David Ford strikes me as a man with better things to do.

Perhaps not at the moment I was talking to him. He was on the road in Idaho, en route to a show in Salt Lake City, when we battled our way through cell phone connectivity issues and spent a few moments discussing music and all the things that seem to come part and parcel with today’s music industry. But like I said, he’s got better things to do. Like, say, writing and performing music.

Ford’s been a working musician in Great Britain for more than a decade, and has even seen some measure of success as part of the band Easyworld. Since 2004, he’s been a solo artist, and has been steadily gaining fans in the United States, among them Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. He has toured with Ray LaMontagne, Suzanne Vega, Sara Bareilles (in April 2008) and Augustana (this month), and in June will be touring with Aimee Mann. (All of his summer tour dates are available in the OFTV events calendar.) His latest album, Songs For The Road, was released last year and is available for download on iTunes.

I first heard of Ford thanks to Kired over at Cursed Monkey Paw, and I was immediately struck by the honesty and sheer musicality of his songs. No pop songs, these, although they could easily do well in a better musical atmosphere than the current music industry. Therefore, I thought he’d be a perfect fit for our readership here — we’re all tired of the current music industry, yes?

Here is the utterly enjoyable and admittedly most “pop” song from Ford’s Songs For The Road, “Decimate”. As Ford says, “It’s a positive song about inviting someone to lay all their problems on you, to take their hardships and lighten their load, wanting everything to be OK. It’s kind of like a love song.” The video, I think, is also the most “pop” of the videos I’ve seen.

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More representative of both Ford’s music and his videos is “State of the Union”. The video was shot live, in one take, with one camera. “It’s a challenging thing to keep it interesting without relying on clever editing and cuts,” he says. “There’s a sense of realness as well, you’re actually watching a moment in time that happens as you see it.”

The song uses what seems to be his trademark, his “sound looping” technique. Watch as he picks up each instrument, then puts it down — the sound keeps going on an infinite loop, the same sound, same chords, over and over again until he changes it. Ford tells me he has “no musical theory at all”, which is not uncommon among incredibly creative musicians. They don’t have The Rules holding them down, they work by instinct, and they end up creating the most incredible sounds and techniques. I do have the theory, however, so I will tell you that this is something like a modified drone, although one that is quite dependent on the technology now available.

One of the reasons Ford uses this technique is because he is a solo artist and it is convenient to use technology for this purpose. Also, “it’s visually interesting, and more challenging for me as well, using the machines live… challenging myself as a solo performer to get as much out of the performance as I can.” It’s the modern equivalent to the old one-man-band, but much, much cooler.

“State of the Union” on YouTube

So watching this, you start to wonder: how many instruments does this man play? Well, quite a few, but with many it’s only enough to get the sound he wants. “There’s a point in music where you get it enough to be able to pick most things up a bit,” says Ford. “I’m not a great banjo player actually, but I like to have a go and get involved. I quite like the fact that for me, everything’s like a little journey.”

As plenty of wise men (and women, of course) have said before, life is all about the journey. Ford’s journey seems to be never ending. When I asked what his plans were after this summer’s tour, he answered, “Vacation, and then another tour, and another tour, and another tour.” That’s the hallmark of a musician who is in it for the music, of course, always thinking ahead to the next opportunity to perform. And of course, vacation usually means time off the road to compose the next album.

What Ford does not spend a lot of time thinking about is his own promotion. “My job is being a musician, and I’m lucky enough to have people whose job it is to… promote what I do. I shouldn’t attempt to promote my own work; the promotion of your work should never influence the input of your work. I want to spend all my energies on creating the best music that I can.” In a time when it seems that there are millions of bands out there promoting themselves because they can’t get professional support, Ford is very lucky indeed to have the support of people who are web-savvy enough to be posting his videos on YouTube, maintaining a MySpace page and a Facebook group, and (thanks so much!) making it easy for blogs like OFTV to do an interview.

