By Sharon Goldman
songwritingscene.com
I’m a big fan of an amazing three-part harmony folk-pop trio called Girlyman, who are now based in Atlanta but started out in Brooklyn. Its members — Ty Greenstein, Doris Muramatsu and Nate Borofsky — used to play in the same kind of small local NYC clubs and coffeehouses as I played before starting to tour and getting a deal to re-release their first album with Amy Ray’s (of the Indigo Girls) label, Daemon Records. Back on the indie scene, they’ve put out a couple of new records, including the recent Everything’s Easy — they tour all the time, so check them out in your town!
Ty Greenstein of Girlyman
Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
The first song I ever wrote was for an assignment in my ninth grade English class. We had just read Of Mice and Men and had to do some kind of creative project about it. I just gave it a shot, not having any idea what I was doing. The song I came up with, with hindsight, was actually not bad — it had a real structure, three verses, and three choruses, but the choruses had different words each time. (I think I still tend to write choruses with parts that change each time through.) Doris sang harmony (we grew up together) and we recorded it onto a cassette tape using my little boom box and just me playing acoustic guitar. My teacher went nuts and said it was the best project she had ever received, and so from that point on I completely froze and couldn’t write another song for four years!
What is your typical songwriting routine?
The one constant has been a short period first thing in the morning for what I call “blurts” – little free-writes that I record onto my iPod. Basically I pick up the guitar, put the capo somewhere or change the tuning somehow, hit record, and start singing a song. Whatever happens, happens. Sometimes I’ll explore an idea for a minute, and sometimes I’ll keep going for 15 minutes or more. I have probably thousands of these little blurts lying around, and there among all the boring melodies, crappy chord progressions, and weird lyrics, occasionally something rises to the surface that has a ring of truth or a feeling that moves me in some way. That’s the material I come back to and try to craft into songs, which I do on my computer. The more often I sit down to write, the lower the stakes are – if nothing happens today, so what? I know there’s tomorrow and the next day.
What are your biggest songwriting inspirations these days?
My biggest songwriting inspirations have always been my peers – the other musicians I play shows with or hear at festivals. In particular, right now I’m really inspired by our new friend, Lucy Wainwright Roche – she has an original style, unexpected rhyme schemes, and a quality of truthfulness about her writing. Brian Gundersdorf from We’re About 9 always blows me away with his ability to go deeply into wildly original subject matter. Antje Duvekot’s songs also have that deep feeling of truth about them. {Editor’s note, Sharon’s Q & A with with Antje Duvekot was posted here on Aug. 5 and is archived in the Features section]. I think all the writers I love share the quality of writing songs that are channeled more than thought out – songs that are written from a place deeper than thinking. Dar Williams is another example – her songs have a wildness and a free association that is hard to achieve by trying. You get the feeling she really lets go. Of course all these people are masters of craft as well and have internalized form to the point that their brilliance seems effortless. Recently we’ve been touring with the Canadian band Po’ Girl and I’ve been really inspired by their originality, especially in their arrangements. There are so many examples!
Do you get competitive (in a good way) with Doris and Nate about songwriting?
I think when Doris and Nate start writing batches of songs, it motivates me to get going on mine. My fatal flaw has definitely been leaving songs in the oven FOREVER, whereas those two tend to write quickly and be done with it. I can be a big editor, sometimes to a fault. Sometimes I’ll write a billion verses before I’ll realize what’s essential. I think this is actually part of what makes co-writing with Nate or Doris so great – they are good at getting down that first draft with a lot of energy and I’m good at pinpointing an exact word or phrase. I think in the past we’ve been more competitive or threatened if one person’s writing a lot more than the others, whereas now we just use it as motivation, or else we jump right in and co-write.
How do you keep songwriting on your plate when you are touring/recording? Seems like it would be so hard to keep writing front and center.
