Songwriting challenge - collaborate with an artist from a different discipline!
Songwriting collaboration advise by Pro7ect’s Songwriting Retreats Founder Lisa Fitz.
“Sharing a creative venture with an artist from different discipline may sound a little left field, but sometimes working outside the circle can be liberating”. - Lisa Fitzgibbon
If you are looking for a songwriting challenge, why not collaborate with a non-musical artist?
The Down in the Valley Song Cycle by Lisa Fitzgibbon
Some famous hybrid collaborations include Lady Gaga and Art Pop sculptor Jeff Koons; Hip Hop musician Drake & S/2 gallery’s “I Like it like this” exhibition; the ‘Ten Writers Telling Lies’ collaboration with a group of storytellers and poets by singer-songwriter Jim Byrne; and the notorious union of Salvador Dali and the ‘Godfather of Shock Rock’, Alice Cooper.
I recently breeched these musical boundaries myself on a collaboration for the ‘Down in the Valley’ song-cycle commission, with Cotswold author and poet, Adam Horovitz. I was commissioned to write 6 songs inspired by the landscape, legends, and characters in Laurie Lee’s famous book ‘Cider with Rosie’ to commemorate the 25th year of his death. This is my dream job, enabling me to conceptualise these characters, delving deep into the history and mystery of past lives and legends.
“It was a really good interweaving of the two disciplines” - Adam Horovitz, writer/poet
The final song of the cycle is called ‘Rosie’s Reply’. The premise, to give a voice to the girl who is the namesake of this famous book. I wanted to imagine her experience of that legendary encounter with the young Laurie Lee under the hay-cart that summer, and to tell her side of the story in this song.
“The day Rosie Burdock decided to take me in hand was a motionless day of summer, creamy, hazy, and amber-coloured, with the beech trees standing in heavy sunlight as though clogged with wild wet honey.”
- Laurie Lee, ‘Cider with Rosie’
It came to me like a bolt out of the blue… I wanted to write ‘Rosie’s Reply’ with an artist outside my musical sphere, someone who could bring a different lived experience to the session, and who could lift the song out of my comfort zone, with an experience fitting of the literary context of the project.
Award winning writer and poet Adam Horovitz not only knew Laurie Lee but grew up where the book was set and seemed the perfect collaborator. I was given his email by a local historian, so I contacted him asking if he wanted to write ‘Rosie’s Reply’ with me. I must admit, I didn’t think it would happen. I’d never collaborated with anyone outside my musical circle before and I knew it was a long shot.
It took many months to catch this fish, but he finally agreed, and two writing days were booked in the diary.
Lisa Fitzgibbon: singer, songwriter, music producer & P7 Creative Director
Writing Day 1: The morning session was spent drinking coffee and listening to the other songs in the cycle in my studio. We talked about Adam’s childhood, growing up in the Valley, and his relationship with Laurie Lee. My objective was very clear, I’d even named the song before it was written, so all roads lead to Rosie.
The afternoon session was spent bouncing words and melodic idea’s around when Adam came up with what would become the opening lines of the song:
- Rosie’s Reply by Lisa Fitzgibbon & Adam Horovitz
“Stone Jar of Cider under the hay,
Sun through the beech trees lighting the day,
With promises greener than innocent lust,
Covered in Buttercup dust” - Adam Horovitz
What an incredibly strong, evocative, beautiful way to set the song scene. The chords and melody came to me, almost like the words shaped the melody, and in about 45 minutes we’d written the first verse and bridge. I was not expecting that!
“I’ll argue with a twinkle in my eye to the ends of the earth Rosie Bannen was the real Rosie but that’s because she’s the only Rosie I knew in the valley. A tough little woman who lived in a cottage right up to her death in 1992, that had no electricity, no running water other than the stream next to the house. She would welcome you in with home-made wine, and let you be subsumed in her hordes of cats and King Charles spaniels. All these things lead me to want to hold her up as one of the Rosie’s but there were many Rosie’s… there were many women who said they were Rosie… and I think all of them have some claim, not least because Laurie, by his own admission, made the character of Rosie Burdock an amalgam of several women. So, let them all be Rosie! But Rosie Bannen is mine.” -Adam Horovitz
Writing Day 2: We meet in Adams old stone cottage nestled in the woods at the top of the Slad valley, an amazing location and truly inspiring setting surrounded by beechwood forests & birdsong. We’d agreed to focus on writing the chorus at this session and then to piece the verses and bridges together to form a continuous narrative. I’ve found that it’s good to have a plan for sessions that are time limited, it helps me focus on the job at hand and stops me going off on tangents.
Adam had his nose in his poetry book, and I was noodling around on my guitar when he came up with the lyrics:
“I’m the only Rosie the Valley allows,
Spun like the petals and woven like beech leaves underneath the boughs” - Adam Horovitz
This was one of those rare songwriting eureka moments. I wrapped a melody around the words and pushed the tune up into my head voice to find a topline with the right amounts of uplifting joy and affirmation. We looked at each other and smiled a knowing smile… we’d found it! The rest of the song was a forest-fuelled puzzle that we arranged around the imagined voice of Rosie Burdock. “Rosie’s Reply” is a wonderfully empowering song to sing and my collaboration outside my circle of musicians was a success. I cannot wait to do it again.
Rosie’s Reply - the 6th song in the ‘Down in the Valley’ Song Cycle, by Lisa Fitzgibbon & Adam Horovitz
Now in our 7th year, Pro7ect Songwriting Retreats at the world famous Rockfield Studios, is the only residential songwriting retreat in the UK offering music production in the room and an opportunity to collaborate with internationally acclaimed writer/producers.
P7 Headline producers include Stew Jackson (Massive Attack), Youth (Sir Paul McCartney, The Verve, The Orb), Roni Size (Reprazent), John Fortis (Razorlight, Ellie Goulding), Iain Archer (Snow Patrol, James Bay), Andrew Levy (Brand New Heavies) and Mercury Prize Winner Talvin Singh, just to name a few.
So far, we’ve had 18 releases & 4 sync’s from songs written at Pro7ect retreats, as well as numerous collaborations and professional opportunities via the P7 Alumni artists community.
I look forward to sharing with you in this monthly column songwriting & music production experiences, advise, tips and insider secrets that I’ve discovered along my Pro7ect Collaboration Navigation adventure.
Take risks,
Lisa Fitz
Pro7ect Session Notes is an insider’s guide to real life songwriting, collaboration, and music production experiences from Pro7ect Songwriting Retreats & Creative Director Lisa Fitzgibbon.
Links to media mentioned in this blog: https://www.pro7ect.com/session-notes
Listen to the audio mentioned in this blog https://www.downinthevalley.co.uk/rosies-reply
For more information and to apply for Pro7ect songwriting retreats and Masterclasses: www.pro7ect.com
Pro7ect is proudly sponsored by Prism Sound.
Images: by Ian Wallman