Growing up, I wanted to play guitar. That's all. I started dabbling in songwriting only as a necessity at the age of nineteen because it was uncool to just play cover songs, but my emphasis was always on the guitar playing or on the band's style--never the song. Which is probably why none of my bands were very successful. But then, over the years, because the band thing wasn't working out, I started focusing more on songwriting and conceiving of writing songs to sell, rather than songs just for me to perform. So now I do both. Although it's the songwriting that pays.

I'm signed with a publishing company called Leiber and Stoller, founded by two songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose big break came when Elvis covered their song, "Hound Dog." They also wrote a lot of his other early hits, plus a bunch for the Coasters and Peggy Lee--in fact, most of the songs that ended up defining the tenets of rock and roll songwriting which remained pretty unchanged until Dylan. Sometime in the fifties or early sixties, they started a publishing company to keep from getting screwed, and from that, they kept growing and buying other publishing companies, and then they hired me. I'm the first writer they've signed in many years.

They're sort of like an agent for me, only unlike an agent, they really do get me work. The way it goes is pretty simple: I write songs and they sell them and I get a yearly advance against future royalties. If/when they recoup the advance, we split the income 75 me, 25 them. I don't have a specialty genre or anything. I mean, I'm not the resident country songwriter. They just like my stuff.

A typical day for me is I get up early in the morning, and I start with the dubbing. That's the big drudgery part of my job. People don't realize how much time goes into dubbing. Every song you write, you have to dub a tape and send it to your publisher and all the producers you know who may be looking for songs like it. Plus you're also generally sending stuff out to your co-writer, and other writers, artists, labels, etc. So at this point (laughs), when a friends ask for a tape of my music, I just say no.

Anyway, dubbing is good mindless work to do in the morning. So that's the first thing I do. And then, especially if I have the house to myself, I'll usually start recording--working on tracks for whatever demo tape I'm doing on at the time. I have an 8-channel hard drive recorder. There are a lot of different ways of doing demos--sometimes it's just guitar and vocals, sometimes it's full production. For me, the way I do it is, first I record a very rough version, which is called a work tape, then I record a real demo. So, just like writing words is very much about re-writing, demo-ing songs is all about re-demo-ing. Because all the problems with a song come up as you're doing the demo. It's very time-consuming, but when you send that tape off, it's gotta demonstrate the song perfectly. There can't be any ambiguity at all. Everyone in the music business says they can "hear through" rough demos. But I've met maybe three people who can actually do that. Without high production value, it's hard for people to listen well.

Some days I'll have a co-writing appointment where someone comes to my house. It's usually an artist who's trying to develop a catalogue of their own material, or another writer, and maybe we're trying to co-write for a film or TV thing or a specific artist or whatever. Sometimes I work with lyricists, in which case I am just doing the music. Otherwise, if I'm working alone or with a co-writer, I try to develop the music and the lyrics simultaneously so they fit better.

I get my song ideas from everything. Daydreams, books, the media, my life--everything. Sometimes the music comes first, sometimes it's a lyrical phrase, a line, a title, or just a concept. I don't get calls from artists saying, you know, "Write me a song about my ex-wife," or anything like that. That does not typically happen in this business. You might get the word that a producer is looking for an up-tempo number to fill out an album, or a ballad for artist X, but that's about it. And even when that happens, you are writing on spec and you have to be familiar with the artist's previous work to know what kinds of lyrics and topics are appropriate. So nobody's really telling me what kind of songs to write or anything like that.

Artistically, my bosses are Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams Sr., Harlan Howard, and Paul Westerberg. I keep coming back to them, but I try not to repeat myself very often. My favorite song right now is one I wrote for myself a couple of days ago, "The Horrible Truth About Anne." I like it the best 'cuz it's new and I can't get it out of my head and the guitar part turned out very, very rockin'.

Anyway, that's the writing part of this work. The rest is phone calls and traveling. My long distance phone bills are insane. My publisher is in L.A.. A lot of my co-writers are in L.A., Nashville, New York. Then there are producer pals all over the globe. I make a lot of phone calls.

And then there's the travel. That's actually one of the great things about the job. I travel, but just the right amount. I get to meet interesting people. I get to meet famous people. Sometimes the famous people are even interesting (laughs). Sometimes they're not. I once spent four days in a motel room with this pretty famous artist, watching him smoke pot and squirm. He'd flown me in, but he didn't know what he wanted, so he shot down all my ideas and didn't offer any of his own. "We" finished one song which he then didn't use. It was very boring and a waste of time. I would not work with him again.

My main destinations are Nashville and L.A. They're pretty different. In Nashville it's very--well, some people find it rigid. But I like that. You get up in the morning and people typically have two writing appointments a day. One from about 10-2 and one from about 2-5. Something like that. You go to the person's publishing company that you're gonna co-write with and you show up at 10 and write until 2. They have a little office there with a boombox and a couple guitars or keyboards or whatever and you show up and write. And they do the demo-ing during the day, sometimes at night. Usually demos for songs written in Nashville have to be recorded in Nashville to get exactly the right sound. Otherwise, all those people who say they can hear through demos won't think its a good song (laughs).

In L.A. people mostly work out of home studios. They don't start working until around noon or 1, and then they work until late in the night. Partly because no one wants to drive during rush hour--which is like 6 to 10 in the morning, then 2:30 til 7 in the evening (laughs). In Nashville, you show up on time, ready to work, with a good attitude. In L.A., no one thinks you're the real deal unless you have a bunch of attitude. Bad behavior is rewarded in L.A.. In Nashville, no one tolerates it. I just do what the Romans are doing (laughs).

So, basically I'm constantly traveling across the country to work with people on a one-to-one basis. Sometimes, it's people I've never met and that can get pretty bizarre. Last trip I took I met with this guy who's written songs that have sold over thirty million copies. A very successful writer. But he also raises huge Filas--Brazilian attack dogs. And he's also a martial arts trainer guy. A very intense personality. And I liked him quite a bit, but if you're in his house, which we were, you have to stay within two steps of him or otherwise the dogs'll attack. I got too far from him one day and one of the dogs got his jaws around my arm.

In general, I feel really, really lucky. I would guess that out of the millions of people out there with guitars, writing songs, there are probably just a couple thousand who earn a living at it. And I'm one of them. So when somebody buys one of my songs, they play it the way they want. I don't feel any proprietary artistic thing about it. Once I'm finished writing a song, my job is done and my only input is: please perform it often and loudly and sell many, many copies. If I want to do an artist thing, then I'll go write a song for myself and go perform it the way I want to. But if you buy it, you can do what you want to and I'll be happy. I've never had any problems with the way any of my songs have been recorded and I'm not sure I'd tell you even if I did. My mama says, "Don't shit where you eat." And you know, since I do this, I'm less inclined to want to control how someone else does one of my songs. I don't want to be a producer or a performer, I want to be a writer. And letting it go after you're done writing it is a big part of being a writer.

I'm pretty hopeful and confident about the future. I think I'll continue to make a good living at this and have lots of fun. Unlike performing, this a field you can grow old in. The performers have to put up with the youth culture bullshit more and more lately which is one reason MTV looks so good and sounds so bad. But the writers can be old and ugly 'cuz no one ever sees them. A lot of writers are in their 50s or 60s. And I see myself like that one day. But whether I'm successful or unsuccessful, this is something I have to do. I mean that. If I don't spend a certain part of most days with the music, I get very unhappy and cranky. I'd do it even if I weren't getting paid for it. So right now, I am very grateful that I don't have to have a day job to support my songwriting habit.

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