We are kicking off our ‘Songs Under The Stars‘ house concert series with a special night of acoustic songs and stories by Dobe Newton and Roger Corbett of The Bushwackers. ‘Songs Under The Stars’ will feature Dobe and Roger playing their distinctive Australian music, much of it based on the traditional working songs from the early 20th century and the seamlessly incorporated celtic instrumentals with great contemporary original songs.

Between sets, you can hear songs from Blue Mountains country-blues duo, ‘ The Smokin’ Willies’ who recorded their debut album’ Rollercoaster Life’ at The Valley Studio in 2011. Amanda O’Bryan, who has just finished recording her album of acoustic folk songs at The Valley will also make a special guest appearance.

Bring your friends and join us for a very special night of ‘Songs Under The Stars’ November 16th at 7.30pm

CLICK HERE for more information and bookings.

The Heartleys won the ‘Best Group or Duo’ award in the New Zealand National Country Music Awards. The Heartleys achieved success both in New Zealand and here in Australia with their debut, self titled album ‘The Heartleys’. The lastest album “Talk To Me’  looks set to break new ground for the girls, Kayla Martin and Taylor Cairns who both have recently moved to Australia to promote the new album.

Along with the big New Zealand win, The Heartleys ablum ‘Talk To Me’ has so far spent two weeks at #1 on NZ iTunes ahead of USA country music heavy weights Kenny Rodgers and Lady Antebellum. Their new film clip for the title track ‘Talk To Me’ is out soon and features the girls aka in retro style.
More about The Heartleys here>

Congratulations also goes too to New Zealand’s newcomer Jody Direen who received the Horizon Award in the New Zealand National Country Music Awards. Jody’s success  is driven off the back of her debut Valley Studio production, ‘Here We Go’. Later this year Jody will represent New Zealand in the Telstra Road to Tamworth event in Australia and will also compete in the Global Artists Awards in Nashville, USA  in between trips back and forth to Australia writing songs.  More about Jody Direen here>

We wish both The Heartleys and Jody Direen congratulations as both these albums are great representations of contemporary country music recordings produced here at the Valley Studio.

Going or Gold. Are you an music Olympian?

Well it’s been quite an interesting time in the world over the last little while. The Olympics have been taking my attention away from music and everyone else’s I guess. I do love watching sport and I often wonder what it is that is so addictive about sport on TV.

Certainly my lovely wife doesn’t share my passion, in fact she uses my Sydney Swans habit to have an afternoon nap. She crashes out after the first siren and wakes up to me singing “Cheer Cheer……….”

With sport I think it’s the immediacy and the unpredictability of the outcome. The twists and turns, the danger and the heartbreak and the win/lose outcome that keeps watching or playing sport so vital and alive for us.

After 40 years of music performing, I think The Bushwackers still have some of that edgy vibe when we are performing. I think we keep that dangerous ‘anything could happen’ feeling going thanks mainly to that crazy lead singer of mine with his suits and his on-stage conversation which could go anywhere. Actually I don’t think it takes very much imagination to keep the whole performance having the immediacy of conversation.

I have always believed that people come and see you for the music you’re playing but they also fall in love with you because of what you say to them in between the music. Or in some cases what you don’t say to them. Cheesy stage patter is never a good thing but tall tales from your actual life work very well, especially if you get good at it and make it funny and unpredictable. Audiences liked to be mildly shocked and surprised and they will respond by forming a strong bond with you.

The other thing that makes sport such a compelling thing to watch is that the athletes are so fantastic at what they do and that’s always a great thing to watch. Consider this: An olympian athlete starts out competing at school, gets good, gets to be the best in school, then district, region, state, national levels with all the training, injury and heartbreak of frequent failures. They might get to the olympic trials at home to try out for one or two spots in the team to go. THEN: off to the Olympics and compete in heats and then if they are amazing they make it through to a final. THEN: maybe they get a place, maybe even a first place and yoo-hoo the public thinks “great, another Gold Medal”.

I have a huge admiration for these people who work hard and are dedicated to their chosen talent. Let me ask you, “Are you working as hard as these people? Do you train as much as them, do you accept failure and quickly make the necessary changes to your regime to achieve success? Do you rise at 5am on a frosty winters day to sit down and practise your instrument, voice or songwriting skills? Probably not so much. I know I don’t, and yet don’t we expect ‘Olympian’ results from our work?

