It’s awards season. Night after night of banquets and shows. It’s exhausting. Slightly less exhausting than back when I was hitting the charts with regularity.
All careers have cycles. You’re hot. King of the town. Master of all you survey. Then you notice that you haven’t had a song on the charts for a year. Then that stretches out and you become that guy who USED to be rockin’ back in the 40s. Then Arnold’s stops saving the fattiest pieces of roast beef for you.
That’s okay. I’m in the lottery business. Every song I write is a lottery ticket. I sit back and wait for the right ping pong balls to show up and BOOM.
Hi! Remember me? YES, I want gravy on that fatty roast beef!
So the awards shows all happen around this time. It’s CMA week. The big show is Wednesday. I will be in Naples FLA playing a show so if you DVR the show and look for me…I’ll be the guy not there. On the left.
The different organizations all have the banquets this time of the year because it’s when all the artists are in town to go to the CMAs so there is a fighting chance that they can wrangle a star or two to show up.
First up is NSAI. It used to be one show that featured the Hall of Fame induction AND the awards for chart toppers. They decided that the show was too long and they split it up. Maybe they figured out that the young kids who are making the money and the older ones who are tightening their belts and downsizing were sitting across the room from each other glaring. The colder you get the farther back in the room you are seated. From the back all the tables in front look like the toddler table at Thanksgiving. So they made it two different nights. One to give pats on the backs to the youngsters with their “Up ON Cripple Creek” hats and the other to honor the oldsters who like their food soft, their valets quick and their songs with pedal steels.
Next comes the SESAC awards. SESAC is one of the younger performing rights organizations. PROs are the folks that collect money from radio stations, restaurants, skating rinks….if they play music while you are there then they have to pay. The organization then splits it up using some sort of witchcraft algorithm that no one outside of NASA understands and no mortal can question and sends checks to lucky people who walk out to their mailboxes in their jammies.
At SESAC there are a lot of alternative artists. I did not recognize many of the songs they gave the awards to. I think you have to be on Spotify to know these folks. Since Spotify is the devil and I would have to be in hell to listen to it….I am out of luck. (This is my personal opinion based on the fact that a writer who has a song streamed on Spotify five hundred zillion times and get a check for twelve dollars while the owner of Spotify, who did NOT write that song, will take home a base salary of somewhere around “all the money in the world”).
A very young crowd. Lots of vests and hipster beards. You could definitely get a table at any hot East Nashville restaurant that night just by walking in. Ray Wylie Hubbard played a song so that definitely makes it the coolest event.
Then comes ASCAP. I used to belong to ASCAP but I haven’t in quite a few years. We had a falling out over a statement discrepancy. My statement was “You have my money” and their statement was “We would like to keep it.”
Georgia belongs to ASCAP so I went as her plus one. A lot of these organizations are big on coming up with achievement awards. The Diamond award. The Trailblazer award. The Coco Puffs Award. They gave one of these to Hillary Lindsey who happens to be a genius and deserves any ward they want to throw at her INCLUDING the Coco Puffs. Lots of nice long speeches. Lots of old friends. A table way at the back. I was sitting way back near the door with another writer and we both realized that we had both been ASCAP Writer Of The Year at various times. Two Writers of the Year sitting at a table so close to the bathrooms that I had to keep a little dish of mints with me next to my wine glass. Glory Days, baby!.
Tonight is BMI. We have nothing to do with BMI though we have many dear friends who belong. I don’t judge.
Wednesday I will be poolside in Naples Florida all day and performing with my CSN&Y Tribute band that night. Yes, nothing rams home the decline of fortunes quite like a table at the back and being in a tribute band. I kid. I am in the band with two of my best friends and we have a blast. We know all these songs like the backs of our veiny, arthritic hands. There is a booming market for bands that can reproduce the cool music of the 1940s.
That’s our week down here in Nashville. I hope my friends who are up for awards at the CMAs win. I hope the monitors work. I hope we present our best foot forward to the rest of the world. I hope there are no hay bales on stage.
On Thursday I’ll be back at Arnold’s. Checking on my status.