As young as 10 or 11, I would daydream about writing songs.
In my childhood bedroom, I mounted some computer speakers on the wall.
I would stand in front of them and listen to my favourite songs (Fox On The Run - Sweet, You’re Just What I Needed - The Cars, Night Train - Guns N’ Roses) and imagine myself playing them.
These imaginings turned into daydreams. I had a recurring daydream - sitting in class at school and getting ‘struck’ with inspiration. A bolt out the blue.
Suddenly, I would be scribbling lyrics and chords and musical notation when I should have been doing math. Of course, it was just a daydream.
I was one of those kids with an ‘active imagination’. To a fault, sometimes. I was a bit of a fibber. I liked to make up stories. At night, to help myself fall asleep, I would tell myself grand stories until I drifted off into dreams.
At 14 or so, my friend Roman Clarke and I started playing music together. Roman is an incredibly gifted and persistent writer and singer, and even at 14, he was writing good music.
Here’s an excerpt of a song he wrote at that age, which we recorded together in my parents basement:
“She drinks all night,
‘Til she can no longer open her eyes,
Her sadness, measured by the bottle
And her love, measured by the pill”
What the hell, right? 14 years old.
The first song I contributed to our project, which we called ‘The Liam & Roman Expedition’, went something like this:
“Cook me up something in the oven,
Cook me up some good ‘ol fashioned loving”
Not quite as cool.
All of my early songs were imitations of songs I had heard and liked. Sometimes very close imitations.
Looking back now, I think that’s perfectly fine and normal. At the time, I felt like a fraud and that feeling turned into discouragement.
Despite wanting to write songs more than anything else, I was soon unable to do so at all. Anytime I tried, I felt like I was writing something stupid and boring and bad.
At 15 or so, I joined another band with Roman and another dear friend, Dylan MacDonald. Both of them were excellent musicians and writers, better than I was, and had been writing from a young age.
This impressed me, but did not always inspire me. Instead, I let it intimidate and limit me.
Our band worked hard, and we played a lot - around 700 shows by our collective memory - and we tried our best to make music we liked. It was a lot of fun!
I did a lot of the admin in the band. I wrote grants and organized stuff, made merch, answered emails.
I also took to recording, and would record our demos. I would record music for other artists as well.
I distinctly remember telling Dylan that I didn’t think I was cut out to be an artist, because I just couldn’t write songs. I focused on these other ‘easier’ things instead.
Why Couldn’t I Write?
The truth is, I was blocked.
I had the distinct sense that I had something I wanted to say, something I wanted to express, but I just couldn’t do it.
I was also blocked emotionally. It was difficult to express how I truly felt about anything. I had become incredibly worried about being perceived as ‘selfish’, so I became a people-pleaser, and had lost touch with myself.
Because of all this (and other things, young adulthood being a difficult time for pretty much everybody) I was unhappy.
I was not happy with the way I looked, with the way I felt, with the direction my life was going, with the relationships I was in, and I had a deeply negative view of myself.
I would still try to write songs sometimes, but they were not good, and that fact simply reinforced the fact that ‘I just couldn’t write songs’.
More than anything in the world, I wanted to be able to express myself and write a goddamn song.
What Changed?
I now know that this is a common story.
While on tour with my band, I had a feeling that I needed to change my life. This feeling grew and grew. I became determined to do it.
I remember driving into Winnipeg and thinking to myself, “If you don’t do this, you will never write a song”.
Somehow, I knew that to be true.
So, I began changing my life by ending the relationship I was in. I did not do a good job of this, but I was 21 and had no idea how to communicate anything, let alone my deepest desires.
At first, this crushed me.
But after a while, the gates in my mind started to open.
I wrote a song that I liked. In some ways, it was still an imitation, but this was closer to being ‘my song’. At least it was true to my heart and true to my life.
It seemed to have come from nowhere.
I was hooked. I wrote another. And another. And another.
At 23, I released an album of solo material that I worked hard on.
I had written at least 50 or 60 songs, demoed them, recorded 10 of them, gone on tour as a solo artist, and then released them.
In short, I bit off way more than I could chew.
