From unwritten in Ontario to on-air in New Hampshire -- in 18 hours!

(Note: If enough people want to have a listen, I'll post the song on my "Band Profile" tab here (Facebook "fan" page).)

I'm not sure this has ever happened before.  It's a double wonder of modern technology.

Two nights ago (Thursday night, just past midnight), I was noodling around in my living room when a song idea sort of showed up unbidden.  I strolled over to my (cheap, cassette-based) recorder and turned it on. Sat in front of the (one) mic and started playing.

I write songs that way much of the time -- an idea comes up, I record what's there, and if it works out, I flesh it out into a complete song over the course of anywhere from the next hour or two to the next year or more.

But this time, the whole song came out.  Intact.  First try.  That's never happened to me before, though I bet there are a few songwriters who have this kind of tale to tell.

Song is pretty good, too, I think, albeit one of those simple types of songs that you can probably imagine might not have taken years of hard labour and craftsmanship.

I'm a member of Jon Colcord's Facebook "group" for his show ("Out Of The Woods", Fridays on WNEC-FM Radio in New Hampshire), and he and I and a few others sometimes end up hanging out in the group's live chat before and during the show's airing.  I also listen in on Live365.com when I get the chance.

Next day (yesterday, Friday), I was on Facebook when Jon's group chat window popped up.  I joined in with Jon and a couple of the other regulars, and mentioned having written this song the previous night. Jon said he'd like to hear it, so I emailed the MP3 I'd made of the song (as recorded, with only minor volume enhancement and noise reduction effect).

To make the long story short, Jon aired it on the show, roughly 18 hours after I'd written the song.

I guess it adds to how cool this is that I'm in a different country (well, Canada isn't really "foreign", I suppose), roughly 520 miles away as the crow drives.

The version of the song Jon played was actually me *writing* the song (fortunately not as many guitar clams as usual!)  This may be a first in radio anywhere.

Obviously, I'm delighted and tickled both to get the airplay and to get this story to share.


On 8/20/2011 12:26 AM, Jon 'Chip' Colcord wrote:
> Tonight was fun.  I got to play a bunch of new stuff, and one was so new
> that it was recorded just last night in Jay Linden's living room!  Jay
> emailed me a new song that essentially wrote itself while he was playing
> it... and the tape was rolling.  We dodged Canadian/U.S. Customs at the
> border as it skimmed right by into my email box during the show.  Thanks
> Jay!
>
> Some other listener requests rounded-out the show...

[...]

> JAY LINDEN - Goin' Home - Jay's Living Room - Self