Mark,

Pushing me tonight, are you? Okay, I am up for it. Number one, in most of the writing I do, I am involved in what I call a "teaching excercise with a practical application result." The "clients" are from all walks of life, all styles, all levels, from the very newbies, to people who approach writing like a golf lesson from the house pro." To former rockers or folkies, trying to update their language or styles. All the way to people that I really believe are going to be tomorrow's "NEXT BIG THING!"

The things I do are from writing with over 25 people who have had number one songs, and 20 years of writing almost every day here. My purpose is to teach structure, focus, character, styles, etc. It is kind of a private workshop. The methods I use are gleaned from those much more experienced, successful and focused than I am.

When I am working with someone, I am somewhat channeling their personality and listening to the things they really want to say. I take a sort of verbal dictation as they talk about emotions, settings, experiences. I am in someways a video director, setting the scene, lighting etc.

For the past two days has been Allen Shervelle from Charlotte, North Carolina. Some of you who have visited my web site, www.marcalanbarnette.com might have seen my video on the song, "Less is More" that features Motown Bassist, Bob Babbit, the genuis behind Signed Sealed Delivered, Midnight Train to Georgia and Rubber Band Man among hundreds of others.

Allen is from a rock back ground and is a drummer, so a challenge was to get him to "SLOW down.' He tends to be rather wordy, and when you have too many words, you rarely get your message out. That song came from that. Worked fairly well, with a Motown groove, cool singers, and except for the lead singer, could be a pretty cool song.

Whenever we are sitting down I ask questions.
#1 What are you missing from your catalogue?
#2 What type (style of song) do you want?
#3 What are you passionate about?
#4 If you could write a song for anyone living or dead, who would it be?

In the past two days we have written three songs. I try to confine the experience to two hours for each song. In someone like Allen's case, he is also meeting people in town, playing four writer's nights, and doing a guitar vocal session on the songs we write. Oh yeah, and finding a place to live for when he gets here in August.

The first song was written with another guy who lives here whom I also work with. They both wanted an "Anthem." I had them both start a conversation about what they are going through in their life. They are both interested in music, obviously, but both at very different ages, one being in his 50's and Allen in his early thirties. Through it we talked about the economy, the ups and downs of life, normal day to day experiences most people can identify with.
As I am the senior writer, I don't say very much. This comes from Jimbeau Hinson, who is my mentor, who is a superb lyricist. he goes into what I call the "Jimbeau Zone" and works for about thirty minutes on just the perfect lyric without saying anything.

In my travels I know that great songs are not written, they are re-written. So my goal is to get a "template down." This is groove, melody options, lyrics, sometimes word placement, etc. I try to get as much as I can so everyone can get into their own world and concentrate on where they think it should go.

After about 15-20 minutes I formulate a verse chorus pattern. I write from the first line, trying to set up a scene, and direct the action. then I pick up the guitar, and for the first time we all hear it. I don't really know how I do it, instincts and experience, but most of the time I hit pretty close.

This one was very driving anthem called "Trying my Best To Live" and the feel was somewhat like a country Chicago, type song. Power pushes, and lyrics that simply talk about the things we all go through, yet trying to find the "elbow moments" that we strive for:

I’ve had a lot of demons to battle down
Jumped out of plane’s and never left the ground
Made enough mistakes to fill a lifetime
But I’m still here
Heard old men talk about their regrets
Of taking the easy road with safer bets
I didn’t want to be
A prisoner of my deep dark fears

Chorus
At least I’m trying my best to live
So I don’t look back and say what if
Can’t fail if you don’t try
I never want to ask why
I didn’t give everything I had to give
I’m just trying my best, trying my best to live

We finished the song in about an hour. I then do a work tape on my lap top, e-mail or make a CD and make sure everyone has it.
Then we start the re-writing, which will come later.

Today we wrote a song in the morning for our Mother's, kind of a "I don't want another day go by before I let you know,"

"YOU WERE ALWAYS THERE FOR ME"
Thank you Mom. Song

The after noon we wrote "Right Now." A song for his upcoming wedding in April.

The point on each song is that you pull a little bit of the personality of each person. You "get out of yourself" and think about what other people feel. How would they say it, feel it?
You think in terms of "how would this perform on a writers night?" How would it best demo out? What would separate this from all the other songs in that genre? And most importantly, what is the ultimate goal of this song.

In each one, I feel it is to touch lives. Whether it is for a local wedding crowd that someone might hear it and go "I want that for my wedding." Or that someone is stuck for a special Mother's day present. Or possibly someone is looking for an "Anthem" They might do for their local high school. But all of them are written with today's common language, have a (hopefully)memorable melody, and keeps them singing along and even more, remembering the song after it is over.

I don't know if this long winded thing has helped, but this is what I try to do every day. I am pretty proud of what I do, but admit that I am just one of many guys who try to make things work. Every day I do things that hopefully will make a difference.
Again, I think whether it is Jeffery Steele, trying to find out what some 20 year old artist wants to say, several of us, trying to get our material in front of industry people, to the artists and producers we compete with, we are all trying to bring our best level of craft to the party.

There are a lot of these people who love to go "This is all crap" "they stole my songs", etc. and we can never please everyone, for the most part, we put our hearts and souls in this, coupled with a feel for audiences, and the industry. We go by the most important rule of all,


"Make Memories, not excuses."

MAB