Step 1: The Song

My old professor and mentor Ron Simpson used to ubiquitously use the phrase, "It starts with a song." Likewise, the first step in the process of creating my Epworthian track required the creation of a song. Initially, I had planned (and put forth in my proposal) to write a song together with an artist and use that as the basis of my track.

This, however, created a problem. As an American recently arrived in the UK, I'm still getting my bearings and developing my local network of collaborators and musicians and not all collaborative writing sessions are created equal. I found an artist to work with but our schedules did not easily align and our writing styles did not quickly yield anything ready to use.

I came to the conclusion that, to move forward with the project, it would be easier to use a song I had written previously, and have the artist sing it for me. This decision allowed me to focus on the recording and production aspect of the project without getting hung up on writing.