Musings

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?

Matters of the Muse

A dear friend recently posted the cover of my solo album from 1978. Do the math. Wait….I’ll save you time.

I’m a hundred.

That friend is now dead to me.

Seeing my solo album cover sure brought back a flood of good and bad memories.

I found my producer/mentor by mailing him songs out of the blue. He found me a deal on a small label named Lifesong that was run by Terry Cashman and Tommy West. Terry Cashman was the singer who put out al those “We’re talkin’ baseball….” Songs…one for each team in the majors.

They had decided that they had more money than they needed s they signed me. The record company went out of business about a month after my album came out. (“Dropped” as the kids say)

We worked in the big studio on CBS’ Black Rock building on 52nd St in NYC.

We stayed at a Howard Johnsons, just over the bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Right next door to a Mr. Richard Feder.

I wanted to record with my band but my producer didn’t think they were good enough so I had to fire my best friend Dean. I was able to get a few of the guys on the record on one song and Dean made a few bucks by playing some percussion but I felt horrible. We had all come up thru the local hellholes together and we felt like this break was OUR break but it turned out it was only MY break and I was the one who had to tell them.

It sucks to be the King.

Random memories:

One song had an orchestra on it. It was amazingly cool to walk in and see all those grown men sitting with charts in front of them getting ready to play on something I wrote.

Some of the musicians were very famous. People who played with Beatles and stuff but I didn’t know it at the time. I just knew that my producer Harold had a fat Rolodex.

This album contains the worst lyric I ever wrote. Writing and singing it changed me in fundamental ways. The line is in a song called “Cool Night In Paradise,” and the line is:

“The fish in every sea 
Follow you and me” 

Spoiler alert: They don’t. They could care less.

The album got one review in the Boston Globe and he said that it was a must for all lover of California country rock.

We shot the album cover in Connecticut. A photographer came to town with his dog and we drove around for days trying to find something I could stand in front of and not look so cool that I would not be believable. We finally found a very old funky barn and shot a zillion pictures inside it. Then we shot about three outside in the field. Those were the ones we used. The reviewer missed a golden opportunity. He could have said that I was out standing in my field.

For years I told people that the dog was stuffed.

When we went out and promoted the record in NYC, we played a club and Robin Williams was there and he invited us all out for drinks after the show was over. I got his autograph on a napkin but I lost it in 1986.

I am not totally embarrassed by the album. It was a snapshot of where I was as a songwriter. There is a kernel of a good song in every song. A micro-kernel. A sub-atomic kernel. But it’s there.

I do have to admit that the cover looks like I am out searching for Dora the Explorer.

Mirrored Hall

Conway Twitty sang a song I wrote called, “That’s My Job.”  In the song I wrote, “So I made my way down the mirrored hall… and tapped upon his door.”

This is that mirrored hall today. ON a recent visit to my hometown I did what I always do and stopped by my old house. It’s derelict now. Owned by the bank, I guess. A real mess.

But this is the hall. To my right is where my parent’s bedroom door was. Where I would go running when I had bad dreams or an upset stomach. Across the hall was the room where I lay on a tiny little bed wrapped in my plaster cast from my broken leg.

I could not believe how tiny that room was. I had a bed, a dresser, a table with a stereo on it and a guitar leaning against the wall. I guess the answer is…I was tiny.

I love going to the old house every time I come back to Meriden. I had a crazy idea that maybe I could buy the house and come up every few months and work on rehabbing it. Then I said to myself…”If you really think that is a good idea…YOU need to go to rehab.”

I hope someone buys it someday. I hope some other kid lays in his bed in that little room and has as great a life as I did. Without the broken leg, of course.

The mirror isn’t there anymore. I was just about to type “Sometimes you don’t need a mirror to see yourself…”

But as I started I threw up a little in my mouth.

Kindergarten Lesson

Sitting down to write a song with someone is like dipping your toe in a river. If you don’t look at what’s in the water you could get it bitten off. Yes, writing a song is very much like that.

But another thing it’s very much like is two guys marveling at the sheer “what the hell just happened”-ness of it all.

