Thank you Charley Pride and Tom T. Hall

 

Everything we hear may not move us, but what does, lasts more than lifetimes. Butterfly effect and beyond ...

Thank you for the music.

Songwrites: Inspirations I

"Please Little River"
Songwriting credit: Kriz Rogers

"Roll On Mississippi"

Songwriting credits: Kye Fleming/Dennis Morgan

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBJ0DCW0h0U2yXwiBBi4YGJr0AkZqPMP0

Songwrites: Inspirations II

"Gloryville"
Songwriting credit: Kriz Rogers

"I See"

Songwriting credit: Tom T. Hall

Songwrites: Inspirations II playlist

Where "Thank You Song" comes from

Inevitable, there are trials in life. It is a common belief that they will grow you and make you stronger.

"Thank You Song" comes from a place like that. It was a day like any other day (way before this thing in 2020 hit us), and why an event triggered me to write it, is a mystery, just like Life itself, but what I do know is that my husband was still hooked on narcotic pain pills at the time, and the unpredictability of each moment was a constant cloud hanging over us and me. He had had one of his out-lashes and it was  after that moment "Thank You Song" came about.  I turned to my consolers God and music and reached for my guitar and simply started strumming and singing. The words and the melody instantly started flowing through from my heart and the Holy Spirit . There is no other explanation when a song simply starts seemingly out of "nothingness". The purpose for me that evening was to find strength in life's weakness to connect with a feeling of gratitude, so that I could turn a resentment into something uplifting.

In this day and time, when we all are more or less in an adaptive stage of living, my hope is that you will find strength and inspiration from hearing this song.

PS. There is a dictionary on my facebook page that explains some of the terminology I use in the song: https://www.facebook.com/krizrogerscountrymusic/photos/p.10157202566266470/10157202566266470/?type=1&theater

and I would like to add that "Bigger Scheme" refers to God's plans for not just you and me, but for human kind as a whole.

How I Work On Music

When I need to learn a new song, write one or musically arrange one, it is very helpful for me to go for a walk. The rhythm of my footsteps gives me a beat to work with. Then I simply repeat the lines of the song in my head (yes, I can "sing" the melody in my head).

Favorite Lines

There are songs and lines in songs that touch and stir, make my heart sing and my eyes cry.  Or simply make me happy. I'll list some of them here, and I will tell you from what songs they are at the bottom of the post. Hey, you can play a game with me and guess from where these lines are taken:

"Hey, I'm not trying to be nobody,
just want a chance to be myself."

"Some are going north and some are going south,
I'm just going to be gone."

"You'll only miss the man that you wanted him to be."

"And I was like a Christmas morning child"

"Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night."

"A hundred years go faster than you think."

"My eyes are not blue, but mine won't leave you."


Interesting how powerful just one line of a song can be ....not to mention a song as a whole along with the melody and the way it's sung ...

No wonder music is such a big part of most of our lives!

I promised  to tell, so if you haven't guessed just yet, here are the songs listed in the same order as I posted the lines: "Streets Of Bakersfield", "I'm Just Me", "Shut Up And Drive", "Memoryville" (yes, a song I recorded and that was the line that pulled me in), "I Saw The Light", "Don't Blink" and "I'm Not Lisa".


Now you also know some of my favorite songs to sing and/or to listen to!

Player Widget For My Recordings

If you'd like to listen to my music, here's a player:

Songs That Create Emotions

A morning routine of mine is to turn the radio on to 650 WSM while I'm having breakfast in the kitchen. One of the songs they played today was "Coward Of The County", which I first heard on the radiop when I was a child over in Sweden.  How I viewed it back then, I don't remember, but now I love it because it is so brilliantly written with its storytelling.  It also has teachings in it about choices we make and that there always is so much more to a person than what can be assessed by simply one standpoint of theirs. I feel it is a song that encompasses both "Blessed are the meek" (from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:5) and the more secular "The straw that broke the camel's back".

The Creation Of Eddy's Song

Where does a song start? In your heart? In the air? in the atmosphere?  I believe it is as unexplainable as trying to hypothesize on what God is all about (although I know that God is Love).  All I know is that it starts with a feeling and a thought.  Before that: all the places, encounters and experiences that lead to those.