The truth is that the truly successful musicians and artists among us do work harder than the rest to achieve their goals. They invest their money, effort and their time in the thing they love to do and waddyaknow they achieve the results they want. The rest of us sit around and say “hah……….overnight success!!”

It was an inspiring time in London and the lesson of commitment and inspiration is there for us all to see and feel. By the way, try doing all of that with a physical or mental disability as the Paralympic team are about to do. Now there’s inspiration!!

Curiously, I had an Olympic moment myself in 2000. A friend of mine called up out of the blue and asked if I wanted to do a bit of writing. I said “sure” as you do. The job was to write a theme song for the Paralympic Opening Ceremony. The title was already chosen ‘The Fire Within’ and I had to come up with an idea and some music and so on. I had a lot of help from my friend Peter Winkler and we finished up writing the song and having it be the ‘big song’ of the Ceremony. I sat in the stand and saw my name on the big screen come up as the writer as a 5000 person choir sang the song with Renee Geyer, Nathan Cavalieri and Jeff StJohn in front of 110,000 people in the stadium and a 2 billion audience on TV. A truly surreal experience.

My point in telling you this is that I had to rely on my training and technique to get through all the stages of writing that song. Had I just relied on ‘inspiration’ hitting me at the right time I might still be sucking a pencil now and missed my moment completely. So download my book of techniques and tips on Songwriting if you haven’t already and think about being an Olympian of the music Industry. As with everything: talent coupled with hard work, training and courage will be your guide.

Thanks for reading my blog. I love writing this for you and I hope you are enjoying my ramblings.

Cheers Roger Corbett

Download my FREE ‘How to Write a Song’ book HERE.

Roger Corbett is a multi award winning music producer, songwriter and long time member of The Bushwackers Band.

That’s all well and good, so how do you define/confine yourself to a genre without the inevitable comparisons to the giants of that genre? Do you try and make a ‘me-too’ recording and hope that it gets some traction or go way outside the genre boundaries and hope that somebody ‘gets it’? If you have a look at somebody’s random song collection on their ipod, you’ll see that not all the songs are the same genre, the same era, the same gender, the same vibe. In fact the average punter switches their whole listening focus from one thing to another all the time.

Do your songs do this? Are you writing your songs with a view to incorporating different genres and styles?

My belief is that when you’re creating a record or even putting together a repertoire of music for a show you’re doing you should think about how people approach their music listening habit. Not dropping names here, but I was chatting to John Williamson the other day out this very subject. I asked him whether he puts together his albums with a view to providing variety and a range of entertaining possibilities that then translate into his shows. His answer was ‘Absolutely’. He puts together his albums so he can have a varied repertoire to take out on his next tour. His audience grows a little all the time but he retains his loyal fan base so he has to be familiar without being same-ist.

John actually reminded me what life was like long ago and why this idea works so well. When I was a young artist many years ago in Melbourne we used to come up to Sydney to play a bunch of club shows. We played once at Manly Leagues Club for four whole days. We did a show each day and a Sunday morning ‘Smoking Breakfast’, very strange indeed but that was the club scene back then.

The way it worked was that every night there was a band of 14 musicians onstage and there would be some classical music, a comedy act, a dancer or ballet number, a magician and our little band. It was a direct hangover from the days of the Tivoli variety shows. It worked very well for the audience and it was always packed out with punters. There are many stories of this era around the place. Careers were founded and buried during this time. Rock and Roll and financial pressure killed all that off eventually but the acts that survived and prospered took on the lessons. Namely ‘it’s entertainment stoopid”

So a performer like JW takes his show out there with a whole raft of great entertainment ideas at the ready. He thinks of his songs as the vehicles to create entertainment events within his show. I’m probably over-thinking this a bit but isn’t it worth rethinking your show and figuring out the ‘entertainment’ quota of each song. Even if you play covers in bars you quickly get to know what songs are ‘killers’ and which are ‘fillers’.

If we are brutally honest about our songs can we honestly say that we are trying to keep our listeners entertained? Are we just trying to keep ourselves entertained and hoping like hell that someone else notices our amazing talent and spirits us away to some songwriter Nirvana where people sit enthralled by the beauty of our lyrics?

