They were those old-school (pardon the pun) hard grey headphones that used to go with old read-along SRA kits.  The tape deck was one of those rectangular ones with a single speaker at the top, the cassette deck in the middle, and big-assed buttons at the bottom to operate it.  Every time I was at kindergarten, I would take myself to the teacher’s office, put on the headphones and block out the rest of the world.  It was a refuge and my best friend.  I vividly remember my last day of kinder, and my mum had to force me to say goodbye to my teacher.  My mother was told that I wasn’t ready to start primary school – because of my shyness – but my mum insisted and “graduated” me anyway.

Looking back, it was a key moment because it was where I discovered for myself the love I had for music.  Sure, I knew it instinctively; but this was the first time I truly acknowledged it myself.  Soon after, I started piano lessons, and made my first stage appearance.

But that is another defining musical moment for another time!

Until tomorrow,

Blog ya later!

Drew