JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Musician Message Forum Nashville song development service / work with any budget

Kevin, I've been checking out your site off and on for the past couple of years.
It's always seemed pretty upfront to me.
I'd be pleased to take you up on your kind full-demo offer in the near future.

(And congratulations on your new daughter. )

Donna

Hi, Kevin and welcome to JPF. Congratulations on the new arrival!

I'm very glad to see you respond. I was afraid that your first post was just a hit-and-run, and I'm glad I was wrong.

Oh yeah, we can never have too many Kevins around here!

Kevin,

Thanks for responding. Congrats on the baby girl! Good work on your site there, I hope you get a lot of demos. Please keep in touch here, we always want good info and experienced perspectives.

Mike

This is not directed at Kevin, because it sounds like he's a standup kinda guy, but I have one simple rule in these situations.


If someone approaches me with a deal, especially one that is unsolicited, that to me is a huge red flag and I'm likely to simply refuse immediately. I don't even want to hear about it.


So any contact from someone purporting to offer demo services, song plugging services, or any kind of service etc. for a fee, gets dismissed out of hand. It may or may not be a scam, but whatever it is, I'm not wasting my time or money on unsolicited offers.


I hang up on things like "you won a free cruise, trip, etc, and I've laughed at my share of 419 (the "Nigerian Letter") scams.


When I'm ready to buy, then I'll do the research to make sure I can make the best decision I can for myself.

Hey John which Kevin are you referring to? .....LOL

PS wanna give me your bank details and I will put a $1000 dollar cheque in it?

Thank you kindly, my fellow Kevin! I'm hoping to develop some good relations here. Blessings..

Thanks Big Jim for the kind words. I like to consider myself as one of the "straight up guys".
Blessings and good luck to you.

Thank you kindly Donna. It would be a pleasure to serve you. Please visit my personal site sometime: www.kevinwicker.com
Sending love from Nashville.

Thanks Kevin. A pleasure to meet you. Us Kevin's have got to stick together!

Any way I can be of service to you Mike, my pleasure. Best of luck to you.

Hi Kevin W.,
Nice to meet you...
Michelle

Hello guys,

This thread had appeaered during my absence and I did want to tell all of you that I do indeed know Kevin and he is a stand up guy. I have talked to him about making sure he doesn't come off too "Here is my service" oriented. I told him to let everyone get to know him and things would be fine.

He has been known in Nashville for sometimes and has done a lot of work with people here. I consider him a friend and very professional.

MAB

Hi Kevin, Nice to meet you and welcome to JPF!

Congratulations on your baby daughter.

MAB putting in his word for you will do wonders to put the forum folks to rest concerning you.

I am not sure what I'm ready for myself in the demo area, but am always curious to have honest opinion re: my vocal and/or marketing potential as an artist and singer/songwriter.
My vocal style is shifting from classically trained to branching out into rock, jazz, blues, etc.

http://www.reverbnation.com/lindaofficial

Do you ever need to hire an outside female vocalist?
My little bitty pipe-dream of the moment is "if only I could find a studio where I could trade vocals for song demos."

Thanks for listening, welcome, and you should like it here as we get to know you and vice versa!

Linda

BTW if you're ever in touch with Charlie Pride, could you ask him if he remembers singing with my friend Janey Berg back in the day? She's been married 44 years, I don't know her maiden name or whether she was single/married when she sang backup.

I always thought that was the coolest story though - she remembers him with fondness as a really great guy. (And I always presumed so, too)

have a nice day - hope the sleepless nights are slowing down a bit - it does seem like life slows down to molasses speed those 1st three months..... and I figured it's from being awake way more of the 24 than we're used to!!

Linda

That's a good one Linda,

"Hey Mr. Pride, do you remember singing with my friend about 40 years ago? Her name was Janey, but I don't know what her last name was in those days. Surely you remember her. She was the one who was real good. LOL!