I remember getting together with my good friend Hal Ketchum some years ago. We sat down to write a song. Neither of us had an idea. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time agonizing over that sad, unprofessional fact. We both just started strumming away until we found a pattern and a “feel” we both liked.

From there it went back and forth. I sang, “There’s a new star in my sky,” and he answered with… I don’t really remember. Something about an umbrella, I think.

No, he answered with, “There’s a new song in my life.”

We went back and forth like that for a few minutes till we got to the end of the chorus.

I said, “How about “To find true love?”

He said, “Could you BE more boring?”

I had to agree. Oh my God… I had dipped my toe into a river of clichés. And it had been bitten off by the “snapping turtle of hubris.”

“Okay,” I said, “How about GREAT love?”

“Cool love?”

“Fireproof love?”

Existential love?”

We went on like that for some time. At some point in a conundrum like this I start going thru the alphabet in my head.

“Adult love”

“Bodacious love”

“Careless love”  (sounds poetic but not good for a positive love song)

On and on I went until I got to:

“Sure love”

We both agreed we had no idea what it meant but it felt good rolling off our tongues.

Did you think it’s more mysterious than that? Two guys going thru the alphabet. My best work is usually done using the tools I learned on my second day of Kindergarten.

On my first day I learned that when you have to go…you should ask.

“Sure Love”
(Words and music by Gary Burr & Hal Ketchum)

Celebrities

CELEBRITIES

My dear friend Bette Midler once said to me, “Gary…never be a name dropper. No one likes a name dropper.”

Tough.

I have had a pretty cool life in that department, working with and rubbing my shoulders with some pretty shiny shoulders. Working with people like that ALMOST elevates you to their level except for the fame, the money or pretty much every other measure of self worth.

It’s the brush-bys that stand out. The famous people you sort of meet in strange ways and odd places that stand out in your memory.

Such as:

I was working in the studio at CBS in New York City on the 7th floor. I was told that James Taylor was working on the second floor. Where the vending machines were. That pretty much tells you where this is going. I lurked (yes, lurked) around those machines every second I wasn’t needed in the hopes I would see him.

Finally he walked out the studio door, looked at me lurking, and this was the exchange:

“Hey, is there a bathroom on this floor?”

My response:  “Yes. Just go up those stairs”

See the wondrous part of that exchange? If the bathrooms were on THIS floor then why would he need to go upstairs? Get the comic symmetry? Let’s all take a moment to imagine the look he gave me… followed by a sigh and finally a resigned walk to the stairwell.

I once ran into a friend in a lobby who was standing with Sting. Mr. Sting. The Stingster.

He said “Oh, Sting, this is Gary Burr, a very successful songwriter here in Nashville.”

Sting looked off about seven feet to my left, held out his hand and said, “Oh…hello Jerry.”

I was working with my friend Mark Hudson in LA and got to his studio only to be told that he was having breakfast across the street. Always one for a free meal, I went to the café and found him breaking bread with Ozzy Osbourne.

Introductions were made. I had barely sat down when Mark stood up and announced that he had to go to the men’s room.

“Hey Ozzy….tell Gary that story you told me about your assistant and the car.”

Hudson left and did not return for fifteen minutes while Ozzy proceeded to tell me this hilarious story. I think it was hilarious. I could not understand a word he said. Granola was flying out of his mouth and into my eyes while he stuttered and sputtered like a small watercraft having a seizure. I had to sit nodding my head like I understood ONE word, till Hudson came back with a smile on his face. Cruel man.

And lastly:

One fine sunny day I was clothes shopping at a high end store on Melrose. I say shopping because I was never going to buy.  A T-shirt was $700. I was with a friend and was about to go into a dressing room to try on a pair of jeans that would have cost more than a new Prius. I had my back to the dressing room and was talking to my friend. I held open the dressing room door, not looking behind me, when I saw his face get weird. Weird and red. I let the door swing back shut and asked him what was wrong.

He said :  “Heather Graham was in that dressing room naked.”

Okay, I didn’t officially MEET her…….

Memory Fountain

I had zero idea how to become a “professional” songwriter.

