SONGWRITING > Songwriting Overview
Songwriting. Wow. It's been such an amazing journey being a songwriter. My very first song was plunked out on a Framus guitar that my Dad had gotten for Father's day and my Mom had stuck in my closet for a few weeks. I would crawl in there after school and close the door so Dad wouldn't hear me playing.
We were living in Germany at the time and I remember only having one of those round tuning things you blow into to get the strings in tune. I just started putting my fingers in places that sounded cool and writing down my first "chords" on a yellow legal pad notebook with a flashlight tucked under my chin.
I was 10 years old at the time ... or maybe I was 11, but I do know I was in that terrible shift of adolescence where my bones ached and my mood swings and general sense of my center were very unpredictable. I wrote a cowboy song first.
"In the month of May
Cowboys used to say
Let us lead the way
During the month of May
Flowers bloom today
Let us lead the way
During the month of May"
Stunning, huh? I remember coming down the stairs to play my new song for Mom who was napping in front of a soap opera, I think it was "Days Of Our Lives".
"Hey Mom! I just wrote my first song!"
"That's great sweetie" she said with a sleepy yawn, "Play it for me!"
So she proceeded to doze in and out of consciousness as I plodded away at my tune, with several seconds between "chord" changes. Who ever could have guessed that a mere 13 or 14 years and 2000 songs later one of my songs "All I Have", (Chapman/Kaz) would be featured as the love song between Jennifer and Jack on "Days Of Our Lives"? Especially, considering the Cowboy Song is how I got my start! It all goes to show ... anything is possible!
My family settled in Montgomery Alabama through my high school years. I honed my skills as a musician performing solo and with a very popular local band called "Harmony." Here we are getting some notice! We played at "The Kegler's Kove," which was a Bowling Alley Lounge.
So, the big move to Nashville took place in 1985. I had already done my first record on a major label (Capitol) with Barry Beckett producing. I had signed a very bad "slave contract" with a guy who owned a studio. He had me for 5 years as an artist and writer. Long story short, I managed to get out of that deal when he sold my catalog of 50 songs or so to Screen Gems. They in turn helped me hook up with Barry who had just produced Bob Dylan's Slow Train Comin.' This was around 1979.
I had just gotten married and moved to Mobile. I went to Muscle Shoals to record with Beckett. It was beyond exciting. I stayed at the Beckett's house in the fabulous guest room. I remember finding some cigarette buts in the ashtray by the bed (back then I was smoking 3 packs a day!) and thinking they must be Bob Dylan's. So I called my husband Ernest and puffed on one of them saying, "Guess who's cigarette butts I'm smoking?"
Ah. Yes. You've got to start somewhere.
So "Hearing It First" was released in 1980 on Capitol records just as disco started to skyrocket and vinyl went through a crisis or something. Anyway, suffice it to say, my time had not yet come.
With no manager, not a clue, and Disco Duck taking over the airwaves, I had to be satisfied with a few nice reviews that said things like: "Oh wow. If only she'd put this record out 5 years ago!"
So within a frighteningly short period of time, my publishing deal was not renewed, further proving to me that I was a total failure as a writer and an artist.
A funny thing happened to me in processing the loss of all that. I felt something within me shut down and recede and dry up and take cover all at the same time. I didn't realize it too clearly, other than my overt declaration to my new husband and the rest of the world that I was now convinced that I must not "have it" as a songwriter or singer. I mean what else can you do? I was given my shot on a major label with a major publisher. And nothing happened. No need to beat myself up over it. Just get another definition for myself and move on.
Around this time along came a beautiful bouncing baby boy. We called him "Boat" because we had thought we would have to sell the boat in order to pay for the baby. Insurance came through just in time though. Which is good because he was born six weeks early and weighted four pounds!
Boat did fine catching up though, as I set out in full bloom to give my child the most fabulous experience of life I possibly could. Homemade teething biscuits, hanging hand-made mobiles over his crib-which was decorated, along with the walls and ceiling, with funny made up people, colorful creatures and anything else my creative tidal wave could fashion.
In the course of this almost 3 years of "not being a songwriter" I managed to learn to bake bread, perfect gumbo, French pastry, study tons of things about childhood development, and sculpt prize winning figures out of play-doh.