Some of the elements of inspiration to"Eddy's Song" were that I was at a time and place where I had a guitar player that just had introduced me to the magic world of Billy Joe Shaver’s work.  The guitar player had also recently welcomed a son into this world whom was given the name Eddie.  My drummer had just had a daughter.  The thoughts of those new lives and the myriad of possibilities of obstacles and positive events the children would see on their way of becoming grown are what triggered my wish for them to have not just one, but many strong and loving hands to help lead and guide them through the can be at times enervating journey. 

Recently I performed a Nashville Showcase at Jeanne's Dinner Theatre here in Nashville and the first song I performed was "Eddy's Song". You can watch it here

You can also download the song from the Kriz Rogers'/Kriztina Ahs & Countryfied's CD "Roads" here

Foot note: the sub title of the song is "Everybody Needs Someone".

A link ....

... to an interview that has many a good advice on songwriting:

http://www.kimcopelandproductions.com/secrets/BB14-16.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=MyNewsletterBuilder&utm_content=1347765221&utm_campaign=SWC+E-Tip+-+Developing+Songwriters+Common+Misconceptions+1412362993&utm_term=Read+Sessionnbsp5#sthash.bJ709oys.dpbs

Songwriting Inspiration

It is always easy to get inspired as a songwriter living in Nashville. One thing to do is to go to one of the Songwriting Sessions they have at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. This time it was with Byron Hill, and if you are a country music fan, I know you have heard many of the songs he has written. Google/search Byron Hill on the web and see what you'll find ...

If you haven't searched/googled yet, here are some of the hits he has written: "Fool Hearted Memory" for George Strait, "Born Country" for Alabama, "High-Tech Redneck" for George Jones .... and there are more ... 

Songwriting Tools

Here are some very helpful sites to use when you are writing songs:

http://www.rhymezone.com/    (to find words that rhyme or near end rhymes)

http://www.onelook.com/        (dictionary search engine with very advanced search options)

When my songs come

Somewhere in between dreamland and awake-land. That's where melodies appear to me. Nothing forceful about it, they are simply there and I hear them. Like "Driving Me Crazy" from Roads. Please don't ask me what I dreamed about before I nearly woke up that time because I don't remember. I rarely do. I guess melodies stick better than dreams do and that's a good thing! :-)

The Creation Of A Song - Gloryville

Some of you may already have seen and heard the song on youtube or dowloaded it on Amazon or itunes or a similar site or maybe even heard it on the radio. Either way, let me tell you about its creation:

I was on the way home from a gig in Sweden in the village of Holmsveden. Fredrik, my guitarist at that time, was driving and he had some favorite songs of his he wanted to share with me. One of them was a description of a man walking around in his loneliness in a city. There I received the inspiration to the last phrase of the verses "It's just an ordinary day in the life of the people, living by the streets in the town of Gloryville".

The name of the city "Gloryville" is a name that can describe the city of our dreams or the city we live in that is not yet the place in life where we want to be. Simply a state of goal setting. Or the world that we live in. When arranging the music, I had Ravel's "Bolero" in mind with a constant ascension leading up to the finale.

I was attending a course at the Mid Sweden University in Harnosand during this period of the song's creation. My class mates were teachers in the making or teachers wanting to upgrade their education to start teaching higher grades of school. A lady was venting her frustration with communication with parents of children. It was not unusual for her having to set up two different times to speak with the parents of a child whose mom and dad were divorced. Simply because they could not be in the same room at the same time. That's where I got the idea for the first verse.

The second verse is about a friend of mine. He was one of my promoters in Sweden and he had been badly burnt by a relationship with a woman whose only objective was to ask him for money for her mother. She never paid him back, just took the money and left.

Verse three - the spoken part - is the true story about my dad's aunt and her lost love. She never married the love of her life because of her loved one's parents' rejection. He never married either.

But wait, 'nuff of these sad stories now: the last verse is about the glorious place of Utopia we all really desire to live in where "each one's neighbor is each one's friend".

"It's just an ordinary day in the life of the people living by the streets in the town of Gloryville"!

All lyric excerpts and song and video: Copyright Kriz Rogers.

Song available for download here http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/KriztinaAhsCountryfied  It is track #9