Markus Rill
Markus Rill is a German singer-songwriter who performs internationally.
Rolling Stone has praised his ’songs shimmering beautifully with ambiguity’ and the quality of his ‘brilliant lyrics’. You can find out more by visiting www.markusrill.net. Listen to some of his music on MySpace and YouTube.
Markus’ MySpace page also has an up-to-date gig list. If you’re in the UK, you can catch him in Stalybridge, York and Bath in early August.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your career. When did you start performing and writing songs?
I became very interested in music and particularly in artists who wrote their own songs when I was about 12, 13, 14 years old. John Mellencamp was a big influence at the time. I only picked up the guitar at age 18, never with the intention of becoming the world’s hottest guitarist. I really wanted to write my own songs.
Soon I started playing in bands and writing my first songs. Made my first solo record at age 27 in ’97. I have now made six records with a well-reputed label and three more ’special-interest’ records that I only sell through my website and at shows (a live record, a compilation of demos and radio appearances and a covers album).
I’ve had the immense pleasure and privilege to cut my last three regular albums with some of the finest players on the Americana scene in Nashville.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of creative ways of expressing yourself. What makes songwriting special for you?
I suppose I can find some explanation now … but really I was emotionally and inexplicably drawn to songwriting from an early age on. I loved music and I was always very interested in the fine print on those albums. Not knowing very much about arrangement, interpretation and performance, I figured that the songwriter was really the guy doing the hardest work. I still believe that if you don’t have a strong song you really don’t have very much at all. But I’ve also learned that a great record not only needs a strong song but also a great performance.
Why songwriting? Maybe writing novels is too daunting for a non-native speaker. I may try my hand at a short story one of these days. But I really love the unique combination of lyrics and music that songwriting offers. I believe it can affect you on a different emotional level.
What’s your approach to writing a song? Do you have a particular method, or do your songs just grow out of inspiration?
I try to be open to what the song wants or needs and apply whatever method it seems to ask for. But most of the time I try to write words and music together. In other words, when inspiration offers me a few lines, I’ll wait till I find some music to go along with them before I continue. More often than not, a line will have some sort of cadence to it that’ll suggest a melody, a rhythm, a feel or trigger some musical idea.
I guess when I find a guitar lick or a musical idea it takes a little longer to find a lyrical match for it. I’ll just keep playing that little lick until it reveals what it wants to be about or till I find some kernel of a lyrical idea.
Once I have a starting point of lyric and music, I’ll try to write them together. Like I said, there’s no right or wrong and songs can come in all imaginable ways but most of the time I enjoy the flexibility of developing words and music together.
The few times that I wrote a lyric to an existing chord structure and melody, it felt like I was riding on rails, like I had to make the words fit the music. And similarly when I try to set a lyric to music, I’ll end up changing the lyric.
Whereas when I’m following both of them at the same time, they inspire each other, know what I mean? Hitting a major chord coming out of a minor chord-verse will inform the lyric or else a certain line that comes to mind will ask for a certain kind of musical bed.
What advice would you give to someone who has some basic musical skills but has never written songs before?
I’d say look closely at the kind of songs that you like. Examine them, learn them, play them. I suppose everybody starts out trying to write like their idols, even Bob Dylan started out as a Woody Guthrie jukebox. And after a while when you’re no longer intimidated by the songs that you love, you’ll discover a chord structure that appeals to you. I suggest you follow it and try to find out what it makes you want to say.
What would your top three (or five… or ten…) songwriting tips be?
I guess my #1 piece of advice would be to really study the art of songwriting. Immerse yourself in it.
Other than that, I really don’t want to give advice too much. Everybody has to find their own way of doing things.
But I can say what works for me. Lyrically, I’m very much of the Hemingway school. They call his writing style ‘the iceberg technique’. Only one eighth of an iceberg’s size can be seen above water but you know there’s plenty more underwater. Similarly, I like to reveal some things in my writing and hint at a lot more going on beneath the surface.
My approach is always to try to write something that I would be interested in, lyrically and musically. Over the years my taste has evolved and so has my writing.
I’ve recently co-written some songs and have learned how to put more focus on melody. I used to be very lyric-oriented. Still am but I’ve been more aware of melody lately.
Any advice on live performance?
Again, I’m not big on advice.
What seems to work for me is to be myself as much as I can. I don’t like performances that seem fake or very contrived or too extravagantly staged – so I try to be real.
Seeing Townes van Zandt live was an eye-opener. He had all these incredibly sad songs yet he told very funny stories between songs. It taught me to take my work, my songwriting very seriously - but not myself.
As well as being a successful writer and performer in his own right, Markus has done very well in several songwriting contests:
Winner of the International Songwriting Competition Stocking Stuffer 2009 (a major competition with 15,000 entries each year: Judges include Tom Waits, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Davies of The Kinks, Robert Smith of The Cure).
Winner Narrative Songwriting Competition 2007.
Finalist in many more competitions: UK Songwriting Competition, American Songwriter magazine competition, Just Plain Folks Songwriter competition, South Florida Folk songwriting competition…
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