Just Keep Writing

Holy cow I didn't realize that it'd been so long since I've posted anything! Let's just say it's about darn time that I get back to the blog. So let's get to the back story. I wrote this last year when Aaron and I visited my folks and we went to the Gary Allan show. Our seats weren't the greatest but since there were no opportunities to really take any photos, we just danced, sang along and enjoyed the music. Perhaps it was getting lost in the music, perhaps it was a fangirl high after getting our fan club pic signed, perhaps it was Gary coming out on stage in a duster and a cowboy hat....it was totally Gary coming out on stage in a duster and cowboy hat (and the line "chapters, pages, stained an torn" references when he passed his lyric notebook around the audience at the 2019 fan club party. Yes, this girl geeeeeked ooouuutttt!). I felt so inspired on the drive home and this lyric just happened. I did a quick search on the hook and didn't...

For those who don't know where it started, my dream began when I was probably around 14 or 15 years old. I decided to start writing songs one day. It seemed like a good idea. After I began writing I found the Tunesmith songwriting forum, where I'd post lyrics for critique and read about the adventures of others. I don't remember when it was, but someone mentioned the Bluebird Cafe. Now, I was just a teenager from southern Indiana who wrote for a hobby. I didn't know anything about the Bluebird Cafe, but it sounded like the songwriter mecca, so I made up my mind that I would play there. Of course, to a dreamer, the feat seemed within reach. I just had to be in Nashville. My first trip to Nashville came and went, followed by several other visits. Suddenly I was in the right place, but after experiencing a show at the Bluebird, I told myself that I wasn't ready yet. I was just waiting for the right song that would give me the courage to make the journey to Music Ci...

As I mentioned in a prior post, I decided to kick off a new branch of my blog called the Dream Cut Series. In this series, I’ll be discussing the artists that I imagined singing the songs as I wrote them, and the vibe I was going for. As many of you know, my musical skills are limited, so I rarely actually get the songs where I want them to be, but I try. To start the Dream Cut Series, it only seemed fitting to talk about a song that has a line in it that came from a dream I had about co-writing with one of my idols. In this dream, from what I can remember, I was sitting there with Gary Allan. We were chit-chatting and working on writing something, when he looked up, kinda shugged off a cold chill, and said “Whoo, I felt my guardian angel fly a little too close that time”. I woke up right after that line, picked up my phone and typed it in, then went back to bed.  I was bound and determined to use that line in a song someday. Fast forward to the May Songwriting Challenge....

Took some time this morning to record Heart in a Bottle. This was the first song I wrote in the May Songwriting Challenge and it has been on my mind since then! I’d love to maybe learn  ukulele someday because I feel like it might go really well with this tune! Drop me a comment and let me know what you think!

It's taken me a while to come around to writing this one. I feel like this is a pretty universal feeling: Every writer has a list of "Dream Cuts"...maybe even "Wildest Dream Cuts". At least in my case, a lot of my writings are influenced by these "Dream Cuts". Sure, I can write with others in mind, but somewhere in the depths of my soul, I'm hearing certain artists wail the notes I'm imagining. I'm feeling the solos that I can't play, but that I can interpret from the song. Dream cuts are an amazing motivator. Then comes a day when that dream cut simply ceases to exist. I'll never forget the day that it happened. For years, I'd been writing thinking "All I need to do is get published, then get some cowrites going, and if we work hard enough, it'll happen." September 8, 2017. That's when the dream ended. I was checking social media to keep tabs on the island, which had just been destroyed by Irma when I firs...

If you’ve followed my blog at all during the past month, you know that I took part in the Song-a-Day May Songwriting Challenge. The challenge began with a callout from the founder of a songwriting group that I joined on Facebook named “The Sounding Board: A Roots and Rhinestones Songwriters Critique Group.” As I have been in a bit of a songwriting rut these last several months, I thought that this challenge would help me break out and get back into the groove of things a bit.  I bought a new notebook and went to town. After titling the first page “Hooks, Lines & Stinkers”, I jotted down a list of different concepts to use for inspiration down the road. Some of these came out of the blue, on the drive to work, or from things that I’d heard from strangers throughout the say. Some of them came from conversations that I’d had with my honey, where we’d pause after saying something completely random, and both agree about how that’d be a good line for a song. Some of them wer...

And with this, the May Songwriting Challenge comes to a close. I’ve officially written more this month than I have in the past year. It was full of ups and down, and I finally feel like my muses have returned to inspire. To wrap this challenge up, I decided to finish one that has been in the back of my mind for a few months. I’ve had the chorus, but the verses just weren’t coming to me. That all changed this morning on my drive into work. I first got this idea after a quarter beer night at the Bluebird (nightclub, not café) and thought it’d be fun to write a song about broke girls going out on ladies night.  Right on the Money © 2018 Chelsey Sears V1: Once bills are paid, most my hard work ‘s spent Countin’ down the days ‘til my next check So hard for broke girls to have any fun But once a week, that old marquis Reads “ladies get in free” Like a beacon calling out to us CH: Times are tough and the struggle’s real So let’s belly on up for a quarter bee...