These are the kinds of people that come up to me and say "Hey play that song that I LOVE! It's my FAVORITE SONG!!!!! AND YOU KNOW WHICH ONE IT IS!!!! I saw you do it ten years ago in some bar but I don't remember where that was and I don't remember what the name of the song is but it has something about "love" in it. You KNOW!!!! Do the good one!!"

I love those.

How's the finger?

MAB

he question I have is--"Is it necessaty to have a demo like Kevin produces to get a song sold?"
Tim

Tim,
Trust me,I am by no means an authority on the subject,but I dont believe that most people want to "sell" their songs..Think about it...If you would just 'Sell" your songs then how would you ever receive royalties and such..When you have time you should read through some of the older posts on the subject here at JPFs..There is alot of information here at this place.I learn alot from just reading the articles on the forums here...As far as needing a song demo?I am sure there are many articles here also that explain why you should have a quality demo.You have a decent demo made so that you can pitch your music to publishers(or artists)who may be interested in your song.I have been told that sometimes a simple guitar/vocal demo will work,but the consensus seems to be, the better your demo,the better your chances of finding a publisher or getting a cut.As I said,I am definitely not the person to answer these questions for you,but there are many people here who can and who definitely know what they are talking about....Good luck...and nice to "meet you"!!
Michelle

Tim,

Michelle has some good advice here. As someone who deals with this every single day professionally I think I can answer this pretty well.

I can give you a test.

Go anywhere that you can randomly listen to a LOT of songs.
Go to web sites, places like this with hundreds of demos and songs. Make sure they are not the songs that are on the radio.

Give yourself thirty minutes to one hour.

Listen to as many verses and choruses as you can in that hour.

Tell me what you think about demo quality.

The basic facts are that any one year there are around
250,000-1 million songs that get pitched around a town like Nashville. And most of those are from known quantities.
Mulitply the friends of friends, mail in services, demo studios, basic scam artists, etc. and you have 10 times that.

The Internet as one Billion songs a month on the internet with 30 million artists on You Tube, MySpace, and various web sites.

The library of Congress is backed up three years processing copyright forms.

What do you think?

We now have higher quality on our cell phones and I pods than most people had on those giant "state of the art" stereos most people grew up with or had in their cars.

So if you are a publisher, you listen to about 300 songs every three days. Those are songs in your catalogue, songs from your writers that you pay,songs from friends of friends, and just a ton of things. All to get about 20 or 30 spaces per week.

Artists are writing most of their own material now. Hit writer and artists Darius Rucker, a hit artist with Hootie and Blowfish ANd now a major country act, wrote 72 songs for his current CD. He is a tried artist and writer being number one in TWO catagories. How many of those 72 songs is he supposed to move out of the way to make room for unknown songs with no demos?

Record companies listen to around 3000 songs a week. They have artists they are trying to promote and all the time listening to songs from everywhere. But there is only so much time and they have tons of other things to do namely promote the artists they already have.

So now what do you think?

Without a quality demo, you have less than a chance of being struck by lightning in a tornado in a submarine underwater three thousand miles away from the actual lightning storm.
Now you can say "Well there's still a chance' like Jim Carrey in "Dumb and Dumber" but to be honest, no there isn't.

It is always about upping the level of your odds. You have them all stacked against you to begin with. Let me ask you these questions. If you can answer them yes, you don't need a great demo:

Are You a known quantity who has known an artist for years.
The majority of artists record their songs or those of their friends,their producers, or the people who sign the checks they recieve.

What would you do?

Do you have a track record of dozens of hit songs that bring in enough money.

Jeffery Steel, the top writer in Nashville has around 200 cuts, about 70 top tens, 14 number ones over a 10 year period.
Jeffery even has top notch demos on all of his songs.

Do you have that many hits?


I believe if you really think about this and answer it honestly, you will know the answer.

In the past three years I have been working with two groups of artists that are currently on top of the charts in country music. Steel Magnolia and Frankie Ballard. I produced Frankie's first CD and had Megan,the singer of Steel Magnolia in the studio continuously singing demos and on things that I had written with and for her.

