Song form is one of those things that most listeners probably don’t think about very much, but they feel it. The structure of a song tells us where we are. Repetition gives us something familiar to grab onto, contrast keeps things interesting, and when a song leaves something familiar and eventually comes back to it, that return can feel satisfying because we’ve been waiting for it.

You don’t need to know any music theory for this to work. Over a lifetime, we hear songs an almost incalculable number of times. Some individual songs we’ve probably heard hundreds or even thousands of times. Without consciously studying any of this, we internalize the patterns. You may not know the name of the form, but your ears definitely do.

Most people are familiar with the basic idea of verses and choruses. The verses develop the story or idea, then the chorus arrives with the big repeating hook, usually including the title, the part everybody knows and sings along with. For example: “Bye bye Miss American Pie…”

But there’s another, older form called AABA. It was enormously common in the standards and popular songs of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, and it continued well into rock and pop. The Beatles used variations on it all over the place, and Billy Joel was fond of it too.

The basic idea is simple. You establish an A section, then another A with the same music but different lyrics. Then you go somewhere different, both musically and conceptually, for the B section, or bridge, before returning home to A.

A-A-B-A.

You can hear it in songs like “Georgia on My Mind,” “Yesterday” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and later in Billy Joel songs like “Just the Way You Are.” Sometimes the title starts the A section, sometimes it ends it, and sometimes it does both. Rather than having a separate chorus, the title or refrain can be built right into the recurring A section.

I’d always wanted to write a song using the AABA form. I love the classic feel of those songs. The best of them somehow feel as though they’ve always been around, and I wanted to see if I could write something that had a little of that quality.

Which brings me to “My Beautiful Bride.”

When I started writing it, though, I wasn’t consciously thinking, “This is finally going to be my AABA song.” I started with images from our wedding day:

“Bubbles in the champagne
Perfect summer afternoon
Here I stand with my best man
In this brand new blue suit”

Then I got to the end of that first section:

“Then the music starts to play
And all of our guests rise
Waiting for my…
My beautiful bride”

As soon as “My beautiful bride” popped out, I knew that was a line I wanted to keep coming back to.

That didn’t automatically mean the song had to become AABA. I could still have followed that refrain with a separate chorus. But the song didn’t seem to want one. I wrote another section using the same musical framework, telling another part of the story, and again it landed on “My beautiful bride.” At that point the AABA shape was pretty clearly revealing itself.

Michael Crichton once made the point that books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. I think that may be even more true of songwriting. A novelist has tens of thousands of words to work with. In a song you might have only a few dozen lines, and every word, every syllable, has to earn its place. A lot of the real writing happens after you think you’ve already written the song.

That was certainly true here. Originally, my third A section began:

“And I say, that you’re the song
That I will always sing
You’re my shelter from the storm
My best friend through everything”

There’s nothing particularly wrong with those lines. But the more I worked on the song, the more I realized they were doing a different job from everything around them. Most of the A sections were very visual and specific. You could see the champagne, the blue suit and the wedding rings.

Those lines weren’t showing the wedding. They were more like vows. They were telling Angela what she meant to me. So I took them out and replaced them with:

“Daisies in your long red hair
Rose petals at your feet
Our eyes lock as you slowly walk
Across the lawn to me”

Now I was back inside the scene. You could see it again. And the vow-like idea had somewhere better to go. It became the B section:

“And I promise I will love you with everything I have to give
And I’ll be right here by your side as long as we both live”

That was the point where the structure really clicked for me. The A sections show what happened. The B section says what it meant.

The funny thing is, I’d wanted to write an AABA song for years. When I finally did, I didn’t have to force it. “My beautiful bride” showed up at the end of that first section, I knew I wanted to hear it again, and the rest of the form followed from there.

Then the rewriting showed me something I hadn’t quite understood when I started: the form wasn’t just organizing the music. It was helping me understand what I was really trying to say.

That’s one of the things I love about songwriting: honing in on what exactly the song is about. And sometimes that isn’t just about finding better words. It’s about finally understanding what the song is trying to do.

