Writing with Eric Bikales

Writing with Eric Bikales was pure fun: www.myspace.com/ericbikales. I go to his beautiful house—it seems so many neighborhoods in Nashville are houses will rolling expanses of land, no sidewalks, with a very pastoral feel. Eric’s is no exception. We go to his basement studio, with a walk out patio and large windows that let the sun stream in. We sit on the coach and have a wonderful conversation, getting to know each other, and I hear about what brought him to Nashville from L.A. two years ago. This is a common theme—there seems to be a revolving door between Nashville and L.A. and a constant flow of collaborations between the two epi-centres of the music industry.

When we start writing, Eric plays around on his Hammond—-what a gorgeous sound-—and finally settles himself behind the grand piano. He starts hammering out a funky, groovy number that I love. We quickly find that Eric is more comfortable jamming out music, while I love playing with lyrics and words. So as he plays with music, I start to try out different words that fit the feel. Together, we find a melody and start singing and swinging.

It all comes so effortlessly—I find that I’m totally in the moment during these sessions. In the interest of moving the song along and honoring whoever I’m working with, I tend to turn off my inner critic, the one who starts trying to judge if the song is good or bad before we’ve even come to the end of a phrase. So I continue piecing together lyrics and playing with the rhythms and sounds of different deliveries, knowing that I can dig into the lyrics later if I need to change them.

We decide to cut a demo of the song, and Eric quickly puts down some drum, bass and keyboards that I can sing along to. Now you’ll have to wait to see the result….