By Larry Baum

Part I
For many reasons, I initiated a songwriting activity of high intensity in 1987 that lasted strong for 10 years and still has a legacy, presence, and reality for me at the end of the second decade.
In a similar manner, I initiated writing weekly columns for the Delphos Herald in November 2007. And who’s to say where this will evolve to?
Please forgive my excess and allow me to tell you some of the background and detail of these song-writing escapades. I do not want to give it too short a narrative, so I’ll have to tell this to you in several parts and this is part one.
I was at a crossroads in my QA career and in 1987, I thought that this was the right time to put my extra efforts into this “side” development issue that was important to me.
I had turned down a promotion opportunity to go back to NY HQ from Houston as a Kraft Foods Division QA Manager because I felt the expense to move back to the Westchester area was too inflated (it was). Staying in Houston was viable because there was still development work to be done in the facility I was in. I had job security moving or not, so I made the choice to stay, giving my song-writing a chance to emerge.
Now people, you know I never “made it” as a songwriter, but that had nothing to do with my need for doing it. The songs that I wrote wouldn’t have been done if I didn’t divert all this energy into it. If the value of the songs are measured in money earned and fame amassed, then I failed miserably, as there has been way more output than input.
I just wanted to write the songs I was meant to write. Now, I’m writing the columns I was meant to write, but I still have the songs as collateral!
I had ideas crackling in my head and I wanted to work on how to properly express them. I had dabbled in song-writing, poems, and short stories and felt if I worked harder at it I could convert the ideas I had into music. I had learned the basics of music from my childhood piano teacher, Mr. McCormick. I learned how to improvise and how chords were constructed and what a I/ IV/ V progression was and what the Blues scale was in addition to the Major and Minor scales. That was some good training which I took into guitar playing once my fingers were strong enough to turn it into action. I believed that I could develop the guitar and music side of the equation. I never became a great guitarist, but adequate enough to play leads on my own songs and I had a good natural rhythm sense for both the documentation (recording) and playing out. I thought I could work on singing, an obvious pressing need, and see if that would improve. I will have to let you be the judge of that. I can sing and fingerpick at the same time, and that has been a useful skill I have put to some advantage.
So, I went ahead with this huge plan to write and stay in Houston and keep up the work I had been doing for 5 years in the Maxwell House coffee and Minute Rice facility I was a part of. After expending energy and effort on the creative process, I put a party together in 1988 at our house in Southwest Houston. We had seating and food and merry making liquids and a few musicians and non-musicians and assorted singers to accompany me.
We called it “The Weekend of Love” as it was on Valentine’s Day and it was an unforgettable blow out. My friends really got involved and had fun with the concept. We played all my original first 10 songs and more (like, you know, we played covers!). We aired out the song “Weekend of Love” of course, which I don’t happen to sing or play anymore and “I Wanna Fly” and “The Prisoner” and similar goodies.
It was a fun and crazy first step and while the quality was quite shabby, it must have had something intrinsically exciting about it because I came out of the experience more eager than ever to continue. We video and audio taped the “eeekend” concert although I don’t know where it is and I haven’t seen it for years.
Song writing for me meant late into the early morning playing, singing and recording in a closed room by myself every day. While this may seem possessed, it was driving and motivating me. Writing and re-writing meaningful stanza’s and changing words to fit the meter and playing and searching for new rhythm’s and melody lines. That was a labor of love. I spent years doing this to come up with my satchel of songs that would keep me off the streets, and then put me out there on the streets (in clubs at Songwriter’s and Open Mic Nights!).
I began to write the great Bam (my pen name) tunes: “Little Tiny Feet” and “A Tale of 2 Bodies” and “Tried Like Hell” and “Party Down Tonite” and singing the heck out of them. I eventually researched how to copyright the songs and was able to do this with the recordings that I would put together.
After an equipment selection process, I bought a Martin D-35 outfitted with a matching Martin pickup on board as only the best would do. I bought a Yamaha 4 Track Cassette recorder and amplifiers and such. As I learned to record, I sent the tapes to my drummer, Rich Roiseman, who was in Nashville, Tenn. Rich was at one time a professional musician and drummer but was now married and settled in to being a manic scheduler in a printer business and master Bridge player. Of course he made time to help me as my rhythm section and we ended up recording all the tunes and practiced them over and over again whenever we saw each other (Memphis to Nashville in 3 hours). We especially loved “I Don’t Know” which had an unusual jazzy rhythm bridge and we’d laugh and laugh together each time we would nail it right, or flub it.
The next step would be to try to sing these songs in public, at the pervasive “Songwriter’s and Open Mic Nights” around town in the clubs of Houston Texas. In ’89 I started to do that and in part two next week I’ll tell you more about it.