Neil Fein's Blog

At Martha's urging, I finally finished the words to Hold Up the Wall on Tuesday. Last night, I played it and Welcome Home in front of the Princeton songwriters' workshop, playing them both as revised songs.^[1] It's all arranging and writing fills now. I'll have to cut second demos for both of these songs, and buckle down and learn the words. And come up with a way to play Hold Up the Wall on guitar.

Since these songs are so different, it was interesting to play them in the same workshop.

Welcome Home is a song that started out in 1998 as a 7-verse, 6-minute monster, with a very specific story in mind. The song is a story. It has developed characters (even if neither of them have names)^[2], and a beginning, middle and end.

On the other hand, Hold Up the Wall is a song about a mood. Bob calls it an "encounter", and thinks it has a sensual feel, to which I say, thank you. The song is meant to be about the specific type of sensual vagueness of self inherent in casual encounters. ^[3] It's not meant to be a song about a specific place or even a specific event. And I think this gives me the idea on how to finish another song I've had rattling around for a while. Giving myself permission to work with raw emotions as opposed to emotional stories is a very powerful tool.

^[1] I had played both of these in front of the group before, but only Bob and Ingrid had heard them; three new people were there, giving brand-new reactions.

^[2] I think of them as "Jim and Susan", because I was calling them that in a much, much earlier version of the song. But the final lyric is in the first person, and refers to "we" and makes it clear that there's a relationship going on.

^[3] Sorry if this is vague; there's a demo of the song up on the music page, and hearing the words will make it much unclearer.