It's funny how songs have their own timelines.

People sometimes assume that writing a song is followed fairly quickly by recording it and putting it out into the world. But, at least for me, that's almost never how it works.

I'll usually write a song, then put it away for a while before coming back to it with fresh ears. Given enough time, a song will usually tell you what it still needs. Sometimes it's a single line. Sometimes it's a whole new verse. Sometimes it quietly points out that the chorus wasn't quite as good as I thought it was.

Then there's waiting for the right recording project. Recording, mixing and mastering take time, and release schedules have a way of shifting. By the time a song finally shows up on Spotify, it may have been part of my life for years.

"All Of You" is one of those songs.

It was originally supposed to be recorded during the Everyday Miracle sessions, but we simply ran out of time before we got to it. At the time, I was disappointed. Looking back, I'm really glad it happened that way.

The extra time let me keep living with the song, and somewhere along the way I found a better version of it. I rewrote parts of it, tightened things up, and I think it's a stronger song today than the one I would have released back then.

Interestingly, the song itself ended up reflecting that same idea. 

As I kept working on it, I realized I was writing about something I don't hear very often in songs. Most love songs are about falling in love. I found myself wanting to write one about what happens after you've already found your person. After you've seen each other at your best and your worst. After you've shared the highs and the lows, learned each other's quirks, gotten on each other's nerves from time to time, and chosen each other anyway.

Instead of simply saying, "I love you," I wanted the little details to tell the story. The habits. The expressions. The walls we put up when we're hurting. The private moments that only happen after you've shared enough life together to really know another person.

One of my favorite verses captures that idea:

I see the girl without the makeup
Smiling sleepy as we wake up
Unguarded, open-hearted, nestled in my arms
And I see through the tough disguise
The mask you wear, the hurt you hide
I see the truth inside and who you really are

The song also gave me the chance to try something I'd always wanted to do: write a list song. Country music has a long tradition of them, where one observation builds on another until they create a much bigger picture. That felt like the perfect structure for a song about knowing someone deeply enough to love all of them—not just the easy parts.

Maybe it's fitting that a song about love growing deeper over time needed a little more time to grow up, too.

After quite a few years, I'm finally able to share "All Of You." I hope you enjoy listening to it. And if the song reminds you of someone who's seen all of your rough edges, and loved you anyway, I hope you'll share it with them.

“Make Your Own Change” is a country-folk song about going through a mid-life crisis and coming to the realization that despite everything; despite working hard and trying to do things right, the narrator in the song has somehow missed the point. But the universe sends him a message, in the form of a roadside fruit stand with a handwritten sign saying, “Make your own change”. 

I wrote this song with Colin Black and Les Hauge. Colin came up with the title and the idea for the song after seeing a vegetable stand on a visit back home to his Mom’s place in rural Georgia. And as soon as I heard the title, I thought it could make a beautiful song about a life-changing epiphany. And that’s the kind of song I like to write! 

At one point, the first two verses were written, and I was thinking about what the chorus should say that would sum up the message of the song. And as I was driving home one day, I started thinking about the great Bob Seger song, “Against the Wind”. Especially the part where he sings: “I was livin’ to run and runnin’ to live”. That line always got me, even as a kid, although I didn’t have the life experience at the time to truly understand it. But I realized as I was driving that the feeling that line gave me was very similar to the feeling we were trying to express. And by the time I got home I had the chorus:

Running so fast, I lost track of the reason
I wasted years and I let love slip away
I came back to find myself some healin’
Cause I can’t keep going on this way
I know… you gotta make your own change

“Running so fast, I lost track of the reason”. That’s kinda what Bob meant when he wrote those lines of his that I loved. And I had wasted years and I had let love slip away. The truth of that hit me hard. 

And I also realized that for most of my life I’d been trying to change my life by trying my damnedest to change the people and the world around me. But, like the narrator in the song, I’ve reached the point now where I’ve come to realize that the biggest change we can make, the biggest change we need to make, is actually within ourselves. “Make Your Own Change” is about that moment of realization.

