You Crazy Dreamers

14 songs in 28 days is the challenge ! What’s the story behind this unbelievable concept ?

Back in 2003, Burr Settles a singer songwriter from Madison WI completed a short novel for National Novel Writing Month. Following this writing experience, Burr decided with 3 friends to transpose this creativity exercise to songwriting using a weblog to share compositions and comments.

This 2008 edition is on and already more than 1000 FAWMers (understand FAWM participants) are already registered and gave birth to more than 2000 songs !

YCD : Bonjour Burr, as both the FAWMaster and as a regular FAWMer how you doin’ ?
Burr Settles : Ça va bien, merci! This February is much busier than previous FAWMs for me… I’m a graduate student and have a full-time job in addition to volunteering to run the project. So I’ve fallen a little behind schedule in terms of songwriting. Of course, I’m also working with a handicap this year since I usually write acoustic indie/country/folk songs, and I’ve banned myself from the acoustic guitar this year to stretch myself. I’ve written punk, R&B/soul, and a French reggae tune so far. On the other hand, when I do find the time to sit down and write, I’ve been able to bang out songs more quickly than in the past, I think… probably due to the years of practice. (This is my fifth year doing FAWM).

YCD : 14 and 1/2 songs in 29 days is simply awesome ! Have you got couple stats from the previous years ? How many songwriters succeed / failed ?
Burr Settles : The challenge is usually “14 Songs In 28 Days.” 2008 being a leap year with 29 days, though, we decided to challenge everyone to try an extra “1/2″ song, or to take part in a songwriting collaboration. There has been more of that going on each year at FAWM, so this year we thought we’d encourage it outright.
Last year, we had over 800 register, but only 250 or so took it seriously. Of those, about half crossed the finish line with at least 14 songs (almost 2,700 new songs total). Each year, FAWM roughly doubles in size, so I’m guessing we’ll see over 500 serious fawmers… and maybe more than 250 “winners.” We’re 12 days in this so far and have almost 1,900 finished songs logged on the site, so that says something!

YCD : Having a quick look over your shoulder, how do you feel about this project ?
Burr Settles : I love it. It’s funny, because I selfishly started FAWM in 2004 as a way to force myself to write songs and be accountable to that. But the community of songwriters it’s grown into is really the best part of it these days. There’s a spirit of creativity and competition — not against one another, but to better one another. Fawmers come from all over the world, write in every possible genre, and range from music industry professionals to folks who have never finished a song before. It’s a remarkably safe and fun place to try and stretch yourself musically. I’m really humbled to have played a role facilitating that.

I’ve discovered FAWM last year and it gave me the opportunity to listened to Old Lost John aka Tomas Thunberg, Isaac Quatorze, Phil Norman and Burr Settles !

If statistics prove that Valentine’s day is increasing November births, sure this 2008 FAWM edition will be the craddle of some new and talented songwriters. If I dare to draw one more sexual parallel, let’s say that FAWM.org is also the perfect place to extirpate yourself from an unfruitful muscial solo-masturbation !

To help you start amongst these crowds of songwriters, I’ve selected from this first half of FAWM, couple songs - which for sure is so restrictive. The best way to get through FAWM is to stick your browser on the FAWM Jukebox page and open up your ears !

I would like to thank Phil Norman and Steve Guiles for allowing me to share their songs on YCD, and also Burr Settles for his kindness answering my questions, and his French speaking ! You can support the project with donations and/or buying the FAWM 2007 cd : “14 Songs In 28 Days (Volume 3)“.