![]() Pete Berwick is a professional actor and entertainer with over forty years experience in live performance, film, television, music production, comedy, character acting and improvisation. He has also written four novels, recorded and produced six albums of critically acclaimed music, and has been credited for being an early pioneer of the musical genre, "Cowpunk." Berwick recently released his new album, Island and here thoughtfully answered his e8 where he spoke in depth about the project and songwriting, shared advice from Charlie Daniels, and more. Please choose one song and tell the story behind it. "I Am Not Afraid" is a very big song on my new album "Island." I basically wrote it one night in self defense as the demons of doubt and accusation were creeping in from out of the shadows. My wife was upstairs asleep, and I sat in the darkness staring at the walls, my mind engulfed with anguish and confusion over the problems of the day that were doing their best to crush my soul and spirit. I reached for my guitar and the song basically poured out of my heart, one of the fastest songs I ever penned. Though in reality, I suppose the song had been manifesting in my soul for quite some time. I think this is how great songs are truly born. You have been carrying them around like a mother her unborn baby, and one day, or on a night such as this one, it makes its entrance on its own, the writer merely being the unwilling vessel, as Mary was to the Son of God. Most of the time I hate writing songs, because the song doesn't want to be written, much less born, and when you struggle with it and try to force it, this simply means there is nothing there to begin with, so maybe it's best to walk away and mow the grass instead. This would be why so much modern pop music is empty schlock, because in truth, there is nothing there, nothing that had been living in the soul, nothing that spoke the truth. It's just forced garbage used in the selling of advertising. Is there a story behind your album’s title? I came to the title "Island" pretty naturally. I was considering alternate titles, but I kept coming back to that one, because it best summed up the essence of the songs. Whereas many might see the title and pan it as trop-rock or Margaritaville, they could not be more wrong. One reason the album cover is a stark and eerie black and white photo (compliments of photographer Michelle Shalloo Gadeikis) of a desolate piece of rock at sea, is because this is what each of these songs are, individual pieces of life and love and happiness and sadness. We are all islands, regardless of what anyone says about no man being one. We are born alone and we die alone, and in-between how we live and whether we sink or swim is all up to us. Why did you choose to anchor the album with the songs you did? I can't say the choice was mine, but of the songs that demanded to be born, as I described earlier. My songwriting process for all of my albums, including this one, is a process that evolves over years. Each album I have ever recorded contained songs I had drafted as long ago as decades, and I would revisit them and flesh them out, time and life and experience now enabling me to do so. The reason they had sat as drafts was because they were not willing to yet be born, as I had not yet earned the right to deliver them from the womb. Much falls at the wayside as I pen songs over the years, and the good songs impregnate my soul, and though the last thing I may want to do is go back into the studio and record another record, and no exception to this one, I am given no choice, because the great songs impregnating me demand to be born. I become a victim of my work. I can't say I ever wrote one song with the idea of actually recording it, but six alums later from 1991 to today, the songs had other ideas regarding that. And all of my albums ended up having a theme, and again, this was not deliberate, but the songs sorting it all out on their own. Songs are like children that grow up, and they often behave as such, going off on their own and becoming what they will, regardless what you think or say to them otherwise. ![]() Where do you draw inspiration from when writing? Songwriting is not something you do but something that you are, that lives within you, that ensnares and engulfs and inhabits you. I live my life, battling demons and snakes in the trenches of futility, and then somehow my meaningless wanderings end up in song. Inspiration may or may not be the best word to describe it for me. Most of the time I am not inspired to write songs, especially being they do little to pay the bills. Us songwriters are actually cursed. Every album I do I tell myself that this is the last one, that I have had it with the process of writing and recording and promoting it all and ending up with most of the world not giving a damn about it as much as myself. Then next thing I know a few years later I am back in the studio. I am a slave to my own lies. When/where do you do your best writing? I wrote a lot of my new album "Island" in the wetlands overlooking a pond behind my house. Some of it in dark rooms. The song "The Streets of Pasadena" would have never been born had I not spent a few days strolling them last year. Ideas come and go, and I cannot force them. My best writing comes from a place I am probably not aware of. Maybe God, maybe the devil. I don't know. I used to toil at it more, like my years in Nashville where I approached songwriting like a business and mentally clocked in and forced myself to write from morning to afternoon, and then drive to my record label office on Music Row and play the latest for them. They would tell me what sucked and what had possibilities. As the years wore on, I found myself being a more economical songwriter. Gone were the endless days of throwing a bunch of crap at the wall in hopes of something sticking. My last two albums I would say that about the only time I bothered to reach for the guitar was when I knew there would be a result of a song that would end up on an album. I perform over three hundred music gigs a year, and my hands and fingers are battered and throbbing and I may be a few gigs away from needing surgery on them for all I know, so I don't pound on the damn thing at home, just as a mailman doesn't go for a walk on his day off, unless there is a good reason, unless I can feel my child kicking inside of me. Do you write about personal experience, the experience of others, observations, made-up stories, something else or a combination? Most of my writing is based on things that have happened to me, or someone else, but nothing is ever made up. There is probably nothing one could ever write that never happened or might one day never happen, because in an infinite universe, the odds are remote on that. All things exist, and even if it's only in the mind, the mind is actually a universe unto itself, an endless universe that is continuously expanding, and whatever it conceives is very real, whether anyone else believes it or not. Feelings and emotions, such as angst and bitterness and urgency and remorse and heartache and anger are lonely islands where great songs come from. If the emotion is real, the song is real, and not "made up." What’s the best advice you have ever gotten from another musician? I opened for Charlie Daniels in 1991 at a benefit concert in Florida. Backstage I chatted with him a bit and told him how I appreciated the way he also spoke his mind, and political correctness be damned. I was struggling hard at the time with my band, trying to get things going in Nashville, and though this was a huge show my record label managed to get me on, I knew that once I parted ways backstage with Mr. Daniels, it would be right back to the dive bars and almost empty clubs and the never-ending battle of getting anyone in the business to take the time to care. I asked him for the best advice he could give me, and he summed it up in a few declarative words: "Just be yourself." I never forgot that, and have tried my best to live by that, every day of my life. What’s the best advice to give to a musician just starting out? Be prepared for a lonely and miserable life of frustration and rejection, and be prepared to live and die and bleed for it. However good you think you are now, if you invest a few decades in the craft of songwriting, and focus more on the craft and honest pursuit and study of it as opposed to becoming famous, you may one day surprise yourself. There is a vast difference to being known and famous as to being a consummate craftsman in the field of songwriting and/or musicianship. All the social media stats in the world won't make you a better artist. Countless great artists in all fields of the arts died unknown and not appreciated. If you're not mentally prepared to join their company, do something else. Website/Facebook/Twitter/Purchase
2 Comments
10/28/2021 08:01:18 pm
Being an understudy of writing I get the chance to peruse crafted by individuals who are obscure to me yet show me a ton of things. I found this book however I was unable to find the author thus I chose to keep an eye on the web if another person have found something identified with this book. on account of your post I found the solution to my inquiries.
Reply
2/21/2023 12:08:26 pm
There is so much in this article that I would never have thought of on my own. Your content gives readers things to think about in an interesting way. Thank you for your clear information.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
February 2019
|