When I have to perform a repertoire of my songs on my own I try and make sure that all the ‘food groups’ are covered. Too much meat and not enough greens? Too much dessert and not enough potatoes?? You know the story but I have a few song types that work well. Comic stuff, australian songs from my Bushwackers repertoire, sentimental things and a few social commentary songs. So I try and vary them all through the show and keep the audience entertained.

It seems to work for me and if I was out there giving it a more serious ‘go’ I’d be absolutely committed to this approach. I do see a lot of Festival acts of every genre and an awful lot of these really stick to the one thing they do well and never try to vary the format. The enduring acts that appear at Festivals year after year and decade after decade are the acts that know their audience needs to be engaged and entertained.

Eric Bogle is still a giant of the folk scene here in Australia and has just quit touring the world. His show is a masterful example of this in the folk genre. Can you do this with pop? rock? punk? christian music? Of course you can.

Talk to people about your life, who you are, what you think, why you do this job, who do you like and what you believe in. That’s what people like and don’t be afraid to be funny, heartfelt, angry, nostalgic, love struck and devastated in your songs and your songwriting. The audience at your live show wishes it had it’s finger on the ‘flick to next song’ button so don’t let them have that opportunity to write you off.

As Dolly Parton says ” Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, scare the hell out them and get outa there”

Thanks for reading my Blog. If you’re enjoying it let me know and as always you can download my free book on Songwriting right HERE

There’s always something that gets in the way of doing your very own thing. There’s bills to pay of course and a living to make and then the washing!! Sheesh! it’s a wonder I have time to keep up with what’s happening in Downton Abbey and Masterchef. The truth is that there’s always a grand excuse to procrastinate when it comes to you own creativity. We have kids and a dog and friends and jobs just like everyone but we have to make time..somehow for the things that really matter.

I call this theory my ‘spinning plates’ analogy. I figure life is a bit like the guy at the circus who has an act spinning plates on sticks. He starts out with one and quickly builds up to a lot of them all going at once. The audience gets more involved the minute one starts wobbling around threatening to fall and ruin his perfect record, but of course the day is saved at the very last minute and he completes his act without letting anything fall down. Yay!!

So when we are kids the only things on our minds is food, love, lollies and playing with friends. School kicks in there somewhere, learning a special skill, love appears in puberty, sport and health and so on. Pretty soon we have a job, spouse, kids, responsibilities and all sorts of stuff to juggle. Its like the guy with the plates except that he practices juggling them every day. So he gets really good at prioritising.

The rest of us mere mortals never even fully acknowledge that there’s a bunch of plates to juggle and pretty soon some important stuff falls down and crashes to the ground. Commonly it’s your own health and fitness, your self esteem, your creativity and your spirit that are the first casualties.

Often someone will come in to the Valley Studio to record music or usually to write songs and they ask “tell me honestly is there any point in all this? I mean it’s going to cost money and put me/us under financial stress and what are the chances of success, probably nil and am I just crazy??” Sure! Don’t make creativity a priority, put your self esteem far behind others, gently but firmly smother your dreams and get to the end of your life never having experienced what doing these things would feel like. Is that what you’d like for yourself?

Being creative, whatever your field of endeavour, is important and it’s one of the plates you need to spin all the time. Obviously I’m focussed on creativity all the time…….for other people…….but allow my own (and my wife’s) to wobble and languish in the dark. I guess it’s that whole “am I just being selfish” voice that starts whispering in your ear any time you pick up the guitar or open your songbook.

The truth is ‘be brave’ as I said last week both with the content of your songs and in facing down the world and saying “this is my life and I’m taking a little time to spin my creative plate. I’m also going to invest a little time and a little money in this part of my being and I’ll be a much better, more balanced person for doing this.”

We are only here for a little while, none of us know when the end may come and we don’t have time to procrastinate. Part of living your life to the full and being a person who stands as an inspiration and example to our friends, loved ones, family and our kids is tapping into the thing you love, doing it to the max and making ourselves feel whole and complete.

Find collaborators, conspirators and people who support you to do this, invest a few dollars, take a little time out and go for it!!

Oh, and Amanda’s ( my wife) – album will be out very soon!! I promise.

More Next week…Roger Corbett

Thanks for reading my Rog Blogs and let me know what you think.

