Why this tune?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m participating in the “50/90” songwriting community at
fawm.org. It’s a global forum for songwriters that opens twice a year to a global community of writers who share songs and discussion. The site hosts regular “skirmishes,” where a
host picks a theme and participants try to write a song based on it in an hour. It’s a fun way to stimulate creativity. This song was the result of a skirmish that called for us to write based on a random Wikipedia page. My search landed on the page for Big Knife Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. I saw “Big Knife Creek” mentioned on the page and a story started to form, about an ongoing feud between two clans living along the creek. I wrote the lyrics in one go, building the story as I went. The twist ending was a surprise to me too, but I usually try to end songs on a positive note.
I’ve written eight songs so far, including some music written for other writers’ lyrics. I don’t expect to get to 50 by the end of September, but I expect to keep writing pretty steadily until then.
Photo of Big Knife Park by Keira McPhee from flickr: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license. Cropped for use in the reel and page image.
Tunes On Tuesday Reel
Check it out
Complete song on Soundcloud
Oren Levine, jazz pianist and songwriter 