How to find writing inspiration in your own life

SONGWRITER ANDY ALEDORT KNOWS about how to find writing inspiration in your own life. He finds it in his. He is back on The QWERTY podcast to talk to us about his new album, writing song lyrics, and being fully engaged living the creative life. Listen in and read along as we discuss that, and much more.

Marion: Today, my guest is Andy Aledort, again. Yep, he got a call back. We heard from him here on Qwerty a while back in an interview in which we discussed music journalism, but I wanted him to talk more about that creative life in light of the fact that he’s just released an album. It’s called Light of Love, and it’s a beauty. I’ve been rocking to it now for weeks. So, we’re going to welcome him again. Hi, Andy. How are you?

Andy: I’m great, Marion. Thanks so much for having me back on your terrific show. I really appreciate it.

Marion: Oh, I’m delighted. I’m going to put a little link in the transcript to our previous interview so people can go read that in case they haven’t read it yet. But just to give everyone a bit of a background, you’re the longtime senior editor and writer at Guitar Magazine. You’re recognized worldwide as a guitar instructor and a performer. You’ve been in the music business for more than 35 years. And in that time, you’ve pretty much interviewed everybody. You’ve toured with the original bandmates of Jimmy Hendrix’ band and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band. And you have sold over a million guitar instruction DVDs. You teach online, you perform all over with your band, the Groove Kings, and you’re the co-author, along with Alan Paul, of the New York Times bestselling book Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

You’re also a visual artist. So Andy, it’s fair to say you’re a highly creative person. And now you’ve just released a gorgeous studio record. It is just beautiful. It’s called The Light of Love from World’s Finest Records. And, what I want to say first is, wow. How does it feel to have this new piece of art out in the world?

Andy: Well, it feels amazing. It’s been a long time coming as I’ll describe in a minute. But you know, Marion, you left out the most important thing, which is that you and I have been friends since we’re both five years old. There’s that.

Marion: It is the most important thing. You’re absolutely right, since we were five and our mothers were in the PTA together. Positively. Sorry about that.

Andy: Yeah, come on, man. Don’t leave that out.

Marion: Come on, man. So how does it feel? How does it feel?

Andy: It’s been phenomenal from the beginning. I made a record, my first record. 23 years ago in 1999. And then I started recording sort of in earnest new original music. And, you know, yada, yada yada. All these years went by. And finally I said enough is enough and went back and started to construct what I realized had to be a double album, because there was so much music. And I knew that Light of Love would be the title track and the opening track because it was a song that got written and recorded in the late ’90s, and it was a very important song to me, lyrically and musically and for all good reasons. I think of each song as painting a picture, almost in a visual way, that they can be different from each other. The other thing I really want to say, because I think this’ll resonate with you, Marion, is to me, songs are just like dreams. Because in my experience, they come out of the subconscious. We don’t know where they come from and we don’t necessarily know what they mean or why. But like a dream, they seem to have their own logic to them within the context of themselves if you know what I mean.

Marion: Yeah. I’m going to ask you in a minute about lyric writing. Absolutely. So I love that about the dream. And let’s just double back so everybody knows about, but the record, it’s a double CD, as you said. It’s got 18 tracks that are all originals, except for that rocking cover of Willie Dixon’s “You Shook Me.” So, clear something up for me if you would. I remember when Adele released her latest album, there was this whole flap, which she totally won when she insisted that the album get played in the order in which the tracks are set down. It’s a story, she said. It’s a book. So is Light of Love something that is telling one big story? Is it a contiguous tale? I’ve only listened to it in order, but that’s because I’m a very well-disciplined person sometimes or something. I don’t know. But in your intent of laying down those tracks one at a time, are they a contiguous tale?

Andy: Well, some people have said to me in this day and age, many artists, they release one song. It has to do with the short attention span theater that is today and just the nature of technology in the medium. A song shows up on your phone. And that’s just the delivery system, if you will, of today. But you know, Marion, we grew up in the era of the album. You waited patiently for your favorite band’s next album to come out. And it was an event to sit down either by yourself or with your friends and listen to all of side one. And then it would end and you had a moment to digest what you just listened to. That was just how it worked. You had to wait to turn the record over. So automatically, your sensibilities were such that you could immediately start to reflect on what you had heard.

