The song ‘Working for the Weekend’ aka ‘Caravans’ is released on the EP Postcards from the Shed on 12 September 2022, and is perhaps one of my oldest songs. Or as I sometimes think of it the first proper song I wrote.
Finding an authentic voice and an approach to song writing is difficult and involves a lot of getting it wrong. This was the first song I wrote that had a true voice, style and covered something I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it. The song itself is about a boy who works in a caravan factory, grows into a man still working in a caravan factory, works solely for the weekend and never finds his true love.
At the time I wrote this (circa 2006) I had been struggling with writing anything good enough. All the songs had three chords and rhymed ‘blue’ with ‘you’. Alright I’m exaggerating, but I was pretty trapped in what I’d been listening to all my life; American pop music/americana/American folk and endless Dylan and Paul Simon. This is how I’d learnt to play, so the chord changes I wrote were all based around these styles, as such I ended up writing songs about places I knew nothing of, in a voice I didn’t know. It was frustrating.
But it was an American songwriter that helped me find my own voice; Loudon Wainwright lll. I listened to a lot of his music in a pretty intense two-to-three-year period. One quote sticks with me about his songs which was said by Mike Harding “[Wainwright has a way of] making his life rhyme”.
With this as an approach, I then just had to find the stuff in my life. So briefly the subject of the song came from 1. Two mates that worked in Caravan factories. 2. A documentary about Hull’s night life in which people said they were ‘working for the weekend’ (I didn’t even see the documentary!) 3. My own experience of working in factories in Hull. 4. Chucked in unrequited love.
It was quick to write, and I got the chorus first, the verses came next and were fairly easy – which story songs can be.
All of the above makes it sound like it was planned and I chose to start to writing in a different way; it wasn’t planned. The reality is that I was on holiday in Ireland, sitting outside with a panoramic view of rolling hills and mountains, and I got my guitar out and thought I need to capture this majesty of nature and ended up writing a song about caravan factories in Hull. The chorus just came out, I made a note of it, didn’t write the verses so I could return to writing my great opus about nature and nothing came so I returned to the chorus and 3 verses turned up!
There are other things to add, I think competition is helpful as it pushes you to not settle for the line you wrote either lyrically or musically. Competition can come from anywhere – you just choose it. Also, there was definitely something about being away from the environment that I was writing about, as if being further away I could see it more objectively, being able to choose the bits that helped the song and ditch the stuff that didn’t.
I still think it’s one of my best songs, and it started a style of writing that is really present in my first album Our Mate John, a loose description of the style would be a stubborn, north England romantic. But who am I to label it!
Postcards from the Shed is released 12 Sept 2022 and will be available online with the rest of John’s music
Song Writing John Hardy 
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