I was freshly back in town from a sadly ineffectual trip to California. We meant to go to LA and become stars at the Troubadour but we hit Santa Cruz and, like the siren whore she was, this seaside town sucked us in and we stayed for two and a half years. Just long enough to get on each other’s nerves and break up.

I find myself back in Connecticut working in an auto parts store. Do I know one thing about auto parts? I do not. Someone would come in and ask for a rocker arm for a ’72 Impala and I would nod my head like that was NOT the silliest sentence I ever heard… and run to find the old guy in the back who would assure me that “yes, rocker arms are a real ‘thing’ ” and I could find them in aisle three on the third shelf. I would bring it back up to the counter and, when the customer asked if he would need a gasket for this rocker arm… I would say “yes,” and hope I would not be working the day he came back.

Eddie, our steel guitar player, said my original songs were good enough to be on the radio. He had never lied to me before. He said I should record them and send them “somewhere.” That all sounded awesome and doable if not a little cryptic.

I borrowed $600 from my brother. I promised him, if I got famous, I would buy him a Corvette. (Luckily we had differing ideas of what “famous” was so every time over the last thirty years when he would ask me where his Corvette was… I have been able to point to the fact that I do not live in a mansion in Malibu with solid gold toilets… so he don’t get nuthin’).

I went down to our local record store and wrote down the addresses of twelve record companies. I recorded two songs and sent them off in the mail on huge reel to reel tapes. I got eleven rejection letters and one “Call me” from a guy at CBS records.

He mentored me and told me what kind of songs I had to write for my brother to get his car.

I bring all this up because I am currently in my hometown playing a couple of shows. Stirs up the memory fountain. I drove by my old houses.

The first house was where I grew up and had my first band. Georgia and I snuck in and walked around the basement where Eddie told me to go for it. The House is derelict and gross but still cool to see.

We drove by and took pictures of the next house where, years ago, I sat out on a swing set in the front yard (the front yard of a house that literally was the size of this hotel room) and wrote the kind of song that Harold Kleiner told me would be my ticket to success and bad feelings between me and my brother. (I kid. My brother and I are fine. He worked for Kodak for thirty years and bought himself his own damn Corvette.)

We drove by the house Juice Newton bought us. Juice recorded and released that song and it made its way to the radio and allowed us to move across the line to the ritzier East side of town.

The weekend has been 99% fantastic. Old friends. Good shows.

The 1% that sucks is Les’ Ice Cream is closing for good. This place has been a fixture in town for 36 years and when the owner retires…..it’s gone. We took the kids there every summer. When it opened we knew it was summer. When it closed we knew the season was over. It was more accurate than leaves turning gold or school starting and the kids turning sullen.

I had a blueberry shake. Amazing. When I first hit town I had a pineapple/hot fudge sundae. Those were my “go to confections” all my life.

Next time I come to this old town there will probably be a Walgreens in this spot. I can foretell this because there is already a Walgreens a hundred yards away and that’s just the sort of saturation the head office shoots for.

That will be a sad moment. My original house is still there. My next house where my first son was born is still there. My Juice House is still there.

If those three precious landmarks in Meriden are worth preserving…..shouldn’t my favorite ice cream purveyor be accorded equal Landmark Status?

I need my blueberry shakes. Gotta have em.

Bela Pizza

Are you familiar with the term? It is not, contrary to popular opinion, the Italian term for “beautiful pizza”

I am here in Italy where I am learning new things every day. We are vacationing with friends in Tuscany and it is very beautiful here. The sunsets are amazing…the conversation is stimulating…the food is……well, here is where the learning curve gets weird.

I don’t need much when it comes to meals. A nice starch. Some additional starches as a “side dish”…… That’s why Nashville suits me so well.

But here in Italy I have learned a new phrase… Bela Pizza.

It means “Vampire Pizza.”

Apparently pizzas only come out at night. We drove all over Italy yesterday midday searching for an open pizza place. We know they have pizza here. Every restaurant has a big sign with the word pizza on it.

Not one place was open. We drove and drove and drove. We pulled into place after place… ringing doorbells and tugging on door handles… nothing.

