Modern Explorer

Gordy Quist is an Austin, Texas-based songwriter and a member of The Band of Heathens. Over the years, Gordy and I have traded ideas for tricking ourselves into being more productive as songwriters, and in this episode, we compare notes on recent efforts and play a couple of brand new songs: "Out on Each Other" and "More Like September."  We also talk about our next Songfarmer workshop, coming up on December 5, 6 & 7. Then we retire to the Backyard Biergarten for Sierra Nevada Pale Ales and a couple more tunes, this time two songs we wrote together, called "Medicine Man" and "Cracking the Code."

On this inaugural episode of the podcast, I talk with songwriter John Edward Baumann about how he first started writing songs and the ways we are trying to get better at it. We talk about summer camps, places we always stop on the road, and the difference between West Texas and West, Texas.  Then we move to the backyard for beers and to play a couple of songs in a segment called Backyard Biergarten. While my neighbor plays percussion (with a rake), and the dog shakes his collar like a tambourine, John plays a great song that's the title track of his new project "Gulf Moon" and I play a song that I wrote with George Ensle called "Rings on a Tree."