Local singer hosts songwriting workshop throughout October

Posted

When local singer-songwriter Meghan Cary first started writing songs, she’d write them outside.

“There’s something about getting away from all the stuff and all the to-dos that, at least for me, surround me in my house,” she said. “There’s something about the fresh air that lifts all the weights that hold me down on writing.”

For that reason, Meghan Cary, an Erdenheim resident, is taking her latest workshop, Songwriting: Inspiration and Technique,” outside to Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. The workshop will be held on four Thursday mornings from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27.

Cary has long been a songwriter and a songwriting coach, but this will be the first time she conducts a group workshop that she facilitated. 

“The Morris Arboretum came to me and asked if there was something I could do coaching-wise in the arboretum,” she told the Local. “I said I think what we need to do is be writing out there.”

According to Cary, the workshop for experienced as well as aspiring songwriters is intended to “prime the pump, inspire new ideas, and introduce songwriting techniques in a supportive and motivating environment.”

Critiques will be offered if they’re desired, but the workshop is meant to be more about “the inspiration and the reinvigorating a practice of songwriting and about giving people access to their own ideas,” Cary said.

For experienced songwriters, that could mean “offering them new tools in their toolbox” to use in their songwriting process, she continued. For beginners, that could mean “setting up the toolbox.”

“I think it would be great to get beginners access to that part of our brain that writes songs,” Cary explained. “I want to take some of the mystery off it.”

The goal will be to have attendees write new songs each week.

“Sometimes,” Cary said, “that’s all you need is to be held accountable.”

The workshop is $145 for Morris Arboretum Members and $160 for non-members.