Inspiration is an elusive thing, isn’t it? Sometimes the harder you look for it, the farther away it seems to get. And then, sometimes, out of nowhere it appears, like it’s been waiting for you all along. For me, inspiration struck in the unlikeliest of places: a little arts and crafts fair in Nashville, TN.

If you’ve been to one of these fairs, you know the vibe: homemade jams, hand-poured candles, vintage vinyl records, leather belts, blown glass, and all kinds of jewelry and art. I’ve always loved that kind of thing – there’s something energizing about seeing people’s creativity on full display.

But it wasn’t the jams or candles that made this day unforgettable. It was a photograph – a breathtaking image of a wild mustang stallion. The picture was hauntingly beautiful: a lone wild mustang stallion framed against a sky glowing with the pinks and golds of sunset. It felt like he was alive – you could see the battle scars on his chest, the texture of his mane, and there was something about the way the camera caught him that conveyed a moving feeling of loss… but also resilience.

That photo grabbed me by the heart, so I said yes to an impulse, and bought it.

The photographer, Timothy West, wasn’t at his booth when I purchased it – he was busy with another customer. But his wife was kind enough to tell me the story behind the shot as she carefully wrapped it up.

Tim’s journey was as captivating as the photo itself. He’d been working as a salesman but was laid off, and instead of letting that knock him down, he packed up his dad’s old Nikon camera and decided to travel. While exploring the wild, untamed beauty of Wyoming and Montana, he came across the mustangs – wild horses living free in the rugged expanse of the American West.

And she told me something that gave me chills: in every herd, there’s only one lead stallion. Younger stallions will eventually challenge the leader, and when they do, the fights are brutal. The photo I’d fallen in love with, the one Tim had titled The Warrior, was of an old stallion who’d lost his band to a younger challenger and was now on his own. The similarities between their two stories, the horse and the former salesman and road warrior, was striking.

And right there, in the middle of an arts and crafts fair, I got goosebumps.

I said to her, “That’s a song! And I’m going to write it.”

And so, I did. Over the new few weeks, I poured everything I felt about that image into a song. I called it The Warrior, just like Tim’s photograph.

Once the song was recorded, I emailed it to Tim and asked if he’d be open to letting me use The Warrior as the cover art for the single. He was kind enough to say yes. But what really floored me was what he wrote after hearing the song:

“I am not always emotional, but it was like you sang my life.”

As a songwriter, there’s no greater compliment than knowing your work touched someone deeply. To me, that’s the power of art – it connects us, tells our stories, and reminds us that we’re not alone.

So, thank you, Tim, for your talent and for sharing your story with me. And to anyone reading this, if you’re a fan of wild horses, breathtaking landscapes, or just pure photographic magic, do yourself a favor and check out Tim’s work on his website.

And while you’re at it, give The Warrior a listen – it’s available on Spotify here, or Apple Music here, or wherever you stream your music. I hope it touches your heart the same way that photograph touched me.

Here’s to the power of art, storytelling, and those unexpected moments of inspiration that can change everything.

This interview was first published on Americana Highways…

Americana Highways: Can you tell us what inspired you to write this song “It Just Takes One” and what it’s about?

Brock: The song has a funny origin story. It began life as a challenge from a publisher who mentioned that Carrie Underwood was looking for a new “revenge song” similar to some of her hits like “Blown Away” or “Two Black Cadillacs.” But I thought, you can only kill off so many guys in one concert! Maybe a story about justice being served where the come-uppance didn’t result in death might be a good idea. And I wasn’t aware of many songs about sexual harassment, so maybe it was time for one. I knew immediately that I needed a female perspective to help write this – so I sat down with my wife and her real-life experiences formed the basis of the story. And I loved the resulting song so much I decided to record it myself. But I’m still open to the idea if Carrie decides she wants to cut it! 

AH: What do you hope listeners get from hearing the song?

