I remember the first Bible my  Mon and Dad bought me for my ninth birthday. It was a black Scofield Bible with my name on the front cover in gold letters. Mom wrote on acronym on the inside of the cover that said, Jim- J for Jesus, I for Is and M for mine. Jesus is mine. I wrote a song with those same acronym letters. It is called Jesus in Me. Jim. 

Jesus in Me

 I don't go to weddings do miracles,  turn water into wine

that ain't me mixing dirt and spit together to heal the blind.

No, I'm  a sinner who's in need of lots of love and grace

My life is a script, his finger prints are on every page.

Can you see him? Do I act differently?

Trying to be the man, designed me to be

Can you see, Jesus in me? 

I hope everyone can see, Jesus in me.

He chose the perfect parents and town where I was raised

brought a hell damnation preacher to the church where I got saved

When I got knocked down, his hands helped me to my feet.

Doesn't give me everything I want, He's everything I need.

Can you see him? Do I act differently?

Trying to be the man, Designed me to be.

Can you see, Jesus in me?

I pray everyone can see, Jesus in me.

I only have one life with a solitary view

The whole world watches as Jesus shines through you.

Can other's see him? Do you act differently?

Try to be the one, you're designed to be

He's in you, He's in me

I pray everyone can see, Jesus in you and me.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           I am a NSAI (Nashville Songwriter Association International) member and  coordinator for the Manhattan, KS chapter. There are many  benefits to being a member. My first and foremost reason was that they do twelve evaluations a year with your paid membership. This one benefit alone is worth the price of a membership. My goal is to send in twelve new songs a year to get evaluated.

     Another great thing that they started a few years ago is called Pitch to Publisher. The great thing is you do not have to go to Nashville to get a music publisher to listen to your songs. You get two chances a year to send in your song to be listened to by a publishing company. If you live in Nashville they have these events twice a month at the NSAI office and you can go every time that you are available. I love being able to pitch a song and not have to drive nine hundred miles.

     The song that I pitched to Jen Duke from Concord Music was "Something you can see."  Fifty members get to pitch one song and she listens to one verse and one chorus. If she likes the song she will ask for a copy of it. She will them listen to the rest of the song and see if it is something she is truly interested in or not. I pitched this song last year to a different publisher and she liked it but did not ask for a copy of it. 

      The Pitch to Publisher event lasts about an hour and a half. It is recorded and emailed to me so I can watch it whenever I want. I received and email with the video and a second email that read. Winners selected. Guess which email I opened first? The same one that you would of opened. I wanted to know if I had won but I didn't want to get my hopes too high. I couldn't believe it when I saw that I was a winner. Yee! Haw! I was one of eight members whose song was taken to be listened to later.

       Here is a copy of the video and the comments about the song. Thousands and thousands of songs are listened to by publishers everyday. Very few will every make it to radio or onto a cd. I am grateful that they listened to my song. It is a step in the process of being a songwriter. It is like learning to walk. You take small steps, fall down, bigger steps, fall down, and big steps and fall down. Sometimes there is more falling down that stepping. 

        Thanks for reading and watching me as I take my journey. I love you. Jim

     Songs are not autobiographical. They can be but that is not the point of a song. I read a quote in a book by Pat Pattison called "Write better lyrics." He said, Never let reality get in the way of truth. The emphasis of a song is telling the truth. Or maybe it might be the way that I see truth. I have an example from my songwriting of how this works.

      I wrote a song called, " How to fish". The story is about going fishing with my Grandpa Cowhick. There are some lines in my song which are not accurate. The first line of the song is, He taught me how to row a boat. Okay, he didn't really teach me how to row a boat. We didn't have a boat. Now if we would of had a boat, he might of been the one to teach me. The truth is I went fishing with him and a I learned how to fish from him. That is the truth. 

