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Pro7ect songwriting tips: collaborate with an artist from a different discipline

Pro7ect’s songwriting retreats founder Lisa Fitz serves up some insightful songwriting collaboration advise, as she highlights the benefits of working with artists from a different discipline…

If you are looking for a songwriting challenge, why not collaborate with a non-musical artist?

Some famous hybrid collaborations include Lady Gaga and Art Pop sculptor Jeff Koons; Drake and S/2 gallery’s I Like It Like This exhibition; the Ten Writers Telling Lies collaboration with a group of storytellers and poets by singer-songwriter Jim Byrne; and the notorious union of Salvador Dali and Alice Cooper.

I recently breeched these musical boundaries myself on a collaboration for the ‘Down in the Valley’ song-cycle commission, with Cotswold author and poet, Adam Horovitz.

I was commissioned to write six songs inspired by the landscape, legends, and characters in Laurie Lee’s famous book Cider With Rosie to commemorate the 25th year of his death. This is my dream job, enabling me to conceptualise these characters, delving deep into the history and mystery of past lives and legends.

The final song of the cycle is called Rosie’s Reply. The premise, to give a voice to the girl who is the namesake of this famous book. I wanted to imagine her experience of that legendary encounter with the young Laurie Lee under the hay-cart that summer, and to tell her side of the story in this song.

It came to me like a bolt out of the blue. I wanted to write Rosie’s Reply with an artist outside my musical sphere, someone who could bring a different lived experience to the session, and who could lift the song out of my comfort zone, with an experience fitting of the literary context of the project.

Award winning writer and poet Adam Horovitz not only knew Laurie Lee but grew up where the book was set and seemed the perfect collaborator. I was given his email by a local historian, so I contacted him asking if he wanted to write Rosie’s Reply with me. I must admit, I didn’t think it would happen. I’d never collaborated with anyone outside my musical circle before and I knew it was a long shot.

It took many months to catch this fish, but he finally agreed, and two writing days were booked in the diary.

Writing Day 1: The morning session was spent drinking coffee and listening to the other songs in the cycle in my studio. We talked about Adam’s childhood, growing up in the Valley, and his relationship with Laurie Lee. My objective was very clear, I’d even named the song before it was written, so all roads lead to Rosie.

The afternoon session was spent bouncing words and melodic idea’s around when Adam came up with what would become the opening lines of the song:

“Stone Jar of Cider under the hay,
Sun through the beech trees lighting the day,
With promises greener than innocent lust,
Covered in Buttercup dust” - Adam Horovitz

What an incredibly strong, evocative, beautiful way to set the song scene. The chords and melody came to me, almost like the words shaped the melody, and in about 45 minutes we’d written the first verse and bridge. I was not expecting that!

Writing Day 2: We meet in Adams old stone cottage nestled in the woods at the top of the Slad valley, an amazing location and truly inspiring setting surrounded by beechwood forests and birdsong. We’d agreed to focus on writing the chorus at this session and then to piece the verses and bridges together to form a continuous narrative. I’ve found that it’s good to have a plan for sessions that are time limited, it helps me focus on the job at hand and stops me going off on tangents.

Adam had his nose in his poetry book, and I was noodling around on my guitar when he came up with the lyrics:

“I’m the only Rosie the Valley allows,
Spun like the petals and woven like beech leaves underneath the boughs” – Adam Horovitz

This was one of those rare songwriting eureka moments. I wrapped a melody around the words and pushed the tune up into my head voice to find a topline with the right amounts of uplifting joy and affirmation. We looked at each other and smiled a knowing smile… we’d found it! The rest of the song was a forest-fuelled puzzle that we arranged around the imagined voice of Rosie Burdock.

Rosie’s Reply is a wonderfully empowering song to sing and my collaboration outside my circle of musicians was a success. I cannot wait to do it again.

Listen to “Rosie’s Reply” and watch the song story vlog: https://www.downinthevalley.co.uk/rosies-reply