Let Her Know – Song and a Chat

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Episode #197: Let Her Know (Song starts at 5:19)

Song #156, Let Her Know, was composed in 1990. Back then, I was starting to think that’s a reasonable amount of songs.

The demo on this episode was recorded a decade later. And here we are in 2024. Wow. 34 years later, I find myself with 800 songs. It was fun, as always, listening to the demo, playing parts of ‘Let Her Know’, talking about where it came from, how it came together, what inspired the song.

What inspired the song were a series of episodes that obviously happened years ago. But the thing about art is: in brings memories to the surface, very strongly – so strongly, it feels like yesterday.

The arts are a means to exercise the grey matter, there’s no doubt about that! But more than that, it really gives us an opportunity to explore more of ourselves than is perhaps immediately apparent. You can go deep within, rediscovering old memories.

Each song is a complete surprise to me during the composing process. As you wade in and make a start, so much happens. You establish the mood. In no time, a band is playing in my mind – perhaps an orchestra, backing vocals, everything including the kitchen sink. That amazes me.

And yet it all comes down to the honest feeling, the feeling that caused me to pick up a pen and write an A4 page of lyrics.

Then the morning comes, when the mood hits me, I remember the words. I grab a coffee and a pen and take a seat at the piano.

For me it’s like a performance, writing a song, I’m in my skin, in the room with the piano of course, but part of me has gone somewhere else – many places: I’m on stage in an imagined future, I’m back in time, recalling those strong feelings, how the events unfolded. It’s like a start stop movie, for me.

It has the effect of making you feel really alive, your mind goes over and over a scene, replaying what happened, and you provide the sound track to the movie in your head.

At least, that’s how it is for me. It’s the most natural process for me. It’s a total joy, there’s no struggle, no frustration, and for that I feel incredibly grateful.

Let her know is about a young fellow struggling with something: he’s met someone that’s hit him right between the eyes. Should he let her know? What would happen? How would that feel? What subsequent events would that set in motion?

Putting big feelings like this into music is a great move. It gets it off your shoulders and it might turn out to be exactly what someone needs to hear somewhere down the track – even 34 years later!

I have a seascape exhibition on presently (I’m also an artist). Outcomes will be what they’ll be… will I sell the paintings? I don’t know. I hope so!

But what counts for me at least is: each painting is an expression of joy. It wasn’t a fight to get the paint to flow, to mix the right colours – the colours I could see in my mind (like the sounds I hear).

It’s so like the songwriting process.

I hope you enjoy this weeks episode, recording them is a real pleasure each week – an online performance of spoken word and music, with plenty of humour and entertainment.

I’m glad I took the time to write some words down and then added a music accompaniment as I winged the melody. Back in 1990. It’s such a great feeling, and it’s also incredibly good fun and endlessly fascination to be exploring the creative process of songwriting here on this podcast.

Here we go again: Let Her Know. Enjoy!