FAWM 2025 - In review

Note, I do plan on taking the album down off Soundcloud on April 1. It's a fun exercise, but it's rough demos and my next goal is improving the quality of my work. 

I hit 21 songs, which I'm extremely satisfied with. I think if I had pushed a touch harder that I could have hit maybe 24, but I really didn't feel a drive to do that. 

Of those 21, there are 3 or 4 that tackle serious subject matter and I don't know if I have a real place for them in my act. I'll put those into the archive for another time. I have a small collection building of serious music and that might have some place in the future. I quit the grunge/alt rock band I was jamming with late in January and some of these would have been perfect to take there. But I only have so much capacity to work with and something had to go. No sense lamenting it. One of the influences that helped me dial in this project is the singer Jesse Welles. He's recently released a more serious album in the context of his more humourous work - and I think that might be a option in the future for me as well(es). 

I've also started to see some patterns or groups in the songs I've been writing as a whole. I would like to take some of these groups and put them together as EP releases in the future. Things like "The Kitchen EP", "The Winter EP" or "Pets on Vinyl". But that's many moons down the road for me at this point. 

What I got out of FAWM

As I've navigated the month, I've been keeping notes on some of the things that have struck me about FAWM. Not only do I want to share them here but I also want to keep some notes I can look back on before trying this again - probably next year?

I think the first thing that must hit everyone that does FAWM is the community. They're so welcoming and supportive and I've gathered so much great info about what people think of my music and what I do. I've actually got plans to download my archive from the site and put it through a word cloud generator. My thought is that this can help me find words that describe my music that I can put into things like bios, grab some quotes for this website and just generally use it to help sculpt my act.

But sculpting my act is a big outcome I got from FAWM. While writing humourous songs is my typical direction, I didn't hold myself to that this month and going outside the margins was very informative. One, it gave me some confidence that I can indeed write seriously, I don't per se need to lean on the humour crutch. But it also highlighted my ability to use word play and clever writing - and that will serve me long term. 

With that came exploring many genres and seeing where some of that fits me. My act comes off pretty folky but at the same time, I have deep roots in jazz, blues and grunge, which seems to seep into all my stuff. But I also played with old-school rock n' roll, reggae and hip hop this month too. It gives my music diversity and interest. 

February also normalized writing a song quickly for me. I was getting there already, I'd written 3 songs in a day in the past. But this really highlighted for me how I need to stop just dumping riffs on to my phone and forgetting them. I need to dig in just a little bit and get a song together. It's maybe the greatest hurdle I've needed to cross as a songwriter. And one thing I wish had been in place 15 years ago. That said, I cleared out a huge chunk of my riff backlog in the last 4 weeks - and I don't know if I'll have that to lean on in future challenges. But that's ok. 

What would I change?

I think the biggest change I'll make, and it's an insight only doing FAWM will give you, is I'm not saving up for FAWM in the future. Per the last paragraph, for the last few months I've been sort of touching a riff then leaving it for FAWM, worried I wouldn't have the material. I think the practice of completing the song is much more useful than 100 riffs with no real formed ideas behind them. It was a nice tool box to dip into, but I think I can do this without. 

I need to put together a better recording setup. I used my phone for 90% of my material and it's FINE, but it's not great. This ties into my need and desire to put together an EP or demo tape. I think with a better recording setup that I could record the same performances and make the song sound 20-40% better just in improving the quality. 

I think future years will see me posting my songs as videos on YouTube rather than Soundcloud. Soundcloud absolutely has amazing advantages, it's fast and easy to use and served it's purpose admirably. But there is a max limit of what I can upload and that is leading me to eventually remove those songs from the platform so I have room for better things. 

Overall Review

FAWM is an amazing challenge and I think it's not just useful for creating a body of work but as a way to define and fine tune what it is your music is. I've made friends and I'm again getting such good insight into who I am and what I do. While it's true, I don't have the challenge to fill my evenings and weekends anymore, it's illuminated a path ahead, one that's adjusted from where I thought I was going. So my evenings and weekends are now going to be filled with rehearsal, polishing, and planning. I have an exciting next few months ahead. 

I doubt anyone from FAWM will see this, but I'm thakful to everyone there. The team that puts it on, the mods, the other writers and my new friends. It's an amazing community and I'm so grateful that I never lost sight of this goal in life. A+++ all around.