Download my FREE Songwriting Bootcamp workbook HERE

Are you a brave songwriter?

Thanks for keeping on reading my blog. I hope you’ve downloaded my Songwriting Bootcamp Book and are following some of the ideas in there. As always, if you have any questions feel free to ask away.

So……I  saw Angus Stone and his band on Sunrise this week. I laughed out loud at his image and ‘vibe’ not because it’s funny but just from the sheer joy of seeing someone like him bravely creating his persona and living it out to the full.

If you didn’t see him on Monday morning I’m sure you’ll see him performing the song somewhere. He is #1 on the iTunes chart this week which means stacks of downloads and lots of sales of the CD of course as well. 

He is all about the 70’s, (as I remember it having been there the first time), with the scruffy, beardy, shabby, op shoppy, laid back look of California in the 70’s.

The drummer even put his wallet on the snare to dampen it down which is an old trick from the old days before moon gel and gaffer tape became the norm. Actually, he couldn’t have been a real musician because the wallet was much too thick.

The song was a simple kind of love song. I wasn’t really focusing on the lyrics which were mumbled through his beard but the metric patterning was highly repetitive and there was even a whistling hook in the same metric rhythm. 

My point in talking about Angus Stone and his success story here is that so many of the songwriter/performers I talk to are simply trying to manipulate the whole procedure to the point where the energy gets eroded in the slow drip of self doubt, me-tooism and rethinks.

Creating a persona that’s challenging, dressing accordingly, having the entire band look the same and creating engaging music that fits with that style and look is quite a trick and Angus Stone has done this supremely well. 

When we are creating an entity for our songs, more often that not we think about how the ‘Industry’ will react to our song and how will people perceive us.

• Are we ‘fitting in’ with the other success models we are looking at?
• Are we being brave or merely ticking boxes?
• Are we more worried about a few people’s perception of us or the much wider available audience?

I guess the Angus Stone lesson for us mere mortals is that he’s ‘out there’, he seems like he and his band couldn’t give a toss what the world at large thinks of his image, his song, his performance and the fact that he’s whistling during the song. 

I guess this kind of careless attitude is so opposite to the ‘try hard’ attitude of most artists that it presents as incredibly ‘cool’ of course and we all want a piece of that don’t we?

Everybody wants a piece of the ‘cool’ so how can we create that for ourselves? I sometimes feel very uncool, at least that’s what our kids say about us, but at other times I’m sure people think my band is ‘cool’ and it’s usually when we’re in flow at a gig and we are funny without meaning to be, performing as a unit and working together in a team. That’s when we have a great gig and sell lots of product because everyone wants a part of the ‘cool’

. It’s also when we are being outrageous (brave) and saying things that are stretching our audience’s tolerances and mindsets.

‘Bravery’ in songwriting and performance is a critical part of achieving the ‘cool’ that will create success for you. If we are continually electing the ‘safe’ and secure road instead of putting it out there that’s a perfect recipe for a bland, forgettable career.

So…..grow a beard, go get some clothes from the op shop, stick your wallet on your snare drum, mumble and whistle your way through a catchy tune and achieve the kind of stratospheric success we all dream about.

Roger Corbett.
You can download my Songwriting book for FREE, here and we’ll connect again in a week.

Why am I telling you this as a musician/songwriter?? Don’t you have enough to worry about?

Well this barbecue metaphor is something I often talk about with my recording clients. You see I have a role, a specific, time honoured role within the microcosm of my family. I’m my wife’s husband and that puts me out the back near the shed talking about machinery or motorbikes or guitars with the other ‘blokes’ in the family. That’s a predefined role that I’m able to slot into anytime. With my family I’m a son (much higher up the pecking order) and therefore have a different role.

Who are you at the Family BBQ

Everybody within the family has a relationship with the other members of one kind or another. These relationships are pre-determined at the beginning and then gradually evolve, unless you screw them up somehow. Daughters are always loved, sons are always manly and outgoing etc etc.etc. The typical is the starting point from which you are able to develop and evolve as you would in a normal family. By the way if anyone has a ‘normal’ family please let me know.

I guess you have to figure out exactly what your ‘family’ looks like and whether its a good fit for you and your music. I know what the family looks like for ‘The Bushwackers’ and I’ve got a fair idea what it looks like for AC/DC but you’ll have decide what yours looks like and choose a role/persona within that context.