Brock: What I always hope for with every song I write is that it will make people feel something. In this case, I’m hoping they feel empowered and encouraged to stand up for change. My wife, like so many women, experienced multiple instances of sexual harassment as well as the dismissive “boys will be boys” attitude that permit it to go unchecked. But I believe that, just as every fire starts with a single spark, all change starts with one decision, one voice speaking out. And that’s what I hope people get when they hear this song: encouragement to make positive change. As the chorus states:

        It just takes one voice to speak out – someone to stand up
        It just takes one tiny seed of truth to turn everything around
        It just takes one light to shine on – show the world what’s gone wrong
        It just takes one spark to start a fire and burn it to the ground
        And change will come – it just takes one 

AH: What kind of a vibe were you going for when recording this song? How does the final version differ from what you imagined it might be before you went into the studio?

Brock: The final track is so much different from my original acoustic demo. And it all started with a conversation I was having with Marcus Finnie, who played drums on the album, as we were setting up in the studio. We were talking about how Stewart Copeland (drummer for The Police) was so masterful at creating interesting half-time, Reggae-ish grooves in the verses, and then switching to a double-time straight rock beat in the choruses. There’s a lot of Police songs that use that arrangement technique so effectively to make the choruses stand out. So we decided to use that as inspiration with this track. Marcus threw in some Copeland-esque side stick, and the rest of the band immediately responded to that cue which resulted in a track that blends country-rock with a little bit of The Police. Which sounds weird, yet somehow really works.

AH: How does this song fit in among the others on the album? How is it similar and/or how does it stand out as different?

Brock: Most of the songs on the album are about love in all of its infinite variations. And I don’t just mean boy-meets-girl type of songs, although there’s one of those too, but more complex, real-world love stories, such as “Make A Family,” which is about a couple that can’t have kids,  at least biologically, or “I’ll Always Be Your Dad,” which is about a father reassuring his daughter that he will always be there for her, even though the family situation is changing. So to provide a little contrast and counterpoint to those types of songs, I like to include one or two songs on every album that are more social justice songs, for want of a better description. “It Just Takes One” is that song for this album. 

AH: Tell us about the video. Who directed the video and where did you film it? 

Brock: The video was directed and produced by Karl Weidmann from Southern Cabin Films and features the band in action at the Backstage Studio in Nashville as they record the song. 

It Just Takes One” was produced by Brock and Grammy award-winning engineer and producer Zach Allen (Keb’ Mo’) and features Marcus Finnie (Taj Mahal) on drums, Duncan Mullins (Luke Bryan) on bass, Rob McNelly (Bob Seger) on electric guitar, Pat McGrath (Jake Owen) on acoustic guitar, Michael Rojas (Stevie Nicks) on B3 organ and Russ Pahl (Kacey Musgraves) on Pedal Steel. Background vocals were sung by Kyla Jade, Devonne Fowkles and Maureen Murphy and were arranged by Michael B. Hicks. 
 

Original article here
 

In 2021, approximately 9 percent of high school students in the US attempted suicide. A heart-breaking number of them succeeded. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people.

That’s what my co-writer, Jay Bryant-Wimp and I were talking about when we sat down to write the song that eventually became Keep On. This was an issue that had touched both of us.

How could music, with its incredible ability to turn pain into beauty and inspiration – how could music transmute that kind of darkness into light? That was our challenge. The result was Keep On, an uplifting song of hope that starts with a simple acoustic guitar and builds to a tumultuous climax backed by a gospel choir.

 A few interesting musical facts about the song: it features an “outro”, which is, as you might imagine, the opposite of an intro, a musical section that closes out the song after the last chorus. (Think of the piano part at the end of classic song, Layla, as a great example of an outro.) The outro also contains an example of “word-painting”, which is a songwriting technique that conveys some portion of the lyrics in a more literal way. An obvious example is a melody that goes up when the lyric says “high” or goes down when the lyrics says “low”. (Friends In Low Places, for example!) For the outro, I wrote a melody that extends the word “on” into a whole musical phrase. The word “on” kept on! Which turned into a pretty melody and a nice way to wordpaint the concept of keeping on. 

