By John Carlson—
In an apparent bid to create more country songs, there was a Facebook meme recently asking people to write lyrics about a pizza parlor that turns into a tobacco shop and then a Mexican restaurant.
So I gave it a shot.
It went: “I was chewin’ on a stuffed crust, that became a hunk of chaw, now I’m suckin’ down burritos, while I’m hiding from the law …” You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but it’s been nearly three weeks, and nobody from Nashville has phoned me with a lucrative songwriting contract yet.
Writing good songs is way harder than it looks.
Of course, I’ve long suspected this is so. Many years ago when I was with The Muncie Evening Press, word came that country superstar Chet Atkins was appearing at Emens Auditorium one Saturday night. By coincidence, back then I wrote a newspaper column published on Saturday afternoons. Seeing this fortuitous bit of karma as my big break, I got to work penning a guaranteed country mega-hit. Seventeen endless minutes later it was finally finished. The song was about how there’s no cure for a broken heart, complete with three verses, a chorus and the catchy title, “I’d Like My Bleeding Heart To Mend (But You Keep Pickin’ At The Scab).”
These days I can only remember part of the last verse.
“Now they’ve got a cure for rabies, and they’re even growing babies, in a test tube down in County General’s lab … blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah … why oh why must you keep pickin’ at the scab?”
Pure class, huh?
Sent to review the concert that night, I made sure my hair was neatly combed and my pants zipped all the way up. There was a ninety percent chance, I figured, that at some point Chet would stop his show, hold up a copy of that day’s newspaper and say, “I’d just like to read you folks something that has renewed my faith in humanity …”
Then with Chet clapping his hands raw, I’d mosey up on stage with an, “Aw sucks, it weren’t hardly nuthin’” look on my face. But inside, I’d be wondering if there was enough room on my MasterCard to charge a pair of cowboy boots and a ten-gallon Stetson to wear the following week on the Grand Ole Opry.
When that didn’t happen, nobody was more shocked than I.
Of course, even if I’d gotten on, I had to admit my voice wasn’t the best.
Ask anybody who’s ever sat near me in church. When it comes to singing hymns, I sound like cats in heat. But I also know that many of my singer/songwriter heroes sound pretty lame, too. I love Bob Dylan, but does anybody who listens to him close their eyes and sigh, “Awww, that’s beautiful man”? Naaah. Tom Waits? Same story. Van Morrison? Much as I admire him, some of his songs sound like he needs his jockstrap loosened. Even Bruce Springsteen will never be mistaken for Andy Williams. Same goes for Bob Seeger, Steve Earle …
And yet, they and others come up with wondrous music.
While it beats me if my editor at the Muncie Journal, Mike Rhodes, sings, he has long been a composer of cool electronic keyboard tunes. Will he ever make millions writing them? My experience has shown that’s a long shot, but all a guy can do is keep swinging for the fences.
It’s also been my experience that female singer/songwriters have more finely honed vocal chops than males.
Take Tiara Thomas.
She played for Nancy and me in our living room over on University Avenue once after we hosted a class cookout. Nancy was a telecommunications professor then, and Tiara was her student – a beautiful, engaging, friendly young lady whose talent radiated like sunshine. I don’t remember her song, but it was a great one she’d written herself. Earlier this year, when Tiara won both a Grammy award and an Oscar for music she had collaborated on writing, Nancy and I whooped it up with a fervor that didn’t seem dignified for a couple of wheezing geezers.
Then there’s my favorite singer/songwriter, my friend Jennie DeVoe. An extraordinary product of our fair city, she’s a fabulous vocalist and songwriter whose albums are loaded with her original compositions.
After graduating from Ball State, Jennie was working as a secretary for an Indy commercial-recording studio tasked with cutting some very cool musical ads for no less a client than Meijer’s “supercenters.” Filling in on demos until the studio could hire a professional singer to record the final product, Jennie so impressed the chain’s bigwigs they said, “Heck, let’s hire her to sing them!”
Along about then, looking for a pencil, her boss at the studio rifled through Jennie’s desk to find notebook after notebook of songs she had written during coffee breaks and such. Her trove would come to include ones she later sold to popular network television shows. Plus, her song “How I Feel” won her Billboard Magazine’s World Song Contest for Pop Songs, while “Red Hot Sun” won her a John Lennon Foundation songwriting contest. Those were just a couple inspiring stories about her that I learned while writing the book “Jennie DeVoe On The Record: Life, Music & Elvis Dust.”
In short, Jennie has maintained a fulfilling career as an independent artist, mainly based on writing her songs and singing the same. Hundreds more are as yet unrecorded, some undoubtedly awaiting her next trip to Bristol, England, where she records her music with hotshot producer John Parish.
Meanwhile, I’ve got two snatches of music to my credit. One is about sucking down burritos and one is about picking scabs.
At this point, the singer/songwriter gig for me looks pretty iffy.
John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.
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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three. John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.