When you create a recording project for your projected persona it isn’t a bad idea to try and fit into this imaginary family of your fans. Everybody knows what a family barbie looks like and feels like. So it’s great analogy for trying to fit your music into people’s lives.

So here’s some good positive roles that you, as an artist can play in order to fit in. Country Music examples given:

• Dad’s best friend.
• Dad’s crazy old friend/uncle
• Mums best friend/crazy auntie
• The much loved grandchild.
• The favourite daughter
• The favourite son.
• The really great ‘always there for you’ older sister.
• The kind of cute but weird, nerdy but really smart younger sister/brother.
• The son’s best friend.
• The daughter’s best friend.
• The son’s girlfriend/wife/fiancee.
• The daughter’s boyfriend/husband.

If you think of a role within your extended family there are lots of roles and heaps of positive ways to interact with them that ensures they will like you, want to be your friend and help when you have to extend the deck.which will get you a lot of attention at a barbecue. There’s also lots of ‘negative’ roles to play as well.

Now I’m calling them ‘negative roles’ but they can also be more challenging, fun and edgy so consider these: These would all be pop and rock personalities.

• Dad’s really drunk (funny) and obnoxious friend/uncle
• The brother/sister’s friend who’s got strong opinions about everything.
• The young good looking friend of one of the sons who’s attempting to ‘crack onto’ every boy/girl in sight.
• The young woman who’s inappropriately dressed so that every bloke at the party wants to talk to her and check her out.
• The friend of Mum who’s is trying to look half her age.

So there’s a lot of fun characters to play when you’re thinking about a persona for yourself that works for you. These days we are experiencing a huge boom in the creation of crazy characters in pop music. In country music as well there are many characters that are easy to pigeon hole into one of these stereotypes.

Consider Lady Gaga, John Williamson, One Direction/Justin Bieber, Kiss, Katy Perry, Madonna in the 80′s and 90s Slim Dusty, Green Day, AC/DC, Lee Kernaghan in the 90′s, Kevin Bloody Wilson, and Dolly Parton.

Where did these artists fit in? Are you just occupying a simple role, vaguely positive and basically invisible? Are you prepared to take on something more dynamic and challenging? Are you prepared to be obnoxious and outspoken? Do you just want to be liked?

I’d like to help you answer all these questions but right now I have to put on my fishnets, sew spangles onto my tights and slap on some lippy.

Another Rog Blog next week. Thanks for reading this and as always you’re welcome to download my FREE songwriting Bootcamp Book.

Undoubtedly that model of business is probably on the decline as we all watch our superannuation melting steadily like a paddle pop in the sun. As a musician I hadn’t really counted on having a huge pile of super to play with for the last three decades of my life anyway so I guess I’ll have to stay current and keep working away at what I love to do.

The Seth Godin Linchpin theory is that people for the last 150 years have been encouraged to be a cog in a giant machine. Dispensable, controllable and ultimately replaceable. When I listen to some music forms I must say that there’s certainly a parallel with the music business.

What is it about you that is going to give you the ability to keep doing this thing that you do for ever until one day you electrocute yourself at a gig with your Chinese manufactured PA system? You need to bring something unique and wonderful to the table every time you perform or put out a record.

I have listened to tons of songs from the ‘great’ writers of Nashville and been significantly under-whelmed by the banality and sameness of most of the offerings I’ve heard. Oh, the really top artists seem to find interesting songs for the most part but there is so much pulp music coming out of Nashville, it’s a joke.

Let’s talk about ‘Lurve’. There’s obviously much more love around in Nashville than there is in Australia because every song seems to be somewhere on the ‘love cycle’. Falling in, falling out, under appreciated, not here, lost interest, too much too little, too late aaaaarrggh give me a break!!

With our Australian country music audience definitely on the older side of life is there any point in really trying to engage people en masse in the topic of love? I mean a few songs is fine but all of them??? Leave it to pop music to talk about love and let’s use our skills for good.

Hey don’t get me wrong I love ‘love’ and I think there’s wonderful love songs out there. I think you should write one every now and then but not every time and not exclusively. Think about your audience and what is going on for them not you.

