1st Days writing..

... one excellent song - 'Next Time Around' . Actually 8 songs - all with the same title all very different and all very good.

I'm in love with California...

Fox Car rentals at San Francisco give better value than Enterprise, Nashville. Four days in my Cherry Chevy worked out at the same as 7 days in this. Granted, this one has no roof - I guess that's the difference.

The little house in behind the car - and - there's only 3 of us sharing.

Good Friday... in Nashville

I’m writing as I’m flying out of Nashville, bound for St Louis and onward to San Francisco. It’s been a week of place names I know through songs, literature and film. Yesterday morning, I braved the snow and ice and drove eastside. I was planning on filling the time while waiting for the print shop to call and let me know my Cds were ready.

What, according to the printout the receptionist had given me, should have been a nine minute drive – including my first interstate miles – took me about an hour and a half and, while I found Lanes Motor Museum, I went to my first real American diner instead. The woman who served me could have come strait out of a movie. Black, motherly and very friendly. I even heard her nagging an old boy – looked like a regular customer – to ‘Go to the doctor and get yourself seen too. You men are all alike when it comes to doctors!’. Beautiful.

I had a few other things to do apart from the CD pick up on the West side, return my ‘Chevy’ – surely the reddest car in Nashville – and I was going to see a play reading at the ‘Post Depression Theatre’, somewhere in East Nashville. The play – based on legend, Kinky Friedman was being produced*** by Jaz and Jamie who I met on Thursday at the Commodore.

Having overshot the museum by some miles, I turned around and was heading back when the aforementioned diner beckoned – a Waffle House. After my 4.99 special, a BLT with a bowl of Burt’s chilli and an iced tea, I got a call to say the Cds were ready and figured I’d like to spend more time looking at the cars than I now had so best to head West and pick them up. I’m a really bad tourist – I love everything and particularly the everyday mundane stuff that’s different from my own everyday mundane.

I also got a series of texts from who I don’t know as I don’t even know my US cell number. Getting drunk and ‘making out’ was the desire of the textee. A good idea but not today.

To be sure, to be sure, I asked the motherly waitress for directions to Hillsboro, explaining that I wasn’t the best at following the US road system.

‘Ya take a right outta here – stay on the road and follow signs for Chattenooga till the road divides and follow the Memphis signs a while. Hillsboro’s signed after that and you can’t miss it.’ Poetry, and I didn’t.

When you’re on your first interstate and your phone rings, startling you somewhat, and you notice the caller display is Ralph Murphy – vice president of Membership, ASCAP – you take the call. ‘Hello my good friend, and how are you today?’

‘Scared of crashing my Chevy, Ralph and how’s your stubbed toe?’, followed by, ‘Can I call you back Ralph? I’m about to peel off my first interstate and I’d love to bring the car back in good condition this evening.’

‘You sure can, Sean. I want to give you a number of a very good friend of mine who’s expecting you to call him soon – and he’s “connected”’ – Music to my ears. Thank you Ralph!

Got the discs. Rang Mr Connected and set up a meeting at my home from home, Dan McGuiness’s, for 4 O’Clock, replied to a couple more amorous texts and got back to my hotel – a walk across from Dan’s. Burnt 3 or 4 demo’s onto the beautifully printed discs, dealt with emails – including a response to a rough recording – on the mac – made and emailed to Steve Goodie’s studio, earlier on. Steve said he really liked the song and would work on a track and suggested treatment for me to come on in and put it down on my next visit – in 2 weeks time.

A good meeting at Dan’s and even found Enterprise without getting lost and with Cherry Chevalier in one piece – albeit with way to much fuel in the tank. The kindly dropped me back too.

Six O’Clock – ‘Becoming Kinky’ starts at seven thirty and, as there’s an open mic going on in the hotel’s ‘Hall of Fame’, I got to play a couple of songs while waiting for the taxi – a big mother-f*cker of a truck, and black as the driver. And glimpses of a TV I’d had today were showing all the accidents of the day – ice and snow is big news in Nashville and there must be cameras everywhere. The big 4x4 taxi was, on this occasion very welcome this evening.

*** now on St Louis – San Francisco flight.

Nashville Open Mic Nights - compare and contrast...

The Commodore Grill in Nashville isn’t as world famous as the Bluebird Café but for a visiting performing songwriter, It’s found it to be an easier place to get to play. Turn up before nine, give your name to Debbie Champion and you’ll get to play that night. The sound is second to none and, as the open mic immediately follows the ‘Writer’s Night’ showcase, you’ll possibly have a ‘Legend’ or two warming up the crowd for you. The only drawback is that ‘the crowd’ shrinks noticeably once the Legends have left the stage.

The Bluebird by way of contrast has the Legends playing after the open mic and a lot more people turn up to play. Barbara Cloyd, who runs this Monday night event, has devised a very fair system of deciding who plays. There are two baskets and songwriters without a ‘stamp’ put their name on a piece of paper into basket number 2. Basket number 1 is for people with a stamp to put their name into. Everybody in this basket gets to play. Names are drawn out to decide the playing order. The gig runs from 6-9 and, if there aren’t enough stamp people there, basket number 2 comes into play.

On Monday night, not having a stamp, I put my name into basket 2 and just before kick off, Barbara announced that, as there were 23 people in basket 1, there was only a slim chance of anybody from basket 2 getting to play and those people with names in that basket, would be able to retrieve their stamped name at the end of the show and bring it back for basket 1 any Monday night in the future. I will.

