Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

I want to share with you all a story which is an example of turning a raw deal into a wonderful songwriting situation.

I was doing this outdoor solo gig at a tennis club. It was a great little spot. I was on the roof of the club with about 150 others and covering my part of the stage was one of those huge outdoor umbrellas weighed down by two 60 kg weights.

Things were going really well. I had finished my first set and was downstairs having lunch when all of a sudden, one of the organisers of the gig said to me with a pained look on his face.

“Corey I think you should come upstairs and have a look at what’s just happened”

My heart sank. It didn’t sound good.

Sure enough, a freak gust of wind had toppled the umbrella onto the PA system which, in turn landed on my Maton acoustic guitar snapping the poor thing in half.

The rest of the story is not that relevent. I got another guitar and luckily, the PA was not damaged.

The show went on and all in all it was a very good one. However, I was faced with the sad truth. I was without a guitar.

The first thing I said to myself was ‘how am I going to write songs?’

Lots of other things went through my head as well but I calmed myself down and made a deal that I would not freak out. I am going to make this situation something of a learning experience and see what happens.

It was time to get out of my comfort zone.

As it turned out I had nothing to worry about as it almost always is the case with these sort of things. I borrowed guitars from friends for the shows. Rehearsals turned into songwriting sessions because there was only one guitar between two people.

In one session we wrote or finished off three songs. How productive was that!

Instead of relying on my guitar to drive my own songwriting, it forced me to write lyrics and hum melodies into a tape recorder. I was using my voice recorder on my mobile phone and my answering machine a hell of a lot more as well.

I started carrying around a notepad again and stopped myself anywhere to write down whatever idea came into my head at the time.

Eventually the money to replace my guitar came through and I bought myself a beautiful Taylor 324-CE-L10 Fall Limited Edition Acoustic Guitar.

I am now in songwriting heaven. The amount of playing and noodling that I have been doing has been insane.

That doesn’t take away the fact however, that for two months I was without a guitar and I made do very nicely thankyou.

The experience showed me that:

1. I wasn’t using all of the songwriting tools at my disposal
2. I was relying on my guitar too much to create ideas for songs
3. I can make things happen from nothing
4. Lyrics and melody make a song, not arrangement

They were powerful lessons which I’m very thankful to have learnt. It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t go through the pain of loss. We all have inside us the power to get things done and to create things out of nothing.

Get out of your comfort zone and create without consequence.

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

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