So sequencing, we grew up with it, so it’s something that for me, it’s extremely important and was something I was acutely aware of in all my favorite records. I mean, we all know that feeling of if you’re listening to a record you know, and a song ends, you already start singing the next song because you know what the next song’s going to be. And that’s a great feeling. Or if there’s a book that you’ve read and you’re reading it again, you know what’s coming up in the next chapter. You gain an appreciation for another part of the creative endeavor and the artistry which has to do with putting the pieces together, that these are not just individual elements or moments that are not connected to each other. There is a bigger picture. What if you were forced to watch a movie in one-minute segments? It would be excruciating.

Marion: It would be.

Andy: It wouldn’t make any sense. And so anyhow, there’s a lot of analogies. You could make a cinematic analogy. Again, I’m going to go back to the dreams, in dreams, events happen, if you remember your dreams clearly, where you’ll say, “Well, I was trapped in a world made of ice and then the next thing I knew, I was late to get a steamship to Greenland because I had to perform for aliens.” It all makes sense. Something like that. You know what I mean?

Marion: Yeah, I do. I do. And I think that the way I feel about this record, it makes sense in the order in which you laid them out for me. So let’s talk about the title track of the album, “Light of Love.” I’ve got it on replay. I love it. It’s so deeply beautiful and smart. But let’s talk about the writing. You open the song with the question if two people can want the same things, and then you explore that, or so it seems to me that’s what the song is about. So walk us through the creation. What got you asking that question and writing that song?

Andy: So Light of Love is more literal than some of the other songs. It’s actually a very clear picture. It’s not one that is more interpretive or impressionistic like some of the other songs. It’s really based on real life and it was happening in my life at the time. So it’s very literal. The opening line, there you are, introduces to the listener, okay, there’s this other person, we have two people. But the next line is there you go. So as soon as they show up, they’re gone. There you are and there you go, you’re gone already. And so the person singing the song, which is me, asks, “What’s in your heart? I wish I could know.” So we see immediately there’s conflict and misunderstanding happening between these two people.

And that is one of the things you should try to do in songwriting is tell the story succinctly in a few words. Then the next couplet is, “Do you want the same things as me, love of life, a soul running free?” which you would think everyone would want those simple things. How could they not? But the person singing the song doesn’t know. So that’s the introduction to this world. And as the song progresses into the next verses, I think of it as shooting the scene from different angles by describing the environment in different ways.

Marion: Yeah. That’s beautiful. Shooting the scene from different angles by describing it in different ways. I recently had the great good fortune to attend a masterclass given by the remarkable Janis Ian. And it was a two hour class and she walked us through the lyrics of her iconic song, “At Seventeen,” so she could make the point about the difference and similarity between truth and truthfulness. And not all the details in that song are apparently biographically correct. But all the emotional content is reported from the truth of being 17. So I learned a lot. And I started to think about your songs in this. And “Light of Love” felt particularly… Well, I thought to myself, “I wonder if that’s biographical.” So, in your songs, are you always sticking to what’s in you or are you also sometimes jockeying around in terms of the truthfulness of a man being in love or having a love to be destroyed? I think we always wonder how much is biographical? Is it always truthful? And I loved this distinction she made between truth and truthfulness, to stay true to the issue, but not necessarily one’s own biography. What about you? Are you writing from various different people or always from Andy Aledort?

Andy: I think my relationship with my songs is for me, it’s not that different from my relationship with other people’s songs or other people’s writing or watching a movie or something else. I want to keep a finger on the pulse of something being a little bit obscure and not so defined. So the inspiration always comes out of something in my life. Like in a song like Cool Water, overall, it’s just painting pictures in a more impressionistic way. It’s not biographical at all. It don’t bother me as biographical, but it’s silly. It’s like a funny take.

Marion: It is funny.

Andy: A relationship that people aren’t getting along. The first lines of that song, “It Don’t Bother Me,” “You don’t love me, this I know.” The guy’s already resigned to the fact that things aren’t good. The song’s called “It Don’t Bother Me,” like, “I’m over it.” So, that’s a take. The song “Can It Be,” “can it be I lie for you? Can it be I cry for you? Can it be I died for you? And then can it be I run from you?” So again, it’s a little bit humorous, just a twist on it. It’s not as serious. But “Light of Love” is very serious. The second verse of Light of Love, “Daylight’s here, and daylight’s gone, in the dark, a sad and lonesome song.” So just how the first verse was, “There you are and there you go,” in describing the passage of time, the second verse does the same thing, “Daylight’s here and daylight’s gone, in the dark, a sad and lonesome song.” And then I say, “Where’s the light to brighten up my day?” That’s the other person. And then wrap up the thought by saying, “Broken hearts long for love, always.” So, the story is developing as the song progresses. But I try to have that second verse reflect the things that were introduced in the first verse in an effective way.

