A Songwriter's Grimoire: Practical Notes for a Mystical Practice

By Andy Eppler

In "A Songwriter's Grimoire: practical notes for a mystical practice" art philosopher and professional songwriter Andy Eppler employs his signature comedic style to dispel magical thinking around the creative process without sacrificing any of the power or meaning that fuels great art. Eppler uses the lens of songwriting to encourage artists and deal with the kind of issues that any creative person has to face such as:

Having safe sex with the Muse, defining the purpose of art, and using language at its highest expressive level.

Along with these encouraging and practical chapters readers will find a large collection of Eppler's own lyrics from his numerous original albums.

 

Your best work awaits you and the world desperately needs you to make it. With the right framing and some technical skill set there is no stopping you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andy Eppler
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223313878

Andy Eppler

Andy Eppler (Ando) is a hyper-prolific multidisciplinary artist working in Colorado. Mr. Eppler born in and grew up in Lubbock, Texas in 1985 where he began his career as a songwriter and music producer. His artistic output includes producing sixteen albums of original music, publishing three art philosophy books, writing and/or directing five short films, one hundred and sixty episodes of a web series called "The Hippie Report", eighteen episodes of a television series called "Boulder County Tonight, two books about art, hundreds of paintings, and even more live musical performances with his various bands. In 2022 the Texas Tech University Archives announced that a new "Andy Eppler Collection", which consists of hand written lyrics, original art pieces, and album memorabilia, would be added to their famous "Southwest Collection" to be stored and showcased alongside collections of other impactful local artists such as Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, and Natalie Maines. Today, Mr. Eppler continues to enjoy exploring beauty, mysticism, and meaning through his art.

Book preview

This book is dedicated to my lovers and friends who hold me in their hearts and keep me believing.

Art by ANDO

Edited by Sue Cornett

Copyright 2023 Andy Eppler

Other Works by the Author:

Musical Releases:

There is No Underground (2007)

Disease in the Heartland (2009)

The Prairie Scholars in: Strangers in the Modern Era (2010)

Long and Lonesome Way (2011)

The Prairie Scholars in: Live Wires (2011)

O, Politicin’ Man (2012)

The Prairie Scholars in: The Wasteland Ramble (2012)

Andy Eppler’s Traditional Christmas (2012)

The Prairie Scholars in: Wasted Tracks (2013)

The Prairie Scholars: 100 Year Flood (2013)

The Prairie Scholars in: Live Wires 2 (2013)

The Prairie Scholars in: The Good Old Days Now (2015)

The Prairie Scholars in: Trail Markers (2016)

The Prairie Scholars in: Calming the Dreamer (2017)

Broke-Down Deluxe (2020)

Lonely Disco: Lust Letters to My Friends (2022)

You and Me Now: Apocalypse Campfire Songs (2023)

Poetry and Books:

Dark Places (2008)

New Reason New Way: how my skepticism changed my art (2014)

The Broke-Down Deluxe Art Book (2020)

A Songwriter’s Grimoire: Dispelling the Magical to Protect the Mystical

Films:

World Break (2018)

Liquid Light Art Films #1 - #4 (2019-2021)

Shadow play 

Late Night Caller (2021)

Denver International (2022)

Television, Podcasts, and Web Series:

The Prairie Scholars Podcast (2013-2015)

Ando’s Thinky Time Podcast (2018-2019)

Longmont Tonight (2019)

The Hippie Report: Quarantine Show (2019-2020)

Boulder County Tonight (2022)

Introduction:

When I was a very little boy I used to sit beside my mother on the piano bench and listen to her play. I remember the sun beaming through the window onto the beautiful gleaming woodgrain of the instrument while I listened to her gentle voice singing those old songs about how it wasn't easy being green or how Robin Hood and Little-John came walking through the forest. It was calming. It was centering. Those bright but murky recollections represent some of the most peaceful and safe memories of my childhood. It was in these moments that my young impressionable mind connected the concept of music to the concept of safety. My mother could play the piano and the guitar but what she was most well-known and beloved for in our church community of Lubbock, Texas back in the late 80’s and early 90’s was her singing voice. I think her voice was especially pleasing to people because somehow it carried her essence with it. My mother has always had a wonderfully bright and joyful disposition and I think her voice carried that somehow inside its smile-shaped tones. She would sing for our church on Sunday mornings on the big stage in the big sanctuary under the big lights with the big band. It felt like a regular part of life to watch my mother sing into a microphone for a huge audience every week. Some of my earliest memories are of watching my mother use her gift of music to bring joy to her community. She did it out of love and as a beautiful service. I have since always admired it when people use their passions to benefit their community. She showed her love for people by serving them joyfully in her chosen way. Watching my mother serve her community in this and so many other ways has had an affect on how I view my own life in the arts. I think this is why I have always thought of my artistic expression partially as a service to my community. I think of my job in the arts as an opportunity to share joy, solidarity, and inspiration with people. I’ve always felt safe and free when I create and perform my music. I will always be thankful that I had a mother who had music inside her soul. I’m grateful for the subtle and largely unintentional programming that I received in those early years; it has allowed me to think of music as my own personal refuge as well as my own personal pharmacy full of medicine that heals me all the time. In the time since those sunny days on the piano bench with my mother I have expanded my work into many different mediums but my first love in the arts was music, and my mom was the one who introduced us.

