I am a singer-songwriter. As a singer-songwriter, I draw upon my roots, my family, my friends, my experiences, my observations, and my instincts and seek to relate them to others in a personal delivery of the songs through performance and recording.
Living in Nashville, I am amongst hundreds of others who refer to themselves as “singer-songwriters” and I have come to realize that we are not all the same. In fact, I believe that I belong to a special class of artists, relating personal experiences through song in my own way. I drawn upon the influence of the 70’s singer-songwriters such as Dan Fogelberg, Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor, Billy Joel and John Denver.
Over the years, many people have come to Nashville with big dreams of being successful songwriters, lured by thoughts of fame and money. A whole industry has grown up around teaching, coaching, and critiquing songwriting and attempting to impose certain rules upon the craft. Even though I believe that a certain amount of songwriting can be taught and I admit we are all learning and growing in the craft, the true seed of songwriting comes from the soul. People like me are born into it and are destined to follow the calling.
Songwriting attracts many different kinds of people for different reasons, most of the time it is the perceived lifestyle, fame, money, the process, or the kind of people. The Nashville publishing community and the need for relationships has proliferated the idea of “co-writing” which has largely expanded the definition of “songwriter”. It is widely perceived that basically anyone could be a “songwriter”. I would agree that anyone who is passionate about something can achieve it, but maybe there should be some distinctions in the definition about who is a “songwriter”.
In a recent newspaper article about a pro football quarterback who writes “songs” and is setting up a publishing company, the “songwriter” commented that he was sometimes intimidated because he wasn’t very “musical”. A well known songwriter and recording artist responded that “you don’t have to be musical to write songs”. Now, if you are not musical, I think your contribution to a song is as a “lyricist” or “song idea person” and you are not really a “songwriter”.
In the Nashville social scene, the first question that comes up is “do you want to get together and write”. For political and economical reasons, it is perceived by most in the songwriting and publishing community that “co-writing” is the primary means to success in Nashville. If one only contributes to songs through collaboration, then you are a co-songwriter or “co-writer” and not really a songwriter in the true sense of the word. I am not being critical of “co-writing” because it is valuable tool for some people and I have done some “co-writing” myself, but my co-writing is an activity outside of what I do as a singer-songwriter.
One of the ways to get exposure to the Nashville community is through participating in writer’s nights where a group of songwriters get up on stage and take turns performing their songs. Writer’s nights are a great way to hone your performing skills and meet other songwriters. Most of these performers would refer to themselves as singer-songwriters, but in reality, they are usually “co-writers who sing”. This may not seem like an important distinction to some, but to a singer-songwriter artist like me, the ability to sing and co-write songs does not necessarily make one a “singer-songwriter”.
We all need to seek our paths to success in our own ways. “Success” in the songwriting business may take many forms and many meanings. It may be defined as a level of commercial success or it may be something else. There are places for everyone who can lend their talents to the components that make up a song and each can attain their own definition of success. For me, success would be fulfilling my destiny through relating my life experiences in songs delivered through my own personal performance and making a difference in someone’s life.
If I write a song with someone else, I am a “co-writer”. If I sing a song I didn’t write, I am a “singer”. If I perform a song that I co-wrote, I am a singer/co-writer. But the thing that really drives me is the pursuit of my soul’s passion to relate my own ideas in my own way as an artist. I am a singer-songwriter.
