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The Honey Dewdrops’ Songwriting Workshop
Does your songwriting need a boost? Take a Master Class from masterful songwriters, The Honey Dewdrops! Tickets are free but registration is required. Please review The Smith’s COVID 19 policies before registering for this event.
“This workshop will focus on creativity and songwriting with an emphasis on lyric writing. We’ll explore the importance of making songwriting a regular practice by addressing two ways of working: covering your favorite songs vs. generating your own ideas.
First, we’ll look at why it is important to collect ideas and inspiration from outside sources by listening to and then learning your favorite songs. How do your favorite songs make you feel? Why do you keep returning to your favorite songs? How does learning to play songs help you write your own songs?
Next, we’ll look at how to generate lyrics and musical ideas on your own. To do so we’ll take 5 minutes to write our own haikus to get the creative writing juices flowing. Then we’ll look at a few word play games that are designed to quickly generate ideas rather than just sitting and hoping for a great idea to come.
Last, we’ll give a few examples of our own songwriting and scaffold the process of how we came up with the idea and lyrics for each song.”
“Just one of the highlights from the outstanding Tangled Country, a collection of often sad but still hopeful songs, ‘Same Old’ mines some of the territory of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, with lilting banjo, gorgeous harmonies and tasteful pedal steel, and exemplifies this duo’s simple yet beautiful music.” –FREDDY JENKINS, FOR NPR MUSIC’S FAVORITE SONGS OF 2015
Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish, together known as Americana duo The Honey Dewdrops, have long felt the push and pull between their original roots in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia and their current home in Baltimore, Maryland. It is in the sound of their harmony-soaked songs, blended with the tones of guitar, banjo, and mandolin and also in the group’s songwriting, which reflects the beautiful and hard realities of today. Artistically, Wortman and Parrish are inspired by American folk and traditional music and their sound expands on that style and showcases the dynamism and intimacy of musical duos.
The Honey Dewdrops have released six albums and toured internationally since 2009, with over a thousand shows under their belts on stages such as A Prairie Home Companion, Merlefest, Celtic Connections (Glasgow, SCO) and the Bluegrass Jamboree (Germany). The duo’s latest collection of songs, Anyone Can See, was released in March 2019. Baltimore Magazine says “…their sincere, stripped down songwriting is just the kind of music we need more of.” Stay tuned for the release of a new album of original songs in the spring of 2022.
This engagement of The Honey Dewdrops is funded through the Mid Atlantic Tours program of Mid Atlantic Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Be sure to get tickets to attend the Honey Dewdrops’ concert. Tickets are available here!
“Gorgeous harmonies, thrilling arrangements, and some remarkably insightful, honest writing. ”
— SING OUT!
Box Office, Tickets, and Seating
This workshop will take place on the Smith stage. Proof of full vaccination or negative COVID test is required at admission. Please take this into consideration prior to registering. You must have a valid email to register for this event.
The Smith’s COVID-19 Policies
