Miriam Jones

Spent today mostly writing a song with the word ’surreptitious’ in it. The ’surreptitious’ part wasn’t on purpose of course, just one of those delightful word-surprises that occasionally flies off the tongue – something to do with the combination of sentiment and syllables. I do love it. After a nice long walk this morning and a slow couple of hours with my guitar, I stopped for lunch, and while I was partaking I was playing the song back in my head, only I was accompanied by a pounding piano rather than a guitar; so I switched to the upright in our dining room for the afternoon, and Bob’s your uncle (actually, my father), the song came together.

One of my favorite things about songwriting is experiencing the inter-play between music, ideas and lyrics and how dependent they are on one anothers’ development, at least from my songwriting process point of view. I knew when I began the song a couple of weeks ago where it was coming from emotionally, but after the initial step forward, I got stuck, and it wasn’t until I moved to the piano that I was able to feel the rest of what needed to be felt in order to access the appropriate words and overall direction in fact. The darker side of the story I was trying to express was pushed forward to my attention, through an uncanny combination of an almost ‘accidental’ lyric, and sudden move of melody, which gave the song the added gravity that was there all along but which had been eluding me for days. A bit strange perhaps, but true, and actually, rather beautiful.

I guess there’s a vote for experimenting more with sounds – I don’t have any funky instruments at the moment but perhaps there are other more subtle ways of getting acoustically creative that can help draw out feelings I wasn’t particularly aware that I had, or words, such as ’surreptitious’, which I wouldn’t have expected to feel so at home in a song.

Hi everyone,

Well I wish I could say that my headline was the title of a new song that I’ve written, but it isn’t I’m afraid (though now I look at it it has potential as a title, don’t you think?). The last several months of creative outpouring, gigs and things, have had an exhaustive effect, or at least combined with a few other factors they have. I’ve spent all of this week in bed, and the two weeks before that trying to write but feeling rather lifeless and getting nowhere so perhaps I further drained myself with the effort. Of course, I do find it suspect that several other people who were at the same wedding I was at last weekend are just the same kind of sick as me, so before I go blaming creativity….I say blame the blasted wedding. Last time I go to one of THOSE.

At any rate, this is just to say that I’m very sorry not to have a Solitary Song for November for you, or at least not on time. Jez and I are going to the Lake District for a long awaited holiday with another couple tomorrow, some old friends from Vancouver now working in London, and will be gone for a week (catching Eddie Izzard in Cardiff next Friday). I am trusting for a restful time full of good hikes, pubs, books, nibbles, scrabble, Settlers of Catan, DVDs, beverages of all deluctable sorts and the like. It’s not impossible that in the midst of all that I will find some creative wings again and be able to share something with you later on in the month, but I’m trying to ease the pressure up off myself about it.

I had some kind of awesome Christmas plans, but they are also dependent on the creativity which has eluded me the last few weeks so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get them off the ground in time. I will of course make sure you know if I DO.

In the meantime, I will leave October’s Solitary Song, ‘Don’t Throw Your Words Away’ up for free download, and if you feel like sharing it around via email, facebook, twitter, etc, please do. If you go to http://miriamjones.bandcamp.com/track/dont-throw-your-words-away-october and click on ’share’, it will basically do it for you.

My gig with Yvonne Lyon on the 16th this month was really great, and thanks again to all of you who were there – that was one packed room. There are a few gigs in the works for November/December, and I’ll be sure to send you updates as things get ironed out.

Thanks so much for all your support. Blessings on your November.

Yours in and out of creativity,
Miriam

Two weekends ago, I took part in the Greenbelt Festival at the Cheltenham racecourse for the second time. I confess to staying in town with Jez’s cousin as an alternative to camping with thousands of my closest friends, but I like to think this contributed to my being conscious for my performances, not to mention my smelling like a rose rather than some other things I imagine I would have smelled like.

I arrived on site late Friday afternoon and logged in some CDs with the g-store; Rich and Linda were all-stars throughout the weekend, especially seeing as I was in there every day restocking supplies (my gift packs went like hot cakes – note to self for next year – and happily the rest followed speedily as well). They signed me up for an in-store performance which I did on Saturday afternoon, and that evening I was joined by Jez Carr on keys, Steve Lawson on bass, Tom Hooper on cahon, and Susan Enan singing backing vocals on a couple of songs in the Performance Cafe, glistening, starry roof and all. As was the case last year, the audience was so lovely – really ‘alive’ and listening, warm and responsive. If that was you, thanks so much. I love playing with a band, especially since I don’t get to do it often.
Sunday night we played at Last Orders hosted by Jam Cary and Jude Adam (produced by Helen Morant) and again, a serious trip for me getting to perform for 2,000 souls. What a lucky lady I’ve been. Things only got better on Monday when I had the privilege of taking part in the Rising, hosted by Greenbelt favorite Martyn Joseph, whom I met there for the first time – what a spectacular chap. I am sure he was wearing a bracelet from the B.C coast, as well. Joined by Scotslady Yvonne Lyon and Palestinian Reem Kelani, both beautiful singers and songwriters, we were all invited to share some things about songwriting and to perform a couple of songs. Martyn ended the time off by inviting people to sing along to a new song he’d been working on, which was awesome; getting to back him up was probably the highlight of my contributions at Greenbelt, I think because I don’t get to work with other musicians that often and I love to.

Needless to say, I had a great experience at Greenbelt, and it was a much needed encouragement.

Apart from continuing to work on the Solitary Songs, I’m playing gigs in London and Oxford for the next couple of months and trying to book some things a bit further afield in England. Jez and I are also planning to be in Texas in March for a small conference and I am hoping to plan a small tour off the back of that. If you live in the area and have any thoughts for me I’d love to hear from you.

yours in creativity,
Miriam

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