I have spent about 22 years of my life purposefully writing songs and singing them in various venues for all kinds of people. My neurodivergent brain locked onto songwriting with all of its hyper-focused ability as soon as I learned it was a source of healing and, of course, dopamine. My songwriting has been the joy of my life. During times of deep darkness it helped me remember the light. During the good times it has helped me crystallize those moments into eternity. My original purpose in writing this book was simply to publish the lyrics that I have put my essence into. I just wanted to let them stand on their own without some loud guitar or crashing symbol competing with them. I have always tried to write my lyrics with a poetic value system in mind. I wanted them to be able to be separated from the music and still retain artful integrity. This book includes a collection of the majority of the lyrics from songs that I have published in my albums since 2007. I chose which lyrics to include based on a few factors including basic poetic readability. Lyrics that didn’t really work apart from their musical context or lyrics that simply didn’t read easily on the page were omitted from this collection. I mean, I’m not trying to publish a book full of a bunch of Ooh baby bullshit. I separated the collection into a few basic theme categories so they could flow easily together. The overarching themes that I noticed while compiling the collection were Place, Story, Shadow, and Light. I also considered adding in a section for politics and religion but decided against it because they fit easily enough into these other categories, and I also felt that separating them into their own chapter might act as more of a magnet for hostility than anything else. Those lyrics are still in the collection and while my opinions on those topics might not match your own, I do hope you find them enjoyable at least on a poetic level.

Here’s a list of the published albums from which these lyrics were compiled:

There is No Underground (2007)

Disease in the Heartland (2009)

Strangers in the Modern Era (2010)

Long and Lonesome Way (2011)

The Wasteland Ramble (2012)

Andy Eppler’s Traditional Christmas (2012)

Wasted Tracks (2013)

The Good Old Days Now (2015)

Broke-Down Deluxe (2020)

Lonely Disco: Lust Letters to My Friends (2022)

You and Me Now: Apocalypse Campfire Songs (2023)

In addition to the lyrics herein, I've also included some of my thoughts about songwriting, art, and the creative process. Basically, I've taken this opportunity to write the kind of book that I wish I could've read when I was first starting out on my artistic journey. I love to encourage other artists and I hope that by sharing my experience, my philosophy, and my work I can inspire you, dear reader, to allow your own creativity to bloom. In this book, I will be focusing mostly on the lyric side of songwriting. That's really my expertise. There are plenty of other books that can teach you how to build melodies or choose chords for a song. My thoughts and advice in this book aren’t intended to be thought of as hard and fast rules or definitions for anyone. They are simply testimony of my own discoveries and opinions. I'm not writing this book from the position of being a fabulously wealthy or famous songwriter. I'm just writing it from the perspective of someone who has written a lot of songs and made a living doing so. I know how I’m making my art a repeatable process and I know why it means so much to me. Those are the things I’d like to share with you in this book. I’m a fellow student. I know there is a lot I don’t know. That said, I do feel that my process and my philosophical approach to my work has been completely indispensable in completing my artistic goals. I offer these things here but I encourage you to find your own path and to develop your own tools to achieve your unique destiny. I can't really give you the keys to your own art but I can remind you of your own freedom and power to create the keys you need. Please consider this to be the disclaimer for this book and please remember that when I discuss these mysterious and mystical topics, I know very well that I might be wrong or I might be overgeneralizing. This is me doing my best to collect and organize all the most important ideas I’ve discovered in my journey of becoming whatever it is that I am.

* We here at Andy Eppler Productions would like to take a moment