I’m really excited to be starting a new songwriting project with my friend Hannah Fredsgaard (aka Asthmatic Harp), called Missed Connections.
It’s a short project where we co-write songs based on posts from Best of Craigslist. Basically, weird and wonderful classified adverts.
Hannah and I met at the Bird on a Wire songwriting workshop this March, which was a course remotely hosted by songwriters Findlay Napier and Boo Hewerdine. After having admired her responses to the tasks we were set over the week, I decided to reach out to Hannah and ask if she wanted to write together. Her songwriting is melodic, whimsical, kind of reminiscent of Regina Spektor, Sufjan Stevens and other anti-folk musicians.
The funny thing is, as soon as I opened the conversation on my phone, I could see that she was already in the process of writing me a message. We ended up saying “hello!” at the exact same time.
After a laugh we decided to write our songs in a style we picked up from the course: writing lyrics independently, and then swapping them so we could write melodies to each other’s words. I really loved the surprise element of this way of writing, the initial delight at another person’s lyrics and then the second surprise of hearing my words set to a beautiful melody I wouldn’t have thought of.
I suggested we used Best of Craigslist to base our songs on. There are some really wild missed connection stories in there. My first set of lyrics were based off this post, where a man sees a girl he was married to for three days back in 1989 pass him on a subway car.
Hannah and I are going to keep swapping lyrics every week for the next month or so, which means two new songs a week. We’ve set up a site for the project and a mailing list. I’m really excited about this project and where it could possibly go.