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The Art of Songwriting: Panel V
Dissecting the craft with a panel of experts.
By: Gina Kay Singerhouse
Jack Rosenquist
It is an early summer morning here in the Northwoods. The night sky gives way to the light of a clear blue morning as the sun begins to rise over the eastern horizon. The warm golden rays of the sun reflects off of the cool wet morning dew that graces the freshly cut blades of grass. Thus begins a new day—filled with hope.
If you are up at this time of the morning and are able to watch the magic that surrounds during this early time; you will be graced with a song that begins just before the dawn. Within the darkness that covers the early morning, a silent countdown begins. It is not a countdown to the beginning of the new day. No, it’s the silent launch that gives birth to a whole new song. For each morning begins with a new symphony, provided by the wildlife of the Northwoods.
It is the robins, Wisconsin’s state bird, that instigates this symphony. It is as if they are the conductors and facilitators of the orchestra. High upon the roof tops and trees they begin. One does not have to wait long to hear the blue jays joining in. Amongst this choir we can hear gold finches, cardinals, orioles, wrens and grosbeaks to name a few. If you listen closely you will hear the gentle but powerful sound of the fluttering wings of the hummingbird as it whizzes by.
Each morning this symphony plays a new song. It is a song that very few humans will take the time to listen. This song demands no words or lyrics, for in its pure elegance words can not compete. This is a song that we honor each and every day, here in the Northwoods...
Each year we, at Strictly Country, listen to thousands of songs. We are always looking for that one particular song that will touch your heart as it enters into your soul. The song can be a heartfelt ballad that may bring tears to your eyes or it can be an exhilarating melody that encourages you to stand up and dance. Either way, it touches you in such a manner that begs you to listen to it over and over again.
Too frequently, we are entertained by albums filled with songs with the same melodies. As the years progress, we find that majority of the songs released by various entertainers often contain duplicate and identical melodies. It's these duplicate melodies mixed with substandard lyrics that have prompted us to turn to the experts on the process of songwriting. Just a year ago, we started this extended article as we explored The Art of Songwriting.
So to help us all understand the songwriting process we thought that we would open up this discussion to the professionals. I put the call out to some of our friends who happen to be entertainers, songwriters and teachers of songwriting to come together to help us understand and address these issues. In each issue of Strictly Country, we will continue to address another concern about songwriting and we will discuss each of these with our panel of professionals. Let us introduce you to our panel of professionals...
The first to join our panel is Mark 'Brink' Brinkman. Brink is one of the most highly sought after songwriters in Bluegrass, Country and Gospel genres. His songs have been recorded by some of the most notable entertainers including Larry Sparks, Grasstowne, Don Rigsby, Lou Reid & Carolina, Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road and Dave Adkins. He has won various awards including six Spirit Awards. Many of his songs have earned positions in Strictly Country’s list of Top Songs of the year, while earning nominations for the Spirit Award’s Song of The Year. Today, he continues to write songs and is also a songwriting instructor.
Our next expert is Judy Rodman. Judy hit the country music scene with her 1986 hit song "Until I Met You." Throughout her vocal career, she has sung background vocals for some of country music's most notorious entertainers like Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette. Prior to the release of her third album, her record label folded. Instead of being in the spotlight of the music industry, Rodman focused on the behind the scenes portion. She has earned a wide variety of awards including the 2016 Spirit Award - President Choice Award for Best Country Album for her album Here We Are, recorded with her husband John Rodman. Today, she is an award winning vocal coach, recording artist, stage and television performer, public speaker, author, multi-genre hit songwriter, studio producer and vocal consultant.
Joining our panel next is Rick Stanley. Rick is the second cousin of the infamous Stanley Brothers, Carter and Ralph Stanley. Growing up Rick spent many hours with his father, Carter and Ralph singing and enjoying time well spent through music. By the age of fifteen, Rick penned the very famous Bluegrass song "Home In The Mountains." The song was originally recorded by Ralph Stanley, however, it was recorded by many other great Bluegrass artists and even earned Rick a Grammy nomination. In the 1990's he held a major publishing deal with Maypop Music and enjoyed touring with Stonewall Jackson. Today, Rick tours with his wife Donna Ulisse as a member of The Poor Mountain Boys. He also continues to write songs and is an instructor for Donna's Songwriting Escape workshops.
Our final professional to join our panel is Donna Ulisse. Donna first emerged onto the music scene in the 1980's as a demo singer and background vocalist in Country music. In 1991, she released her debut album Trouble At The Door. Since then she has migrated over to Bluegrass and recorded nine more albums. Donna is another very highly sought after songwriter in Bluegrass. She has earned many numerous award nominations and was named Songwriter of The Year by the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) in 2016. In January 2016 she earned The Spirit Award's coveted President's Choice Award for Best Bluegrass Album for Hard Cry Moon. Her songs have been recorded by a variety of artists. In 2014, Donna wrote her first book, The Songwriter In Me, to earn great reviews. Today, she continues to demo, write songs and tour with her band The Poor Mountain Boys. She also is the owner and teacher of Songwriting Escape, a touring songwriting workshop.
Of course I have to add Jack and I to this panel as well. Jack is my co-host of Strictly Country's Friday night radio show Around The Campfire. Jack served in the United States Army, is a fan and a great aficionado of Rock, Country and Bluegrass music. As for myself, for over twenty-four years I have been the owner, operator and Editor in chief of Strictly Country magazine.
Now that you know our panel of experts, let's continue with the the subject of the art of songwriting. The next question we asked our panel was this - We have heard so many albums where it sounds like one long and endless song, due to the same baseline melody. What are you feelings, as a songwriter, about albums that contain the same baseline melodies throughout the entire album?