So you’re in a relationship!! Woo hoo. Is that your whole conversation with your friends and family? How would it be if that’s all you talked about to everyone you met. How would that go over? Not so great I would imagine but if you don’t believe me how about you try it for a week and see how many friends you have left willing to talk to you.

Lets’ raise the songwriting bar particularly in country music and talk about some of the real things that are happening in the real world and I guarantee you’ll have a more successful and more engaged conversation with your audience.

More next week………………

Thanks for reading Rog Blog #4 by Roger Corbett. I’m enjoying writing his for you and hopefully you’re enjoying this too.

Download my Songwriting Bootcamp Book for FREE Here

Photo credit - Daniel Paxton

Ok! So you want to make a record. Firstly I’d say the landscape has changed dramatically and is still changing.

As a Record Producer I’ve recorded a great number of albums and mostly my clients have made back their investment money and a little extra besides. Some of them have even made lots of money over the years. I do try to give each of my recording clients the reality of making recordings and the prospects of achieving great wealth.

The first thing I’d say these days is that music is free. When I used to play around the clubs and pubs doing covers to pay my rent I used to joke to my duo partners that we get paid for driving out here, investing all this time and money in music gear, extending a month or more of credit to the Club or agency and the music itself is actually free.

When you make a CD you should probably think of it as a business card. I tell my clients to give away at least a third of all your CDs to people who can help you either with a gig, airplay, a Festival booking, a TV appearance, an interview or just goodwill and a word of mouth recommendation.

Nearly the whole world now seems to regard it as ‘normal’ to burn a copy of a CD and give it to a friend. If you like a band you feel passionate enough to ‘pass it along’. Of course it’s illegal and immoral and unfair to the creators and owners but is there anyone any more who doesn’t do that? We all buy a CD and whack it in the computer, convert it in iTunes and put it on our ipod. It’s no a great stretch to burn it, send it or give it to someone else. The opportunity here is, when we pass it along, we are introducing the possibility of new fans.

In the vinyl days you held onto those LPs like gold and it was very rare to share. Cassette chipped the dam wall a bit, CDs had a great and glorious run and then the almighty CD burner and the 20c blanks came along and it was all over. The impact of the internet, file sharing and P2P protocols sealed the deal for us all and now……….here we are.

In truth the record companies have had a great run when you consider they’ve owned all the formats for at least 100 years. There are probably some recordings that have been issued in every format.

The truth however is that people still do buy your CD s at gigs. Why?

A gig purchase is an ‘impulse buy’. Your punters want to connect with you after a show. They want to buy a ‘social object’ and if a CD is the only thing on the table then they’re happy to go with that. People are feeling good about YOU right then and there and want to express that feeling in a generous way.

The number one rule is: Make it easy for people to buy your stuff.

You are the key. The artist, the performer. They want something from your hand. They want to get close, look you in the eye, say “Great show” and shake your hand.

Have someone help you sell your stuff who’s fast, approachable, knowledgeable, friendly and persuasive (also honest). Sometimes that’s just you, the artist and sometimes it’s a hired helper. Sometimes it’s your partner or your parent.

AND

• Have a flat surface to display your items.
• Have change
• Think about your pricing. If people can buy you online for $16.99 why are you trying to get $25 at a gig. My CD manufacturer has great stories about who sells the most stuff. Buskers with a single wallet, 10 track CD buy their stock in lots of 10,000 at a time. Price $10. Who hasn’t got $10? It’s just a little more than putting some money in a guitar case. When people have paid for a ticket already they might want to buy something after the show but this isn’t the time to gouge them.
• Have felt pens to write all over the cover and design your CD cover to be autograph friendly.
• Design a CD cover that looks like something people want to own.
• Plastic is dead. Cardboard rules.
• People chuck the whole item very quickly anyway so don’t spend a million $ on fancy packaging.

OR spend a million on packaging and create something truly unique and collectible.

Sell Tea towels, T Shirts, stubby holders, poster, photos, books. Use your imagination to create a ‘social object’ that can’t be shared or downloaded but is unique to the owner. People love to hang onto memorabilia.

More next week………………

Thanks for reading Rog Blog #3 by Roger Corbett. I’m enjoying writing his for you and hopefully you’re enjoying this too.  

Download my Songwriting Bootcamp Book for FREE Here

Last week I wrote about the way we think about songwriting and getting our material out there.We’ve all heard songs from artists that we think are a bit ordinary or average but they still go on to become successful. Similarly we hear great songs that disappear without a trace.