Marion: It’s a call and response. It’s lovely the way… And I think that’s one of the reasons I like the song so much. It’s very tight and it continues to call back to that original, “Here you are and there you go,” right? It just feels like its title. And literally, it feels like it’s coming in and coming out. So lyric writing seems to be its very own beast in terms of writing, and you write journalism and you write music. And I wonder when you’re literally sitting down to write lyrics, what tools are at your elbow? I read in all those many Steven Sondheim obituaries we’ve all read that he uses the Clement Wood Complete Rhyming Dictionary. And I’ve got a copy. I love that rhyming dictionary. But what have you got by your side when you’re writing lyrics?

Andy: Well, I have to say, I don’t really have anything. I make it hard on myself. I will try to come up with as many rhymes as I can, and I’m willing to keep changing the word that I think I need to rhyme with, without being stuck to, “Well, gee, how am I going to rhyme that word?” I’ll change the whole take on the first line, which will then change the rhyme itself. And so it seems what works best for me, Marion, is I just keep turning over in my mind the next line that I want to sing to the listener to… It’s like you have a rope and you’re pulling them along, and you can guide them and steer them in whatever direction you want. That’s the beauty of writing, whether it’s a song or writing anything. You have all this wonderful freedom for the reader or the listener to follow the path that you lay out for them.

So that’s what I like to do more than anything else. I keep turning over in my mind, “Do I want to take them this way or take them this way or take them this way?” And that almost always answers those questions for me. You know what I mean? I’ll hit on one, just like the chord progression or the notes of the melody, it’s the same thing with the lyrics. I’ll find a handful of words and they have something about them that’s appealing and provocative and evocative enough that I think it’ll hold the listeners’ attention and make them want to know what happens next. If I get stuck, I’ve looked up a bunch of Bob Dylan songs, because he’s looked at as a giant of songwriting. So I’ll say, “Hey, if that was good enough for Bob, maybe that’s good enough for me.” Yeah, I know. It’s so interesting, Marion, songwriting is so condensed. It’s such a condensed form of writing. Just three words could be all you have, all you’re really allotted to communicate a whole big emotion because of the structure of the melody or the song. You got to pick the right words.

Marion: You absolutely do.

Andy: And Bob is good.

Marion: Yeah. Yeah. So when you’re looking at the language and you’re thinking about the language that you might like to use to express something, are you scribbling them down and looking at how the words look like next to each other, what they look like next to each other? Are you saying them out loud? How are you making that kind of decision? Because this is a sound experience for 99% of the time until we can go to our iTunes and push that little part on our phones that lets us see the lyrics. For most of us, it’s a sound experience. So how are you making the judgment of what language goes with what language? Are you singing it out loud?

Andy: Yeah. There’s an expression in songwriting, “Does it sing well?” You could have wonderful lyrics that are terrific as prose or poetry on a page, and they don’t sing well. So many different songwriters, Greg Allman, for example, would talk about that a lot. He’d say, “I had great lyrics, but they didn’t sing well, couldn’t sing them.” And phonetics are very interesting. Sometimes the phonetics, the shape of the sounds, is more important than nailing down a specific handful of words. So then you end up looking for words that reflect those phonetic sounds. And then hopefully the words tell the story that you want to tell. But the phonetics are leading the way because it has to come out of your mouth in a certain way that feels and sounds good and is going to be good for the listener. Oftentimes it is the deciding factor. It’s the phonetics of the sound, and a lot of songwriters will sing gibberish, Mick Jagger’s talked about this, all kinds of singers. And what’s funny is then you listen back, and because you are listening to something that exists, you can forget that it’s you, and you’ll say to yourself, “What’s the guy singing?” But it’s you, and you know you’re not singing anything, you’re singing gibberish. But because the phonetics are good, your brain will turn it into the right words.

Marion: That’s so wild.

Andy: It’s fun. And so you do-

Marion: Yeah, singing gibberish.

Andy: Yeah. You look at it on the page… And then you look at it on the page, this is my experience, “Is this working? Am I wasting the listener’s time? Or am I getting to the point? Am I clarifying and sharpening the picture? Or am I just mucking this up? Making it worse?” Sometimes they fall out and it’s easy and you can’t believe it. But more often than not, you have to work hard.

