I am a self published songwriter. I own 100% of the songs that I write by myself. The name of my publishing company is McCarter Music Publishing.(I  think that is the name I chose.) It might be McCarter Publishing. I might need to look that up.  The day that I signed up I had to pick a name and I choked under pressure. I had never thought of naming my publishing company so I get zero points for orginality. 

      What are the advantages of self publishing? The biggest advantage is I'm the boss. I also love my boss, sometimes. Other times he can be a real jerk.  If I worked for a Nashville music publisher I would have deadlines to meet and I would be confined on what types of songs I could write. Usually, a songwriter with a publishing deal would need to write an acceptable song a month or twelve songs a year. My goal is to write one new song a month. I have been doing this for years. It is great to create your own deadlines and have expectations to meet. It gives me a sense of accomplishment when I achieve my goals. 

      So what would be acceptable? That is the magic question. It would need to fit the country music category. This would be the country music that is now being played on the radio or the latest and greatest version of country music coming down the pipe. The songs would need to be about universal ideas. In the country world this would be love, heartbreak, makeup songs, breakup songs, drinking, and partying songs.

      There have been lots of songs written about these items. What makes it hard is coming up with new and fresh ideas to say the same old thing. Like saying I love you without every saying I love you in the song. Maybe I would say, you are the moonlight shining on the dresser drawer mirror. The sunshine streaming throught the window  that l wake up to. 

       I have the freedom to write whatever I want. I might write a gospel song, a blues song, and instrumental or a folk song. At the present,, I am trying to write songs that could work on radio without too many do's  and don't attached to them. The last song I wrote was a song called Good Good Goodbye. It is a song about my saying goodbye to my Mom for the last time. If I was working for a publisher this would probably not be an acceptable song. It would probably be too personal. 

        Have you ever heard the song Elephant by Jason Isbell? It is an example of a moving song that would not be on country radio but has been a big hit for him.  Sometimes I think that is what is missing on the current country music. It doesn't make you feel anything.  Music should make us feel something. Happy, sad, wanting to dance, or singing along. 

       Well, I better go. My boss told me I need to be writing songs instead of blogging on the computer. I love my boss, sometimes. 

        Merry Christmas. Happy April Fool's Day. I know it isn't Christmas but it is for me. As a songwriter, it always feels like Christmas when I get a song back that I have professionally recorded. The name of my song is called, No Time Son. I won't describe the song and tell you all about it, I'll let the song do the talking. Hope you like it. 

      Today is my Mom's birthday. Shame on me. I wouldn't of realized it if it weren't for Facebook and my son, Jordan reminding me. Part of my problem, without going to deep into a therapy session is I never look or think about a calendar. I don't want to tell you how many anniversaries I have missed. My wedding anniversary is on December 1st. That is a bad time for an important date. April sneaks by me and Oops! we are two days into May before I realize it. Thankfully my wife is very forgiving.

       This was a hard song for me to write. We all hate goodbyes. There are a lot of songs about there is nothing good about goodbyes. So I wrote a song that talks about a good, good, goodbye. That is the name of my song. I believe there are two things we want to know when a loved one passes away. We want them to know that we love them and we want to know that they loved us. If those two things happen it truly is a good good goodbye.

       If my sister Lana Mae is reading this or listening to the song. I'm sorry if this song makes you cry. I had the same problem trying to write it. Here are the lyrics to the song. 

                    Good, good, goodbye

Tubes in your nose, IV with morphine

ICU is empty, just you and me.

You whisper softly, I lean in close

Hold your hand gently, we both know

You're longing for home, dreams coming true

Better place is prepared, waiting for you

Your eyelids are heavy, can't keep'm open

Hugs and kisses, time to be going

Chorus- You said, I love you, I said, I love you too.

that's a good, good, good, a good good goodbye.

Walked across the room and I stopped

Momma asked me to turn the lights off

I said, Goodnight, don't let the bedbugs bite

Same words you told me every night, then

I said, Later alligator, after while crocodile

We started laughing, I love your smile

A moive moment, my mind pressed record

repeated the words, we said before

Chorus- You said, I love you, I said, I love you, too

That's a good, good, good, a good, good, goodbye

Sometimes I miss you, I get depressed

There's a button in my mind, I like to press

Chorus- You said, I love you, I said, I love you, too.

