John M Davis

I didn’t give myself a lot of time after I released ‘Night Tides’ to dive right back into composing. ‘Night Tides’ was a catharsis, an expunging of a tremendous amount of pent up emotion and grief. It was an album I had to make. I’m back now with intention, writing new material after several weeks of conceptualizing, researching, and reading for inspiration. I figured out what I want to say and the metaphor I want to use to tell my story.

This got me thinking about what it takes to really embark on a new project with intention. What does it mean when we say, “I’m going to make a thing” decide for ourselves what the thing is, and then embark on the journey.

For many of us artists, we don’t really know what it is we’re making until we’re making it; sometimes we don’t know what it is until it’s made. In the book ‘Faith, Hope, and Carnage‘, musician and songwriter Nick Cave said he really doesn’t know what a song is about until after it’s been performed in front of an audience.

All this is true for most artists, myself included, but I think many of us start with an idea and intend to run with it. In the running, we often find that the destination is not what we originally had in mind.

For my current project, I started with a CLEAR IDEA of what I wanted to make. I was inspired by post-apocalyptic western themes and wanted to make a soundtrack to the series/game/movie in my head. After a few attempts, some sketches that went nowhere, my brain was like (in a Rhode Island accent), “That’s friggen stupid, bro.”

So the idea began to evolve and move in another direction. I follow this bad boy wherever it went because, like a will-o-the-wisp in a Lovecraftian swamp, it was taking me somewhere I wasn’t planning to go. The conceptualization evolved and became more political, social, literary, environmental… it was moving from craft to art. The work began to speak to me and was telling me what I needed to say.

Honestly, if you came here for how-tos and tutorials and technical advice, I’m really not your guy. You can get all that on YouTube. All I can say about this is that old adage: “trust the process”. It’s good to start a project with an intention. You may see that through to a brilliant piece of art. But when your heart tells you, “nah bro, do this instead”, listen to your clam cake eating, stuffie stuffin’ inner self and follow its advice. Your first idea will get you started but the real ART comes from following the will-o-the-wisps wherever they take you.

Peace. And… I’m really hungry now.