JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum My First Nashville Trip!

****** Saturday, July 17th in Nashville ******

Ok, now it is nitty-gritty time -- today's the day MAB pairs us up with more experienced writers and we sit and co-write a song from scratch. Exciting and scary at the same time -- how am I going to "perform" in front of these "Nashville-style" writers? When I heard it was going to be four hours, I though, shoot, maybe we can do two songs. After all, I've done FAWM a couple of times and am on my second 50/90 -- and I think I can churn out decent enough lyrics under a time pressure situation, so I was looking forward to the event. Plus I had that "monster" idea that caused all my trials and tribulations at the rest area. First of all, breakfast at the waffle house with MAB, Matt, Norm, Ronnie and Me (any one else?). I can't for the life of me remember what we talked about, but it all seemed interesting at the time (ha, ha).

So we arrive at Doak Turner's house at 10am to start off the day. Doak is the ultimate Nashville networker and the house he lives in is really dedicated to music. He has bunches of rooms that can be used as "writing/playing rooms" and it actually used to be a recording studio and some famous bands lived there for months at a time. I believed Keith Urban was there for awhile and MAB told us about a few others, but I forget now. I think folks from out of town also stay there on their visits instead of paying for more expensive hotel rooms. All told there were 24 (or 27) of us and the first thing we did was to go around the group and quickly mention our names and our biggest musical influences. I went for Van Morrison, The Band and newer Americana groups, like the Avett Brothers, as my choices of influences. MAB then broke us up in to 8 (or 9) groups with three per group -- one "newbie" with two more seasoned writers.

I was pared with Lance Carpenter and Bob Paterno. The first thing the three of us did was just to try and get to know each other. The first thing I noticed was that Lance had a big ring on, so I asked him if that was a championship ring and he said he was a Tackle for an Arkansas football team in college (not division I -- I didn't get the school name). However, I decided right then and there that I was going like everything he proposed for the song (ha, ha). Lance works for FEMA and he was assigned to Nashville for the flood relief efforts. He was going to be moving to Nashville full-time in the near future. Big, burly guy with a pretty cool "Rodney Atkins" type voice. Bob was in from Dallas and was actually staying at Doak's and had writing appointments lined up for the time that he was in town. He was a quieter, unassuming type -- but it turns out he knows his music backwards and forwards -- I wouldn't be surprised if I saw him producing pro sessions in the future.

After the preliminary introduction, it was time to get to work. Sorry to say, I tried to jump in with my picnic table story and my idea for the song -- but I could tell it didn't "grab them" (ha, ha -- all that pain and agony for nothing). The next thing was to get out their I-Phones and I-Pads are start looking at song titles and hook ideas that they had been compiling. Lance mentioned that one thing MAB had told him was to "round out his catalogue" with some "funny" or "grab the audience" type tunes. He discussed that MAB mentioned that if you get them in face (smile) or stomach (laughing) with an earlier song, you will establish credibility with them and then they will listen more closely to songs that get them in the throat and heart (those deeply felt tunes). So he wanted a song that would be a good kick-off number at a writer's night type setting. Made perfect sense to me and Bob agreed whole-heartily. Now Bob mentioned that at co-writing sessions like this you have to throw the ideas out and not worry if they get shot down -- don't take it personally. At the same time, don't be afraid to shoot down ideas that I didn't care for. If you are used to business "brainstorming sessions", the concept is to throw out bunches of ideas -- without judging them. The start-off here was like that except ideas get shot down sometimes (ha, ha).

Two side points I want to make here.

1.) MAB told us that it is the job of the "new' writer (me) is to bring lots of ideas and hooks to the session -- as a newbie you have to pull your weight. These guys really don't need me to write a song, so I had better bring something worthwhile. I must confess on that front, I didn't hold up my end of the bargain. I had some ideas, but these guys were organized, focused and really had their stuff together. All in all, I was along for the ride! In the end, we got a pretty good song, so I think that these guys would give me a second shot -- but there probably wouldn't be a 3rd shot if I didn't contribute more. Unless, of course, a great song was written every time I was there. Then they would say "That Kevin ain't worth a sh** as a co-writer, but good things seems to happen when he is in the room!" Yes, I did comment on quite a few things and made suggestions whenever I thought of something -- but these two guys were driving the bus. The best thing I did was to not get in the way and impede the progress of the song. I definitely had checked my ego in at the front door, so I was not going to force my ideas/viewpoints on these two guys.

2.) Over in the Creative Writing forum, someone posted an interesting little piece about Nashville's Dirty Secret where the old guy (reminded me of the character in Crazy Heart) rambled on about today's Nashville. One of the things that he railed against was those "co-writing" sessions. Here's my viewpoint (after seeing it up close and personal): In the end, the creation, and writing and composing of a song is still ART -- any way you cut it. But these guys are serious about it and their time is limited. So why not use business-like practices in all the other parts of the process: keeping a lists of hooks/titles/ideas, scheduling writing sessions, having an encyclopedic memory of all the current songs out there (so you don't start treading on something that is already out there), etc. etc etc.... If you "practice" creativity enough, maybe you can call it into the room when you need it. In any case, face to face co-writing by appointment works -- if you are creative AND organized.

Lance (I believe) threw out the idea of "Girlfriend For The Weekend" and that started the ball rolling. We worked through the story and looked at the different scenarios it could take on. As always we had too much of a story and had to cut back in the end -- but that was OK. Now, one good thing here is that when I threw out ideas/lines that didn't work (!), the two guys actually took the time to partially explain WHY they were turning it down ("remember what we did back here --- we need this cadence or rhyme scheme here" -- stuff like that). All in all, super cool learning experience. I won't go through every line, but after we had a verse and chorus, we stopped to talk about other things. They each played some tunes they were working on, played some recording of songs they were getting cuts on or friends of theirs were getting cut and generally had a good time. All in all, we probably killed off an hour or so -- but that's OK, we are also building relationships. Time for lunch!!!

One lunch time story: We standing around in the kitchen with Lance, Mab, me and one or two others and I mentioned that Bob and Lance were carrying all the water and Lance said, yea we are saving your butt. I then said "I owe you two for this” and Lance said "You don't owe me anything"-- you owe the next songwriter you meet down the line -- in other words, pay it forward, just help folks out. That is just a good life's lesson.

Do anyone of you remember how hot it was that weekend??? Well, there were a couple of teams outside and one of them said we gotta come inside! So we gave up our room and went outside (actually into the garage) and finished up the song. We struggled a little on the 2nd verse, so we skipped ahead to the 2nd chorus and the bridge and then came back to verse #2. Remember I thought we could easily knock out two songs -- well, we were scrambling to finish when the MABster was calling everyone in to play their songs for the group (and since we were running out of time, they actually used some of my lines -- ha, ha)! Now I want to tell you -- EVERY song from EVERY group turned out really, really good. The first couple of tunes were excellent, but more in the positive, uplifting experience type of thing (and nothing wrong with that), so when Lance and Bob got up to perform the tune (I didn't know the chords well enough to help out here), it was a total change in direction topic-wise and Lance really had the crowd laughing with his delivery. It is a song that I am definitely going to work into my little repertoire. I have that song in MP3 format, but I need to get permission to post -- but I'll post it when I can.

I think we went until about three and then it was time to break to get ready for the big MAB birthday party bash at the Listening Room. I'll come back and do part B later on (probably tomorrow night or even Wed. night -- I am on the road tomorrow). Of course, you can just read Bill Robinson's report -- he said it all there. I am not sure how I am going to report on the party -- words are going to be tough and if I wrote about everything I heard or felt, it would probably be a long post (oh wait, I have those already, LOL!).

Kevin