So here’s something we’ve never done before - we’re releasing home demo tapes as we make them.
We begin with a collection of home demos from LONG STORY SHORT - Brendan and Val’s brand new 2-person musical premiering in Pittsburgh and Palo Alto this fall. The recordings will appear here song by song *every Wednesday* beginning August 20, building up to first opening night Wednesday, October 29.
There will be 15 demos altogether, and the full album will be available for download as a collection. (If you purchase them song by song as they’re released, you’ll end up paying the same price, but will get to hear the songs earlier.)
LONG STORY SHORT demo #1: “Rocking Chairs.”
Check back next Wednesday, August 27, for the the next demo, “It Happens In A Moment.”
14 Comments
BRAVO! “Rocking Chairs” is another masterpiece. Keep up the good work…. I look forward to hearing the next song that will be released.
When can I expect a NY or a CT gig?
I have been Jones’n for a GL concert performance.
Hope to see you soon,
John
I love “Rocking Chairs”. Recorded completely live?
Hope you’re doing well!
Michael, Berlin, Germany
Wow……very nice. Thanks for the opportunity to review the new stuff.
Mike in Anchorage, Alaska
V/B: Great song. Thanks for sharing.
[It would be really cool if you could post comments directly from the song page, rather than having to move back to the main page of the site (minor mechanical point - it's the engineer in me!).]
Now for something more fun. Could you comment on the difference in writing a song for musical theater and writing a story-driven Pop song? For instance “Rocking Chairs” does not appear have a chorus/refrain in the conventional Pop music sense. I am sure there are lots of other differences.
Thanks, everybody! So glad you’re digging!
John–we’re working on a NYC gig real soon now–keep checking.
Michael in Germany–glad you like! It’s actually not live…but it’s one take with a couple of overdubs.
Rob–I’d love it if you could comment on the song page directly, but that’s one in a long list of possible features in the next iteration of Dan Coulter’s excellent discography plugin (www.blogsforbands.com). We’ll mention it to him.
Rocking Chairs does, in fact, have a refrain, but it’s really, really short: “sitting in our rocking chairs, watching grandkids playing on the lawn” is the one thing that appears three times. It’s like a very short chorus.
The trick is always to write a chorus in such a way as to sneak in repeatable material so that it sounds like a continuation of the conversation, rather than a repeat of the chorus just to drill it into the listener’s head. It’s a Nashville kinda thing, and a long-standing old-school musical theater thing.
Yeah, nothing makes a first date with someone in their early 20’s end better than telling the other person you’ve been spending the whole evening imagining how married life, kids, and retirement will be with them….
Good stuff, thanks for sharing!!!
Great stuff. You guys are the masters of Pop for Smart People. It’s going to be hard to handle if you guys ever put out something lousy. :o)
Boring logistical question: If you guys are going to be doing “Long Story Short” in Palo Alto on 12/14, how are you also going to be doing “Striking 12″ in Carmel on the same date, same times? (Just bought my S12 Carmel tix yesterday, and am currently scratching my head.)
Steve in Davis, CA
WOW! What a fantastically romantic new song, from the new musical ‘Long Story Short’. It brought tears to my eyes, because I can relate to both ends of the ‘time line’.
In three weeks I am moving to Tennessee to be near my grandkids, and I do own a rocking chair. However, I can still remember the magic of falling in love… or more recently, the fantasy of falling in love… and of sitting at a table on an imagined ‘date’, not really listening to this beautiful woman across from me, but fast forwarding in my mind to future possibilities.
This new musical is going to be Fantastic! I can hardly wait for the the next release. WOW!
–Ed
P.S. I posted these comments earlier on the Discussion Page, but this does seem like the more appropriate place. Thanks!
Hi everyone! Very happy to see the conversation getting started.
Just to build on what Brendan said: in many cases the differences between “pop” and “theater” writing are pretty subtle, and occasionally unclear…sometimes a song with a repeated chorus that does not move the plot forward feels like the exact right thing to put in a show. (Examples from our show STRIKING 12: “Can’t Go Home,” “Caution To The Wind” and “Snow Song” are pop songs, but in a theatrical setting.) As the only member of GL who has NOT attended grad school, I have more than once written a repeated chorus, showed it to my collaborators, and then been voted down/convinced to put in different lyrics each time the chorus comes around…so it definitely can be a good idea in many cases!
On the other hand, some of our “pop” songs have choruses with changing lyrics, and they are definitely not theater songs: “Live Through This” is an example.
I think this is a fascinating topic, and welcome more discussion.
Hey Steve (and anybody else who’s confused about this…),
We’re not actually appearing in Long Story Short in either Pittsburgh or Palo Alto. It’s a two-person musical with a four-piece band, and we are not going to be on stage. The show is cast, and we have some really terrific people playing Charles and Hope–these demos are just us, at home, singing the songs. The actors sound even better.
That’s how we can magically be on tour in December while Long Story Short is playing 8 shows a week in Palo Alto…
Sorry for the confusion!
Val said: As the only member of GL who has NOT attended grad school…
Yeah, but you’re the only member of GL whose child can literally be teased with “Your momma wears army boots”!!
Great song! Love to all.
Beautiful as usual…
In reference to the “theatre vs. pop” lyric discussion… is there any kind of corollary to this concerning the music composition as well? I’d be interesting in knowing how the approach to composition of the music might change when you’re writing for a theatre/character situation instead of a more typical “pop” creation.
I would think that there would be more concern over how to “get into” and “out of” the song, obviously. Hard to do a “fade out” for a song in a theatre situation. Any thing else of this nature?
Dear IowaTim,
As far as theatre vs. pop lyrics and theatre vs. pop music, there’s SO MUCH I’d love to say about “theatre” vs. “pop” music, but much of it bears directly on next week’s song, “It Happens In A Moment.” So I’ll have a lot more to say next Wednesday…
As far as “Rocking Chairs” goes, it is, musically, a typical pop song format. It’s just a little short, and a little odd harmonically…but there’s:
More next week…unless somebody has any more burning questions about this tune, or anything else for that matter.