Marion: Yeah. So as you’re working as a singer/songwriter, are you constantly walking around with tunes in your head? Are you constantly walking around with words in your head? Are you walking around with words and music in your head all the time? The process I think is really mystifying to most people. So we think you’re there with us at a dinner party, but you’re secretly actually just sitting there writing something in your head, or you’re at the grocery store or you’re sitting at your desk or whatever. But what is it that you’re hearing? Or maybe the easier thing to ask is to sort of ask you to chicken and egg it. Do you literally say, “I really want to write a love song,” or, “I really want to write about what’s going on in the world right now,” and then you give yourself an assignment? Or is it that less obvious kind of process where something seeps in and you say, “Oh, that’s a pretty little tune. I think that would be a really nice little love song”? So walk us through that chicken and egg aspect of it.

Andy: Well, to me, and I think this is true for a lot of people, if you have made the decision that you want to maintain a creative wavelength that you are going to get on as early as possible, even before you wake up, in your dreams, and then you wake up and you’re already on that wavelength. In my experience, being connected to your creativity has momentum. So if you do it, it gets easier to do, I guess like playing golf or something. You’re just in the rhythm of your creativity and understanding yourself. Like the other day, I woke up and I had an idea. It wasn’t even a specific thing. And it was a musical idea which there would be a note and the note never changed, but all the chords changed under the note. And so the meaning of that note changed as each chord changed because of the relationship between that note and that chord. So it was actually a sort of structural idea of how music was put together. I had that as an idea. And then I came downstairs and I played a note and played a bunch of different chords under it. And the next thing I know, I had a song based on this idea of how to construct a piece of music. That’s one way.

The other way is you hear a melody, you don’t know where it comes from. It’s like having the TV on a certain channel or the radio on a certain station, and you are just a transmitter, it’s coming through you. But I can tell you, one time, everybody’s different, one time I decided to write lyrics with no music. That song’s called This Physical World, because I had an idea about a concept which was that regardless of all of our altruism and our best intentions, that just like the sun and the sky and air and animals, as human beings, we are creatures on earth in the physical world. And the physical world itself has shortcomings and we have frailties as humans and we are designed to make mistakes. And that was an idea for writing a song about that very thing. That’s why it’s called This Physical World. Regardless of wanting to rise above, we’re still going to be trapped by the shortcomings of being a human being. So the song is in acceptance of that, that that’s as real as anything else. And I love that as an idea. So I wrote all these words, and then I came home and wrote the music. But that’s the only time that ever happened.

Marion: That’s interesting. The other thing I took away from reading that great big tome by Steven Sondheim about lyrics is he has this one quote where he says, “It takes almost as much imagination to justify what you write as it does to write it.” So, are you ever up against that sort of other voice in your head that says, like writing about the physical world like that, are you ever up against a voice in your head that says, “That might be a little crazy,” or, “Hmm, you’ve never done it this way before, just writing the lyrics down without the music”? So what do you do when there’s that? We talked about this last time we talked, you don’t seem to experience an oppositional force much to your creativity. But how do you justify sometimes just pushing through with an idea that comes to you so differently as that one did?

Andy: I think that for me, Marion, it wasn’t like this for a long time. When I was younger, I did question my motivations too much. And I got in the way of my creativity too much. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that these are counterproductive things and there’s no point to any of that, that just by the nature of the fact that you have an idea, it’s valid and worth investigating. The expression I use for myself is giving yourself the time of day. For a long time, I didn’t give myself the time of day. I didn’t allow myself the freedom to explore because the editing part of my brain was too pushy. And so I’ve taken that person and locked them in a basement, in a sub-basement, far away, because he’s not helpful. And we’re going to let him out later. He could come out later when-

Marion: Really? Why?

Andy: Well, because later, that guy could go, “You know, maybe he could try that,” when the thing’s 99% done. “Maybe you want the picture window on the left instead of on the right.” But don’t interrupt me when I’m trying to build my skyscraper. You’re not helpful. At this late day, Marion, it’s become so easy, it’s a wonderful thing, that I wouldn’t even use the word fearless because it doesn’t… Fear and those emotions don’t even come into it at all. If I have an idea, I think by the nature of the fact that it showed up in my brain, it’s worthy of my time. It’s earned being given the time of day, David Bowie said, “Art is one of the only places where if you crash your plane, you can get up and walk away and you’re fine.” So you shouldn’t be afraid of of flying like someone that doesn’t know how to fly and crashing into a tree.

Marion: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Andy: And I agree.