It all comes down to the size, speed, weight and power of the vehicle that’s carrying your songs around.

I have a friend who writes many songs with really good artists. He’s absolutely committed to placing his songs with solid acts and he gets lots recorded. He’s a ‘relationship’ guy who is always on the phone and networking. He’s a good songwriter but there’s a lot of ‘good’ songwriters out there. The difference with him is that he has realised long ago that relying on his own vehicle isn’t going to be enough to push his ambitious songwriting career.

Producers, like myself, are often committed songwriters who get a lot of songs recorded because we co-write with, for and sometimes in spite of our recording clients. Mutt Lang, the famous ex husband of Shania Twain is a multi-millionaire from songwriting alone because he’s an amazing producer and writes with and for his high profile clients AC/DC, Michael Bolton, Shania Twain,The Corrs, Def Lepard and so on. It is said that there’s a song of his playing somewhere in the world at any time. Now that’s horizontal m

oney!

If you are an artist and are determined to be your own vehicle then try this little exercise out:

THE THREE CHAIRS

Imagine there’s three chairs in a room.

• Chair 1 is you, the person.
• Chair 2 is you , the songwriter,
• Chair 3 is you, the performer, (the vehicle)

Imagine for a minute that each of these were different people who all resemble you. So if you are in fact all three ‘personas’, you need to realise that they each have different ambitions, work habits, lifestyle choices and needs. Your person has a way of being that’s a unique combo of your experience and culture. You have a lifestyle that reflects your history, culture and personality.

Your songwriter has his/her own needs and feelings. Maybe your songwriter needs to be more lonesome, have more conversations about different things with a different group of friends, maybe he/she dresses differently, goes different places. Who does your songwriter need to hang out with to keep himself/herself inspired. Sometimes you might need to develop specific, creative relationships with people your person wouldn’t normally talk with.

Your Performer needs to have a different kind of life and personality. I work in a band where my lead singer is very dowdy and ‘normal’ around his home. Quiet, down to earth, grounded etc. BUT he’s an animal onstage! Loud, flashy, outspoken. Fantastic for a band but you wouldn’t want to be around ‘that’ persona all the time. What does your performer need to do? Dress differently? Practise your instrument? Develop a routine on the day you play? Mentally transform yourself into the perfect vehicle? Think about what your audience requires form you and make sure you’re delivering that?

Now I know there’s people out there who feel that they can be all three personas all the time. In fact I’ve occasionally tried this out in my life and I’ve come to realize that it’s not a great idea. My band was on the road permanently for a lot of years and my private life was a mess. My songwriter could only think about songs to do with being on the road, drunk, broke, disappointed, exhilarated and only occasionally thoughtful and alone enough to write songs. My performer was having exactly the right life but the others were neglected.

So all I’m suggesting here is that you at least think about what each of your personas really need to make them happy, effective and balanced against the other two.Your three personas need each other and develop a strong relationship. Your person needs to feed your songwriter with real, true, honest information and stories from your real life. Your person also needs to stay healthy, sane, relatively sober and grounded to allow your songwriter to work.

Your songwriter needs to be feeding your performer with the kind of material that will drive the vehicle further down the track. He/she needs time and inspiration to dream up ideas but also to be quite intelligent and pragmatic about what the audience wants from your performer.

If for example you’re a vibey, party act and your person has just broken up with a partner and is feeling sad and blue, does that mean your songwriter is going to write sad and blue songs for your performer? Hopefully not.

Maybe your life is going exceptionally well, you’re successful, money is rolling in and every thing is hunky dory BUT you’ve forged a music career so far based on angsty, tortured love songs then you need to somehow encourage your songwriter to go to that place when he/she is writing material for your serious minded performer.

You may think this is a little bit analytical and a bit controlled but I believe we need to make conscious what is usually unconscious. The more thought you put into your vehicle the better it will run.

Above all, great songwriters use Imagination and Observation to generate Inspiration.

Some call this the Music Industry but I say “it’s not called show biz for nothing. Show and business.”

Catch you next week and as always feel free to leave a comment and/or download my FREE songwriting workbook HERE

Next Week: Size, Speed, Weight and Power

Roger Corbett.