I’ve never found anything in music more challenging than songwriting. Not to say I’ve never had to work at my singing, because the hours of lessons I’ve had would definitely suggest otherwise, but I’ve never found something that has kept me on my toes as much as songwriting!
I was 12 years old when I wrote my first song. It was a jingle for a car commercial, and still to this day the most, “country,” song I’ve ever written, and if I’m being honest, the easiest song I’ve ever written. I barely had to work at it, it just kind of came to me, (oh what I would give for that to happen again)! I had always been so focused on my singing, that songwriting had really never occurred to me before that moment. Well that little jingle sparked something in me, and I was hooked!
I would write little things here and there, but I failed to duplicate the magic that was so easy for me the first time! I was the poster child for beginners luck! I kept writing though: poems, lines, any idea I had, I would jot down in a notebook. Over the years, I can’t say I really wrote anything revolutionary or worth while. It would take me many more years to get another song together that I would actually record, (that song was, “Ohio,” GO BUCKS)!
I came to Nashville completely intimidated to write. People aren’t lying when they say that Nashville has the greatest songwriters in the world, in fact they might be even better than people say! It took me being here two years before I got up the courage to start writing with the incredible songwriters in town.
It was after my first writing session that I realized two things: one, why in the world did I wait this long to do this and two, wow….I need a ton of work! I think it’s the challenge that I love most about songwriting. The quest for the perfect song is consuming, you really want to get there, but like anything else, it takes hard work and dedication to become great. I wrote and wrote and wrote! I was starting to improve when I had the most amazing thing happen, one of my songwriting heroes asked me if I’d like to write!
My admiration and love of Garth Brooks is almost indescribable! Garth Brooks gave me the passion I have for country music. I can still remember it like it was yesterday, I was six years old when my Dad brought home a tape, (because we didn’t have CD’s yet), of a song he said we just, “had to hear.” That song was, “Unanswered Prayers,” and in that moment I fell in love with country music! That song changed my life, so when Pat Alger, (one of the co-writers of that song), asked me to write with him I could barely speak. I was going to get to learn from, and co-create with one of my heroes. All of the hours of hard work and frustration were worth every second…..and that is the beauty of songwriting!
Lots of Love,
