ComicSpace - Read Bulletin

Home / holdmylife / Bulletins / Read Bulletin

Befriend holdmylife

« Back

Posted by:

holdmylife

Date:

February 5th, 2007 4:06 PM

Header:

Where the hell is Hold My Life?

Bulletin:

hey all,

Just dropping a quick note here to explain where the hell I (and Penny) have been the last few weeks, when we should've been hard at work getting a comic out for you guys.
The opportunity recently presented itself to me to take part in a songwriting workshop taught by Peter Case.

For me, this is a huge opportunity. Peter Case is one of the best songwriters alive today, an incredibly underrated talent who's never gotten the public acclaim that he deserves, and the opportunity to study the craft and mechanics of songwriting from this cat was just too much to pass up.

Factor in the numerous times that I've said in the past that I felt that Peter had lived Penny's life some thirty years ago when he was a young musician playing and living hard on the streets of San Francisco, and there was no way I'd pass up on it.

But here's the rub: The course is six weeks, and it's in Santa Monica, at a really cool old guitar shop called McCabe's. Thing is, I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and it's not like I can bail out on my life for six weeks to go learn how to write songs.. Got a gallery, a day job and a girlfriend (and two cats) to think of. So my buddy Frank (a.k.a Scooter Flappybat for those who are "in the know" ) and I decided the best thing to do was drive it. Every Saturday. For six weeks.

Going into this, I thought, foolishly, that I could work all week, come home and open the gallery in the evenings, pracitice with the Flappybats on Wednesday nights, hit the bar whenever I felt like it with my friends a couple nights a week, then drive to LA every single saturday, pretend to be a rock star for a couple hours and drive back home Saturday night, get up in the morning and wrap up the comic so as not to miss a deadline.

Um... right.

So the bad news is, no Hold My Life last week or this week. You have no idea how much that kills me not being there on Monday morning with the next installment. I feel Like Penny's screaming in my head to get out, any day now she's gonna clobber me with a freaking Fender Thinline or something. The good news is, this coming Saturday is the last class, I've gotten some great songs out of the process, and I've definitely grown as a writer.

I've gained insight into the world of the songwriter, which means that Penny will be a more fully rounded character. I've gained insight into the mechanics of song, what makes a good one work, and how to write through it when it isn't working, which means that the songs that Penny writes will be better than they would've if I'd written them a year ago.

I'm jazzed. Having gone through this experience will allow me to record the songs that I'm writing, and place them in the soundtrack , confident that they're the best songs they can be. They're already in the works. The class itself has also inspired a storyline where we'll really get into Penny's head on the craft of songwriting in a way that I might have been apprehensive about six months ago. It's something that I've always wanted to do, but also something I really felt I needed to research before attempting.

So, just because I haven't said it yet, I am so very sorry for not having been here, but I'll be back next week (promise!), when we'll dive back in and get into the swing of things.

Also, I'd highly recommend going to petercase.com and checking something out there. Peter just put out a book about his experiences in the early 70s, living and playing on the streets of San Francisco. It's called "As far as you can get without a passport", and it's very, very good.

Reads kind'a like Hold My Life, actually...

Cya Monday
Dale

« Back

Befriend holdmylife