Everything that was pitched on them were fully produced. A record company or publishing company, when they start working with artists, first ask "What else you got?" They want to hear everything. And demos represent the artist when they are not there.

The last thing I would say is that about a year ago I was on the bus of country superstar Eddie Montgomery of Montgomery Gentry's bus. Eddie started playing me songs that were being pitched to him ANd songs he had currently written for himself.Every song sounded like a radio hit.They were HUGE demos. The songs were AMAZING. And this is just to present to his OWN label for HIS upcoming projects.


So yes. It is ABSOULTELY ESSENTIAL to have great demos to even get things HEARD.

Hope this answers your question.

MAB

Michelle and Mark-
Thank you for taking the time to answer-
Mark-the goal is to have our songs end up on a really famous persons cd--what are the steps to getting there?
Also-if the copyright office is backed up three years how can I protect my songs?
Thanks
Tim

Hey Marc-
Kevin called me yesterday morning-he reaLLY IS a great guy-
You just sold me on him and I'll tell him so when I talked to him again-
Thanks for all your help Mark
This place is awesome!!!
Tim

Tim,

Man, you know how to open up the proverbial can of worms. hard to know where to start. First of all glad you met Kevin. he is a good guy. In anything with demos, check out what other people do, check around, and go slow.

Since you are new here and just getting to know me, I will try to fill in a little about myself to save time. I have been in Nashville 22 years, the majority of that I was after the record deals, the big cuts, the publishing stuff, normal things. I had five major cuts, but no singles, opened a lot of concerts,became a bit of a known quantity and wrote with a lot of hit writers. But never kicked into high gear. I became the patron saint of the "almost there."

About ten years ago, NSAI and other people asked me to start teaching and mentoring and that has reinvigorated my life and career.

I tell you this because for all the talk of process, follow through, the "Nashville method". etc. I am really not that motivated by "getting songs to the really famous person"or however you want to phrase it. As in many things in life, like winning the lottery, there would be positives to it, mostly that I would charge more for my services than I do now. But in the overall perspective of life. there are many things that reward me just as much.

So no, I don't feel that the end all is getting it to that famous person. That might be a by product, but only one. and fame is very fleeting and the money is NEVER what you would think it would be. EVER.

What is important is touching people's lives. and in order to do that now, getting those quality demos, being a solid performer, networking and building fans and friends, using the gifts you have been fortunate to get is all part of that.

Protection of songs are a pretty difficult concept. With literally billions of songs out there it is nearly impossible to come up with a truely original idea. One of the most eye opening of my work with other writers, are taking them to tons of writers nights, and those ideas of theres that they think are SO UNIQUE, the ones they spent hundreds of dollars getting copyrights on, the ones that they swore WERE BIG HITS, are actually just very average and they hear them written by dozens of other writers over the course of a night.

So how do you protect yourself? Technically, due to the Copyright act of 1973, you are protected from the "moment the pen leaves the paper." If you post it on forums, have paperwork, demos, etc. You are actually recording your work. Today with the current technology, there are other ways to do it.

The reality is that most publishers never copyright songs until they are ready to be commerically released. My theory is that if you get known, write with a lot of people, and have a LOT of activity going on around you, that puts you in proximaty of people like publishers, who will do all of that legally and effectively.

But the other side of the reality is that proving a copyright infringement lawsuit is so hard to do there are very few that have ever reached the point of fruition. and the only people that make money are trial attorneys.
What happens is you start to have so many songs that if something comes out ahead of you, you go to other songs. YOu are not as tied to anyone thing and you don't put all your eggs in one basket.

But you have to make your own decisions. No one can tell you what to do. I try to get people to see the bigger picture, not waste time or money on things that are usually not that big a deal. But I lay out information. It is up to them how to use it.

Mine is one opinion. Get many more.

