Erick Rudiak. Songwriter. Singer. Human.

Another first-class trip on the dare-I-say-annual Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides' High Sierra Singer Songwriter Adventure. Plenty of good songwriting exercises this year:

• Starting a song with a question (e.g. "Who did you think you are?")
  
• Writing a rebuttal to another song
  
• Writing a song in an hour (I got lucky with I Don't Watch The News last year)
  
• Writing a song without a chorus
  

I find something extremely appealing about that last idea. The chorus is, of course, where you get to drive the hook home and shouldn't generally be omitted without an extremely good reason. For whatever reason, I found myself omitting it this year anyway: I was writing story songs and going back to the same chorus repeatedly just didn't advance the story the way I needed. That means no radio airplay in this song's future, but maybe it'll become a MNO iPod anthem.
Practice Divorce

Update: 9/6/2010. The rebuttal song, covering This American Life's Superpowers episode; Ralph Covert's brilliant Jeune Fille in a White Sundress; and Sam Cooke's Cupid is now online.
Cupid

One of my favorite songwriting tools is writing from a perspective besides my own: an identity thief who winds up in Gitmo, a constrictor, a murdered pizza delivery boy, Johnny Cash's victim in Reno for which he's sent to Folsom Prison. The last one was even interesting enough to have been given an entirely different treatment by Steve Poltz. Of all the different perspectives, though, the one that gets the most undeserved anticipatory groans from audiences is consistently the 6-month-old foetus. It's nice to think that I leave folks pleasantly surprised after that.



P.S. For those keeping score, the list above is strictly partial: everything else is not necessarily autobiographical. Really.

On 1/30, I posted a review of the Safari Cup open mic, posing the question: "Can they still call it that?" It turns out, the answer is "no." The Safari Cup open (no-)mic is no more. I'm glad to say, though, that I'm left with several new friends, a slacker stalker (hi, Aaron), and a performing partner, Nick Narbutas, for my next show (!): Saturday, April 24th at Brothers K in Evanston. Nick is an awesome poet (and singer-songwriter), and we're calling it the Words Gone Wild Tour 2010. Be there at 6pm to get a good seat! Below is the last song I performed at Safari Cup. Good times.

Update: for easy calendaring, import this invite into your electronic organizer thingy.

Another year, another great camping trip with Ian, Zotzie, and the SYMG High Sierra Songwriters Adventure crew. Stuff I learned:

• The full story of Smokey Joe
  
• That Fred Van Vactor is even better than I remembered
  
• Marmots prefer Gibsons
  
• Testosterone can be used sweetly in a song (Listen)
  

I'd claim to have learned that the Ansel Adams Wilderness is beautiful, but I already knew that!
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Here are two of the other songs that were born on the mountain:

Elspeth Veronica MP3
I Don't Watch The News MP3

Raining Gravel MP3   Metahpor MP3
I'm getting ready to head out to Yosemite again. In past years, those trips have yielded some great songs - Raining Gravel, Metaphor, and a half dozen others. They've also yielded plenty of great stories. Martin was written after Steve Poltz suggested there might be reason to be jealous of my guitar as it was being passed from camper to camper for fondling and plucking. I'm looking forward to having some more great songs, and stories to accompany them, to premiere at Brothers K on Thursday, July 30th. Show starts at 7:00 PM. Steve will be there too, and will surely tell a few tales. Odds are at least one will outdo the three-parter that was captured at his Halifax show in '07. See part of it here (where Steve explains how writing You Were Meant For Me influenced television), or follow the youtube link to all three as a playlist.

YWMFM 1-3.

Like U2, The Eagles, and the Jonas Brothers, I'm looking forward to spending my summer seeing America. Check below to see if I'm coming to your town and, if I am, get tickets, FAST!

July 22 Bass Lake, CA 8:00 PM
July 23 Yosemite, CA 8:00 PM
July 24 Yosemite, CA 8:00 PM
July 25 Yosemite, CA 8:00 PM
July 30 Evanston, IL 7:00 PM

Tickets for July 22-25 are $1395 and worth every penny. July 30 is a pay-what-you-think-it's-worth show with Steve Poltz at Brothers K Cofee in Evanston. Steve and I will be fresh from a weekend of songwriting, communing with nature, and taste-testing different kinds of rainbows. It'll be the first time either of us plays our new songs at sea level. In other words, it'll be good times.

I often introduce Good In Bed by telling the story that inspired it: the ex-girlfriend who literally wrote out a pros/cons list to determine the fate of our relationship. The cons won, though I'll maintain some mystery by leaving the details of what carefully-chosen words were in each column for my live show and not for Google's cache. Things worked out for the best for each of us, and I hope she will be buoyed to learn, as I did today, that the same method was used by none other than Charles Darwin, albeit arriving ultimately at a different conclusion.

For the first time in three years, I was unable to attend the SYMG High Sierra Singer Songwriter Adventure. I made many great friends on those trips, and it was a gut-wrenching decision not to go this time around. Every year, each member of the gang would write a song with a common title. In 2006, it was "Collapsible Plans"; last year, it was "Raining Gravel". This year, it was "Paradise Pie", and though I wasn't able to join the trip, I did birth a song with the same name, just to make myself feel a little bit better. I even got to stamp another location on my songwriter passport with this one (hint: look around Cuba).

Listen here:
Paradise Pie MP3 (click here to read along with the lyrics).

It was nice to have fans recording the Brothers K show last month, though it does imply a much lower margin for error than usual. I finished the show with Creator (a.k.a. "Reputo Pro Vestri").

My next, and probably last, tour date for the summer is the Underground Lounge showcase on Wednesday, June 25th at 9:00 PM.

First, a follow-up to A Tale Of Two Stories. That's the one where I suggest that my songs might have commercial value. I'm not quitting my day job, but I do want to make an open and unabashed call out to the folks at Uglydoll: if Cinko ever gets his own TV show or maybe even a commercial, this should be the theme song/jingle:

Cinko.mp3

Second, a follow-up to My Very Own OINY Moment.
I was going to be really excited about the Event Promoters Ordinance passing in Chicago, because that would have meant that cool acts like Mozart and U2 and Elton John would've had to play tiny venues in Oak Park and Evanston. But then the whole thing got tabled (to thunderous applause from the local music community, natch) AND I found out that Steve Poltz is touring the midwest and had a night available to play in Evanston.

Steve and I will be playing songs and spinning yarns of epic ant battles on Wednesday, May 28th, starting at 7:00 PM. All this will happen right here in Evanston at the inimitable and unsurpassed Brothers K Coffee. Donations (preferably in Euros, but we'll take what we can get) are encouraged - baristas have needs too, you know!