In June of last year (2015) I launched the Songhacks podcast. It was a real labour of love, I put a tonne of work into it and learned a great deal. I came up with the idea around three years prior to releasing it; I would explore every aspect of my passion for song writing; look in depth at my techniques for writing songs, as well as those of others; interview other artists and collaborate with them to produce an album of co-written material. It still seems like a great idea now, in spite of the fact that I very deliberately put a stop to the project after only three episodes.
After last summer, I quickly realised that although I'd invested great effort in conceiving and executing this project, it wasn't really what I wanted to do. Compiling and editing the shows took up all of my spare time, leaving no space to actually write songs myself, and that's what the podcast was supposed to help me to do.
Though I claimed songwriting to be my passion, I had done very little of it for a couple of years (aside from my one month album), it just kept getting put off in the light of more immediate concerns, Songhacks was principally conceived as a means of encouraging me to write more often and I had a big plan to create an online songwriting course under the same brand so I could justify the amount of time I was investing in it. I hoped to build a loyal fan base that would expect me to keep pushing forward, I hoped to leverage any attention I received so that I would keep a promise to myself to continue feeding my passion. Now I look back on it and it seems really odd; I needed to create a vehicle - a foil to encourage me to follow my dreams - and yet maintaining the "vehicle" robbed me of any time I might have to sit down and actually write and record a new song? In the end the idea of the Songhacks brand succeeding to the extent that I first hoped seemed like it would be a bit of a nightmare, it was another self-defeating feedback loop (among several others that - thankfully - I've managed to rid myself of) and it had to go.
I'm not done with podcasting though and I'll leave Songhacks episodes one, two and three online for posterity. I really enjoyed the process and I want to do more, only this time I am going to make sure that it is in service to my more fundamental goal of feeding my songwriting habit. I'm working on an episode now - or rather, I'm writing a song and I happen to be keeping an audio journal of the process that may well end up being the Al Southgate Podcast Episode 1. There will be no schedule, I'll make episodes if and when I feel like it - or not at all, we'll see.
If you are a Songhacks fan and you've clicked your way here, thanks for listening! Follow me on Soundcloud if you want to hear of any new podcast episodes.