My sense of my worth in life, minus the "I'm a songwriter" was basically somewhat adrift in those years. I had lots of fun being happily married and having this wonder-child to wake up and entertain every day. Who needed songwriting?
Since my husband, who was a director for a treatment facility for adolescents, didn't make a lot of money, I had to bring in some additional income and so during those years I'd be knocking around Mobile and Montgomery playing in small clubs during the happy hour eaking out a living.
My relationship to music at that time was interesting. It was necessary for me to perform to make a living. But the passion and engagement in it that I had always had seemed distant and almost polite. I really didn't see myself ever trying to "make it" in the music business ever again.
It didn't help that the music that was popular in the early 80s left me cold. Not until I heard Emmylou Harris singing "If I Could Only Win Your Love" did my musical nerve endings begin to stir.
By then I'd become fully aware that without the "I'm a songwriter" label, my place in the pecking order of "cool" was related to the other stay-at-home Moms up and down the street. The fact that "I had been a songwriter" was mildly interesting but wasn't something easy to relate to, nor was it of any great significance.
As a result, an interesting thing happened to me. I just started to live in the world just as a person. The huge "I've got to make it in the music business" need I used to define my path in life and exist from was gone. Everything would have been just fine if I could have just somehow kept this balloon of "I'm fine with that" attitude inflated.
Late one night when I was trying to get this nose just right on one of my play-doh people, my husband came into the kitchen where I was hunched over this little glob of clay, intensely concentrating on the left nostril. I felt his hands gently touching my shoulder as he quietly spoke, "Honey, I think it's time you start considering writing some songs again".
Something rose up within me that felt like a tidal wave of tears and some kind of rage. It was shocking to me how much emotion welled up inside me at that moment. Like somehow these words were reaching like a shaft of light into this deep dark corner inside me where my creative spirit had been held hostage for three years and ordered into solitary confinement ever since my experience of being rejected and spit back out by the music industry.
I think the rage was at myself for letting that rejection redefine me and dictate my worth as a writer. Loaves of bread, crayons and homemade baby toys were not enough to feed my creative spirit, which in exile had only grown in angst and now had an attitude!
But in that one moment, three or so years of being "adrift" were ended. I started actively reintroducing myself to myself as a songwriter again.
The first six months of waking up my "songwriting muscle" were very painful. I had large meltdowns and many "I give up" moments. Thank goodness my husband, who was a very talented poet and writer, was able to prop me back up and convince me to keep trying. At one point when bringing him a "drinking and cheating" country song, he listened, trying not to wince I'm sure, and then said, "You know, I think you need to just write from your emotional truth." At which time I stormed out of the room and said some rather immature things I won't repeat.
Then just to humor him I decided to write a song about breastfeeding. "There you go! How do you like that? Now what are you going to say?"
After listening to the song he looked up with a big smile and said, "Now you're getting there.... there's a pulse in this one!" In terms of commercial viability this song was going nowhere, but it did hook my creative spirit back up to the right broadband of creative oxygen flow. My "voice" started to vibrate within me again.
The great thing about writing is that you don't have to be autobiographical. But to be flowing from one's center, coming through one's voice is essential for a song to "ring true" in the world.
As my confidence continued to build, I started to write more and more country songs. As a result of starting to study that as an art form, I began having a growing appreciation for it through Emmylou and Willie Nelson and all that incredible stuff from the 50's and 60's I'd missed while listening to the Beatles and Perry Como growing up...which is also great stuff.
I wrote a song called "Five Minutes" which ended up on my little tape of three songs that I finally sent to a few contacts in Nashville.
Actually, I probably would have never sent this tape out but there were two things that forced me.
One was meeting Bruce Johnstone of the Beach Boys where I was performing the Happy Hour at this big hotel called the "Riverview Plaza" in Mobile. He waltzed up to me after my set and said, "You're good. I heard a hit song or two in that last set." I said, "Thanks. Who are you?" and he replied, "I wrote ‘I Write The Songs That Make The Whole World Sing'".
"No way!" I couldn't believe it. A real bonafide professional giving me the thumbs up!
