Fawm

February Album Writing Month (FAWM) found at www.FAWM.org is a songwriter challenge to write 14 songs in 28 days during the month of February.

Origins

FAWM started in 2004 as a challenge similar to the National Novel Writing Month. Burr Settles recruited Matt Hopper, Willis Fireball and Eric Distad to take up the challenge. They all agreed and all four completed 14 songs.

Burr wanted to help the challenge, so he created a blog of their progress. During the year, people had stumbled across the site and inquired on participating for the following year. In 2005, Burr opened a more comprehensive www.fawm.org to track the progress. Over 500 songs were writen by the end of February 2005.

Currently, FAWM has over 800 participants. 3 compilation albums have been produced.

FAWM.ORG is volunteer-driven and funded almost entirely by donations from participants.

Genres

All Styles of music are welcome at FAWM. New styles have also been created including:

-Strangle Disco
-Crucio
-Cassiocore

Compilations

-14 Songs in 28 Days: Vol 1
-14 Songs in 28 Days: Vol 2
-14 Songs in 28 Days: Vol 3

Media Coverage and Quotes
“The only thing more satisfying is knowing that there are hundreds—nay, thousands—more excellent and fantastic songs out there in the archives (check their website), and even more yet to be written.”
— Pop Matters

“Only a masochistic songwriter would challenge him- or herself to write an entire album in a month… an interesting site with a variety of good, weird and just plain awful songs. (Even the awful ones are great in a weird way.)”
— Christian Keifer, Sacramento News & Review

“While may be a bit much for most mortals, you can still join the February Album Writing Month (FAWM) annual songwriting challenge.”
— Abby White, Performing Songwriter

“‘Fawmers,’ as the Web site calls its contributors, are a group of music professionals, students and anyone with a nine-to-five day job (or not) with little to no songwriting experience.”
— Dani Garcia, The Daily Northwestern

“More than 1,000 musicians from as far away as Japan will participate. To foster creativity, FAWM posts weekly songwriting ‘assignments’ on its web site...”
— Leslie Benson, NUVO

“Since songwriting is by nature a solitary pursuit, being connected to other songwriters also trying to come up with 14 songs helps push the participants along, Settles says. To keep ideas percolating, Settles says he will periodically post ‘challenges’ on the site, such as challenging songwriters to write a song with the word ‘shine’ in the title.”
— Rob Thomas, The Capital Times

“Alaskans in the winter have to keep busy any way they can. So besides reading the dictionary and watching ‘American Idol,’ it’s only inevitable that monthlong challenges would be an appealing pastime… Now in his third year of FAWMing, Fireball turned his material into a recently released album, Secret Grey City.”
— Melissa Hart, FBX Square

“Whatever their motivation, these songwriters have taken a unique challenge and succeeded, often impressively.”
— Kiki Schueler, Rick’s Cafe

“... By creating prolific, deadline-oriented submission guidelines, inspiration will strike, and musical magical will happen. Though I was dubious of the album’s concept, I cannot argue with the results. The songs on this album are all very solid, mostly lo-fi acoustic numbers that are derived from writers who make up what they lack in notoriety with pure talent and heart.”
— Jon Aubin, Verbicide

“Great idea and even better music!”
— Smother.Net

“The singers imbibe styles from Sufjan Stevens, David Gray, Red House Painters and R.E.M. to whip up an impressive array of personally enthused tracks.”
— Wonka Vision Magazine

“From the point of view of a guy that couldn't finish fourteen reviews in a month, much less write and record an entire album, seems like quite an undertaking… Although the artists surely had to hurry to get their work written, recorded, and produced, the sum of all their work does not sound hurried in any way.”
— Justin Wright, The Phantom Tollbooth

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