SPILL FEATURE: CRITICAL IN A GOOD WAY – A CONVERSATION WITH MURRAY FOSTER

CRITICAL IN A GOOD WAY

A CONVERSATION WITH MURRAY FOSTER

What becomes of musicians from well-known acts, when their bands fold, and the time comes to hang it up? Where do they turn, after the cycles of writing, recording, and touring are in the rear-view mirror? For Murray Foster, those questions are answered with a single response: songwriter education.

Foster traveled a long and storied road, before landing in his current career. As a founding member of the folk-pop band Moxy Früvous, he played bass and sang with the CASBY Award-winning and Juno Award-nominated group. Blending clever vocals and musicianship with progressive politics, Moxy Früvous gave us well-known songs such as “King of Spain” and “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors,” and were active from 1990 to 2001. Foster also provided bass and vocals with Great Big Sea for 1 year, after the departure of their original bassist, Darrell Power. While he was with Great Big Sea, Foster was a contributing songwriter, notably having co-written the song “Safe Upon the Shore” with Séan McCann. Of the culture of songwriting in his earlier bands, Foster speaks of the benefits of working with multiple writers. He relates, “The great thing about Moxy Früvous and Great Big Sea, was that they both had multiple songwriters. So really, everyone wrote songs. Everyone contributed songs. Everyone threw songs into the pot for consideration. There was a lot to learn from, in that way. There were a lot of different voices in both of the bands, and also lots of competition. You have three or four writers in a band, and it really pushes you to bring good stuff to the table.”

With experience among such rich communities of songwriters, it was maybe a logical step when Foster founded the Toronto Songwriting School in 2014. Reflecting on that time, he notes, “I guess about 13 or 14 years ago, I was asked to join the faculty of Seneca Polytechnic as a songwriting instructor. That’s a one-year program, the IPS program. It’s a great program! I still teach there now, but I felt like Toronto needed a sort of a general songwriting school, where these things could be taught. So that was sort of the birth of the idea. Just thinking that there was no place to turn really, to learn songwriting.”

Foster truly threw himself into songwriting in 2012, when he did a fundraising dare with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, to write and record 30 songs in 30 days. Picking up the story, he says, “I did that, you know, just every day waking up and writing a song and recording it. And by week one, I was tired of writing songs every day. Like, it was an exhausting thing! But you come out of that, like I just had all these half-baked ideas about how songs worked. I was just so deep into it after that month.”

Having worked with hundreds of writers since the school’s inception – conducting classes, workshops, co-writing sessions, and songwriter getaway trips – Foster has found that working as an educator has helped to inform his own songwriting. He expounds, “Teaching it has forced me to formalize a lot of my, as I said, half-baked ideas about how songs work. And it’s forced me to come up with dozens and dozens of lessons. I’m a much more active, or I guess, critical listener now, to the point that when I listen to a song now, I almost don’t hear the song. I’m like, how does this bridge work? What are the chords in this bridge? Why does it work? Why does it not work? And so, I’ve become incredibly analytical with my songwriting listening, and that can only translate into my own songwriting. So now, when I go to write a song, I have 50 tips and tricks that I teach, that I bring to my own writing. I have way more craft, I guess. Not just sort of a subconscious feel for it, but conscious lessons about how songs work. Conscious ideas about how songs work… With the classes or with individual writers that I meet with, always, my first lesson is ‘parts of songs and their functions.’ What is a verse, and what is its function? What is its job? What are the three things a verse should do? What are the two things a pre-chorus should do? That is not just the fundamental language of talking about songs, but it’s a fundamental understanding about how songs function. Beyond that, you can sort of get into lyrical ideas and a bunch of other stuff. But knowing the jobs of each part of a song is kind of foundational, I think, in songwriting.”

