I love it when songwriter tell there stories about how a song came about and who it is about. This song is about my Grandma Cowhick. Her name was Dorothy but family called her Dot. She was my Mom's mother. She is the creative genius of the family.

      I can still remember her projects that she made. We had pictures that hung on the wall that had printed pictures of horses. She loved horses.  She would mount them in picture frames and place cotton underneath the canvas to make the horses three dimensional. She made jewelry out of safety pins and beads, quilts, afghans, stocking hats, and wall art.

      I remember how she showed me how to make a cross that you hung on the wall. It was made out of matches that had been lit and the ends were black instead of red. She would take one match out of the box. She would then take her lit match and light one match on fire inside the box causing all of them to burst into flames. Then she would close the lid to put the fire out. Probably not the safest thing to teach your grandkid but it sure was cool.

      She also made trash can. They were made out of rolled up colorful magazine pictures. These were rolled tight and connected together to form small trashcans. She always was working on a project. Two of her other hobbies were photography and photo albums. I still have my photo album . She let me help make my photo album. It was real cool.

      I was born in 1958. My theme was pickup truck. So the year I was born had a picture of a 58 pickup. This continued throughout the photo album. I was a little jealous of my cousin Kent. His theme was cars. So he had pictures of mustangs and corvettes. I was able to finally let this go last year after years of therapy. (Just kidding.) 

       My song Polaroid memories is about my Grandma Dot. Hope you like it. 

Polaroid memories 

That's me with my cousins, wearing bell bottom jean

an orange sunset shirt with silk puffy sleeves  

I thought I was cool in my seventies style 

Grandma held up her Kodak, she told me to  

Chorus- Smile for the camera, Smile and say Cheese 

Look over here, and Smile for me.  

Everybody move over, step in a little closer  

We're making and taking Polaroid memories 

Some photos were blurry, she  took the best ones  

put em in plastic sleeves, and made photo albums    

for all of her children, and every grandchild 

when I look at mine I can hear her say  

Smile for the camera, smile and say Cheese 

Look over here, and smile for me. 

Everybody move over, step a little closer 

we're making and taking Polaroid memories. 

Grandma's gone but the clock never stops

except in the photo's that Grandma shot , she'd say 

Smile for the camera, smile and say Cheese 

Look over here, and smile for me 

Everybody more over, step in a little closer 

We're making and taking Polaroid memories.

        2021 is going to be a great year to make some Polaroid memories with your families. Smile for the camera, Smile and , Say cheese. 

      I don't like New Year's Eve resolutions. Probably for the same reasons you don't like them either. My reason is that I fail to keep them. I like to win. I like to succeed. I don't like to fail. If I know I am going to lose at something, I won't play.  My grand daughter Ella has a game that she plays on her kindle. It is a game where you run down a street and jump over, slide under, and avoid obstacles, We used to play and take turns and I was better than her. This only lasted for a couple weeks. Now she is so many levels ahead of me, it is unreal. She laughs when I fail to jump and run right into a barricade. It is time for a new game.

      I had a new idea I am thinking about trying out this year. I am going to set more realistic goals. Wait, that is probably not true. I am going to set super easy goals. Here are some examples of the goals I am thinking about. Exercising- I will do ten jumping jacks a day. Songwriting- I will write one sentence of a lyric. Relationship with God- I will read one verse a day. Helping my wife around the house- move my clothes from beside the clothes hamper into the hamper once a week. All of these look doable and achievable.

      If I do ten jumping jacks and I feel good about myself for the day. Maybe I will go ahead and do a couple extra on my good days. Maybe I will up my goal. (bad decision)  I will let my goal stay the same and I will over achieve and feel like a winner. This is what I do on my Fitbit. My goal is 10,00 steps a day.  I am good for about 14,000 to 15,000 steps a day on a workday.. So I am a winner on workdays. Let's not talk about how many steps I take on a day off. I make up for it on my good days.  My Fitbit makes me feel like a winner. 

       If you are thinking about resolutions, maybe this will help you too. Happy New Years!  (Yeah, I'm a little early but I'm working ahead on my goals.)

