by Darden Smith | Feb 10, 2016 | And here's another thing..
Writing a song with somebody connects you like glue.
You sit in a room and spill your soul, tell each other secrets that you can’t, or won’t, confess in any other setting.
You find the poetry that hangs around the edges of a life,
Sing about the beauty, the darkness, what’s lost and found.
Together, you put it all into a rhyme, a melody,
Sing it a couple of times, make a recording.
It might be that no one ever hears it, might turn out to be a hit.
Regardless, at the end of the day, you have something that wasn’t there before, something you couldn’t have made without each other.
There’s a connection that comes from doing this.
The song may not last, but that link does.
I’m grateful to have had the chance to write with both of these gents, Radney Foster and Jack Ingram.
The songs are usually pretty good, but the hang is relentlessly fantastic.
by Darden Smith | Feb 7, 2016 | Events
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by Darden Smith | Feb 6, 2016 | Events
For more information and to support our work, please visit songwritingwithsoldiers.org.
by Darden Smith | Feb 5, 2016 | Events
For more information and to support our work, please visit songwritingwithsoldiers.org.
by Darden Smith | Jun 23, 2015 | And here's another thing..
Every now and then I find myself in a situation that makes me realize how incredible my luck is. I’m reminded how music has taken me places I never dreamed I would go, and that the surreal quality that it brings to my life is way beyond what I could have ever imagined.
Like today: This morning I did a radio interview from the Green Room at the Grand Old Opry on WSM-AM. Radney Foster had told me to make sure to check out the main stage, especially the wood circle where the microphone stands. This circle came from the original stage at the Ryman Theater, where the Opry originated. Johnny Cash and June Carter, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill and countless other heroes have stood on those boards and played their songs.
I walked out on the stage and stepped inside. I heard the wood creak under my feet, felt the rhythm ghosts from a thousand songs come straight up through my boots. All those voices, the ones who had called out some of the best music ever written, were begging me to join them. I got the guitar out, grabbed a stool from behind the piano, and just sat there playing and singing for about 30 minutes, soaking it all in, listening to the echoes.
To stand in the place where Hank stood is a big damned deal.
The theater was empty, but this morning I felt like was singing with the angels.