And then when we were working out the background vocal/choral parts, which I did with Michael B. Hicks, a super talented keyboard player, musician, singer and arranger, I suggested that we turn that musical phrase into a “round”. (A round is when a musical phrase repeats in an overlapping fashion.) I sang the idea I had in mind. Mike and all the singers sat in the studio control room and looped through the section over and over, gradually building up the part until it became the very cool arrangement we ended up with.

You can see those singers, as well as the rest of the band, in action in this video which we shot while recording the song at the Backstage Studio in Nashville. 

Keep on! ❤️

The song “Bullets And Blood” was inspired by a true love story. It’s a song about a 30+ year relationship that persevered despite prejudice, bigotry, rejection and violence, and ultimately it’s a song about the triumph of love over hatred. It’s the story of Nelson and Keith, two men who met and fell in love in the South during the 1980’s. 

My co-writer on this song, Angela, is good friends with Nelson and Keith and had long wanted to write a song about their inspiring love affair. She had the title and the hook line: “Bullets and blood are not enough to stop this love”, but that’s about as far as she had gotten. We’d been writing another song together and as I often do with songs I’m co-writing, I went off on my own into my little studio to work on it by myself for a while. But it was hard slogging on that particular song; I was trying so hard, too hard perhaps, to find the right lines, the right melody, and I’d been working on it for a couple of days when I decided to take a mental break, shift gears and play with something else. Angela had told me pieces of the story previously and before I knew it I had a couple of verses and a chorus. I recorded a quick voice memo on my phone and texted it to Angela. Almost before she got back to me a few minutes later, I had another verse, and then another. 

Every once in a while (a very long while, for me) a song will come easily like that. (Townes Van Zandt called these songs “sky songs” because it seems like they just come out of nowhere and are delivered to their writers. For example, Don McLean reportedly wrote all eight minutes of “American Pie” in about an hour. ) That other song Angela and I were working on never really came to much, but I do think that all the time I spent on it paved the way somehow. I was warmed up, I was open to the creative flow, and when I focused on something important, something that matters, it became the catalyst for this beautiful song. 

Here’s what Alan from the UK blog The Rocking Magpie and to say about the song: “The bravest song I’ve heard in years: Bullets and Blood. The first night I heard it I couldn’t believe my ears and had to take it back to the beginning and listen intently! Phew! The melody is as Country as Country gets but the lyrics will set your average redneck’s hair on end. I applaud Brock Davis for having the chutzpah to not just write this song but release it too…and for that it’s my favourite song here.”

The world has changed a lot since the 1980's and we've made a lot of progress. I wish I could say that some of the challenges described in this song are completely in the past, but I can't, at least not yet. One day, I hope, one day…. ❤️

Listen to Bullets And Blood on Spotify.

Bullets And Blood

I met my love at college in my junior year
But when I brought him home it was worse than I feared
“You ain’t no son of mine”, my Daddy made it clear
And that was that
Never going back

Caught in a parking lot, late one August night
Four good ole boys with baseball bats didn’t think our love was right
If it wasn’t for the cop car cruising by
We’d have been alone
With more than broken bones

[Chorus]
Bullets and blood
Can’t stop this love
Bullets and blood
Are not enough
To stop this love

They did their best to run us out of town
Gave us a welcome that was worthy of the South
Three bullet holes through the kitchen door remind me how
We have to hide
Or pay the price

[Repeat Chorus]

Then one cold winter, he woke up and couldn’t breathe
Raced him to emergency for some surgery
Wouldn’t let me visit him in his time of need
They told me
You’re not family

We got married when the laws began to change
Couldn’t do it here, had to travel out of state
After twenty years, I could finally take his hand and say
Please be mine
For all time

[Repeat Chorus]

It was the fall of 1984. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” had been released that summer and it was already well on its way to becoming a humongous, smash record. (It sold 15 million copies that year, making it the top selling album of the year, eventually selling over 30 million copies worldwide.) “Dancing In The Dark” was all over the radio and MTV. 

