Baby steps in award-winning song
We ask artists and performers about how some of their most famous work happened, and this week we talk to Tami Neilson about her 2014 Silver Scroll-winning song, Walk (Back To Your Arms).
s a songwriter you don’t always write your own story. In this case, this was me offering someone else’s story and not my own.
‘‘I still have the demo on my phone. I was a new mum and at home quite a bit with my first-born Charlie. You still have the creativity coursing through your veins - even if you don’t have the time to pick up a guitar because your hands are full of baby. But I would sing the chorus around the house. With a newborn there is precious little tIme to do anything else. I can still remember, Charlie was crying and I was burping him and walking around the kitchen
On the original demo you can hear Charlie gurgling away in the back seat... Tami Neilson
and patting his back to the beat of what would become Walk (Back To Your Arms).
‘‘That’s how the melody and music was born. It’s definitely a different way to how I have written before. Normally, I would pick up the guitar and write but I had my arms full at all times so I was writing the music and melody, the rhythm all without the use of an instrument except my voice.
‘‘The only time I didn’t have Charlie in my arms was when I was driving. One day I recorded parts of the song on my mobile phone to send to my brother Jay in Canada. On the original demo you can hear Charlie gurgling away in the back seat and me tapping the rhythm of the song on the steering wheel while I’m singing it and then you hear the car’s indicator ticking.
‘‘That was how I found time to write the song. I then went back to Canada on a visit and, although I had pretty much finished the song, I told my brother Jay it wasn’t going where I wanted it to go. He worked his magic and contributed some things that really changed the flow of the song.
‘‘Even though you might write somebody else’s story, I think almost any song you write is based on an emotion you have experienced even if the actual situation hasn’t happened to you. We all have people in our lives who don’t necessarily empower you and so sometimes you need to do a stocktake of the people who are really influencing your life. I’ve definitely been in those situations, where a friendship or a romantic relationship is not healthy for you but you are definitely at the mercy of what’s going on. I am someone who doesn’t like conflict or confrontation so people who do thrive on that or are anyway manipulative can definitely take advantage of people like me or with my kind of personality.’’ – As told to Mike Alexander