      A successful 2020. How in the world can somebody call 2020 a successful year? Are you crazy? This is the year that the song, Bye, Bye, American Pie came true. This is the year that the music died. In my hometown the Heartland Stampede was canceled. The famous bar, Douglas Corner, in Nashville where many songwriters have played closed it's doors for good. There was no way they could survive with being closed and then reduced hours. The world famous Bluebird Cafe is closed and will probably not be opening any time soon. The Bluebird only holds about eighty people and with social distancing they might be hard pressed to have a crowd of fifteen. The goal of a business is to make money  but sometimes you can lose less money being closed than being open. Bars in Topeka are closing at 9pm with the recent up swing in positive Covid cases. It has been a terrible year for the music business. 

      Despite all that is going on in the world. 2020 has been my best year of songwriting success. I got to admit it all depends on your view of success. There are many songwriters who would not agree with me. When I say success, I am obviously not talking about money. I am talking about baby steps in the right direction.. (Forward not backward.) I did receive a check from CD Baby for last year. When you combine my album sales with my streaming income, I could buy two Starbuck mocha's. Yeah, my deposit into my bank account was ten dollars and some change. Now might be a good time to hit me up for a loan before I spend it. 

      Let me share bullet points of my success.

• Played at a Open Mic night
• Met an A@R manager for an independent music publisher
• Sent three songs to the A@R manager
• Signed single song contract on two of the three songs
• Had my song pitched to country artists
• Signed contract on a new song I wrote 
• Signed contract on a co-write with the A@R manager
• Have another song that the publisher is interested in signing
• Co-writing songs on Mondays with the president of the publishing company.
• Received a songwriter to watch award from NSAI
• One song won first place in the Walnut Valley New Song contest
• One song won second place in the Walnut Valley Song contest
• Played winning song for virtual concert for the Walnut Valley Bluegrass festival
• Played virtual concert (one song) for the Kansas State UPC council

       I am very thankful to God for all of the success's he has given to me in 2020. Looking forward to a better year in 2021.    

      I have been doing my reading on my Libby app this year. It is pretty cool. I select a book, check it out, place  a hold on it, if it's not available, read it and return it. It is really easy. I read a book called Finish. It was written by Joh Acuff. It was a great book but I didn't finish it. Just kidding, I did finish it but I thought that line was funny.

       The book is about reaching our goals. My favorite part of the book was a chapter about looking back. Sometimes we forget how far we have come in life because we don't take the time to see how far we have gone. This is especially true of me and my songwriting. 

        I started out writing songs to play at the Classic Bean coffee shop in my hometown. I was able to write songs that were in my key. The Key of Bb. I was trying to write in the key of C but I was just a little flat. I remember writing a song as I was singing it. I would make up the words as I went along. I was a member of a songwriting group called Garage Band. The idea was that you would listen to other folks song and give evaluations and they would do the same for you.

         One guy who listened to my song was not impressed. He said, It sounds like you made up the words as you played your guitar. I still do this  but now I go back an tweak and rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite. It was terrible and he called it out. Some people might have quit but this helped me to see that I had a long way to go.

         My best songs at the time are not songs that I play now. They are the best I could do at that time. Not masterpieces like I hoped they would be just a part of the learning process. It is good to remember where we were at the beginning of our journey so we can see how far we have come. I am going to recap some my songwriting adventures in 2020. 

            Did John Lennon listen to the radio a lot to keep current? This is one of the many questions that he was asked by Clive Davis. Another question he asked was if John kept current on music? Clive Davis is a famous music executive who made millions in the music business. He was trying to find out for himself if John Lennon was keeping current with music during his breakup with the Beatles.

            John Lennon told Clive that he did not listen to the radio. Clive was shocked. He couldn't believe that John was not listening to other artist's music. Didn't he want to know what else is out there? John told him that he had not listened to any new music at all. He then went on to explain his reason why he did not to Clive. I thought this was a great answer.

            John said, "Clive let me ask you a question? Do you think Picasso went to the galleries to see what was being painted before he put a brush to the canvas? What a fitting answer. 

           As a songwriter we should be focusing on being ourselves, being unique, and writing the best song we possibly can. We  need to spend less time watching trends and what is hot today, Instead, we should spend more time writing our own original songs. Thanks for the tip from John Lennon.