A PUBLISHER, AGAIN...

Hope everyone within earshot (or eyeshot) had a good Thanksgiving. I baked a whole salmon (traditional), so there’s a lot left; I’ll be making salmon quiche, and salmon fried rice, and other things, out of the carcass for a few days.

There is a Nashville music publisher that apparently came up with the same idea I did, of marketing the songs of unknown writers to regionally well-known artists looking for material—bypassing the Big Boys and the Big Record Companies that aren’t interested in new material anyway. So I’ve been invited (along with a lot of other writers) to send them stuff.

I have no idea who the regionally well-known artists might be. It’s possible the publisher doesn’t know, either; if I were doing this, I’d assemble the library of available songs first, and then go find the artists, and that may be what’s happening here.

What to send? “Rotten Candy,” of course; it’s the most “mainstream” of all the songs I’ve written. “Crosses by the Roadside,” too, even though this publisher is one of the ones that rejected the song earlier (at the time, they were looking only at Big Name Stars as clients, though, and this might be different). Beyond that, I don’t know. I have three songs that I know are being performed in other places by other people, and I could include them: “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas,” “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up,” and “Bluebird on My Windshield.” The first two are obviously seasonal in appeal. Tempting to include the Southern Pigfish song “For Their Own Ends,” too, because just about everybody who’s heard it likes it (I have no idea why).

The collabs, now… There are several of those I could envision being performed by other people or other bands, in either small venues or on big stages: Stan Good’s “Don’t Remind Me You’re On My Mind,” Diane Ewing’s “Distraction,” Marge McKinnis’ “About Love,” Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” and Skip Johnson’s “Tune the Strings of My Soul.” I would want the authors’ okay before I submitted anything (though I half expect they’d say yes). Of those, “Un-Easy Street” is the only one being performed in public, but that’s by our band; on the other hand, the reason we’ve been performing it every concert is people like it a lot, and it gets them out of their chairs and dancing.

More “one hand/other hand” considerations: I don’t know for sure if the publisher guy’s legit—he acts legit (a lot of presumed publishers do not), and hasn’t been after money (publishers work on commission, and aren’t supposed to ask for money), and I’ve reviewed (and think I understand) the “licensing” arrangement being proposed for songs in the “library,” and it doesn’t seem to be tying up the material so it couldn’t be pitched to or recorded by someone else. He hasn’t been “gushy” about my material, either (I would consider gushiness a sure sign of illegitmacy).

I am inclined to try things out as experiments on myself, to see how well (or if) they work—but I’m not always the best guinea pig. I am aware that a lot of what I write appeals to a “niche” market; yes, it gets performed a lot, but it’s mostly being performed by me. Would people come (and pay) to hear anyone else perform those songs? Like I told people when I suggested “Serial Killer Starter Kits” (small shovels, knife, lye, cleaning supplies) might be popular Christmas gifts, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

Music tonight at City Hall; practice tomorrow with the band—we’ll have all five of us in one place at the same time, finally. Press releases about the Christmas concert to do for a couple of newspapers (including the local one I write the weekly column for). No Santa gigs this Christmas season—I guess I’ve lost too much weight to be a good fit for the part.

Joe