The Austin Ukulele Society Ensemble performed at the city council's meeting today as part of Bob Guz's retirement ceremony. The mayor declared it Bob Guz day, and somehow, we managed to sneak into the meeting (all pre-planned with other city staff) without Bob finding out until the big moment. He was completely flabbergasted, and we were a hit. Congrats, Bob.

I think this is my fourth year performing at Rover's NXNW (North! Buy No Wristbands) show, which coincides with the city's larger SXSW festival. First year, I was part of a song swap. Second year was a John y Pablo thing, and last year and today was as part of the Kaye Pasa Trio.

My perfect job would be writing songs for younger, prettier, and more talented people to perform. Not that I don't enjoy performing, but writing has always been my dream, and that led me to songwriting. 

And, let's face it, I'm not exactly packing 'em in as a performer.

Technically, I'm a singer-songwriter. The difference between a songwriter and a singer-songwriter is other people want to cover a songwriter's songs. [insert frown face here]

My most recent song, "Moderate Amount of Bad Habits," is an example of why I love songwriting. I took 10 days to write it, and thanks to my use of voice memos on my iPhone when I'm writing, I have a pretty accurate record of all the song's changes from original concept to the final version.

The end result was nothing like the first draft, which was much grittier and a little vulgar. Kind of a follow-up to "He's Just an Old Friend," my only F-bomb song. 

At one point, it probably had a dozen or so verses, many of which had two good lines, but not four. Over the next two days, I cobbled together various combinations of lines and rhymes, ditching the vulgarity along the way,  By the end of Day 2, I had succeeded in creating what would be my first "final version." 

Before writing this post, I listened again to the recording of "Bad Habits 2," and it's actually pretty good. It has a much folksier feel, including a line comparing some habits to comfortable jeans with holes in the knees. It seemed like keeper, and I felt pretty confident that "Bad Habits 2" would be the final version. I performed it at Dino's open mic in Round Rock the next day.

The song got a nice applause, but I felt like it didn't grab their attention until the joke about church. I started rewriting it the moment I got home.

I performed the newer "final version" at another friend's open mic two days later. The song was better, but still not quite what it wanted to be. Back to rewriting.

David's doughnut joke inspired a funnier second verse, which prompted me to reorder and rewrite the other verses. I offered him co-authorship of the song, but he declined. 

On the morning of the Austin Ukulele Society gathering, I squeezed in one last rewrite. The test would be during the AUS mid-meeting "open mic" that evening. (Open mic is a figure of speech; it's actually 100% acoustic with no mics or amps.) More than 150 people actually listening to the song!

As I mentioned in a previous post, the song went over great. So well, in fact, that I can finally say, "This is the FINAL, final version."

UNINTERESTING FOOTNOTE: During the course of six rewrites, the church joke was: moved to the first of the song, which changed the direction of the whole song;  completely deleted from the song to help it stay folksy; and ultimately returned to the song, but now toward the end, for comic effect.

Got to see Shake Russell tonight at Hill's Cafe as part of a schmooze fest with Pitt Garrett of Songwriters Across Texas. Lotsa fun.