I’ve written previously that, when I was a kid, Bruce Springsteen was my favorite songwriter and a big inspiration for me as a young musician. I’d heard that his live concerts were legendary so when the radio announced that Springsteen and the E-Street Band would be coming to the Vancouver Coliseum, I knew that I absolutely had to be there. 

But there was a small problem. Tickets were going on sale immediately and were only being sold in person at the Coliseum. No phone orders. (And of course, no internet in 1984.) I was just starting my sophomore year at the University of British Columbia, which happened to be on the complete opposite side of town from the Coliseum. Miles away. It literally couldn’t have been farther away and still be in the same city. And to make things worse, there was a bus strike on in Vancouver, and I didn’t have a car. What could I do? I started walking and hitch-hiking. 

By the time I got there, a couple of hours later, there was already a reallllllly long line of people snaking its way through the fairgrounds where the Coliseum is located, and it was immediately clear that the vast majority of the people waiting in the queue were going to be out of luck. As I got closer, I saw Marvin, a guy from my high school graduating class, standing in line, wearing the uniform of our small town: jean jacket with brown corduroy collar, blue jeans and black boots. He was a good guy, Marvin, but he wasn’t gonna get any tickets. 

I’m not proud of what I did next, but on the other hand I can’t say I have any regrets about it either. I worked my way into the back side of a some bushes close to the box office, crawled through the underbrush until I came out the other side – where I was now a whole lot closer to the front of the line. 

Despite limiting tickets to 4 per person, by the time I reached the ticket window the show was almost sold out. I bought 4 tickets in the nose bleeds with cash I’d earned playing in a top 40 band that summer. A few minutes later, they closed the box office - the show was sold out. But I had tickets and I was going to see the Boss! 

It was an epic 4-hour show, the kind that Springsteen had become famous for. The encore itself lasted for 90 minutes, in itself as long as many other concerts. Every single person in the building was on their feet the entire time, dancing, singing, rejoicing. 

Memory flashes: the roar of the crowd as the lights went down and the band took the stage. A bone shaking backbeat from mighty Max Weinberg to kick things off followed by the anthemic guitar riff from “Born In The USA’. Chilling cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped”. Bruce sliding across the stage on his knees to finish Tenth Avenue Freezeout in an embrace with Clarence. Nils Lofgren on a trampoline attempting a flip during his guitar solo. Unsuccessfully! Ending with the Detroit Medley, Travelling Band, Twist and Shout, and, even though it was just October, finally wrapping up with “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. 

After that concert I had the very romantic idea that I was going to follow the tour around and see as many shows as I could. I’d heard about fans who’d seen hundreds of shows. I was a teenager and didn’t have a whole lot of cash, but I’d read “On The Road”, so I thought I’d take a page from Kerouac and hitch-hike between cities, sleep rough to save money and see how far I could go. 

A day or two later I found myself in Tacoma, Washington where the E-Street Band was scheduled to do a couple of back-to-back shows. After taking care to hide my backpack in the brush beneath a freeway overpass, I went down the hill to the Tacoma Dome to haggle with the scalpers. 

It was another great show, the set list much the same as Vancouver, but it felt a lot different being there alone, a kid with not much travel experience in a strange city and another country. Even surrounded by 15,000 people, I was aware of how alone I was. 

After another 4-hour show I made my way back to the overpass and found that I’d hidden my backpack a little too well. The bushes I’d noted as landmarks looked remarkably similar to all the other bushes now that it was pitch black. I searched for half an hour becoming more and more panicky until, with relief, I finally found my stuff. I crawled into my sleeping bag, shoved a black toque like the one Jack Nicholson wore in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” on my head, and, there on the hill, looking down on the Tacoma Dome, to the sound of trucks and cars hauling ass down the I5, I fell asleep.    

I awoke the next morning to some unwelcome news: scrolling across the electronic billboard in front of the Tacoma Dome was the announcement that the next show had been postponed. (I found out later that Bruce had come down food poisoning.) So I had some time to kill. I bummed around Tacoma for a bit, took the ferry to Vashon Island, where I sprung for a youth hostel as the nights were getting colder and colder. 

