Have you ever seen a show or a movie where someone just says “hit it” to a random pianist and suddenly everyone knows what song to play, or maybe when two lovers start singing in unison in a song they made up at that moment?
While it will never be like that in real life, there are musicians that just have things click in an instant, and they’re pumping out a dozen bangers.
Dan Mangan is an artist from Smithers, BC, and he shared a story in May about his album, “Natural Light”, when he was stuck in a cabin with his bandmates from blackflies.
Natural Light Album
The band actually didn’t intend for an album to go out. They spent the week at Lake Dickey in Ontario to swim, go outside and be creative. There wasn’t any intention to put out an album, yet the result is one of the band’s proudest works.
When he wrote “It Might be Raining”, he showed it to his band members the night they arrived at the cottage, and they made three takes until they decided that the song captured the essence of something.
The next day, he and the band were still feeling the glow from the night prior, so Dan had 12 more songs they could record. The process of writing the song only took a week since they recorded one song in one day, two the next day, three the day after, and four following the last. Like a snowball moving down a hill, their flow kept gaining momentum.
He compares the creation of the album to the process of making scrambled eggs for his members. He makes the eggs around leftovers the night before.
The songs were actually old ideas that they wanted to play five to six years ago, with the idea of placing some of them in albums like “More or Less” and “Being Somewhere“, but they weren’t included. He believes those old songs were meant to be delivered now rather than wishing they were played then.
This album is especially important to Dan because he says it’s a love letter to his family, his band members, and to the world. It’s so important that if he and his band were struck by an incoming meteor, he says this album is their final message.
Sometimes the best ideas come without the pressure of having to create something. Maybe they can just be at the back of your mind, waiting for its moment.