*To hear the music referenced in this article, watch the video here.
Did you throw it away?
No, not your leftover chicken mahkani. That was delish. You housed that the next day for lunch.
Did you throw away that idea?
File away that attempt in the “unsuccessful, never againl” pile?
Did you let go of that dream, dismiss that possibility?
Maybe it’s time to dumpster dive.
Let’s open with a story that sets the tone…
My latest album, Love Again (which rocks!) kicks off with a song called “What Kind of Fool.”
I first released the song on my debut album, Dirty Jeans, back in 1999, but it sounded much different back then. It was fingerpicked and bluesy, had (what I thought were) clever lyrics, and the main character was the female equivalent of Dos Equis’ “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” It was fun!
But I couldn’t play it anymore. My hands were shot due to repetitive motion injuries, and as I grew older, I couldn’t fingerpick much anymore without my hands cramping.
So I threw it away, so to speak.
What do you do as a guitar player when you can’t play your own songs anymore?
Well, you learn new ways to play! I always loved the style of music known as “jazz manouche,” a classic genre popularized by legends such as Django Reinhardt, so I signed up for some lessons on Udemy.com to learn a bit more.
One of the foundations for the style is a particular guitar strumming technique known as “le pompe,” so that’s where I started. And, one day, as I was “le pomping” in the key of A minor, I remembered my song, What Kind of Fool. It was also in A minor. So I started playing that song with this newly learned style.
And boom!
It sounded great! The tune was resurrected from the depths of the musical dustbin, and with that new style of strumming, the song took on a brand new life. It had a new energy, a pumping rhythm.
And it was way better than the way I had initially written it!
Its time had come, almost 26 years later. And, when I recorded it in Nashville recently, my producer and Grammy-recognized songwriter, Cliff Goldmacher, and I made the absolute best decision – we hired a super talented fiddle player by the name of Andy Leftwich to play on it.
And – holy crap! The result is incredible! It sounds soooooo cool with Andy on it!
But that’s my story…
What tune of yours needs revisiting?
So often, we dismiss things quickly with the phrase, “We tried that before. It didn’t work.” We hear it all the time – at work, from people who are comfortable with the status quo, and even in our own minds when we recall the plops versus the possibilities.
But maybe it didn’t work then.
Then was a while ago.
Things have changed since then.
The world has changed.
You’ve changed.
You’ve learned, and you are still learning. What if that dumped idea’s day has come?
Maybe the timing is just right, and there’s treasure in your trash.