But still, I had written a song. Not just one song now, but many.
Even so, I ended up discouraged again. My album release didn’t go the way I thought it would. My music wasn’t saying what I wanted to say.
Luckily, I pressed on.
Writing music had completely changed my life, and I couldn’t just stop.
Where Am I Now?
These days, I write songs constantly. I don’t write songs for albums, for my career, for money, I write songs because I have to.
Writing itself is a habit.
Every morning, I write three pages of stream of consciousness longhand writing (called Morning Pages). I have been doing this for several years and I plan on doing it for the rest of my life.
I am always working on songs, or demos or albums, whether my own, or someone else’s.
I am, in short, an artist. Something I never thought I would be able to call myself.
Becoming this person has been difficult. It has also been the best thing I have ever done.
Without the relentless pursuit of more and more authentic and deeper artistic expression, I would not be the communicator I am today. I would not know myself the way I do. I would not have the deep relationships I am blessed with. I would not be as comfortable with the person I am.
Writing has forced me to get to know myself. It has forced me to reckon with the parts of myself I do not like to look at.
I am incredibly grateful for this gift.
I also happen to believe that this is a gift that everyone is given.
Everybody is born creative.
Creativity gets beaten out of us, by the world, by ourselves, by others. This is not an original idea - in fact it is almost a cliche - but it is true.
If you want to be more creative, if you want to get to know yourself better, if you want to improve your relationships, if you want to be happier and more mindful, you can do that.
This song is called Meadowsweet. I wrote it last July at my parents place in Onanole, Manitoba.
This song came out all in one bunch, which is my favourite. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it sure is sweet. I spent quite a bit of time editing the bridge, but I’m fairly happy with it now.
Writing Will Push Your Life Forward
When I write, I don’t usually have any ideas in my head.
The unconscious mind works first, pulling things down to the page and then the conscious mind organizes the ideas.
In this way, I find writing regularly moves my life forward.
When I wrote and recorded the first demo of the song ‘Smoke on the Breeze’, one of my favourite songs on Church of Better Daze, it would consistently bring up a strong emotional reaction. (I would cry).
At first, I did not know why.
I thought it was a simple love song about a good time in my life. I only realized later, that it was in fact written in the past tense.
It was a song about knowing in the moment that this beautiful moment would not last. That the relationship would not last. It would become a memory, like every other moment - ephemeral, like smoke on the breeze.
Since then, I have found that my writing can often ‘predict the future’ in certain ways.
Whether that’s true or whether the song becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy makes no difference to me.
What is important is that if you write from a place of openness, you can experience this sensation that the songs are moving you into new places.
One of my heroes, Sinead O’Connor, agrees:
“And you have to be careful what you write, because all songwriters will tell you that songs always come true.” Sinéad O'Connor, Rememberings.
This is an old video, not available publicly on YouTube.
This is the original demo of Smoke on the Breeze. I made the video for it two years later, so I’m faking the playing bits. The demo still has a beautiful feeling to it I think.
For Eden
My new album comes out in July. It is called For Eden. Writing and recording this album changed my life.
As I mentioned in my last post, I discovered a process of writing and recording through this album that I still use today.
I aim to take you through various elements of that process over the course of the next several emails.
Please feel free to send me a message, comment, or email about anything you have thoughts on here!
As well, catch the band on tour in May!
As a young adult who doesn't know what they're doing with their life and craves more creativity in my day-to-day this was great to read!
Thank you Liam! This was lovely to read and to learn a little bit more about how you came to the place you are now. I resonated with a lot of the reasons you mentioned about why you felt you couldn't write. I think it has taken most of my 20's to ignore all of this and finally start to write more to complement the images I create. I have only just started and I wish I had learned this much, much earlier. The writing may not be the greatest, but the actual act of putting pen to paper, transferring the words to a computer, piecing the images throughout and then publishing is a good process and will hopefully make it better. Through all this I feel like I'm slowly learning to be content with this process and what I put out, not because of how I want people to perceive me, but because I feel like I need to do it, to document and record and process this wild and strange life I'm living. Cheers to the creative process. Can't wait to hear the new album.