All That Jazz: The Art of Songwriting, and How to Play “War Torn Johnny,” Part One

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This month, I’d like to address the sometimes tricky process of songwriting. Most of my songs start as a germ of an idea that comes to me during an improvisation. I’ll have a cool little nugget of “stuff” that catches my interest enough that I am inspired to investigate it further and perhaps forge a composition from it.

I think that for many of us, a new song idea springs from a moment of improvisation. From there, it becomes a question of how to take a cool little riff and expand it to something that can actually be played by a band. That’s the challenging part.