PHOTO CREDIT: HEATHER POLLACK

In conducting the classes and workshops at Toronto Songwriting School, Foster has noticed certain trends among students. For one thing, he notes that most of his students are female, something he describes as a “fantastic development.” Additionally, he has observed a definite skew towards students being influenced by the work of a certain pop music superstar. He elucidates, “One of the issues is that most of them are either huge Taylor Swift fans, or they are subconsciously influenced by Taylor Swift. And I will say that Taylor Swift is a genius. She’s like one of the most influential songwriters and greatest songwriters of all time. I’m a Swiftie. Absolutely a Swiftie. The problem is that there are lots of young female songwriters who are just kind of trying to write Taylor Swift songs, either consciously or unconsciously. And so, the world, and my classes, are flooded with like, second- and third-rate Taylor Swift songs. There’s lots to be learned from Taylor Swift. I teach two or three Taylor Swift lessons. But having Taylor Swift as your conscious or subconscious bullseye, and not questioning it, and not sort of pushing back against it, means that you’ll never find your own voice. The voice that you’re actually looking for – like your perfect song – is a Taylor Swift song, which is not great. Your perfect song should be a song that sounds like you and nobody else, basically. And so, the Taylor Swift implication of songwriting is, I think, a big – I don’t know if it’s a problem – but it’s certainly a hallmark of this moment in time, in terms of songwriting, I would say.”

Our conversation turns to the work of the Beatles, another major influence for songwriters. It was (and still is) not uncommon for songwriters and record producers to lean on the sounds and styles of The Fab Four. Foster picks up on this idea, asserting that, “People have said that ‘Taylor Swift is the Beatles of today’ kind of thing, which is valid in many ways. One way in which it’s not valid is that The Beatles were way more adventurous and had a huge variety. They took so many risks, and they stuck the landing so many times. And their music had a just a greater complexity and sophistication in terms of chords and all that stuff. So, if you take The Beatles to be your songwriting gods, you will end up in a very different place than if you take Taylor Swift to be your songwriting goddess. Again, that’s not even a judgment about those two artists as artists, about their art. It’s about what bullseye you’re choosing, in terms of what is your subconscious or conscious goal when you sit down to write a song – which I think is really valuable to question. If your bullseye is ‘I’m going to write a second-rate Beatles song,’ I think you’re doing better than if your bullseye is ‘I’m going to write a second-rate Taylor Swift song.’”

We discuss other aspects of songwriting, such as many writers’ fear of co-writing or collaborating with others. Foster maintains that fear of collaboration is pretty much universal, saying, “I think everyone’s scared of it, which is part of the reason that, in everyone’s first class – and this might scare people who are reading this – but within 12 minutes of the first class, you are going to be in a breakout room on Zoom, co-writing with someone you don’t know, and probably twice in that first class. And you’ll do it 15 times during the course of the classes. And so, I guess it’s aversion therapy. Try to just do it until you’re not scared of any anymore. I also teach a class on how to collaborate. Like, how to create an environment when you’re collaborating that is emotionally safe, but also productive. How do you have a good collaborating session? I think there are things you can learn. There are techniques that that can guide you in terms of having a better experience or a worse experience.”

Undoubtedly, Toronto Songwriting School has much to offer songwriters at various levels of skill and experience. Still, delivering instruction is not a one-way street. Murray Foster gets a return on his efforts, affirming, “It has forced me to be so critical of songwriting. Critical in a good way, like to really think deeply about what makes a song work. That’s probably the best thing that it’s given me. It’s also given me connections and great experiences with a bunch of songwriters. Often, like when I’m teaching weekly classes, the best songs I hear in that week are in my classes, and I’m not blowing smoke. I’ve been exposed to incredible songs that were written in a half an hour in my classes that are better than any song that I hear on the radio that week. More individualist, more quirky and weird and funny and heartwarming than anything I would hear on Spotify that week. So, that’s a great privilege as well, I would say.”

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Main Photo Credit: Robin Cymbaly | Background Photo Credit: Lou Middleton