So, as I bounced home in my joy at being professionally validated by none other that a Beach Boy, I became aware that my husband was quite taken aback. He had been the main cheerleader for all these months, hoisting me up and trying for weeks to get me to muster enough nerve to send a tape to anyone and everyone in Nashville to reconnect. I had been dragging my feet, though happy with the songs I'd been writing, I was completely gun-shy and terrified of having further rejection.
Even with a Beach Boy inspiring me I continued to postpone actually writing any letters or sending any tapes. I mean, I'd come through this devastating rejection once. It took me three years and 27 play-doh heads to get back in the saddle. How could I put myself out there again only to be shot down and told I was not wanted?
Well, it would have never happened. I would have been just fine continuing on singing the Happy Hour at the Riverview Plaza for at least another five years. My happy little son was the center of my life, and now writing songs was fun again and I wasn't about to mess that up by wanting anything more.
At this point, my husband decided he was going to have to do something rash. He walked into the kitchen on a Tuesday morning and announced that if he didn't see proof of postmark on at least four letters to professional music people with tapes and return envelopes enclosed he was going to start smoking again.
Now this was the one thing that I just couldn't bear. We had both been heavy smokers and it had taken us several years to actually quit quitting and really quit. And we both knew from experience if one of us started the other one was going to cave in. So this was war. And I knew he meant it because part of him was just looking for justification to light up!
So began the arduous task in front of me. The agony of having to risk rejection was as bad as the agony of actually writing the letters and both of those didn't even come close to the agony of having to actually get these packages to the post office. One of my least favorite things in the world is having to get things in the mail on a deadline. It's like I couldn't breathe. But thank goodness I wrote these letters:
This one is to Jimmy Buffet!
This one to Mac MacAnally...
And this one to a friend of a friend in the biz who knew someone who knew someone who knew...
I wrote this to Barry Beckett who'd been my producer on my Capitol Records.
And another one to Barry!
And here's your basic begging letter....
And here's one I love....learning to "Re-write"
So you can see....with the threat of my smoking habit on the horizon I had to totally rise to the occasion.
From this outreach came opportunities that have led me to a life as a professional songwriter. This journey has been wonderful and sometimes very demanding. But mostly wonderful and completely worth it! Within five years I had started to have some success.
My first "hit" was a song called "Baby I Want It," which I had actually written a few years before coming to Nashville. I'll never forget it. My then 3 year old son "Boat" (that was his nickname because as you may remember we were going to have to sell our boat to pay for the baby) was screaming at the top of his lungs and was clinging to my shins as I stood in the kitchen with the tape recorder balanced on top of the refrigerator. I was standing there with my snarling little wild child in full tantrum mode, while I played guitar and tried to sing this fab song idea into the tape recorder before I forgot it. Boat had made it very clear from infancy that even the sound of one "ping" from my guitar signaled that I wasn't available to him. He had this incredible radar. I mean I could run the vacuum cleaner and bang around doing housework and he'd sleep through it all. But if I so much as opened the piano lid or started to strum the guitar within moments you could hear him wailing desperately to be picked up.
 So by the time he was 3 and I'd started writing again the competition was on for my undivided attention!
Lucky for him I finished recording the song. Because it was the first one ever to bring in the bacon!
The next few years brought more wonderful opportunities. Writing "Strong Enough To Bend" for Don Schlitz was a real stepping stone. It went to #1 on all the charts and was nominated for Song Of The Year.
Here we are celebrating at ASCAP for our #1 Hit.
This was taken in 1999 the year I won for "This Kiss." Ernest here is about 18. Dressed as an Arab. *sigh*
Following the success of "Strong Enough To Bend" I was asked by Willie Nelson by the way of legendary producer Fred Foster (second from the right) to write a song for Willie. I did. And the song "Nothin' I Can Do About It Now" also went to #1! Here we are celebrating....
BNC singing on stage with Willie in Memphis!
Here I am meeting Willie for the first time when I went to Austin to play guitar and sing on "Nothin' I Can Do About It Now". My friend and fellow artist Kimmie Rhodes pictured here has done lots of stuff with Willie. I felt like part of the family! How about my outfit? Yikes.
Hal David, Jimmy Webb, and Ashford and Simpson! Wow. I'm starting to like this songwriter job!
Winning Song of the Year with Annie Roboff and Robin Lerner was a highlight of my career!
To see more songs I've written go to "Hits And Covers"!
|
