Wednesdays are our production days – the days when we hurriedly write our remaining stories, proofread, color correct photos, dream up headlines, paginate, finish ads and send everything to be printed.

It’s quite the stressful day, let me tell you.

I’ll be honest in saying that when other people are around, I have a hard problem staying focused. I want to gossip, I want to chat, I want to get up and grab a snack, I get engrossed in other conversations. But to help stay focused and drown out the activities of my co-workers I pop in my earbuds and listen to music. I like to listen to it as loud as I can, which makes communicating with me difficult (I had a notepad thrown at me to get my attention today lol!), but lately it’s just been only a little loud.

I like to follow the Snow White theory: Whistle while you work, it won’t take long when there’s a song …

Music has always served as an inspiration and when I’m writing I listen to various genres. Sometimes I’m pumped about a story and in a hard rock mood, sometimes the sultry sounds of R&B (Maxwell!) and lately I’ve been into mellow folk and indie rock. Over the last few weeks I’ve been in a melancholy mood and have revisited my preference for raw, gut-wrenching emotional music. I love a good ballad.

A few weeks ago I asked for recommendations and my high school friend Melissa really came through for me (thank you!). Through her recommendations I have fallen in love with several new artists and even found new artists based on my Pandora recommendations (God bless Pandora!). According to Pandora, I’ve really been into mellow rock instrumentation, folk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, acoustic sonority, major key tonality, acoustic rhythm guitars and whatever other fancy-schmancy attributes these songs have.

Currently on rotation while I write are:

Chris Trapper, In from the Outside
The Fray, You Found Me and Never Say Never
James Taylor, September Grass and Carolina in My Mind (how do you not love James Taylor?)
Jason Myles Goss, Another Ghost and Long Way Down albums (especially Twilight Serenade and Irish Eyes)
Jason Reeves, Treefall
Josh Kelley, For the Ride Home album (faves here are Home to Me, Pokerface and Amazing; and also, he’s a cutie)
Kan’Nal, Time (other songs are more tribal and psychedelic, but I really, really enjoy the Pandora version of this and the lyrics are great: “People come and people go, that’s just the way it goes/So listen to what we know/Like water we shall flow/Back to the ocean so/In the body of the Lord, yeah/Welcome home, time to reap what you sow/Time is overwhelming me/I just hope there’s time for everything”)
Francis Dunnery, Sunshine (need to download this, but it’s one of my Pandora faves)
Rachel McGoye, Try Try (hated this one at first, but it has great lyrics, melody and repetition; she almost sounds like Natalie Merchant)
Maxwell, Pretty Wings (yeah, not really in the rocker category, but I absolutely love this song)
Green Day, 21 Guns (LOVE this song)
Matt Nathanson, Come on Get Higher

The only bad thing about listening to music while at work? I can’t belt out the songs like I want to. Not only would Echo Live in the Editorial Department be totally annoying, but I can’t sing so it’d really suck. Sometimes my co-worker Sara catches me whisper singing, though. lol. Oh well, I’m just enjoying my workday!

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