Debbie’s open mic runs Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and, if she likes what you do, you can play all three.

Dublin to Nashville...

I left Dublin in snow, passed through Chicago - in the snow and landed in Nashville - no snow - about 7pm. Hotel is good and location is pretty good too. There's a small row of shops across a big stretch of road and I'm sitting in a cafe-bar there and there's wifi.

I was knackered on arrival but came over here and ate an excellent shepards pie with a pint of Guinness. Enda Cullen recommended it to me and I haven't been disappointed. I've just eaten a char-grilled burger - rare and I've never had one as good before. With Swiss cheese and fried onions, not to mention the fries, the bill came to 6.56 dollars (inc. taxes)

I'm hanging out here and giving myself an easy day. I walked for 2 or 3 miles before I found my car rental depot and have so not got a handle on getting around - need to buy a box of matches for instance - or a lighter - but don't know where the shops are - toothpaste too.

People are very friendly and open to chatting too. I played a couple of songs here last night too, wandered into the famous Tootsies at about one and there was a guy playing - stunning voice - he'd been playing since 10 and would be till the changeover at 2 - and for tips only.

Oh yes, I opened my curtains this morning - snowflakes.

Countdown to Nashville - a sort of diary...

It's December 5th and in less than a month, I'll be flying to the USA for the first time in my life - and I'm 58. This is a special time for me and so I think that I should record it. My blog seems the best place to do it and so here we go.

Where I’m at in my life is probably a good place to start.

I’ve been separated/divorced since 1997. My ex is a lovely woman, we had 26 years together – kids when we married and kids when we had ours too.

Two sons and one daughter, all doing well in their chosen fields. Both sons are married, the older with an 8 year old girl and the other with two sons, 9 and 7 bookending the set.

I live on my own and have a big friendly dog for company. I have been in another relationship – possibly still am, it’s a rocky one and I’m not sure day to day. Quite possibly there’s not enough of me to be in a relationship and pursue my goal which is to earn my pension from songs I write.

It wasn’t until my wife and I split that I began to sing and write. I was 47 and went busking in Galway to overcome some block I had with singing in public. There’s lots of background on my website www.seanoneillsongs.com and so that’s enough of that.

Oh yes, I became an orphan this year too – September, and on Monday, work the last day of my notice as I was made redundant almost a fortnight ago. When I say work, I don’t actually mean work as I was told to work or not for the two weeks, and that I would get my basic pay without commission (I sell) or bonus anyway. I felt that putting some sort of plan in place for the future was a better option.

Nashville is not all yee ha and country music – although losing my mam and my job within a few weeks of each other would put me in a good state of mind to write country songs, and if my dog was to pop her clogs, nay paws, before the new year, I could be truly inspired in that direction. Hopefully my dog will last as long as her father, Shep, who died this year aged about two thousand and something in country dog years. Nashville has been a plan since I began writing. It’s the hub of the music business as LA is for film and TV.

In October 2007 and again in October 2008, I attended a writers retreat on Inis Oirr, the smallest of the Aran Islands. It was organized by Brett Perkins – a fine songwriter himself. Brett hosts these retreats in different countries under the name of ‘Listening Room Retreats’. Last year I stated, at the close of the retreat, that, if at all possible, I’d forgo Inis Oirr this year and go to the one in Northern California – The Sequoia Retreat Centre, Ben Lomand – which is on in January.

There’s an earlier blog about the death of my mother here and after she died, I realized how organized she was. Almost everything she owned had a little sticker with a name written on it. Gift I gave her when I was a kid had mine. A die cast model of a cream Morris Minor Traveler – the one with the wood – that I’d found and bought for her a couple of birthdays ago, still in the box, came right back to me. My Ma did her driving test and got a full sized cream Morris after she had her eighth baby and couldn’t get a big enough pram.

The eight of us are all still around – and, since last week, all in our fifties. For each one, there was a bunch of stuff we’d given her – and an envelope with our name on it containing some cash. Mine had, ‘for Nashville’ written on it too.

to be continued…

Dublin escaped the devastating floods so widespread in the West during the recent rough weather. We did get a lot of rain on Saturday night and Sunday morning - 28-29th Nov.

One thing about living with a large healthy dog is that you have to venture out on the days when you wouldn't otherwise

Bushy Park, on the Dodder is one of my favourite walks - Clara's too. Squirrels to chase and good swimming usually too. Not on this day though. The Dodder was all but bursting it's banks and Clara does have a strong self-preservation instinct. There's an ornamental waterfall close to the duck-pond that normally has a trickle or two, feeding under the path and into the river.

I made a few video clips on my Nokia n95 and, when joined together, had a total running time of about six minutes. The sound of the water is powerful but I felt it needed something more to still be interesting after the initial couple of minutes - or seconds - for the youtube audience.

Enda Reilly ( www.endareilly.com ) is a fine singer/songwriter, friend and collaborator too. The day after I put my clip on youtube, I got an email from Enda who, while I'd been walking the dog on Sunday, had been writing a new song , inspired by the weather no doubt. It's a really beautiful song (perhaps a bit long at over six minutes) and it must have taken me about 24 hours to twig that combining the two, if I could master the technology, would do both a favour.

Enda was game and it's worth checking out and staying with for as long as you're interested.

http://www.youtube.com/user/seanoneillsongs#p/a/u/0/lER414qxoT8