“It really affected me, it was very unfair,” said the singer -songwriter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. “I wanted to write a song from that feeling of ‘Where is the outcry like there was with Haiti?’”[break]
And it’s feelings as such, his personal sentiments, and people around him that inspired the 28-year-old to write a song every day. Mann is on his personal quest to write one song a day as long as he can.
“There is no stopping,” he said over a Skype interview from Berkeley, California, where he currently lives.
For Mann, the idea germinated at an art event called Fun-A-Day wherein artists from all over the US joins in to showcase their creativity in different forms. This is when the Vermont native thought that he would make a song a day, which turned into a song and a video a day.
“I’ve always worked quickly and wrote a lot of songs,” he said, adding, “It was just formalizing a process that already existed.”
During his teen years, Mann was addicted to Bob Dylan’s songs, which he credits as his source of inspiration. For him, the epiphany came at 12, listening to Dylan’s albums such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Highway 61 Revisited. It sowed the seeds of songwriting stirring him to “want to write songs like him [Dylan].”
Mann stressed his mind and paused taking a ride down memory lane. Though the lyrics of his first song aren’t fresh, he said he still has that moment captured.
“It wasn’t very good,” he said of the first song that he scribbled on the back of the pizza box, while driving with his mother, looking outside the window. “It was just me making up words.”
But from that very first song to his 619th song since he started his Song-A-Day project in January 2009, Mann said it’s difficult for him to judge if he has gotten any better. However, writing on a daily basis, according to this graduate in recording and music and creative writing, keeps his creativity flowing.
“I write a song every day: 365 songs a year,” he said. “[There is a] pretty good chance that 30 to 40 [songs] could be pretty good.”
And for Mann, Song-A-Day is his only job. Working as a freelancer, he said, has its ups and downs. He makes songs every day, sometimes for himself and at times for different companies that pay him. Once he wrote a song about Apple’s new iPhone 4, which the company used. Though they didn’t pay, Mann said “it helped him get noticed.”
But writing one song a day isn’t an easy task, but according to Mann, it doesn’t take much effort, either. For him, writing a song takes fairly 20 to 30 minutes and recording and editing might take from an hour to an entire day. However, the singer-songwriter said that he “cannot be good every day.”
“If I write badly, it’s just another day. We can’t be great every day, and it’s okay for you to fail and allow yourself to be bad. I just allow myself to write what I write.”
And during or after writing, Mann sits down with his instrument, guitar or piano, and records his song before posting to his Website, rockcookiebottom.com. And when there is no Internet while traveling, he posts it from his phone, as he did in his 609th song “On The Road to PAX,” a trip from San Francisco to Portland.
The website titled “Jonathan Mann’s Songatron”, is a compilation of Mann’s everyday work where he is usually seen singing in front of a green background, usually with his microphone and musical instrument. He describes Songatron as: “Mystery machine discovered by Jonathan Mann. [that] makes videos and music daily.” Each of his videos, he said, gets 1,000 views per day, and his website has 200 to 600 unique visitors every day.
“That’s the best indicator I can think of [my popularity],” he said.
And for Mann, to become noticed as a musician and get recognized is one of the reasons, among others, to continue Song-A-Day.
“I know, as a musician, I have to set myself apart,” he said.
In the field of music, apart from his Song-A-Day project, Mann also sings in an indie/folk rock band, Barefoot in the Family Tree. The six-member band also has released a self-titled EP that has five of Mann’s songs.
“This EP represents what I feel is some of the strongest material to come out my first year of writing a song a day,” Mann has written on his website.
And as the Barefoot in the Family Tree sing in the Bay Area once a month, Mann has his hands on other projects: an iPhone application of Song-A-Day, and an album in the pipeline.
But until then, he said he is committed to writing a song every day: songs about his travels, cooking, weather, his 5,000 subscribers, his feelings, and also songs about how he writes a song every day.
“Some days, I start out with an idea, like today/ I’ll write a song about how I write a song/ Other days I have no damn clue/ So I sit with my guitar until something comes along/ Then I sit at my computer and bang on this old keyboard/ Sometimes there’s false starts that I end up throwing away/ Song a day, song a day/ This is how I write song a day.”
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