I find it hard to write on the road because we usually share hotel rooms and there’s just no privacy. So my home time is really the only time I get and often we have rehearsals or recording sessions going on, too. I just do the best I can. Even an hour in my studio is better than nothing, and it’s hard to find a valid excuse not to put in an hour in the morning. Sometimes I’ll get a lot of lyrics while I’m driving and then I try to remember them and write them down at the next rest stop. Several of the songs on our latest album were written in hotel rooms or in the van, which goes to show that writing can happen anywhere.
Do you have any goals these days when it comes to your songwriting?
I’d like to finish more of the songs that I start, and I’d like to finish them faster so that they contain more of the original energy of the idea. Beyond that, I’m interested in co-writing with other people, writing on other instruments besides the guitar and in exploring different tunings and song structures. And I’d like to maybe take a songwriting workshop or go to Rocky Mountain Song School or something like that. I’ve never taken any kind of songwriting workshop for fear it would just add more voices to the chorus of editors already in my head, but I think it might be a good experience.
How has being in Girlyman changed (or not changed) your songwriting?
I pretty much write what I want to write, although not all of it is suitable for the band. There have been songs that I’ve been really excited about that just didn’t work with the three of us. That’s happened for all of us at various times, and it’s always a real bummer! But the fact is, not every song is appropriate for three voices or for the instruments we happen to play. Someday I’d love to release a solo album to give those songs a home, but I can’t say when I’ll have the time. I actually included one such song on our last album (Hudson), and just sang it by myself with one guitar. I thought it was actually nice to have a break from our vocal blend for one song out of fifteen. Sometimes I think my songs are too weird for Girlyman, but then I included one of the so-called weird ones (“Easy Bake Ovens”) on the new album and that’s the song everyone keeps talking to me about now. So I’m letting myself write a little weirder, because it’s interesting to me when my ideas of what images or what chords belong together gets played with a little. I like not knowing what’s gonna happen next.
How do you feel about the songs on your newest album, Everything’s Easy? Similar? Different? Better? And what was it like recording at Nate’s instead of in a big studio?
I really love the new album. It was a totally grassroots project that felt incredibly natural even when the learning curve was steep and we had no idea what we were doing. Recording it at Nate’s house made a huge difference because we could really take our time developing it, slowly layering sound, adding exactly what we wanted to hear. In the past, we booked two weeks of studio time and whatever happened in that time, that was it – we had one or two days for overdubs, total. On “Everything’s Easy” we had time to sit with the songs and develop a vision for them. We had time to experiment, to bring in drummers and cello players, to have friends drop by and sing a harmony part. We had time to change lyrics and to re-do vocal takes that we knew we could sing better. We played most of the instruments ourselves and we played things that weren’t even instruments, like a colander I hit in lieu of a hi hat. We even had the freedom to change our minds about what was going on the album – for example, one of my songs wasn’t even 100% written until the very last day of recording. I remember I called Nate early that morning and said “I know what the second verse should be, and I’ll die if I don’t get to change it!” It was great to be able to do that.
Who were your biggest songwriting influences growing up?
My biggest hero from age thirteen until I first heard the Indigo Girls was Paul Simon. Back then Doris and I learned every single Simon and Garfunkel song on guitar and every single harmony part and we’d sing late into the night in her parents’ kitchen – I guess that probably served us well, actually! I remember the first time I heard “Closer To Fine” on the radio I was stunned. I was really amazed, in particular, by Emily Saliers’ writing back then – she and Amy both wrote these raw songs and sang with such intensity, and especially in 1989 in suburban New Jersey it was just so different from anything else I had heard. In college I listened to The Story a lot – Jonatha wrote these songs that kind of hurt, with oblique lyrics and dissonant harmonies and strange time signatures. Then Ani DiFranco came to campus. There were maybe 30 people at the show and she blew us all away by just saying things as they were. I had never heard that before, either.
To hear a few of Girlyman’s songs, visit www.myspace.com/girlymanband.
Sharon Goldman is a New York-based singer-songwriter and member of Sweet Bitters, a female folk pop duo. She recently launched Songwriting Scene, a blog for songwriters about songwriting, from which this column is republished with permission.
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