Lori Yates passing on her songwriting skills
At the Creative Genius workshop, she’s there to teach, not sing
Don’t enrol in Lori Yates’s Creative Genius songwriting workshop expecting to hear her sing. It doesn’t work that way.
Yates possesses one of the best voices in Canadian country music and she can probably make any song sound sweet, even yours. But she’s there to teach, not sing.
She possesses more than 30 years of recording and performing experience, signing her first recording contract with Columbia Nashville back in the late ’80s.
She’s recorded with Gregg Allman, Jim Cuddy and Rick Danko; toured with Dwight Yoakam, Faith Hill and Steve Earle; and written with Hall of Famers and Grammy winners — Guy Clark, Don Schlitz and Matraca Berg.
Yates knows what she’s doing. Which is why no one feels embarrassed when she starts class off with a series of limbering-up and breathing exercises.
“Breathing is your friend,” Yates says. “If you’re going to sing, you need to have your diaphragm working. It also controls your fear. So let’s shake off some fear.”
So starts the third class of the 21st Creative Genius workshop.
The entire course covers six weeks. The goal is for each participant to have two songs recorded at Downtown Sound Recording Studios on Barton Street and then performed before a live audience Thursday, Feb. 21, 8 p.m., at Zylas, 229 James St. N. (the public is invited).
Yates limits the size of each six-week session. There are only four people in the current class.
She’s been holding these classes for more than three years. So far, more than a hundred people have graduated from her course.
This class is being held at the boardroom of the Hotel Hamilton, an artist enclave on James Street North above the Mulberry Coffeehouse.
The participants are a diverse group.
Gina Monaco is a marketing director for a local mortgage company. She’s also got a background in journalism and has taken music courses at Mohawk College. Monaco loves singing, but admits she needs help writing the songs.
The week before, Yates was helping Monaco on chord progression. It helped. Now she’s having a tough time with melody.
“I’m a professional writer and I write every day, but this confounds me,” Monaco says. She’s frustrated, but a run-through of her song shows she’s making progress.
“You have to have a beginner’s mind,” Yates tells her. “It’s not about thinking, it’s always about feeling.”
Fern Fresco, who works in the engineering department of a local stair company, has come back for his second workshop, having also taken the course last year.
Fresco admits to not completing last week’s homework assignment, but wants to try out something that came to him while walking his dog that morning. He hasn’t brought his guitar, so he uses Yates’s.
He offers up two verses that contain some vivid imagery. Applause all around. Yates reminds him he must now finish it.
“Lori kicks me in the butt to get the songs going,” Fresco says when asked later why he signed up for the course a second time. “She’s awesome.”
Gavin O’Sullivan is probably the most experienced of the class. He has played drums, guitar and sung in local bands dating back to the ’90s, including The Rayburns and All Good Children.
O’Sullivan offers up a song that had its genesis driving home from the West Coast. It only needs a few tweaks. He’s taken some advice from Yates and dropped into a lower key. It seems to work.
“This workshop keeps you on track,” O’Sullivan says. “It makes you more accountable.”
There are tips on registering songs with SOCAN and working with the Songwriters Association of Canada.
Yates also gives the group some practical advice about live performance. It’s a matter of confidence, she explains. Don’t get worried if you make a mistake. The audience won’t likely notice.
Yates moved to Hamilton in 2002 after a solo recording career in Nashville and working in Toronto with bands Rang Tango and Hey Stella. She still performs regularly in clubs in Hamilton and Toronto.
Creative Genius is a business for Yates — the fee is $425 for the course, including the recording studio time. But it’s also a labour of love and a lot of fun.
“It’s an honour for me to be able to foster people’s creativity,” she says after class. “I love being involved with creativity.”