In an effort to celebrate the official launch of djphillips.com, challenge my songwriting/ recording abilities and to take my own swipe at a 30 Day Project I will now post a new song idea every day for the next 30 days. These are not necessarily finished products. They are not necessarily fantastic pop nuggets. But they will be new ideas (written at least within the last few weeks). They will be (pretty much) on time. And they will be original.

Along with each posted song, I'll include a little story of the writing and recording process. If you're the kind of person who doesn't like to know what's behind a song, feel free to skip all the content below the track.

I'm putting these out there-- warts and all-- so let me know what you think! The songs that get a good response will be the most likely to be included on a future release.

Be Somebody Who Has Somebody

April showers bring May... um... flooding, I guess. The sky is going crazygonuts out there, people. It's a good excuse to stay inside and make some music!

A couple of months ago, my dear friend Emily DeLoach and I decided to go check out a local writers' night here in Nashville.

It was god-awful.

Despite the excruciating experience, we had a blast. And it turns out terrible things can be just as inspiring (if not even more so) than good things. After Emily and I talked for a bit about how uncomfortable the situation had made us, I went home and wrote two songs. This was one of those songs.

I had been playing a little in open C tuning and I thought it sounded very regal and would go well with a military/marching beat. So I took that and ran with it. The chord progression itself is very simple, but gets a little more interesting with the marching beat and the triplet rhythms. Being in the key of C also made playing the organ parts a lot easier!

Trying to get a good marching beat with the keyboard and MIDI drums proved to be pretty difficult, so I once again enlisted the help of my pal Vince Romanelli. I sent him a quick rough cut demo of the song and he played MIDI drums to the correct corresponding tempo and then emailed them back. Technology is sweet. I then chopped up and sequenced the drum track he sent to my liking then recorded guitars, vocals, bass and organ over top.

Lyrically "Be Somebody" is your typical sappy pining-for-love song. I was looking at one of those dating websites (IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT). I noticed all the pictures of the happy couples that ostensibly met on the site and I started thinking about what the designers and CEOs of these sites want people to think when they look at it. So, the song is written from that perspective.

Be Somebody Who Has Somebody

I don't know why this is so hard When all that I want is to give all my heart

It's not like I haven't tried but it's a shot in the dark I'm all for having fun but I just want to

Be somebody who has somebody Somebody who's here in the daylight Somebody who has somebody That's just right, just right, just right, just right for me

I'm not one for tears, so don't expect much But ever sense she was here, I just imagine her touch

It's not like I haven't tried but it's a shot in the dark I'm all for having fun but I just want to

Be somebody who has somebody Somebody who's here in the daylight Somebody who has somebody That's just right, just right, just right, just right for me

I want to be somebody who has somebody Somebody who's here in the daylight Somebody who has somebody That's just right, just right, just right, just right for me

Just right, just right, just right, just right for me