Autumn Evenings – Song and a Chat

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Episode #216: Autumn Evenings (Song starts at 5:33)

It was a pleasure to rediscover song #261, Autumn Evenings for this episode. I wrote it in 1993.

Here we are now, in 2023 – I’ve written about 800 songs now.

At the market this week, people were asking me how on earth I managed to do this (not to mention the 1000s of cartoons & hundreds of seascapes).

I’ve found having a peaceful space it really helps me to create. I make sure I’m in the mood before I even pick up the brush, the pen, or let my hands near the keys of the piano.

Because emotion gives you the push, the momentum and focus – in fact, almost everything you need.

The other thing you need is to have some sort of art ‘down’. For me I can let my fingers just play on the keys of my piano and they seem to find endless combinations of notes that really appeal to me.

The opening chords of autumn evenings are emotive to me. They take me right back to the day I wrote the lyrics for this one. I was sitting in my old van, having taken a drive to see the view over Lake Taupo, NZ (quite incredible: a vast inland lake with the volcanic back drop of 3 huge mountains).

Beautiful. And the power of the beauty of your surroundings has a big say on what we create in our lives.

So I choose to lead a peaceful life. It’s a life of some solitude…more than I thought might have been the case.

You can’t pick the future, I never dreamt I’d become a seascape painter, for instance.

Back in 1993, I was a piano man, spending some time by myself. Sitting in the van, I let my thoughts drift back to the sunset of the evening before. And then, looking south, beyond the mountains, in my mind, to a person, well, ok, a love interest, who was never to far from my thoughts. She popped into my mind and that gave me the idea to bring her into the song about the sunset of the previous evening

And with just a few lines, it all came together. The idea of somehow sharing watching the sunset, although we were in two different parts of the country…in a sense we’d be together.

Ha- the desperate sensitive mind of the artist, eh. Oh well, you sort of let it out now and then… actually there’s not too much of it ( ‘it’ being overly romantic mush) in the song.. for that reason, I think it works well.

Singing and playing the song for this episode was fun (I’ve no idea when the last time I played it was – years ago). Flying by the seat of my pants, I made a couple of changes in the moment.

This is an example of what I get up to, when I’m in the mood: I get into ‘performance mode’ and sing and play one song after the other. And as I go along, I make little changes. Changes I wouldn’t have been able to make if I wasn’t in the performance mode. Because those changes might not make artistic sense – and it’s all about the art.

Ok..I hope you enjoy this half hour chat as I sit at the piano – and the song, of course, too. I’ll also take you to the arts market on this episode (some audio I recorded at my stall).

I’ve written another 9 songs this week. It’s so nice when they come tumbling out.

Plenty on my blog including the lyrics of this song and this weeks painting, go here: www.petepascoe.Wordpress.com. and search for autumn evenings.

Enjoy.