Original Flayvah!

I’ve been writing songs since I was a teenager. In high school, I wrote a (deeply embarrassing and delusions-of-grandeur-y) rock anthem called Lemmin Lighted Halls, which I performed with shameless gusto in my show Keira Daley Vs The 90s. Aside from that, my very worst stuff (that I needed to write in order to improve and/or not go insane) remains unheard.

I had a weird renaissance at age 18 where I was writing songs (and poems… barfapalooza) constantly. One of these songs is called A City Meditation, obviously because I was so freakin’ deep that I could find stillness in hustle-bustle. It’s in 6/8 and mentions “my soul” in the chorus… you get the idea. Mercifully, nobody has heard it or its compendium either.

About six years later, I co-wrote a short musical set in a market research testing facility. It was called On The Other Side and made the shortlist of a mini-musicals festival, but I had no hand in performing it. Some of it was okay. Serendipitously, the festival organisers had a young Mark Chamberlain – whom I only knew in passing at the time – play the songs because they were “too funky” for the main accompanist.

Finally, in 2013, I started performing my own, newer, slightly wiser, compositions with the help of wonderful musos bringing my clumsy demos to life. My biggest shout-out, of course, goes to Mark Chamberlain – piano nerd and everyone’s favourite anime body pillow – who patiently listened to my ham-fisted piano playing, as well as my insane sonic descriptions (“it’s like a whale swallowing a school of fish…”), and stitched the accompaniment together while I could sing out melodies.

Thanks also go to Peter Lead who’s managed to interpret my aforementioned keys-playing on guitar, and Ed Delos Reyes and Joey Pangilinan who endured my awkward beat-boxing, annoying analogies, or rusty drumming. Tinder Musical-related thanks go to Steven Kreamer, whom I’m certain I irritated thoroughly in the making of that show.

Slowly, but surely, I am getting hooked on writing things for me – and, eventually, my talented friends – to sing. And thanks to Slapdash Song Night! I have a collection of recordings.

You can find some of them here, and I’ll keep adding to the collection.