Interview: Band Of The Week - Heidi McCurdy - Page 3

No, It’s not deliberate. Ideally, I’d sit down for two hours every day and say “I’m going to write now” but I don’t really do it this way. I sort of wait until it comes. But when I get enough relaxation time, when my brain can just be free and there are not a lot of commitments for the day, that’s when it comes out. Often, on a long drive, I start to get ideas; I’ve had to pull over and jot them down. Then when I get home I’ll run over and record it quickly so I don’t forget.

Also, I started learning how to play guitar about a year ago, just a little bit as well as piano. Often time messing around with these instruments will trigger ideas. With the guitar, as soon as I learned five or six chords, I suddenly started getting new ideas for songs because it’s so much easier writing with an instrument.

Were you writing before just by voice?

Yes, what I’d normally do is sing the harmony parts into a recorder of some kind or maybe play a bass line or piano. But now that I know what the chords are called I can write them down a lot quicker.

That’s amazing that you were able to write such well-formed songs just from singing.

Thanks. I would rely a lot on co writers for the earlier years. It’s great anytime to work with people whose music styles you match with.  But nowadays it’s a lot more better for me. There’s a lot more freedom.

I think you have an interesting story for how you came up with the idea for your song “Play My Game”?

(Laughs) Well, I’ve never been much into sports, but once I was dating someone who was really into hockey. In Canada hockey is a big deal for a lot of people. It’s like the national sport, and most men grow up loving it. So I watched my first hockey game with him, and I started thinking about all the different kinds of ways people use game terminology like “games people play”, “the dating game”, “let’s get the ball rolling”, so I stuck all the ones I could think of into a song. And there’s a line in there that’s an actual direct quote from my friend who said “never make a lady wait” (laughs), and I thought that, yeah, people really do have their own sets of rules about what’s ok and what’s not ok and when yours merge with someone else’s, that’s when you hit it off. So I thought it’d be fun to play off of that idea.

Tell me about other performers you’ve had the pleasure of being on stage with and what did you take from your experiences with them?

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