Marion: Yeah, I do too. Let’s all live like David Bowie. That’s a beautiful concept. As we start to wrap this up, I know you remember that my audience is writers, and I think you’ve started the answer to this question, but I would like you to go a little bit further, because writers are frequently told to just stick to one single genre. If they’re in publishing and you write a memoir, your publisher will say, “No, no, no, you’ve got to write more memoirs. Don’t try to write fiction or nonfiction.” And I think that’s the worst advice we can give anyone because I think creativity begets creativity. And I know you agree with me because you were a visual artist through college. You were always playing the guitar, but you did so much on so many platforms, including visual art. But for those writers who are inclined to want to try a song, to try some song lyrics, but are locked in that dumb advice that, “Well, that’s not what you do,” I wonder, what can you say to anyone who’s fighting that urge to write in another format to try this beautiful format that you love so dearly?

Andy: Well, if you are not a musician and you’re a writer who you write words and put stories together and you’re interested in the nature and the creative path of songwriting, then go out, hear some musicians, find musicians that you like. You may have friends that are musicians that… It’s helpful, you’re already friends with them. And start to write from the perspective of these words are designed to be in a song. I think it’s fascinating that Bernie Taupin could write these lyrics for Elton John and have no idea, didn’t want to have an idea about what they would be like in a song or a melody or how they’d be sung or anything else. He would just tell a story that he knew, hoped that Elton would like those words and turn it into a song. And they ended up having this incredible working relationship where whether you’re talking about Someone Saved My Life tonight or any one of Elton’s greatest songs. Elton was lucky in finding a lyricist who could write lyrics that he could relate to as a musician. And then the two of them together created this end product of wonderful songs.

Andy: So, I would say to all writers who don’t write songs, if you’re interested, explore that notion. Maybe start with looking at Bob Dylan’s lyrics or Lucinda Williams’ lyrics or the lyrics of your favorite songwriters. The other thing I would say is that to me, songs are like little movies, little condensed, whether we want to think of short stories or vignettes, there’s lots of writers that as an exercise would write vignettes. I don’t know if you do that, Marion. And songs can be like that. You’ve already, before you start, given yourself the freedom to, “Well, I don’t know what this is and I don’t know where it’s going to go. It doesn’t matter because it’s a vignette. I’m writing this little thing that doesn’t need to be anything else than this little picture of something.” And that’s what songs are. So the best songs to me are able to, in a succinct way, paint this picture of a world that you can relate to, that listeners can relate to and that resonates with them emotionally in some way. But generally it’s not a 300-page book. It needs to be tight and concise. It’s fun.

Marion: It does appear to be fun. And as we go, you’ve given us a great line from David Bowie, you’ve reminded us of the great relationship between Elton John and Bernie Taupin. And I know from all of your music journalism, you’ve interviewed a bazillion people, and you referenced that before, but did anybody else in your own interviews give you any other lyric writing advice that you remember that you use every day?

Andy: Most of the guys that I interviewed were guitar players because I wrote for guitar magazines. And so guitar players, because they play guitar, they wake up every day and pick up the guitar and start banging on it. And if they’re trying to write a song, they’ll think of it in that way, “Okay, what do I have here? And are these the beginnings of a song?” And then you start to sing a melody, and in that phonetic way, just make sounds that go with the melody that feel good in your mouth, coming out of your mouth, just the phonetics. Because there is a sensibility to a phonetic as well. You don’t want to use the word you or me too many times. It’s too literal. And actually, it’s not that creative. There’s other ways to tell a story without referencing yourself or the person that’s sitting across from you. I think it’s more interesting to reference something that’s less obvious. But, another quote I love is from one of my favorite songwriters, Townes Van Zandt. Townes said, “One of these days, I want to write a song that’s so good I don’t even know what it means.”

Marion: That’s beautiful. Thank you, Andy. We’ll leave it there. Thanks so much for coming.

Andy: Yeah, that’s a good goal.

Marion: That’s a good goal. I like that. I’m going to go off with that goal in mind. All right. Well, thank you for coming back. And best of luck with the album. I know you’re coming up on 200,000 streams on Spotify. So by the time this airs, let’s hope it’s half a million. How about that?

Andy: Yes. And if people want it, they can go to andy aledort dot com and drop me a line and I’d be happy to send them one. And Marion, it’s always great to talk to you. Thank you so much. All writers out there, don’t be afraid. That’s my mantra. Fear nothing. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Marion: That’s it. Thanks, Andy.

Andy: Thank you, Marion.

Marion: You’re welcome. That was Andy Aledort. See more from him at andy aledort dot com. Get the album “Light of Love” on iTunes or wherever you get your music. I’m Marion Roach Smith and you’ve been listening to Qwerty. Qwerty is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them overitstudios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marion roach dot com where I offer online classes in how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow Qwerty wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a starred review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.