What question do students ask most often when I have a class in songwriting? Try to guess:
“Where did you get that shirt?”
“Is that your real hair?”
“What’s the capital of Botswana?”
Nope.
It’s: “How do I get my songs HEARD?”
You took the classes. You put in the time. You studied every move your collaborators made and imitated them to the point of them taking out a restraining order. Your songs are good. Better than ever! Mom and Dad LOVE them.
How do you get them heard by someone who can make your dreams come true? How do you get your song cut by an artist that will get it on the radio where you will make a buttload of moolah and put your kids thru college? Or enable you to actually HAVE kids. (One step at a time)
I’m warning you…this musing is not gonna end well.
I don’t know.
I used to write for a publishing company. I would turn a song in at the end of the day…someone would listen to it and decide who might like to record it. They would make some calls, take some meetings and the next thing I knew…..my song was on an album. I don’t write for a publishing company anymore. I decided to stop when I realized that everyone my publisher was setting up meetings with I already knew well enough to send the songs to directly.
The problem I have now is that I am not a great self-promoter. Getting a cut involves pestering. A great deal of pestering. Pestering is an art form I have never mastered.
It’s not enough to send them a song. You have to follow up. “Did you GET the song?” “Did you LISTEN to the song?” “Did you LIKE the song?” “Will you cut the song?”
Every one of those questions is a separate phone call that takes weeks of energy and chips away at your self esteem like a stone hammer in Shawshank Prison.
Enough negative malarkey.
Here’s what I DO know.
You go to every songwriting seminar you can afford to go to so you get to play your best work in front of people who can tell good from bad. Tom Douglas played “Little Rock” for Paul Worley at one of those seminars and now Tom is in the songwriter Hall of Fame.
You come to Nashville when and if you can so you can gauge yourself against the writers here. You can be the top tier writer in your town but remember…Nashville is the All Star Game of songwriting. Many writers came here thinking they were ready just to find out that they had a lot to learn. I used to go to the Bluebird every night I was free so I could listen to the great writers and get inspired. And by inspired I mean incoherently drunk.
You meet people who can help you. And then…DON’T ASK THEM TO HELP YOU!!. Sounds counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Just tell them how much you like and appreciate what they do. Make them laugh. Something about a priest and a rabbi walking into a bar is always a good icebreaker. Be pleasant to talk to for a few minutes. Then go away.
The next time you see them they will remember you as the cool kid who was polite and stroked their ego and they will give you a little more of their time. And then one day they will ask YOU “What do you do? Oh. You’re a songwriter!” (Inside they will say to themselves…”how cool that they never mentioned that!”)
Then they will ask YOU to let them hear some of your songs. You will fall in love. You will get married and live happily…wait. That happened to ME. It probably won’t happen to you. Sorry.
If you are talented and do good work and have a great work ethic good things WILL happen. Amazing things that will change your life and make your being on this planet part of a plan instead of an accidental combination of chemicals and amino acids. Yes, that’s what we are. Accidental combinations of chemicals and amino acids.
It’s just that some of us can rhyme and carry a tune.