My dad gives me tons of amazing lyrics and we finally convinced him to post them on FAWM, since I have a much harder time fitting lyrics to music and coming up with melodies. I am astounded how people do that. I always write the opposite direction with music first, so that makes it harder. He's enjoyed it a lot and if you need some lyrics for inspiration, head on over to his page! This year he has a ton of collaborations with other FAWMers as more and more people realize how wonderful his lyrics are.

That said, I love writing songs with my dad, and that is actually how I got started in FAWM in the first place, if you didn't know. In 2011 I told my parents about this crazy musical challenge I was going to do, and my dad (who had never written songs or lyrics before) started sending me tons of them. So I did my first FAWM writing songs with his lyrics. I've continued that each year with at least one song.

He had sent me a set of lyrics before this year's FAWM that was a sequel to a wonderful song that we wrote together in 2011. One of the surprises of that year was how poignant his lyrics could be and how much they would touch the hearts of other people. "A Workers Song" was one of those, and always made the biggest impact of all the songs I played when I did open mics in 2011. I could see how much it connected with people, and I thought that a sequel would be a wonderful idea. That was the one i had been planning to do this FAWM, but had not gotten a chance to until today.

I got my regular 6 string acoustic back from fixing the end pin and the first thing I played this morning was a brand new song that seemed like it would work well for the set of sequel lyrics. So, I wrote the entire song. When I went to figure out a melody, the original set of lyrics didn't exactly fit the syllables I needed (this is always the problem with the direction I write), so I rewrote the verses to fit, keeping all the main parts. The worker from our first story had fallen on even harder times and was very, very down, and I thought the song needed a little hope, so I wrote a chorus for it. Then i ended the song with a reprise of the intro to the original song, which gave me chills every time I played it. Finally, I added my Farfisa Pianorgan, since the original always sounded like it should have an accordion, but didn't. 😀

Check out the original and hear the story of the worker, and then listen to this update to the story. 😀

"A Worker Song" (2011 - ZeCoop and SrCoops)
bit.ly/2EDarGM

James says:
Great job, John. If anyone wonders where this came from, his father made him work as a common laborer in a Bingo factory to earn money for school.