john watilo » Songwriting

CSN Song of the Month

John — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 02:30:38 +0000

Okay, you may consider this to be a bit of shameless self-promotion. Well…uh…you may be right. But guess what? One of my latest tunes, “God’s Own Heart“, is the featured “song of the month” for June at the Christian Songwriters Network web site.

So, I just want to send a big “thank you” to the folks over there for giving it a listen. And, for those of you who don’t know, CSN is a huge community of Christian songwriters with some great folks who encourage, critique, provide a network of support for those who are into Jesus Christ and, specifically, the Christian songwriting scene…

Somebody Like You: Redux

John — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:01:08 +0000

No, that’s not me in the picture. In fact, it’s my ol’ high school buddy Mark Murtha. You’ve heard me go on about what a great guitarist he is, but that’s only part of the story. He’s also an awesome songwriter and recording musician. Don’t ask me why he’s not sharing his tunes on the web, but he should be. Perhaps we should start a grass-roots campaign to convince him to!

Anyway, last month I blogged about a project we’ve been working on together, Somebody Like You. Well, after a bit of long-distance tracking, I was finally able to get him to replace some of my sloppy guitar work with the REAL DEAL. Man, oh man, what a world of difference it made. Check it out:

Audio MP3

At the same time, I did some additional remixing to fix some things that were bothering me and also added a few more sonic “spices”. Not the least of which is MORE COWBELL! Unfortunately, it may not be prominent enough to please Bruce D…

Visit the song page for download options and more info.

God’s Own Heart

John — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:30:29 +0000

Recently, I pulled a song out of the drawer that had been sitting there, unfinished, for quite some time. I’m not sure how to categorize this one – for a songwriter, it can be difficult to label one’s own work. Quite often, people hear things in a tune that I don’t notice.

But anyway, I felt inspired to work on it again, and the result is what you should hear if you hit the play button below. It has sort of a retro kind of sound to it – not the edgy, modern sound that everyone is used to these days. I think I did the guitar track when I was going through a bit of a mellow Larry Carlton phase – not that I’m comparing myself to him by any stretch of the imagination!

This is also one of those songs that seemed to take on a life of its own while I was recording it; it’s as if I had very little choice in arranging it any other way. It’s an example of simply writing a song without the goal of coming up with a “hit” or targeting it to any specific audience.

So, I hope you enjoy! I’d be interested in hearing your impressions…

Audio MP3

Visit the song page for download options and more info.

Promises

John — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 01:34:10 +0000

I wrote this praise/worship song years ago and never recorded it. Last year, through a close family friend, it was brought to my rememberance and the message once again resonated within my soul. I realized then that the original melody, chords, rhythm, and “feel” were just not right. So I completely rewrote the music and came up with what you can hear if you click the play button on the handy-dandy music player below:

Audio MP3

Visit the song page for download options and links to additional resources.

Bread of Life

John — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I uploaded a new song to my website: Bread of Life. It’s not strictly “praise and worship”, since the viewpoint of the song is from the Father to the believer. However, it is well suited for congregational singing. Special thanks to my buddy Ron Wallace, who co-wrote the tune with me.

Also check out my previous upload, Deep and Wide, which is more of a “praise and worship” tune. To be honest, even though my wife Carol and I have led P&W for years, most of my songwriting has been more geared toward radio-type songs. So, it may take awhile for me to get into the groove of writing these types of choruses…

Oh, and one more tune you should check out is my remake of Mirror Mirror, which took 1st runner up in the Dallas Songwriters 2004 contest. Whoo hoo!

Okay, enough shameless plugging. I’m really trying to get back in the swing of things after coming off of a two-week Christmas break. I’m not sure how prolific a poster I’ll be, since this whole blogging thing is a bit new to me. Most of the time I don’t feel like I have much to say of any real value. But I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Most people won’t see this anyway. The people who do probably already know me, so they’ll probably forgive me if I say stupid things. Sounds like a win-win!