time to try selling

Well, I got the 2012 edition of the Songwriter's Market. This makes three years in a row that I bought it. Maybe this year I'll get around to putting together disks of demos and sending them to music publishers or record companies.

Part of the reason I haven't done so in the past is that I haven't had a whole lot of material to send. Generally, the places listed in there indicate how many demos that want you to send. And it's usually more than one. Right now, I have three demos that I can send -- which is more than I had last year at this time. But of those, only one is really fully produced.

"Jackpot" is a fully produced demo, recorded by County Q, a studio in Nashville. It's the kind of thing that, if you heard it playing on a C&W radio station it wouldn't seem out of place. "Music No One Else Can Hear" is a much less elaborate recording. My friend, Scott Milner, recorded it for an album he did with his brothers, collectively called The Milner Brothers. They included it on their album, Haven't Lost a Thing. So the production value is good, but very simple. "Do You Think of Me (Now and Again)" is a rough demo. There's no way around that fact. Scott recorded it in 2010. I think I can justify the simple mix in that it's a slow song that doesn't require a full arrangement, and this lets the song stand on its own, without using fancy studio wizardry.

A year ago, at this time, I only had two demos to send off. I had all three recordings, but I hadn't registered the copyright on "Do You Think of Me (Now and Again)," and I'm not about to try to sell a song without first registering it with Washington. Now, I'd rather work with more than three demos, but I gotta start sending things off sometime. Then again, maybe with one or two more demos...

There is one label, Nervous Records, that I find appealing. And they are open to new (i.e., unknown) songwriters. But they specialize in psychobilly, and none of my material really fits that genre. Now, there's a song idea I've been working on and off with, that would lend itself to a psychobilly arrangement. Without going into great detail, the title is "Bleed Me a River." It arose out of an attempt to write a Louis Lamour novel in song form. And it was partially inspired by "Run the Ridges," a Kingston Trio song. Here's a video of attendees at a Kingston Trio fantasy camp performing that song (just to give you an idea:

I have almost all of "Bleed..." done, but I kind of put it aside a bit more than a year ago. I was discussing it with Scott, and he had some harsh (though not undeserved criticism of it. First, he noted that the narrator was without redeeming quality. Unlike "Run the Ridges" or "Poor Ellen Smith" (another song that inspired me to want to write a Lamour Novel-song), there is little ambiguity. He said that, as a singer, he would have a hard time getting himself to sing something so negative. Also, he noted some incorrect use of old Western jargon. Being that I grew up in New York City, and my kowledge of the old west is very limited, that makes sense. But, if we're talking about a psychobilly song, those two flaws in the song may not be fatal.

Now, of course, if I decide to go with "Bleed," I have to finish it up, polish it up, record a rough demo, register the copyright (the fact that I haven't done that explains why the title is all I'm putting in this blogpost),  and get a good demo made (which is expensive). So I have to decide if it's worth it.

But meanwhile, I really have to put together some mailing packages, and try plugging my songs. I may not get anywhere, but at least I'll know I tried

music no one else can hear: history of a song

It started back in high school with a stray comment from a friend. Melinda was listening to my Walkman (I believe it was a tape I had made of Dave Edmunds’s album, D. E. 7th. She paused at one point and said she’d better stop dancing to music no one else can hear. That phrase, “music no one can hear” struck me as a great song title. Then, as now, my songwriting usually started with a phrase that I thought was catchy. That night I wrote a song with that title. I thought it was great. I know it was crap. I can’t remember any of the words (except the title), and I don’t want to. That was in 1982 or 1983.

Fast forward to 1988. I was a grad student at the University of Michigan, dating Anne. I spent the summer in New York. Missing her, I picked up my guitar and tried to write a song. By this time I knew that the song I had originally written was garbage, and decided to recycle the title. I had been listening to a lot of Air Supply, and wrote a verse to the tune of their song, "All Out of Love," which begins:

I'm lying alone
With my head on the phone
Thinking of you 'til it hurts.
I know you hurt too
But what else can we do,
Tormented and torn apart?

For those unfamiliar, here's the video:

My verse went:

I'm lying in bed
With you in my head
Wondering where you are now.
Tell me, can it be?
Are you thinking of me
Even though I'm not around?

A chorus followed. Here the melody departed from the Air Supply song. It went:

Your song is with me wherever I am
Even when you're not here.
And all around me there's music,
Music no one else can hear.

More verses followed, but I was never as pleased with them as I was with that first verse or the chorus. I don’t remember them though I wish I did.

A few years later, a work buddy, Matthew, invited me over to his house to work on some songwriting. He and his wife were, like me, amateur songwriters with day jobs. We spent New Year’s Eve 1992 hanging out, talking music, and working on some songs. One of the things we did was revisit the song I wrote in 1988. We created a chorus by combining the first verse and chorus, with a few minor word changes (e.g., we removed the words “tell me” from the third line). We wrote a couple of verses and a bridge that together turned it into a story song about a broken marriage. We also completely reworked the melody. So I entered 1993 with a new song, and promptly did nothing with it.

About ten years later, married and with one child, I went camping with my family and a couple – Scott and Miriam -- we were friendly with. I should point out here that Scott is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and singer, and a PhD in musicology. He and I both brought guitars on that camping trip and spent a lot of time playing songs for each other. He enjoyed “Music No One Else Can Hear,” and so we played it over and over again until he knew it inside and out, frontwards, backwards, and in Texas. Ultimately, he and his brothers wanted to record it on an album they were doing.

That was great news for me, except for the fact that I had never registered the copyright. If it was going to be out in the world on a CD, even if by three unknown brothers selling it on CDBaby, I really wanted to have the copyright registered. This was complicated by the fact that Matthew and I had fallen out of touch and he had moved. In order to register the copyright in both of our names I needed his information. I also wanted to get his blessing before registering it and letting Scott and his brothers record it. Ultimately, I found Matthew and got his information and blessing. He had an, at best, vague recollection of writing the song with me, and seemed amused by this unexpected turn of events.

So, “Music No One Else Can Hear” was the first (of three, to date) copyrights I registered. The Milner Brothers recorded it on their album, Haven’t Lost a Thing, which was enough for me to get into ASCAP. I really should get around to registering the song within ASCAP. Just in case, on some off chance, a radio station in Montana (home to Scott and his brothers) plays the song, I'll get my half a penny of royalties. Scott still plays the song during his shows sometimes. Following is a video of him performing it at a fundraiser in Missoula (be warned, the video is dark and of poor quality):

Scott is singing and playing guitar, accompanied by Edie Smith (vocals) and William Haffey (clarinet). The arrangement differs greatly from the album version which features guitars and a bass as the only instruments. The clarinet makes it sound almost klezmer, even though I think of it as a country song.

Oh, and another musician friend has expressed interest in recording his own version. I’m not holding my breath, but I am crossing my fingers.