The Clouds Gave Way: An Interview with Greg Owens and the Whiskey Weather

by - August 20, 2020

Photo courtesy of Alex Crawford
The 5 in 5 Song Challenge is both simple and, well, challenging. Each day, a prompt is given and the songwriter’s goal is to create a song based on its theme. Maybe the prompt involves using specific words. Maybe the title of the song is in the next prompt. At the end of five days, five songs should be written. During one day of his challenge, Greg Owens received a prompt where one of the words he was required to use was “rain”.

Owens started participating in the 5 in 5 Song Challenge roughly two years ago, and he feels that it has changed the way he writes songs. He definitely felt out of his comfort zone at first and wasn’t sure if he could bring the passion to a song that wasn’t directly about him or his own experiences.

“What I found is that I absolutely can because we can all find ways to relate to a song even if a song that I'm writing isn't about an experience of mine,” he said. “For instance, this song ‘Love in the Rain’; it's not about me, it's not about anything that ever happened, but I connect to it and the sentiment of it. The idea of making love in the rain and just taking advantage of a beautiful day with your lover; I can definitely relate to that.”

Seeing the word “rain” in that songwriting prompt gave him the idea of a couple being outside and head over heels for each other. He thought it over for the rest of the morning, and came back to it in the afternoon for about an hour. Part of the challenge is to keep editing to a minimum, but once the challenge was over Owens realized that the song was nearly complete.

Looking back on it, he feels that “Love in the Rain” is an ode to the now-considered classics of 90s-early 2000s romantic comedy films. The Notebook, any Nicholas Sparks book-turned-movie; he feels that the song is reminiscent of everything those films have to offer.

“When you're a young adult or teenager, you watch those because you're interested in love and obviously at that age you have a lot of feelings and you're really trying to figure things out,” he said. “Not that those movies help you figure love out too much anyways, but they definitely try.”

Owens admits that “Love in the Rain” is a bit cheesy, much like the films that remind him of the song, but wants the listener to take in its rock elements and stress-free vibe and add it into that summer playlist. It sounds best during long drives, nights by the bonfire and making love in the rain.

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