“4 Daughters, 3 Chords, 2 Cats & 1 Dog” by Eric Selby
I was then youngest of 5 sons, largely raised by my Dad. Just getting married, there was culture shock by having “ladies things” in the house. Little did I know that I would end up being a single Dad with four daughters (with 2 cats and a dog). Three daughters are still teens and live with me. I am a songwriter, musician, producer, but my most important gig is Dad. Does being a parent influence my creative work?… Does Ringo get one song on almost every record?
The most influence is in my songwriting. I don’t get much of that sitting down with a cup of coffee or adult beverage for “songwriting time.” Like most parents in today’s hectic world, things are disjointed. Family night is disjointed, dinners are disjointed, life gets disjointed. I am currently home in the D.C. area quarantining with them and it’s still disjointed. One learns to either be in frustration purgatory or dance with the disjoint. My choice? I want to be Fred Astaire.
Because of this, I found my songwriting was disjointed early on too. I would just grab the little, fragmented time I had allotted to me, but feelings, emotions and passions changed over time. Even over an hour, I find. I forget my point in one phrase, incorrectly remember another. The lyrics started becoming disjointed phrases that, when all was said and done, all made sense (at least to me). Now, for the most part, that’s how I write lyrics, even if I have some good dedicated time to invest to the craft. It’s kinda like various witness accounts, from different angles, of a car accident…an internal telephone game.
Melodically, simple hooks that ear worm are what I’ve instinctively learned from their Teletubbies years to their Billie Eilish years. That, and growing up in a Beatle home form my brothers, has taught me the acronym K.I.S.S.: keep it simple, stupid. Sometime the three-chord song is enough to communicate your message and feeling. If that message and feeling needs more, than that is often, for me, when the song dictate s and starts to write itself.
My poor daughters endure listening to my solo living room work-shopping, crafting, writing, re-writing and blowing up a song altogether simply to re-engineer. They listened to the final master of my upcoming release, ‘Do, Baby.,” and they would comment with “oh, I remember that” or “that’s different than when you played it initially.” This shows me they are listening, and I am fully aware while songwriting. They aren’t afraid to critique too and (most of the time) I welcome it. For the most part, it is quite constructive. When you are writing songs in your living room, initially to simply entertain yourself and then they sometimes end up on your record, their musical input is really worthwhile. I believe a songwriter emotes who they are and their perspective in most everything they write. I am without a doubt a Dad. You can hear it in all of my music…I have to go now, I think one of them is hitting a lacrosse ball with back of my Taylor guitar.
Eric’s newest record, Do, Baby. will be released on April 17, 2020.
You can find out more information at www.ericselby.com
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https://www.instagram.com/ericselbymusic