Of course, it’s all about the approach you take to the music. We spent several minutes discussing the state of music today, and how in pop music, “The music itself is the final element of a campaign, like launching a new brand of chocolate bar. You have your commercial, your project, your packaging, your demographic,” Ford explains. Then someone says, “‘I guess we need a song’ … and you write a piece of manufactured shit and that becomes your song.”

Ford exists in a parallel universe to that approach. “I wouldn’t want to cross the line and start thinking about that. If you do have any kind of propensity for being an artist, you should make art. If no one likes it, then no one likes it. If they like it, they like it.” This is sort of the if you build it, they will come approach to music. The result is honesty in the music — honesty that attracts people who are looking for more from music than a good beat, and you can dance to it.

If you’re looking for more than superficial noise and a glossy package, there’s nothing more honest (or painful!) than “I Don’t Care What You Call Me”.

I, for one, am eager to follow David Ford on his musical journey.

Would you like a FREE copy of David Ford’s Songs for the Road CD? The first three readers to email Alicia at alicia@oneforthevault.com (with your complete mailing address) will win!

For those who like instant gratification, you can purchase Songs for the Road on iTunes using the link below.

My personal experience is that there are two “usual” types of hits: the uptempo dance number, and the midtempo ballad (a/k/a makeout song). In this blog, I’m going to examine uptempo songs. Later, we’ll cover ballads, and the third, rogue category, the novelty song (which can occasionally fit into one or the other of the first two categories). Now, on to the hits!

The backbone of a danceable song is the backbeat. (It even has “back” in it!) This usually consists of drums (or some kind of percussion, drum machine, etc.) and some kind of bass line, either from bass guitar, “stand up” double bass, or maybe the left hand of the piano or organ player. This is what you tap your feet or fingers to, it’s what you move and groove and shake your booty to. It’s what made people on American Bandstand say, “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, I give it an 8.5″ for many, many years. If you haven’t got a beat, you haven’t got a hit dance song.

If you’re reading a score, the backbeat is on the bottom. Building upward, you find the instruments that play (or create) chords: keyboards, guitars, and string and horn sections. Chords are nice; they move around and create a mood, and then they resolve and finish the song (or section). Without getting into the technical details, I’ll just say that there are ways of doing this that are “usual” and ways that are “unusual”. The usual suspects are simple triads (made of 3 notes) and that’s your basic rock ‘n roll or punk song. When you get a songwriter who really knows what s/he’s doing, and s/he does something unusual, then you get a song that’s not only mass-market enjoyable, but stimulating. People actually like that. However, they don’t like “weird”, so if you’re using this post as a songwriting guide (I hope not!), be careful of weirdness.

Up at the top of our hypothetical score are the lead “instruments”, which can be just about anything that plays a melody: lead guitar, vocals, piano, sax, and if you’re Jethro Tull, flute. Here’s where the “catchiness” factor of a hit song comes into play. Like Blues Traveler said, “The hook brings you back.” So what’s the hook? Hum or sing your favorite song. The part you know best and sing loudest is probably the hook! Oftentimes, the hook is the title of the song or the fun part of the chorus. It gets repeated a lot. And in a hit song, it should be easy for the majority of people to sing. Most people who listen to the radio and enjoy songs are not trained singers, and they don’t have the range of, say, Mariah Carey. (I do, but this isn’t about me.) So take pity on your shower singers and car karaoke stars, and watch the range.

Finally, and this is optional: the lyrics. I say this is optional because there are plenty of songs out there that people sing that do not have lyrics. One of my personal favorites is… um… well, I can’t remember the name of it, because it doesn’t have any words! Oh well. Maybe I’ll remember it for the next installation of this mini-series. Anyway, if I could hum it through the blog, you’d probably know it too. And I hum or la-la-la along with tons of classical music that doesn’t have words. So lyrics are optional. And if you do have lyrics, frankly, they don’t have to make sense. In fact, it probably helps if they don’t. And if, like “Louie Louie”, the words are slurred? That’s pretty much an instant hit.

I’ll be back in a week or so with Midtempo Ballads, or Seduction In 12/8 time. Your homework assignment is to listen to the popular dance music of your generation with an ear to what I’ve discussed here, and report back as to whether I’m right. Class dismissed!