       I do like that opening line. How many of us remember the first time we tried to row a boat? It is really difficult if you chew gum at the same time. It takes awhile to train your muscles to do movements that are new. Does it really matter to your audience, the color of Grandpa's shirt, if the sun was really shining that day or whether you owned a boat? If the accuracy of these details really matter, then go ahead and write your autobiography. I hope this helps the next time you go to write a song.       

     My grand daughter Alyssa is eleven years old. She loves music and want to learn how to play guitar. I have started giving her guitar lessons. This is not an easy job. A guitar teacher has a big impact on creating an environment where the student wants to learn. I don't want to be the reason she stops playing. I want to be the person that inspires her to play.

      There are a couple avenues that you can take to become a great guitar player. One method is to practice and learn musical scales. If you are playing in the Key of C. You would play C,D, E,F,G,A,B. This would be all white keys on a piano. If you were going to write a song in the key of C you could play any of these notes and they would sound good. (They would be in the right key.) Now you might have to play around with them to get a great melody that is easy to sing. 

      Another method is learning from music books. This was one of my earliest methods of learning. I had the Alfred's basic guitar method and Mel Bay books. These books are a combination of scales, sight reading music, and learning songs. I remember when it was thought the best way to learn music was the Suzuki method. I never learned this method. It involved listening to a simple melody and learning how to play by ear. I think this is a great way to learn if you have an ear for it. 

       All of these are great ways to learn the guitar but we are not very patient students. As a student we want to play songs. I remember playing songs but they were often times not the songs that I wanted to learn how to play. I wanted to play the songs that were on the radio now. The songs in the song books were Hank William, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline songs. I wanted to learn Alabama, the Eagles, Grand Funk Railroad, and Three Dog Night. Alyssa and I have worked on a couple songs. One was Blake Shelton's- Boys Round Here. It is an easy song with two chords. Next we worked on a Taylor Swift song, the riff for Smoke on the Water, and For What It's Worth. 

       I started out taking piano lessons. I learned how to read music. I believe this hurt my piano playing. I played the right notes (most of the time) but it lacked feeling. Louis Armstrong was a world renowned trumpet player. He was asked, Do you read music? I love his reply. He said, "Not enough to hurt my playing." Music is about feeling not exact notes. 

       I hope that I become a good guitar teacher. No, that is not what I want. I want Alyssa to love playing guitar and have fun doing it. That is why I play guitar. 

     I started this music gig  as a guitar player. My goal was to not sing. I was going to play guitar only. That worked out fine until I needed more songs to fill up a show. This led to finding easy songs that I could sing. I sure wasn't going to sing Bohemian Rhapsody like Freddie Mercury of Queen. I decided I would play it safe and sing Bob Dylan songs. Bob is not famous for his singing ability. His songwriting was his ticket to success. I started writing one song for each upcoming gig to help fill up space. This  worked  great because I could make the songs (more) sing able for me. 

     This week I had some free time so I decided to learn a new guitar song. It is hard to pick a new song to learn. You would think that I would learn a song by one of my favorite bands or artists. Maybe and Eric Church song like Record Year or Monster, maybe I would learn a new Luke Combs tune like Beautiful Crazy or a fun song like When it Rains it Pours. Or I could learn a Red Dirt song off of a Jason Boland album. Did I do that? No!  I am almost afraid to admit this. I learned a Justin Bieber song. The song is Love Yourself.

      This song has some finger picking in it and I like to finger pick. I also need to practice my finger picking so what few skills I have learned don't disappear completely. This song has a nice finger picking pattern in the verses and the chorus is really catchy. My favorite lyric of the song is- My Momma don't like you and she likes everybody. That line is so honest and straight forward it shocks you when you hear it. I love it.

      I have played that song for the last three days and feel comfortable with it. It has been fun learning a new song. Sometimes when you learn a new song, bits and pieces of it find their way into the songs you are writing. Maybe you use a different chord change from the song you learned has. Or maybe a note interval that you sing is cool and it is part of your new song. I don't know how this song will affect my upcoming songs or if by singing this song I will have a sudden urge to get a tattoo. Time will tell. 

      Have a good day and love yourself.