About
Mighty Robbins
Mighty Robbins is a songwriting project — an ongoing attempt to learn the craft of the lyric by studying the writers who mastered it, and to tell stories, my own and invented ones, in narrative folk and country ballads.
It started later than most. For years I had things to say and no form I enjoyed enough to say them in. Songs turned out to be the form. Songs & Stories That Might Be True is the first record; Unplugged, the singles and the journal are where the work keeps going.
The writers who taught me the craft have their own entry in the journal: the seven writers I’m studying.
The practice
Fifty-plus songs, and counting
Songwriting is a craft, and a craft is learned by doing it again.
This project is me practicing. I write a lyric, rewrite it, and throw it out when it isn't true yet. I have written over fifty songs so far, with dozens of demos and drafts for the ones I wanted to develop. I don't have the time or the access to producers, so I make my own demos and play with the melodies until I can hear whether a line works. Working this way is becoming common across the music industry, and this video explains how.
01
Volume is the teacher
Most lines and drafts don't make it. Writing over fifty songs is how I learn what a good line feels like, and what to cut.
02
Demos close the loop
With no producer and no studio time, a demo lets me hear the words with a melody under them, then go back to the page and fix what I heard.
03
The craft stays mine
I choose the images, cut the weak lines, and fight for the true one. The writing is earned by hand, one draft at a time.
About these recordings
Demos, not performances
Every recording on this site is a demo. I produced them with AI music tools as part of my songwriting process, to hear a song and sharpen its lyrics. The words are mine. The performances are not mine and not a band's. Each is the version that comes closest to the song as I hear it.
The next step is to find musicians and play these songs live. If that could be you, get in touch.