
Roy Rogers and Me
I have been teaching songwriting for a few years now. Not a class at a college or anything. I have my online course and I go to songwriter conferences if they are held in nice places and can guarantee me a soft bed and a nice buffet. I do it in and around my writing schedule. Why, you ask? (Thought I didn’t hear you, didn’t you?)
I know what I know is valuable. Over the last forty years I have sat knee to knee with some of the most accomplished and respected songwriter/artists in history. (Also Bob DiPiero)
You can’t HELP but pick up tips and tricks.
I’ve studied how they choose their words. I’ve paid close attention while they wrestled and idea into submission or even, on occasion, given up and discarded an idea because it wasn’t going to pay off the way they thought it might. I’ve watched them work on one tiny part of a song for hours adding things that most listeners are not even going to notice.
That got me thinking.
How the hell did I learn how to write a song? I was isolated in the wilds of Connecticut. I was an electrician. The people I learned at the feet of taught me how much it hurts to touch the wrong wire and get blasted off the top of a six foot ladder. (Spoiler alert: very much)
I was in a band and they all decided to punish me by making me the songwriter.
I was always some sort of writer. My grandmother gave me a typewriter for my birthday when I was about 6 years old and I started writing my own fairy tales. I still type the same way I taught myself back then. Just keep hitting the keys with my Roy Rogers doll until I pee myself.
For my first few songs… I stole. My first one was a Neil Young song with slightly different words. It was still a thrill to hear the band play it. I was hooked. The next one had a little more of me in it.
I listened to Beatles songs and Joni and the radio and tried to scope out why some songs I liked, and some I didn’t.
I listen to some of my early songs today and here’s what I notice:
My lyrics were terrible. BUT they were always about something interesting. I had no desire to write love songs so I wrote about other things. My rhymes were okay and my structure was always sound, but most of what I put in there was just taking up space and not really saying anything.
What I do notice, looking back, is that there was SOMETHING cool and original in every song. Maybe just a line. Maybe just a small part of a melody. Maybe it was just hanging on a chord a little longer than you’d expect. I had an instinct for looking off in a direction where someone else might not look.
It wasn’t until I got to Nashville and sat with all those aforementioned folks that my lyrics got tight… my melodies got hookier and my songs started hitting the radio. If there had been a class or a teacher up in CT to help me over all my hurdles, I would have gotten there much faster.
If songs stop improving, a writer might decide to give up. That’s a shame. I was lucky to have found mentors and writers that kept me from giving up.
This musing has inspired me. I’m gonna go write a song.
Where did I leave Roy?