MAB

Well,
Kevin of the first part, ignore all those other Kevin's. Welcome aboard.
Yesterday I called five Publisher's in Nashville to see if any of them are accepting song material at present. They all required that you call first. Four of the phones were disconnected. Presumeably out of business. The other one was in a re-structuring and wasn't curerently accepting any songs.

I would guess that this is about the norm in Nashville.

I have finally gotten able to come up to Nashville and spend a few days. Barring any complications I am coming for the Songwriter's Festival the first weekend of June on Music Row. Maybe I'll see some of you there. Write a hit!

Around 8 years ago we had right around 3500 publishers. We now have around 300. About 25 get the majority of cuts.

8 years ago we had around 1400 staff writers. We now have about 315.

Still think downloading and "FREE" has not had an impact?

MAB

Humm,
3500 Publisher's in Nashville? I have heard a Publisher can live on one hit song. Kind of tells you how hard it is to write a good song. 300 Publisher's left? Sounds about right. Things are probably getting back to normal after all the wantabes have found out how hard it is to be in the music business.

A few years ago a businessman from Canada, I think, discovered Country Music. He had a Web Site and hundreds of Artists. By the time I found him he had decided the music business wasn't for him and he disappeared. Dang. Back to the Salt Mines.

I remember when the publisher's were cutting back on Staff Writer's. It is hard to write a hit song!

Ray,

Has been about 20 years since you could live on one song. With relatively little money in publishing any more, it is even harder.

One of the things I always noticed that was odd about the hit writers and publishers is that they never just had one business. they had dozens, both in the business and out. Can't tell you how many times a writer's session was interuppet when the writer had to go show a rental house or some real estate.

The reason is that the revenue streams never come from one thing. And when you spend the amount of money it takes to be in the business in the first place, and do that for the ten or so years until the big money kicks in, they are paying off loans, and getting out of debt.


The reason why record companies now are also cutting into an artists publishing, touring revenue, merchandising. It is also why you are finding more and more publishers in the artist development business instead of just publishing. If they can deliver an artist who writes, performs, records, etc. they are more likly to be able to recoup that investment.

MAB

LOL MAB! Yes well actually Janey sang with him for a really long time years I think - they stayed in touch for quite a while too as friends if I remember her telling me the story right, (it was a while back) so it's slightly better odds than the 1-song in the barrel of 10,000

---but gotta admire that fan that does that.... haha

So anyway - I'm not quite that dumb - it's a legit story --- she may know him better 'n Kevin does.

As to my finger it's getting better
Might be able to play piano again by next week or so.

wow-i had no clue
tim

Linda,

I am sure it is true. I just like to use you as a back drop for my own stories. LOL!

MAB

MAB:
It's indeed a pleasure to have you on this forum. For all the years I've been in Nashville, I seem to learn something new every time I read your posts.
In my book, you've already "made it". Your contribution to our community is priceless. God bless you.

Thanks Kevin.

Glad to see you around. Keep an eye out on those people in Hendersonville for me. They have a very shady look! LOL!

MAB

Big Jim, how can you say someone might not be better off with plastic surgery?

Michael Jackson

I couldn't get into either website.

Myrtle

I've heard Kevin's work, and from what I've heard, you get a quality production for a decent price. Can't ask for more than that.

I produce demos as well mostly fleshing out the song helping with lyrics arrangements etc. Don't make a lot of money, but I do enjoy hearing the finished product. I know a couple of people who have paid dearly for PRO demos with live PRO musicians. A Full Blown PRO demo at $200 is a deal.

yes indeed Rob a full blown Pro demo for 4200 is more than a bargain indeed

I say jump on it

Tom

I just wanted to chime in my two cents for what it's worth. I'm indirectly familiar with Kevin's work. He has done some wonderful demo's for a song writer I know by the name of Roy Harris, including one of a song Roy and I co wrote called "What Matters Most Of Al". Here is a link to Roy's Soundclick page. Roy writes some terrific lyrics but dose not write music. There are some great examples of Kevin's work here.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=555065

Tom W.