This week I exchanged a few emails with a singer-songwriter named Shannon Hurley. She recently moved from LA to Nashville, and as a consequence her songwriting became less country.

I know, that sounds counterintuitive. I’ll let her explain:

Shannon: My songwriting changed in the most unexpected way. Instead of wanting to fit into the country genre, I went further out of the realm. I find that I quite like being the “indie-pop” songwriter in a city of country music. I am enjoying the experimentation of electronica, downtempo, chill-pop, etc. and blending them into my singer-songwriter world.

Tom: When and how did you start writing songs?

Shannon: I wrote my first song when I was about seven. It was called “Georgia Moonlight”. I remember exactly how it goes, and if someone paid me $1,000 then I will sing it. I even have the cassette tape I recorded it on..Maybe I’ll put it up on podcast for my own embarrassment

Tom: Music or lyrics?

Shannon: Both! They seem to happen for me at the same time. I often sit at my piano and start noodling around until a lyrical phrase and a melodic idea come together.

Tom: Have you got any tricks or tactics to come up with new songwriting ideas?

Shannon: Lately I have been enamored with bringing up different loops in Garageband. That’s the way “Life is Strange” (from my new project Lovers and Poets) started. A fresh groove is a great way to create a new song.
That particular loop I used in “Life is Strange” is just one of the basic “club” beats that comes with Garageband.

Tom: Your songs are very American, and very traditional. Are you ever tempted to go crazy and throw in five key changes then break into a 7/8 groove?

Shannon: Hmmm, probably not. I am not big into progressive meter changes or progressions that seem to go in random directions. I like simplicity, and all my favorite songs are easy to sing and play. The Kinks, The Who, Tom Petty, and The Beatles all had some great songs with only 3-4 chord changes. But who’s to say that I’ll never throw in an extra beat or an unpredictable chord? I will if the song calls for it. I’m just a slave to the song!

Tom: Personally I always over use certain chord progressions or keys – I have way too many songs in E lydian for example. Have you got any songwriting clichés you over use?

Shannon: I think every songwriter has little ticks and idiosynchrosies they rely on. Either you can fight it and try to go in entirely different direction, or you can use it to your advantage and it can become your “sound”. I don’t want to admit what I think is my weakness because that “weakness” may be what is drawing some listener into my music. But I know what I have to work with, and I am aware that my muscle memory is to play a certain way on the keyboard..but sometimes I will test my comfort zone and go off in a completely new songwriting direction.

Tom: The sample of Lovers and Poets sounds very different to your solo songs. What’s the idea behind this new project?

Shannon: I feel like my solo material is very personal and autobiographical. It’s also more organic with a full band sound. Lovers and Poets is more fanciful, and not based in reality. Instead, I chose to write about fictional situations or skewed the truth in some way to create alternate endings to things that have really happened to me. “Life is Strange” is a half-truth; I fell asleep at the wheel of my car in South Park, Colorado after playing keyboards for the band I was in at the time (called Jyemo). We had gotten through a sunrise set on the 4th of July. All I remember is listening to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, and then I was in the air, then the air bag inflated, shards of glass were everywhere, and I rolled a couple times in slow motion. I thought I was in heaven. Luckily I was unhurt (except for a case of shock) but it was the catalyst for the song. I heard Ralph Murphy speak here in Nashville, and he said there are no regrets in songwriting.

We can create our own truths, and things that didn’t happen, we can make them happen in our songs. So I thought, well, what if I wasn’t driving alone? What if I had a passenger..somebody I loved..and what if one of us died in the accident? And I wanted to be vague, like you can’t tell which of us had died. Or both. And I really wanted to tell a story of how fragile life is, how random life is.

Well shoot, I didn’t mean to end up on such a morbid note. On a more positive side, “The Things We Do for Love” is a song I wrote as a tribute to one of my favorite bands- Belle and Sebastian. So there, I hope readers feel warm and fuzzy now- I know B&S always does that for me!

Check out Shannon’s songs here!

PS. I’m always interested in interviewing songwriters about what makes them tick. Drop me an email if you want to talk about your songwriting at tomslattermusic AT gmail.com

Related posts:

1. Ultraviolet Eye – A Songwriting Interview