Creative Habits

Dit is één van de columns die ik schreef voor VoiceCouncil Magazine, een internationaal magazine voor singer-songwriters.

Listening to his songs for decades, I was very pleased with the opportunity to meet American singer-songwriter A.J. Croce during his tour in Holland.

He turned out to be a patient model, taking the time to play the piano and sing one of his songs for me. After the session we sat down in the recording studio for a long talk.

What’s the secret behind A.J.’s incredibly creative songwriting?

“I write every single day. Songwriting is as much about the exercise of doing it, as it is about finding that perfect song. In the process you will write good songs and bad songs. I write terrible songs sometimes. But no one has to hear them. I am sincerely questioning my own work and my own ability, from time tot time. I just keep doing it because I love it.”

He doesn't give up easily on a song. When he isn't satisfied, he rewrites it, or steals the best parts to be used in another song. A.J. loves watching his songs evolve. To him, the editing stage is “the real process”.

A.J. is unceasingly collecting ideas he might be using in a song one day. Interesting remarks and phrases from other people, his own thoughts and feelings... they all end up in his little black notebook. His jottings are a constant source of inspiration whenever he composes at his piano or guitar.
Hearing someone play a beautiful tango or some chords that aren't in his vocabulary, triggers him to learn it and to incorperate into his own writings.

He can just as easily be absorbed by analyzing echo sounds. “You know the echos in early Ike and Tina Turner records and in The Everly Brothers? I can spend 5 songs trying to capture that sound.”
It's these new influences that keep him creative.

He admits it's hard to be really original though: “Every single thing I write, I recognize it comes from somewhere else. There is very little that is totally original. Until you put all of those familiar things that have been separate before, into one place. Then you've created something new and individual.”

At the end of our talk he asked me about the song he had played especially for me, before our talk. I had no idea which song he meant… I had been so absorbed in thinking how I wanted to depict him, that I hadn’t really listened at all. I’d only been looking. Sorry, AJ. ;)

Maybe that’s MY secret: I tend to get completely lost in looking…