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Showing posts from August, 2015

I won

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I want a cute way to tell you that my song "Feel This Way" won the Grand Prize in the Smoky Mountains Songwriters' Festival Competition on Saturday, like just putting up a picture of the certificate. But I don't have my Grand Prize certificate. Because, actually, someone stole it from the SMSWF when it was still blank. I know right? That's weird. There will be pictures of me holding my... well, not holding my Grand Prize certificate, but looking kind of rumpled and joyful; standing for pictures with the festival director and my singer. That's coming later. This festival, this contest, mean a lot to me because it's my community, and because this is where I started. I love the workshops and meeting people and sharing songs. Deciding which song is best is subjective and dicey and all that, but I am also deeply concerned and interested in what makes a song successful, what makes it well-crafted, and what reaches people. Not all the same thing, at all. I he

Year 3

It was exactly two years ago, give or take, that I started the commercial songwriting thing for real. I went to the Smoky Mountain Songwriters Festival, learned a bunch of stuff, participated in the song competition, got lost on the way home, ended up in Greene County an extra hour away from home, muttered "ain't got time to see Rock City" under my breath as I tried to find my way back to Maryville without GPS, ended up writing a song about that, and that was the beginning.  So today, the day after the Smoky Mountains Songwriter Festival, has become the end of my songwriting fiscal year. Accounting-wise I do January 1 like everybody else, but in terms of new ideas, new beginnings, taking stock, whatever: this is day 1 of my third year writing for (in spite of?) Nashville. Year Two, August 22 2014 until August 22 2015, was big. It started with me, sitting in the lobby at the Edgewater Hotel at last year's song competition. I was in the lobby because I had not mad