That's a good, good, good, a good, good, goodbye.

My friend Henry has problems hearing my  songs. If you look in the bottom left hand corner, This is an arrow that you left click once with your mouse to hear the song. Hope this helps. 

      I am on vacation this week. I had big plans. Here is some of the things that I had planned and that I had paid for. I was going to drive to Nashville on Sunday. I was going to leave early in the morning to make the trip in one day. I was going to leave at 4 or 5 am so I could be in Nashville by 6pm. I would drive straight through. My straight through is different than most people. I like or need to stop every hour or so. I get sleepy, I get hungry, I get bored, or hey, I just want to stretch my legs. To my credit the stops are fast. Fast food, rest room and back on the road. Sometimes I'm eating or drinking while I'm driving. Coffee can really increase the number or stops but it really helps me stay awake. So I consider coffee a necessary evil.

     Sunday night I was planning on hearing some live music. Monday I was going to a two day NSAI conference call Tin Pan South Songwriter conference. It would be attended by about  four hundred songwriters from all over the world. Cool event. It was a two day conference. On Wednesday, I was going to go to the NSAI chapter coordinator training class. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I was going to go to concerts every night as part of an event called Tin Pan South Songwriting Festival. 

      Tin Pan South is the best concerts I have ever heard. I say this because it is the songwriters performing their own songs. Yeah, some of them don't sing as great as the artists that performed their songs but they sing it with so much feeling. I love it because the songs are sung in small venues where you can see the performer up close. No need for a megatron screen or whatever you call those big screens that you have to watch at a concert because the peformer's are 4 inches high.

        I was going to hang out with my buddy Dave and see some concerts, do some songwriting and have a grand ole time. It was going to be great. Oh but wait, something happened. Corona V 2019. None of these plans happened. Everything I had planned changed. Life is like this. We can make our plans but we are not really in control. God is. I am thankful that he is in control. I can rest in his goodness and know that whatever happens I will trust in him. Maybe I'll get the virus, or maybe I won't. I don't have to worry because I'm trusting in him. 

        So what am I doing on vacation? Yesterday, I raked the yard, hauled limbs off, and ate Godfather's pizza. Today, I sent a song off to Nashville to get a demo made. Tomorrow is still in the planning stages but I am going to try to accompish alot in my days off this week. 

3      Who was the first baseball player to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine? Let me give you some hints. He was a pitcher who played for the Detriot Tigers. His first season in the leage his won-loss record was 19 wins and 11 losses. He was the AL rookie of the year in 1976. 

      The answer is Mark(The Bird) Fidrych. I loved to watch him pitch. He was a character. He was very animated. He would get down on his hands and knees and groom the pitcher's mound around the pitcher's rubber. He would talk to himself and talk to the ball. He was a competitor who loved to win but what  attracted fans to him was he was just a humble, friendly guy. He was a hero that we could relate to. A farm boy who make it big. He was one of us whose dream came true.Us fans were able to enjoy his success because he was like us,

        What do you think his salary was in 1976? Remember this was before sports stars were paid astronomical amounts. His yearly salary was $16,500 dollars. True things were a lot cheaper in 1976 but I remember what I was making at the grocery store. I was freshly graduated from high school and was full time at Rick' Super Saver in Oskie, KS. I was on salary and I worked forty hours a week. My paycheck before taxes was 100 dollars a week. That would make ny yearly salary 5200 dollars a year. He would of make about three times more money than me.

         The minimum salary for a major league player in 2019 was 555,000. A full time stocker at a grocery store makes about ten bucks and hours. That would be 400 week of twenty thousand a year. That would figure out to be more than 25 times what a stocker would make. What a crazy world we live in. I bet if we lowered the pay not everyone would want to be a major league player. If that happened the players who played would be the ones who truly love the game. Ticket prices would go down. Everyone could go to a game without breaking the piggy bank.