Hey guys,

Interesting you mention the Kalamazoo NSAI group. A lot of activity has come out of there. But I'll tell you how they did it.

I have been a mentor to members of the 110 NSAI chapter workshops for 11 years. I have traveled to 75 of them, and have relationships with almost all of them through their coordinators and members who come to Nashville and seek me out through my consults, workshops and private tours. They are pretty much my life.

Out of all of those about 5 stood out over the years, in talent, enthusiasm and desire to actually do something. That big something was to find ways to bring me up there financially more than once a year. Once that was done, I could help them there then when they came to Nashville, I could help drive their careers here.

Unfortunately, I am not a charity or "not for profit". I have to be paid. That is part of having the "drive not just the dream. That is putting your money where your mouth is and doing it in a focused manner.

In the case of all of them, they had members who had a little more drive than others. Those took the meetings to the next plataeu and met on their own. I helped guide those as well.

The Orange County group of 45 regular members, formed the "Breakout group." This was five guys and five girls, who met every two weeks.They formed a dummy publishing company.they elected a president and then each week had an assignement. They wrote to paintings, current artists, book titles, wrote songs for each other by doing research on the styles of songs they wrote,etc.

Each week brought them together first for critiques.Which were brutal. I wrote quite a few of the "assignments and know how hard they were. They gave each other grades and wrote private notes on lyric sheets. They used an egg timer to limit how long the discussion could go. Once the timer dinged at 5 minutes,the next song rolled into play. I do this in all the groups. If you have similar comments on each sheet, with people saying the same things, you look at that. If it is random comments, you go with your gut.

At the end of each night, the best song got this trophy, a really dumb pelican with a clock in it's belly. It was stupid but you got to wanting the bird. I think I won it twice on songs I wrote but they never let me bring it back to Nashville. damn it. Those Californians. LOL! They had to bring it back the next session.

After two years of doing this, (and they had about 30 other people wanting in but they had to limit space but did show others how to do it. No one did.) they started the quarter 16 weeks, by throwing in $100 each. At the end of the period the top two writers with the most consistant grades, got $600 each to pay for a demo.Which I produced here.

I had similar but not as intense things going on in Cincinatti Ohio, and Green Bay Wisconsin. Out of the Green Bay group came Julie Moriva, who is primary writer and big sister and adviser to Steel Magnolia, the fastest rising duo in the history of country music. Julie got a publishing deal with Taylor Swift's company.

Out of those three groups we formed the OCC writing group.Which featured six members of each group. 18 people in all. They are represented by Sharp Objects Music in the most inexpensive songplugging arrangement in America. They come in once a year (three weeks ago) to have a writing conference weekend, meet with hit writers, publishers and artists, (this year was Jamie Johnson) and pitch songs.

The Kalamazoo group has three coordinators and two of them are shall we say, self motivated. It is very much about them, and while they do try to help,in my opinion they don't quite do as much as they need to. You have to give whether it helps you or not.

That is Rene Mauve.A Mexican artist,with a tremendously well known Tex Mex Tejano band, Los Bandits, really wanted to tap into the American writing market.That is what he wants to do.Rene always found the money to get me there.He put me up in his house. He made sure I had private appointments.

One of those people was Frankie Ballard.A Blues guitar player, he just wanted to "ride on a bus" and play guitar. But he had no writing chops. After working with me for six months, writing songs, meeting hit writers, Walt Aldrich got him signed to Sony Music who got him a record deal with Warner Brothers. He is on the road now. Sixteen of the songs I have written with him are at Sony. Three of those feature Rene, who now sees the president of the company each time he comes to Nashville and plays songs.And those songs most of the time have me on them.

Two weeks ago he brought Shelagh Brown,a young very attractive great singer, who is a member of the Chili Peppers, Rene's version of the breakout group. They get together once a week to write.There are six of them. With ten wanting to get in. You have to be accepted and prove yourself first.

Shelagh so impressed Troy Tomilinson the head of Sony, he is starting to put her in some sessions and do the same thing he did with Frankie. She could be the next big thing out of Kazoo.

The point is that it takes going "beyond" the NSAI meetings, or the occassional trip to Nashville.It takes helping others.Constantly working on your craft. Always meeting and being out there. Always put yourself in proximaty of being in position of doing something.

Pretty much every hit writer and producer in this town are doing some version of this.And through that is where the next Taylor Swift's, Justin Bieber, or Jeffery Steel and Craig Wiseman come from.

This is about constant work and building relationships. Face to face and never ending. Both in your own areas and in a music center. The problem I have with all these Mail in services, pitch companies, film libraries, etc. is that they don't do that. They are competing with that. And the people who do those kinds of things with that kind of dedication, are the ones who write the more in the pocket songs, the ones who meet the future stars on their way up. They know the quality of the demos needed and the face time to get known.

The pitch services represent demos and songs that are often not as good, as well represented and have no personal relationships. Without those, there is nothing. Period, nada, nothing. And that is the element that everyone else is missing.

I don't.

MAB