My first conclusion is that Italians do not eat lunch. Every place we went to we checked out on Google to make sure it was open that day. Each one said “yes… we’re open.”

They lied. Or they meant “yes we are open today if by today you mean TONIGHT.”

I don’t think Italians care a fig about the precious tradition on lunch. They just figure if they open up at seven at night… then they are technically OPEN that day and can say it on Google.

We finally found one last restaurant (with a great big pizza sign) that WAS open! We pushed a few tables together (there’s forty seven of us) and waved over the waiter. (Or waited over the waver)

“We’d like a hundred pizzas please.”

“No pizza. Only at night.”

Pizzas only come out at night.

What else only comes out at night?

Vampires.

Pizzas are vampires.

Bela Pizza.

Boom.

That just happened.

It’s Country ‘Cause We Say So

Many years ago I wrote for MCA Music under the wise and kind leadership of both Noel Fox and Jerry Crutchfield.

I was a transplant from Connecticut. I was having my share of hits but still trying to find the sweet spot of what I did.

I was in the studio on afternoon putting the finishing touches on a very Pop sounding song I had recently written by myself. (no one else to blame)  I was standing behind my engineer. Greg Kane, listening to a playback, when Russell Smith came in and stood next to me.

Side note: Russell Smith passed away just a short while ago. He was the lead singer of The Amazing Rhythm Aces and wrote and sang their enormous hit “Third Rate Romance,” and was one of the truly great country songwriters. (Look Heart, No Hands, Old School)

We listened to the song blasting on the speakers. The song had more in common with Kenny Loggins than Dave Loggins… crazy pop groove.

Russell leaned over, put his head next to mine and, in his distinct drawl, said:

“It’s country cause we SAY it’s country.” 

Jump ahead to this morning.

I was rummaging thru the “Intraweb” that the kids are so crazy about, when I saw an article about the state of the country music industry. The premise (as I understand it) is this:

The industry puts out things that are not “country,” but, because we want the attention and money that a younger demographic will bring, we say “It’s country because we SAY it’s country!!” Because of that… we have no right to complain that country is drifting from its roots and has now seemingly morphed into something more pop and rap than George Jones.

How do you all feel about this? Is it a question of intent? I was finding my way, learning how to write a country song. I didn’t really accomplish that until I wrote “A Thousand Times A Day,” and had both George Jones and Patty Loveless record it.  Carrie Underwood is country.  She won the game show and could have gone any direction she chose, but she is “country” even though her records are as pop sounding as anything Taylor Swift does. Is Taylor country? Carrie labels her songs as Country. Taylor just puts them out and doesn’t say they are anything other than a Taylor Swift song.

Yes, we claim pop sounding records are country so we can widen our audience. Does that take away our right to whine behind closed doors about the direction of Country music? Whining is a God given right… right up there with the right to give a Koala a semi automatic.

I have no conclusion to draw about all this. Hell, I’m not even sure it’s a decent question. I think it does, for me, come down to:

You don’t get to complain about the Poppification of Country music if you are part of the industry that pushed Old Dirt Road up the charts. Disclaimer: That is not a slam on that song. I may be a party of one here but I have NEVER heard that song. I listen to country radio but, probably by pure chance, I have never had it come on while driving. Was it played less on Country radio that I thought? Do I spend way too much time on the Beatles channel? (The answer is yes.) 

If  its Country cause we SAY it’s Country… should that change what we say is country?

I say we appoint a Country Purity Board to listen to each release and approve it as Country or not. They do it for milk. Why not Rascal Flatts CDs?

Cursing

A couple of Mondays ago while ranting about the quality of songwriting in earlier, bygone days, I sprinkled a little profanity on my word cereal. Mmm. Profanity.

Some people got upset and asked why I had to do that.

I wanted to take up the question seriously and figure it out. Here’s what I came up with.

Go f*#….            no, wait.

That’s just going for the easy joke. I like to think I’m better than that. I’m NOT…but I enjoy thinking it.

Here’s what I figured out….

I come from a generation where we wanted to shock “The Man.”  We shocked with our hair. We shocked with out clothes. We shocked with our music. I feel like it is the same thing that rap music did in the 80s. One of the points of early rap was to scare the heck out of people with language and style and attitude. That “Let’s raise a few eyebrows” is still in we few remaining kids of the 60’s I guess.

