Behind the Bars

Elevator Pitches, by Demmene Syronn

I’ve wanted to create an album with beatsmith “Beatnick Classics,” for many years. When the opportunity availed itself I purchased a plane ticket from PVD international to Jacksonville FLA to actualize my vision. We had no plan, no beats picked, no real established direction just a desire to create music as a tandem.

While flying I sifted through some pre-written verses and couple of song concepts I’d been pondering. Upon landing, I was creatively no further than when I started. This was a 9-day excursion from which it was my goal to extract as much creative energy from the vibe, weather, environment, and Beatnik as I could. OH, and I also wanted to record the entire project before my journeys end.

After listening to what seemed to be 100s of beats it was decided that we should just pick things that instantly provoked my inclination to write. And so began the process of the production, which would later, be called Elevator Pitches. I wrote the first few songs over the course of the first three days. I was confident with the material I’d written as I felt it paired well with the beats I was selecting. We were gearing up to begin recording on the following morning.

On the Fourth day, after setting up and conducting preliminary sound checks we set out to the market for dinner that night. It was my practice to keep my lyric book in one hand and a pen in the other. I had also written a small grocery list on one the back pages of the book. When we parked the vehicle in the market lot I got out of the car and immediately looked for my book. It was gone. We drove back to his house fully expecting that I had left it there. It was nowhere to be found. Looked up, down, in the garage, on the lawn, in the backyard, the guest bedroom, the studio, the couches, everywhere. I was at a loss. All the new material I’d written had vanished.

After walking the neighborhood several times in search of my precious lyric book it was my girlfriend who suggested we walk further for it was a beautiful Floridian evening. We decided to walk to an orange traffic cone we could see about 250 yards away. As we approached the cone in preparation to turn around I noticed something sitting on top of a small pile of sand on the side of the road. It was my book, almost two miles away from Beatnick’s house. We concluded that I must have put it on top of his truck when we left for the market. That day I discovered two things, giving up is never the best option and that objects placed on top of vehicles can travel much farther than one would assume.

After wasting full day in search of my book, all I could really do was get back to writing. Tomorrow would be day five and I was running out of time. I pulled up an old song that I had wanted to put out for a while and added it to the collection. I also found a beat for a verse/concept that was supposed to be for another project. On the following morning we began recording. I think I was ready to record 5-6 songs on that day. 4 days left but one was reserved for my son, it was Halloween.

On the morning of the final day we fixed a few of the apparent mistakes and attempted to record the last song. I was proud of what we had accomplished given the named/unnamed obstacles. I had created a group of short pieces that tapped into the most visceral parts of my creative being.

In the end it was decided that I would rerecord the entire project. I was compelled to add a few new pieces and continue improving my writing with edits, all and all about 70% of Elevator Pitches was written in 7 days.

On behalf of myself and Beatnick Classics (Still Looking Pro)
I hope you enjoy the unrefined nature of our project.
Thanks for listening.