First Thoughts

Whether or not you believe it, every morning we wake up each of you has as good a chance of writing a great song as I or anyone else who is in attendance here or walking around this planet calling themselves a songwriter. If you don’t believe that you need to begin to believe that. It is a profound part of the attitude essential to persevere in this dreamy business. 25 years ago, when I was in my early 20’s, I had but one motivating mantra: I was going to be a songwriter. It was a piercing sensation. It drove me and haunted me and would not let me rest. It pushed me to the point of panic a few times. The thought of settling for anything else was terror to me then. If I had been given any natural gifts or inclinations toward the craft they were heightened and sharpened by this one crazy notion: I was going to be a songwriter. Perhaps some of you are being chased by that demon. Perhaps that demon has chased some of you here. I hope so.

I nor anyone one can teach you how to seduce that demon. I can’t lead you to it or make it materialize before you; if I could that demon would no longer exist because I would have killed it; I would have grabbed it by the throat and said, “Let me alone you annoying son-of-a-bitch because my family thinks I’m nuts since you insisted that I quit college and now I never have any money and all I can do is drive a truck and use a hammer so the father of the girl I want to marry thinks I’m a no-count and I’m sick as hell of living in New York City but, I don’t want to move to Nashville and I’m no good at this anyway you bastard!” But alas, I was never able to find that demon. He or she or it is still roaming around out there waiting to prey on another innocent victim. It may be one of you.

I greatly admire each of you for coming to this event. There is an earnestness that must certainly accompany you here. I have thought about something for many years. I have discussed it with many great songwriters; argued over it, disagreed and walked away. Perhaps there is no ultimate answer. In fact, it may not be very important but, at this very moment, as you have been instructed to place yourselves in my uncertain presence for the next 60 minutes, you should know that I hold to the firm premise that, for the most part, songwriting is a difficult, if not impossible craft to teach. Creativity is not mine to impart. Great instincts resist documentation. A gift for irony is tough to cultivate. You cannot be exercised into acquiring an old soul. That’s where I begin and I guess we’ll go from there. We’ll go from there because I admire each of you for coming to this event and if there’s anything at all that I can dredge up from the little bit of experience I’ve had over these years that holds any meaning for any of you it would be a great privilege for me to share it. And, I am here to learn from you but, I didn’t have to pay the fee.

Second Thoughts

Unless you were listening to country radio in the 1980’s and paying close attention to the writers as well as the performers there is no reason in the world that any of you should know who I am or the little I have accomplished. As they say, I have worn a number of hats in Nashville since I moved here in January of 1978. The first hat I wore was that of a waiter in an Italian restaurant. It was a red and floppy hat. One busy Friday night in the kitchen of that establishment an old, alcoholic waiter picked up my order by mistake and I didn’t really give a shit but the assistant cook who had just gotten out of prison after 15 years hated that poor bastard and pulled a knife on him so I took off that humiliating hat and left the scene for good. A week later I was wearing a hard hat on a construction site and continued to wear that hat for about a year until they introduced these pneumatic nail-drivers one afternoon and I drove a 16-penny nail through a 2x4 and right into the tip of my left thumb. That hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and 3 weeks later, during the 1980 Super Bowl, I handed my one-month old daughter to my wife and drove myself to Vanderbilt Hospital where I sat in the emergency room for 3 hours while the lead poisoning was seeping through my veins on the way to my heart. I woke up in the men’s ward the next day where I stayed for 2 weeks and 3 of my roomies died in there during my recuperation.

I picked up my hard hat again and my hammer (a real one, that is) and helped a guy remodel an old house on Music Row for a few folks who were starting a publishing company and in-house recording studio. Those folks were Jim and David Malloy, Even Stevens and Eddie Rabbitt. I was 28 years old and had two very young children, a sweet and supportive wife who was teaching school, a 1,200 square foot house and a red, Ford Granada. I needed the work so badly that I never let on I was a songwriter in fear they would run me out of there worried I would be bugging them everyday to listen to my bullshit little songs. A couple months into the job I had booked an appointment to play a few of those songs for a young songplugger at Peer Music Company over my lunch break so, there in the kitchen next to my Thermos of coffee and a couple bologna sandwiches was my little reel-to-reel tape of 3 guitar vocal demos I had recorded for 15 bucks and while I was out putting shingles on the garage the receptionist, a dear young woman named Keni Wehrman, unbeknownst to me, took my tape, listened to it, played it for Jim Malloy, then Even Stevens, then called David Malloy in LA and played it to him over the phone and when I came down for lunch Jim said, “Hey Thom, come back here in my office a minute...I wanna ask you something,” and that’s when I got my first songwriter’s hat to wear. Not only did I get the hat I also got $150/week and a free studio any hour of the day or night, a refrigerator full of cold beer and an environment where all they wanted me to do was write songs...by myself.

The other hats I’ve worn in this business, so far, have not been nearly as interesting. I made a few shitty records and a couple good ones, I think. In the process of making those records and going on the road to promote them I even wore a cowboy hat from time to time which, to me, was more humiliating than the red, floppy one at the Italian restaurant because a steelworker’s kid from PA in a cowboy hat is pretty much a total fraud whereas that same kid in a red, floppy hat can be seen all over eastern PA tossing pizza dough into the air now that all the steel mills are closed. I worked for RCA Records for almost 7 years and that was, emotionally at least, akin to taking a barbed treble hook out of my heart. The only thing that has ever really held meaning for me was the song; the great song in the process of becoming; the great idea when you first have it; the great song when you stay out of its way and you allow it to become itself. It’s always handy when someone wants to sing it and record it and put it out and run it up the charts and send you a check for it but, the best part is the creating. That’s really the only thing I’ve loved about this business; that and some sweet, kindred spirits with whom I’ve had the pleasure of traveling this harsh and narrow way.

