Getting My Ducks Lined Up

Last year, I subscribed to a songwriting service called "Taxi." Basically, it's a company made up of former record label and publishing executives that brokers songs written by it's members. Taxi's customers are artists, record labels, music publishers and music supervisors for TV shows and movies. In a nutshell, anybody who's not a songwriter, but needs a song.

I had been a member many years ago, but never really seemed to get any positive feedback. It seemed that no matter what the particular criteria they were looking to be met was, I was failing miserably at it. In the end, I began to think that maybe it was all just a big come-on, designed to get the $200 yearly membership fee out of me.

Although I had pretty much written Taxi off as a viable way of weaseling myself into the music industry, I would still occasionally get mailings from them, with stories of their members' success. This guy licensed three songs to a TV show, that girl got her song covered by a well-known country artist. Each story was more tantalizing than the last. Once more, I started to let myself dream of an established artist including one of my songs on their million-selling album, the way that a lottery ticket holder spends their pre-drawing time imagining what they'll do with their jackpot, should they win. The standard royalty that goes to the songwriter is roughly $.09, making placement on a million-selling album a $90,000 payday. For me, a life-changing amount of money.

Last year, I figured I'd take another shot at it. I also decided that I'd make a concerted effort to view Taxi's want ads as assignments, as if I was a Brill Building songwriter in the early 1960's. My first few submissions were not forwarded on to clients, but I was getting some great feedback from the Taxi screeners about how well my songs were structured and recorded. Eventually, my song "Call On Me" was forwarded to a publisher. Although they eventually turned it down, I felt as though I'd jumped a major hurdle. Maybe this was going to work after all.

During the course of the year, I had six songs forwarded to record labels and publishers. Though none produced any contracts or five-figure royalty checks, I was encouraged by my nominal success rate of 17% (percentage of songs being forwarded to clients). Being that my previous year with Taxi had yielded a 0% success rate, I was feeling pretty good about what a possible round three might eventually produce. This third try, however, would require me to do a little more groundwork, if I was going to gain further traction.

Several months ago, I began recording a small batch of songs which I thought would be good to have at the ready; two country/pop songs (lots of country artists rely on outside writers), two Christmas songs (not many good new ones out there) and two songs that sound like they're from the 1980's (music supervisors are ALWAYS looking for these). I've made some pretty good headway on the recordings, and I've even decided to bring in outside singers to help me with the quality and overall feel of the vocals. I know a lot of talented singers and if they can make my song sound better, I'm going to use them to help me sell it. I should be done in a couple of weeks, and then I'll join Taxi again and see if my strategy works. I'm optimistic.

My Skeleton Hurts...

Spent a goodly portion of the day tending to a small project in the yard with the wife. It was more physical labor than I'm used to doing these days, and my 45-year-old body is screaming at me. Still, it was a beautiful sunny day here in Wisconsin and, dare I say, I had a good time. We don't get to spend so much time together these days, and we had a bunch of good laughs. I think it helps that we took the "perfect yard" pressure off of ourselves and decided to just focus on getting the front yard in shape this spring/summer. If we get more done, great. If not, we're not gonna sweat it. There's grillin' that needs to happen.

Fountains of Wayne

The band Fountains of Wayne is just about the best thing going right now, FYI. If you're gonna argue the point, you're just an asshole that's lookin' to argue.

Nit-picking

The best thing about having home recording equipment is that, instead of paying a professional studio $50 an hour, you can record without sweating the budget clock. It's also the WORST part. With unlimited access, you can find yourself in the horrific position of re-doing parts and tweaking until you're pulling your eyebrows out.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I have a song that's coming out on a charity compilation CD, to benefit our local school system's music programs. I'm very happy about being a part of this, as it's very likely that more instruments will find their way into the hands of kids who are desperately in need of a creative outlet, because of extra funds raised by the CD. I remember when I got my first guitar, and the hours I'd spend trying to learn songs off of records. This was a great escape from the drama of the high school years. It annoyed the hell out of my family, who'd bang on my bedroom door and say, "How many times do you have to play that same song?"

At any rate, I turned in my song to the producers of the CD, though I wasn't 100% sure I was happy with it. I had previously recorded it in a higher key, but felt like my voice was straining a bit, so I lowered it a full step, from E Major to D Major. Now, after officially submitting it, and being beyond the point of no return, I took another listen to the original version in E. Turns out I was wrong, it sounded just fine. In fact, it sounded better than what I turned in. I second-guessed myself right into putting my club foot forward. What an idiot I am sometimes.

The good news, though, is that I haven't sent this inferior version, along with a Marshall Crenshaw cover, to be manufactured as a single yet. It'll be easy enough to swap in the better recording, making for a much-more impressive teaser to my forth-coming album, "Wake Up To Music." I've got the instrumental tracks for another ten songs done, I just have to find the time to get my singing voice in tip-top studio shape.