Sometimes a curse word is simply a phonetic exclamation mark. It adds a little oomph to the point you are making. Not only to shock. Just to hit the readers eyeballs just a little harder. When I am writing a song I do the same thing with my melodies. I find the words that I want to stress to the listener and I make the melody on those words do something, anything, to draw a bit more attention to them. There’s no melody in blogs so I had to choose between italics, bold font, or saying something naughty.

Sometimes curse words make me laugh. My dear friend Mark Hudson tells me this story:

“I was at a party long ago. John Lennon was at the same party. I followed him around all night like a puppy dog. I knew he knew who I was because he was a fan of The Hudson Brothers. Finally, as the party was drawing to a close he took pity on me. He turned and said “Okay Hudson. You can ask ONE Beatle question!” I blurted out, “In I Am The Walrus when you say I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together”…what did you mean?”

John said “I didn’t mean anything. It just felt good coming off my tongue.”

Sometimes a nice dirty word feels good coming off your tongue.

But I am a songwriter and I make my living with words and rhyme (as the song says) and I have a whole lot of words at my disposal. I’m not going to say that I will forgo working blue for the conceivable future. Just know that if I ever DO let one fly….

It’s either a form of punctuation….or it felt good coming off my tongue….or I’m still trying to p*ss off “The Man.”

Oops. Does “p*ss” count?

Regrets

Last night we went out to dinner with some friends. They brought their young daughter with them to meet us. She is a songwriter and wanted to “pick our brains” a little. Since we enjoy the mentoring process… and we were getting a free meal… we gladly went.

This happens a lot these days. Young people. Brain picking. I used to think that it was my reputation, my many years in the industry, that drew the young ones to me for advice. I’m starting to realize that it’s probably because every year that passes I look more and more like Yoda. Who better to get advice from? Sage council I am.

(I really need to moisturize)

Last night the young one asked me a great question. She asked if I was going to finish the fried artichokes and if not….could she have some? No, wait. That wasn’t the question. She asked:

“Do you look back on your career and have any regrets?”

My first, knee jerk answer was to say no. Honestly… my life has wildly exceeded my wildest dreams so why would I have any regrets?

Then I stopped and thought for a while. Then I realized, like the Sinatra song says:

“Regrets, I’ve had a few…. da doo doo doo… something else…”

There was the time my friend asked me to write with her because she was writing that day with a teenager (which can be exhausting) and wanted another “real” writer in the room. I told her “No. I have just written seven days in a row and I need a day off.”

So I didn’t write that day with her and Taylor Swift.

I regret that.

There’s the fact that I never learned the business side of my profession. For many years I had a large corporation to take care of all that. I was the “artist” and above the day to day minutia. I would create the art, loftily hand it off to someone who then would protect my ownership, get it recorded, collect my money, send it to my accountant, who would then pick out a nice new car and have it delivered to my driveway.

When I stopped working for “the man” I had to take all that on myself. Did you know that when you write a song, record it and then save it to your hard drive..…it does NOT end up on the radio the next day?  I did not know that.

I never took classes in the music BUSINESS.

I regret that.

When I dropped out of college (no regret there) I headed to California with my band. We were going to be the house band at the Troubadour and back up Jackson Browne and become the Eagles a year before they did. We were just going to maker a quick stop in Santa Cruz. Really quick. In and out. You can wait in the car.

We never left. That town sucked us in and we stayed for three years. The band broke up. At that moment I had to decide whether to go on to LA and The Troub (as I liked to call it)…or go back home to Connecticut with my musical tail between my legs.

I went back home. I never got the chance to play the Troubadour and see how I stacked up against the Jackson Brownes, the David Crosbys…become besties with Michael Nesmith and sleep with Joni.

I regret that. (Not the Joni part. Not my type. But if LINDA had been hanging around….)

We all have regrets. They are the score cards that tell us where we are in the game. I have many more regrets than just the three listed here.

“But then again…too few to mention!!!”

Just remembered the next line.