Tag Archive: songs


Recording Session and Spilled Coffee

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Recording, Songwriting, Stuttering, writing — Leave a comment
November 25, 2013

Conner and Dan in the Studio I was at the Patrick McGuire Recording Studio last Friday, working on songs for my new CD. Randy Talbert, Steve Smith, and John Tepper of the praise band at church played on three songs. My oldest son, Conner, who also plays with the praise band when his schedule allows, played guitar on several songs. Cameron, the middle son, helped with taking pictures, videos, and assisting the engineer. He also plays with the praise band and helps with sound. The session went well and I’ll discuss it later, perhaps, but I want to back up a bit.

While I was getting ready to go into the studio, I naturally thought about Joel Nichols, my musical partner of twenty-five years until he died in 1999. We recorded our last CD in 1996. My wife, Cyndy, introduced me to Bruce Gibson, and later to Joel when he came home from college at Scarritt in Nashville. When the three of us began to gel as a band, I moved out to Nashville while Joel was attending his last year at school. We lived with two other people in the top half of a house that had been around for fifty years, had been home to a hippie commune, and no longer exists.

Joel and I were driving around Nashville in his car one morning. After stopping for John Tepper in Studio coffee, we continued on our journey, going over several bumps and through several turns. Throughout the drive, I managed to keep from spilling my coffee by acting as a human gyroscope. Then I made a mistake. After we we went through the next dip, I turned to Joel and opened my mouth.

“I haven’t spilled a drop. I’m pretty good.”

A short while later, Joel grinned and slammed on the breaks. Coffee soaked the front of my last clean shirt. And going to the laundry mat had not been in my immediate plans. I objected, but the more I objected, the more he laughed. Seemingly in an increasing vindictive manner.

I was somewhat used to taking crap for my stuttering. But a prank like that from someone I considered my closest friend was painful. It illustrated that even the best of friends have a few, even if small, irreconcilable differences. The darker side of their personality that you hope you seldom see and avoid if you see it coming. Joel’s vindictive prankster side was one of those sides of his personality that switched my defensive tendencies into high gear.

photo When I continued to object, Joel realized how much it bothered me, and he apologized. Despite the times when our personalities conflicted, there were more good times than bad times in our twenty+ years of making music together. Going into the studio reminded me of the good music we made together. When I play the old songs, I can still hear him playing his part. I am playing both parts in the studio and I hope I do him justice.

Peace be with you.

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Transition Between Writing Styles

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Music, Poetry, writing — Leave a comment
November 4, 2013

20131103_132007 I hope I’m not the only writer with this problem, but I find it difficult to switch from writing prose to writing poetry or to songwriting. Not that I can’t, I just find it difficult at times. In younger days, when I was writing songs and playing music all the time, the ideas came continuously from everywhere, whether it be a verse a line or two, or a chorus. It’s a mindset. I looked at everything in hooks, lines, rhymes – or not – and musical themes

Writing prose is another mindset altogether. I think in terms of paragraphs, short stories, ideas that can be stretched into posts, articles, essays, or books. There is not the “instant” (in comparison) gratification as in a song that you have just written. The song will go through changes, but having the framework is the hardest part.

So, having written books, articles, and so on for the past twelve years, and having written few songs, getting back into the rhythm – as it were – of writing songs as well as other writing has been a little tough. One idea would be to write prose works on alternate days from songwriting. Or spend a half of each day on each. Which would be good ideas if I didn’t have a myriad of family obligations.

I watch re-runs on tv when I’m writing because it’s background garbage. If I listen to music while I’m writing prose, I quit writing and get into the music and begin to switch to the songwriting mindset. If I listen to music while I’m writing songs, I end up with pieces of songs that sound like everyone but me. And not necessarily in a good way.

How do you juggle writing duties – whatever that may entail?

Peace be with you.

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Relying on Musical Memory

Filed under: Communications, Current events, Family, Music, writing — Leave a comment
October 31, 2013

Dan Roark and Sons 3 For the past couple of years, I have been getting music together in preparation for recording a new CD. I didn’t play much when the boys were growing up, what with Little League baseball, church activities, and disc golf tournaments. Now Conner and Cameron are 20 and 19, respectively, J.D. is a senior, and it’s time to get back to playing music. We all play in the praise band at church occasionally.

I started with my old standards and added the new songs I’ve written over the past few years. As I was practicing and getting ready to go into the studio, I kept thinking of other songs I’ve written that I hadn’t thought of in a while. But when I looked in my notebooks, I could not find some of the songs I was looking for. And some of the songs I found didn’t have the chords written down.

I remembered the songs in my head, of course – for the most part. And I have a large number of tapes. My musical partner, Joel Nichols, and I were fanatics about recording practices and shows (sadly, Joel died in 1999). Yet not all of the tapes are labeled as to what songs are on them. Unfortunately, there are no clues such as – “this is the recording of that song that you remember was particularly excellent.” So I get to spend a lot of time listening to tapes. Which means a lot of recordings of the same songs.

Which is my cross to bear. Here’s my point – keep track of everything. Back everything up and date it. Having everything on computer is useless if you don’t know where to find it. But you’re a couple of steps ahead of me. I still have boxes to go through and copyrights to renew.

Joel and I thought we could hit the big time at any moment. We would spend our lives playing the same songs, along with new ones we were writing. It never occurred to us we might not sing them long enough for them to settle in the backs of our minds with other old memories. Fortunately for me, I played most of my songs enough that, even if I didn’t play them again, I probably will never forget them. Once I started playing the newly found old songs, they usually came back to me fairly easily. Yet there were others that didn’t come back as quickly or easily.

So trust me, don’t rely completely on your memory. You’re already having to write songs, record, give interviews, make appearances, and plan tours (among other things). Don’t leave anything to chance. It can come back to haunt you.

Peace be with you.

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