The rescheduled date arrived and while getting my ticket from the scalpers, I overheard them talking about the next tour date. There were quite a few professional scalpers following the tour as well, and I think they were making pretty good bank. Next up on the itinerary was Oakland and word among the scalpers was that a lot of them were giving that one a pass. I got the strong impression that Oakland (at that time) wasn’t the safest place. 

I decided that was enough for me. I was running out of money and I’d already missed a week of school. I was tired, I was lonely. I loved the music, but I missed my baby. So with a silent apology to Jack Kerouac, I spent the rest of my money on a Greyhound Bus ticket and beat it back to Vancouver. Maybe the road wasn’t for me.

I was 13 when I found the first love of my life. My parents had given me a little transistor radio, black, about 10 inches in size, that I think probably came from Radio Shack. It was a ticket to another world. Music was always playing in our house – my dad had the radio constantly tuned to CBC FM, which played classical music non-stop during the day, and the opera from the Metropolitan in New York on Saturdays. But once I had my own radio, I could explore the airwaves and discover what became my first true passion: pop songs, rock songs, the music that would inspire me, and ultimately lead me to spend my life making music. 

I listened to that little radio night and day. I also had a small portable cassette recorder that I would put next to the radio speaker so that when a song came on that I liked, I could quickly press record and tape the song (complete with DJ intro) to listen to over and over. The fidelity was terrible. The passion was off the charts. 

I started with AM radio. In Canada, the radio stations are mandated to play a certain percentage of Canadian artists, so I was introduced to the Canadian tradition of singer-songwriters: Gordon Lightfoot told of “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald”, Bruce Cockburn was “Wondering Where the Lions Are”, Dan Hill moved me with “Sometimes When We Touch”. But after hearing “Brass In Pocket” by the Pretenders for the umpteenth time in the same day (it was in heavy, heavy rotation!) in desperation I flipped the switch to FM and found the FOX. 

CFOX-FM out of Vancouver, Canada had the slogan “The Fox Rocks!” Their schtick at the time was to play the first part of a disco song and then rip it off the turntable to the sound of machine gun fire. And it was on the FOX that I first heard this singer, his songs were powerful and passionate, he had a unique mumbling way of singing, his band featured the piano (my first instrument) prominently, and his lyrics were intelligent and emotional. Every time I’d hear one of his songs, I’d wait until the end of the set for the DJ to come on and tell me the name of the band, but I’d never seemed to be able to catch who it was.  I’d try and sing the songs for my friends at school, imitating his style, asking “who the heck is this”? 

That singer that so captured my imagination was Bruce Springsteen. At that time the radio was mostly spinning tracks from his latest record, “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”, songs like “Bad Lands”, “Prove It All Night”, “Candy’s Room”, “The Promised Land”. I loved it. And I’ve continued to love it ever since. When it comes to love, you never forget the first. 

If you read or listen to many interviews with rock musicians, there’s one story that comes up more often than any other. There are variations on this theme, but it usually goes something like this: “I was a teenager when I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, and that’s when I knew I had to be in a rock band.” I was too young to have seen The Beatles on Ed Sullivan (although I loved the Beatles and my first band played nothing but Beatles songs. But that’s another story…) but I know exactly how they felt. Because when I was 15, one fateful night I saw a TV show called “The Legends Of Rock ‘n Roll”. It featured all sorts of live clips starting in the 50’s with Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, and of course Elvis. And as the show progressed forward in time, towards the end of the program was a clip of Bruce and the E-Street Band doing a live version of “Rosalita”. What a performance! Bruce was electric, all over the stage, stunningly charismatic, the band was rocking, the Professor, Roy Bittan, played the hell out of a real grand piano, Clarence was growling on the tenor sax. THAT was when I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of MY life. I stayed up for hours that evening banging away on our old, out of tune upright piano, trying to express that same energy and sheer joy of living. The trajectory of my life was forever changed.