How Blues Traveler Writes a Song | John Popper is a pretty cool guy

On the brilliant advice of a friend I posted this past week my old college paper likening Blues Traveler's "The Hook" to a Shakespearean sonnet (#55, for reference). I also tweeted it @Blues Traveler since John Popper had expressed an interest in it. My friend thought he might retweet it and get me some page views. It was a smart move.

Well, John actually got back to me with some fascinating thoughts strung out over the course of ten consecutive tweets, which I've decided to dump for you here so everyone else can get a little insight into how a BT song comes together.

[Note: I've adjusted for tweet separation and spelling errors, but not grammar or style. That's all Popper, baby.]

Wow... I did not know a lot of that!... Intuition led a lot of my feel for respecting & rejecting traditional form intermittently but my desecration of Pachebel was my first aim.

Actually the song was built on the premise of my older brother mentioning that I use too many words in a verse... So my aim was to do the first two verses "normal" & cram way too many into the "3rd" verse (which became the break down).

But the subdivision of rhyme scan into rhyme within a "rhyme" while not perhaps Shakespear's brand of gin, is a practice as old as the hills... Especially with lymrics or iembic scans...actually rap does it alot... But I'd wager most devises have been effected by the Bard... & certainly his ability to take what had come before & innovate is a trademark of every innovater I aspire to...Bob Marley didn't do alot of the "reggae" things we now associate with a genre we give him credit for inventing. Likewise Hendrix broke many of his own rules of the new guitar style he himself was establishing... I expect no less from arguably the greatest master of the english language ever.. But I was really impressed with that report & must now track down sonnet #55... Thanx for that... ;)

For the record, that is two winky faces John Popper has tweeted me.

Your move, Everyone Else Trying to Feel Cool.