“Well that’s arrangement…” tells Rick Stanley. “That might not be the song—or the way the songwriter wrote the song. That could have been something the producer had arranged for that song…”
“When we put an album together, we really go after diversity.” interrupts Donna Ulisse. “We want all the songs to stand on their own. We make a conscious effort to go… I want this feeling of a little bit of a sloping, roller coaster riding kind of thing. I want the listener to be up and then kind of coming down and then they—they’re way down in the valley and I want to bring them back up again. So I’m always... I’m making a conscious decision to do that all the time, when selecting an album. So, maybe what happened is that the person didn’t put that kind of thought into maybe what the listener is going to experience.”
Experience. Donna hits the nail right on the head. Listening to music is an experience for all of us music lovers.
“With AC DC, they went real simple so everything sounds the same.” shares Jack. “Then you have Led Zeppelin, everything stands on its own. Nothing sounds the same.”
If you take a look back into some of the greatest country music albums, you will find that entertainers like Barbara Mandrell, Johnny Cash and even Reba McEntire (in her earlier years) really took into consideration the roller coaster experience with the songs contained on their albums.
“I want that listener, the one who’s putting their hard earn dollars down, I want them to have a great experience.” tells Donna. “So maybe the other artists didn’t put a lot of thought into diversity…”
Diversity is something that is truly lacking in today’s music.
“There are very few bands who can write all their own songs for an entire album.” shares Brink. “There’s a few. Blue Highway has done it consistently, but they have five really good songwriters in the band. There are very, very few—maybe you can count them on about three or four fingers that can do that. But you have so many artists today that want to write all their own songs and put thirteen of their own songs on an album and the same two people write all of them. Every songwriter has a finger print! I don’t care—if I put an album together I’d be really careful because I can come up with thirteen songs that sound very similar. That have some of the same licks in it, the same feel...and if you do that on an album, every song is going to sound like the next one. I think that’s what’s happening because the labels don’t want to pay the royalties to outside songwriters.”
Does it really come down to money? We have heard that some record labels will state in the contract that if the entertainer writes a song they won’t have to pay the song royalties for the first two thousand or so copies. The interesting part of this is the fact that it is the record labels who complain that the industry is losing money. Could they be the ones who are to blame? Is this why we are hearing some of the worst music to come out of Nashville?
Even some of the best singer / songwriters will avoid creating an entire album filled with their own penned songs.
“Led Zeppelin was known for using other people’s material and making it their own.” shares Jack. “They would borrow other people’s licks and change them around to make them their own. Bob Dylan was his own. But he was known for giving away songs that he couldn’t use. He gave Jimmy Hendrix ‘All Along The Watchtower’ and Hendrix made it a hit!”
“Boring!” laughs Judy Rodman. “Here’s what I do about it...and I do it myself when I feel like I’m writing the same song...get a co-writer and take vocal lessons, because then you can sing different melodies. I work with a lot of singer / songwriters and a lot of just songwriters for that very reason. The songwriters need to sometimes play their songs out, they need to write good melodies and have more ability to write different kinds of melodies. And they need to demo their song or direct somebody else. Well if you can’t sing for them what you want them to sing, you’re in trouble. So there’s lots of reasons to have a better voice for a songwriter. There’s nothing like a songwriter singing their own thing…”
Could it be that simple? Perhaps. We do come across many albums in which the songs contained are well written by the songwriter, however as a singer they lack the ability to mix their vocals with the moods of the song that they wrote. Case in point Ray Scott and his album Guitar For Sale. On this album, Ray co-wrote each of the eleven songs with various songwriters. Many of the songs on the album are finely-calibrated songs. Nonetheless, Ray lacks the vocal capability to bring any of these songs to the forefront of the listener’s attention as he is unable to connect his vocals with the heart and soul of the song.
In 2015, Kenny Chesney released his album The Big Revival. The album contained eleven songs. We all know that Kenny is a talented songwriter and can belt out a great melody. However this album sounded like one long entire song with a few breaks, as none of the melodies differentiated from the next. Was this Kenny’s choice or someone else's?
During an interview with author Mark Rickert, Mark had mentioned that in his Grandfather’s day—Merle Kilgore—there wasn’t a recipe for writing a song. They just wrote the song in hope that it got recognition. In other words the songwriters of yesterday, and it doesn’t matter which genre that we go back into, were just trying to write music in any which way they knew how. It was a guessing game back then.
Where as today, songwriters write songs using an specific equation of commercialism. Therefore, each of the songs sound like the previous song. We can also look at the musicians. Many of today’s entertainers refuse to take the appropriate time to learn the intricacies of their instruments and or crafts. Where as veteran entertainers like Steve Wariner, Willie Nelson and Eddie Van Halen spent hours learning how to hone their craft. More so, these legendary entertainers knew how to use their imagination.
Imagination, it can become magical if you let it. In the early morning the symphony provided by birds, bees, frogs and trees plays on while humans sleep. It is a gentle like concert that is performed throughout the day, if you take the time to listen.
It has taken Mother Nature centuries to create such a finely-calibrated, sophisticated, and highly-listenable song. It is a symphonic song that is pure elegance. A new song is written each morning and each morning it becomes a timeless classic as it fades amongst the noise called human nature. Perhaps it is time to return to that simplicity we once knew in music...
Tune in next time as we explore more into the Art of Songwriting.
(This article was printed in the July / August 2017 issue of Strictly Country Magazine.)
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