Great Songwriters

The King James Version of the Bible is full of rich imagery and flowery language that is often difficult to interpret. For instance, a passage from the Gospel of Matthew reads: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." Simply translated it means that heaven will be full of songwriters. A rough calculation would lead to the conclusion that fewer than 10% of those people who have determined to call themselves songwriters will succeed in earning even a modest living from their work in that field. On the other hand, a chosen few will be rewarded handsomely for their pursuits. The gulf that separates these two groups is full of tens of thousands of songs that are too long, too short, too country, too pop, too complicated, too ordinary, too hard to sing, too much like another song, not quite right, too good, too sad, indistinct, unnecessary, ill-conceived and probably lost forever. And, back to the scriptures for one last tortured image: Why is it then that … "many be called, but few chosen?" Well, I think there are three reasons: Timing, talent and tenacity. The talent, however, is the key.

Great songwriters, I believe, have remarkable gifts. Clearly there is a fundamental understanding of and instinct for melody and harmony, rhythm, chord progression and other musical components that fit together to create the popular song. And, although I will say little more about these musical components, I suspect that most folks are initially drawn into a song because of its melody or beat or the instrumentation in which it was set or because of a particularly stunning vocal performance. Song structure, that is the verse, the channel, the bridge, the chorus, etc. is easily studied and learned. For me it is in the story-telling that the cream rises to the top. Great songwriters look at the world through two eyes: One is the eye of a prophet, one is the eye of a child. They listen to the world with two ears: One is the ear of a poet, one is the ear of a spy. Great songwriters seem to be, at the same time, standing right in the middle of everything and yet somehow just outside. They are preoccupied with the subtle twists and turns of language. They thrive on irony, consider pathos their own, fertile field, elevate the simple to the sublime, depend a great deal on the word blue and regret that there are fewer than a half-dozen pure rhymes for love. The work itself is tedious requiring equal amounts of spontaneity and patience. I would call it something like mystical labor. Most writers will tell you that they had very little to do with the best songs that they produced other than having the wisdom to stay out of their way. Then again, they’ll also tell you that you’ve never heard the best songs they’ve ever written because they haven’t been recorded and likely will never be. Great writers write 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. Others write only when they are inspired. Some succeed because they are diligent craftsmen. Others have such deep resources that great songs seem to just roll out of them. They draw from their own experiences, reflect on the experiences of others and they also make shit up. They have earned money from masterpieces and they have earned money from tripe. They are not messengers, they are not ministers, they are not counselors; they are songwriters. And, great songwriters, I believe, have remarkable gifts.

Harlan Howard, Bob McDill, Dave Loggins, Hugh Prestwood, Tony Arata, Don Schlitz, Bobby Braddock, Dennis Linde, Gary Burr…these are not the best songwriters in Nashville; they are the best in the world. I use their names for several reasons. In the 24 years that I have walked the streets of Music Row these gentlemen have been the most consistent, most diligent, most commercial, most profound, most enduring, most studied, most appreciated and most successful of them all. There are more, many more but, these men have climbed the mountain, they have found their own voices and those voices are distinct. And, guess how they found their own voices? They worked alone. Somehow the collective wisdom of Music Row has determined that if we put two or three or even four songwriters together in a room the result will be a song that is two or three or four times better when, in reality, the creative process is diluted, the focus blurred and the result is an innocuous little ditty that has all the right parts and then some unrecognizable 24 year old kid from Oklahoma will record it, a promotion team will run it up the charts, someone, somewhere will hear it on their car radio and think to themselves, "That sounds just like the last song they played," and then the song will win a BMI Award, the songwriters and publishers will make money and so the publishers will encourage the writers to write more of these ditties, the promotion team will urge the A&R department to get the kid from Oklahoma to record more of these kinds of songs because they can run them up the charts, the guy in the car will start listening to the Top 40 station because, "He just can’t stand this shit anymore," the head of the sales department will tell the label head, "That kid from Oklahoma may be having hits but, he’s not selling records," the kid will be dropped, staffers at the label will be let go, the songwriters’ option will not be picked up, stand-up comedians will make jokes about country music and, eventually, we will all die. This, in my opinion, is the unnecessary result of co-writing.

Finally, let me say this about Garth Brooks. There is much spoken and written about his remarkable accomplishments but, our opinions of him, positive or otherwise, are irrelevant. The people have voted. He has reached them. He did it with shrewd, global marketing, with an astonishingly exciting live show and with a very vital, world-wide partnership with his record label. When it is all counted up, factored out, studied and analyzed, may it be remembered that he also did this:

"And now I’m glad I didn’t know
the way it all would end
the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could’ve missed the pain
but, I’d have had to miss The Dance."

Of all the wonderful opportunities that have been afforded me in this town, in this business, it fills me with the greatest joy and satisfaction to be able to say that I am a songwriter.

----from Thom's closing remarks NSAI songcamp 102, 2001.

© 2001 Thom Schyler

"Christmas Midnight"

"The Closed Door"