I will take the liberty to say that for non-wealthy creatives—I don’t think the pandemic has been “all that.” If you are holed up with big bank accounts to drain, I believe that the pandemic was (is) strange, but certainly not insurmountable; you just start writing and recording material with the leisure of time aplenty! For most journey artists, though—some chances at live shows are needed for money—for merch sales, etc. I think that for this middle class artist group there was too much anxiety to make the pandemic time creatively productive. It also didn’t help that many great artists perished during the pandemic and not all of them were old.
For myself, I tried to keep some practice up with our trio Purple Hat (pictured below) and yes—we did write a song about Covid 19 (see the video at the bottom of this page).
On the writing of this particular song:
The closest I personally get to real religious experience is when a song shows up for me from basically out of nowhere. There was nothing and suddenly there is definitely something: a chordal pattern that begets a feeling and suddenly a narrative tumbles out and an entire song is made out of thin air. It is quite amazing to me. Sure, famous composers and producers may do this thousands of time in their careers and perhaps their cut and paste palettes are so sophisticated that it is no big deal for them, but for the simple young guitar player when a song appears out of nowhere—it is damn special.
This song “The Wind” I wrote when I was a much younger man. The basic story seems to be about a woman in a bad relationship with a man who might be able to save the situation from a complete downward spiral by taking the right action. This song has been performed live through the decades and it even made it to the old Higher Ground with Professor Eric Sample at the piano (We were Smooth Buddha then). Finally, in that pre-pandemic time, I had the chance with road-worn maturity to put the tracks down at LowTech Studio in Burlington, VT and at Tower Recording in Dedham, MA. The vocal and organ is performed by an old band friend of mine, Rebecca Harrold, who now is an internationally recognized solo pianist (www.rebeccaharroldmusic.com). She remains the singer of my dreams.
In terms of genre, I tend to understand blues rock and r&b the most. I don’t consciously try to write in these forms, but always there are tendrils of connection that lead to these categories. I am guilty of still wanting a good guitar solo on most of the songs that I put together.