Let’s Connect.
One thing I have enjoyed about our recent situation has been the chance to connect. Join us at the following:
Let’s Watch A Movie Together: https://discord.gg/BsvUQvY
FFC: The Free Food Coalition: https://discord.gg/MKRnzMq
QuaranMeals: https://discord.gg/cvmrM9c
The QuaranTimes: https://discord.gg/zcGRYTH
Twitter.com/BillyPettinger
Instagram.com/BillyPettinger
I watch people learn.
All day.
Every day.
That is my job. I’m a music teacher. I teach piano, guitar, voice and songwriting (which eventually turns into co-writing).
At one point, I had 60 students. That’s 60 different people that I would get to watch, as they learned different concepts, week after week.
My youngest student was five years old.
My oldest student?
74.
I’m a music “teacher,” but I don’t feel like I “teach” all day, every day. I present people with information, and then I watch, as they absorb it.
After all the lessons I’ve taught and all the different kinds of students that I have encountered, I started realizing a prevalent fact:
It Didn’t Matter How Smart, Young, or Talented A Person Was.
What mattered the most was the kind of person they were.
What does that mean?
In my experience…(continued here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-attitude-is-39073001)
This is for my friend who’s a radiographer in the UK and just tested positive.
Some day
Some day
I’ll have a big old garden
I’ll grow whatever I want to grow
One day
I’ll go wherever I want to go
Don’t ask me where now
Cause I don’t know
If we make it out alive
I won’t waste any more time
Some day
Can I have one more Sunday
With you
Some day
Cause I have one more Sunday
With you
And something to do
Somewhere
There’s a world we were meant to know
I swear I’ll get it right this time
One day
It won’t feel so out of control
We’ll take a deep breath and walk outside
If we make it out alive
I won’t waste any more time
Some day
Can I have one more Sunday
With you
Some day
Cause I have one more Sunday
With you
And something to do
Listen here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-day-demo-35670010https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-day-demo-35670010
Here’s a clip of what I’ve been up to.
I wanted to be one of those people who was posting and reposting: “just wash your hands!”
Pretty early on I caught myself thinking about how we don’t always have all the facts in this country. People are more concerned about their own narrative, how the economy is doing, and getting re-elected. The President was recently at the CDC, and mentioned that Fox News had stated the current number of infected as he was getting off the plane. You’re AT the CDC, bro.
I watched the news closely, with my upcoming travel dates pending…
Continued here.
Well, here we go again.
This month Andy Hawkins is returning to Alabama from the UK to make his next album. March is dedicated to that, and a project with Alabama Public Television about the Women’s Rights Movement. Then, I’m heading into the Nutt House in Florence for five days to record some of these new songs.
I know I played nine new songs in Nashville in December, and wrote 15 in January. There are some stragglers I either need to finish or just make demos for (like the songs I just have videos of). I will post the consolidated demos here when I have them. Then I need to pick 10-12 of our favourites. My hope is that you guys will let me know if there are any you’d like to hear studio versions of, and if there are any that maybe aren’t your favourite or are fine living out the rest of their days as phone recordings. There are 25-30 to choose from.
My suspicion is that there are around 5 slow piano ballads, five acoustic fingerpicked songs, five more uptempo rock songs and then maybe a handful more of each of those and a few that I’m not sure how to categorize. The first songs that are picked will help define a little more clearly what kind of album this is going to end up being. Right now I don’t know. I just have 25 or so songs, many of them cowrites. It’s possible I may turn the cowrites into their own thing and just focus on songs I wrote on my own for this new album. Still thinking. Anyway justed to keep you in the loop…one more month and we begin the cycle again 🎉
If you would like to stay updated about the new album, join me here as we roll out demos and more:
15th new song this month. This is probably gonna be the last song of this project so I decided I’d make it a video (I have a show Friday so I should probably rehearse tomorrow). This project has been both exhausting and inspiring. More on this later. I think I got back the thing I felt like I had lost, which was always going to something creative in all my spare time. That is the person that I want to be. I wanted to see if it was just a habit all along, and I never really changed. My suspicions were correct. I’m happy that these 15 songs exist. I had a lot of help and for that I am grateful. Now I know I really could write an album every month or so if I wanted to. I’m not saying it would be the best album, but it would exist. Can you imagine?
15th new song this month. This is probably gonna be the last song of this project so I decided I’d make it a video (I have a show Friday so I should probably rehearse tomorrow). This project has been both exhausting and inspiring. More on this later. I think I got back the thing I felt like I had lost, which was always going to something creative in all my spare time. That is the person that I want to be. I wanted to see if it was just a habit all along, and I never really changed. My suspicions were correct. I’m happy that these 15 songs exist. I had a lot of help and for that I am grateful. Now I know I really could write an album every month or so if I wanted to. I’m not saying it would be the best album, but it would exist. Can you imagine?
I keep this book on my coffee table and read it at least once a week. All the way through.
Do you ever find yourself, living in your own life…and you don’t remember who you are?
I was thinking about the times in my life when all I did was music. I wrote, toured recorded, and then repeated all that. Every once in awhile I would try to tackle a huge project like learning 31 Covers in 31 Days but mainly I just…coasted. If I had an idea, or a convenient collaboration popped up, it was something to do and usually enjoyable.
I don’t know what I did with the moments in between but I feel like there were so many moments in between when I was just doing nothing. So here I find myself, in my present day life, doing many somethings, and there’s no time to sit around and do nothing, which is the usual time when a song seems to write itself.
Every time someone comes to me to help finish an idea or figure out why (continued here…https://www.patreon.com/posts/33445416)
