No, I'm Not Interested In Co-Writing With You

     A few years ago, I was contacted by a guy who had written a charting country radio hit back in the '80s. He said he wanted to co-write with me. I told him we could check it out. Then he sent me a finished (but in my mind, poorly-written) song for us to work on. I told him I wasn't in the business of "fixing" people's songs, and that wasn't what I considered co-writing to be. He got very angry, and told me "I don't need nobody to tell me how to write songs!"

     That was the last I heard from him for a while.

     He approached me again, right after I came offstage one night about 6 months ago, to introduce himself, give me a business card, and inquire about co-writing. I politely tucked his card into my guitar case, but told him I didn't do much co-writing these days. I thought he would take the hint.

     I have run into him three or four times since then. He always tries to give me his card, and he always asks me about co-writing. I always tell him I'm not interested. I don't say "I've heard you play your songs, and they are nothing I am interested in", even though that's what I'm thinking. I attempt to be more diplomatic than that, but I guess I'm doing a poor job of dissuading him.

     He can't seem to grasp the fact that I am not interested in trying to write songs with him. There are a number of people who flock around him, and tell him he's "great". I guess it doesn't make sense to him that there is someone who doesn't think that. I am unfailingly polite to him, but crossing paths from time to time is as far as I want to take our relationship.

    Today, he stepped it up a notch, and sent me this private message:

          "i became a fan of your writing,ill never be able to write em like you do,

           your awsome,iam just learning songwriting, your a great 

           entertainer also, iam also sorry,for asking about cowriting,iam 

           not that good,a songwriter you probaly noticed that, so my 

           mastake,it wont happen again,my word, keep up your amazeing 

           carear,,your fantastic"

           "sorry to bother you,"

     He also attached a photo of his younger self, standing in a room with some instruments, and a bunch of records on the wall. Passive-aggressive, much? I guess he showed me.

     I'm still not interested in writing with him. Even less, now.

     I wonder how long before he asks again.

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

     I woke up this morning about 4am with one of my old songs in my brain. It was something I had written in the very early 1980s. I could remember almost all of the lyrics, except for the beginning of the second verse. After getting up out of the bed, and moving around a little bit, the words all came back to me. I even remembered the chord changes and melody. I also realized what a pretentious piece of work it was.

     At the time that I wrote it, I was listening to a lot of Townes Van Zandt's music. I was playing in college town bars, and covering songs by him, Kris Kristofferson, and Jesse Winchester, in addition to Hank Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, and some country, rockabilly, and old-time rock 'n' roll tunes. I was starting to hang out with other writers who read books, and poetry, listened to traditional folk music and blues, and told exciting and exotic (or so it seemed to me) stories. I slipped right into a "Let me show off my vocabulary. Surely people will be amazed" phase.

RENEGADE
You try to burn your bridges down the moment that they're built
Into my mind you've plunged confusion way up past the hilt
You rash rapacious renegade you burning shooting star
Unfortunate mistake I made and the consequential scar

     Oh oh renegade
     Oh oh renegade

Love me for a little while and stay 'til you must leave
But please don't tell me stories you don't want me to believe
A Rapunzel or a rapparee a lover or a thief
Your indecision instigates my flux from mirth to grief

     Oh oh renegade
     Oh oh renegade
     Oh oh renegade
     Oh oh renegade

     The crowd I was running with all seemed to really like the song. The girl I wrote it about even wrote a reply song (the next day) called "Renegade Woman", letting me know that she only wanted me when she wanted me, and she certainly didn't need me. In spite of the fact that my love life was virtually non-existent, I was quite impressed with myself, even though I often felt like I couldn't hold a candle to some of my "peers".

     But at some point I came to the realization that people's eyes would glaze over if I pulled out a song like that at a campfire or dive bar. I had to face the fact that I wasn't writing songs for English professors, and that I had a better chance of communicating with people if I wrote songs with words that more people understood. In certain circles, the songs went over fine, but intellectuals and artistes are such a niche market. Nobody talked the way I wrote songs, at least not contemporaneously.

     I began to choose my words more carefully. I found that my songs that sounded like the way people actually talked got a much warmer reception than the ones that audiences needed a dictionary to listen to (and in fact were often written with one open in front of me). Not to say, I won't throw a challenging "fifty cent word" into a song these days, but the ten dollar ones are generally nowhere in sight, nor within earshot. Polysyllabic can be problematic, so I have learned to keep it simple.

It's much less complicated that way.