I believe in you. Those are very powerful words. Words like these can make a huge difference in our life. These words are how my parents made me feel. They believed in me. What a difference it can make in a person's life. Every once in a while we will run into someone who is not a family member who truly believes in us. This is even more empowering because we don't have our family connection with them. Sometimes we expect our family to believe in us and not others.

       I have been an NSAI member for a long time. I remember the first song that I sent in. It wasn't a great song and there was problem areas in it. Richard Helm was the evaluator of that first song. He wrote an evaluation that was a page and a half long. It was so encouraging.He broke the song down and talked about the verses, the chorus, and then how the song make him feel. A song should make you feel something, if it is done right. 

       I was a beginning songwriter looking for feedback. Wanting to know if I was doing as a songwriter was the right way to do it. Richard confirmed that I was on the right road but it is a long crooked road that covers alot of miles. The bottom line was Richard told me - He believed in me. He said, I should move to Nashville and become a songwriter. Those were powerful words. Words that keep you chasing the dream.

       Nashville Songwriting Association International (NSAI) had changed over the years. In the old days you got to know the person that you were sending your songs too. I sent my songs to Richard Helm. With all of the lawsuits over songs, I don't send it to person with a name. I now send my songs to evaluator 21371. On the website it tells me that evaluator 21371 does these genres of music. Country, Jazz, Pop, Americana/folk, Hip hop, R&B, Tracks, and contemporary Christian. Wow! That is a wide variety of genres. 

       I sent in a song called Polaroid Memories. (Evaluator 21371) , I think she is a girl but I could be wrong. She liked my song and wrote a very good evaluation with comments on how to make it a better song. What really moved me was the last line she wrote in her evaluation. She wrote- I believe in You. Powerful words. Thank you.

       I sent in a new song yesterday to get evaluated by 21371. It is called- Almost (The story of my life). I wrote a thank you note in the comments of my new song thanking her for believing in me. If you want to make someones day today, tell them, I believe in You. It will make their day and maybe change their life. 

     It has been awhile since I blogged about songwriting. I have been spending more time songwriting and less time writing about songwriting. That is how it should be. 

      I have been co-writing with Fletcher Moudy. Fletcher owns his own publishing company called Ammar Music Group. We have been writing about once a week. We have to skip a week occassionaly because of my work schedule. It has been fun. Co- writing is about finding someone who together you can produce better songs than you could by yourself. 

      I have been a write by myself writer. I am a slow write by myself writer. I am good for about one song a month. When I say one song a month, I am talking about a fully completed, evaluated,  demo'ed, and ready to pitch song. (In my opinion.)  My struggle is with the busines side. I don't have the time to pitch songs and wirte songs. That is why I am working with Ammar Music. 

       It has been great getting to write more songs. I am still writing my one song a month and then I add on the three songs that Fletcher and I write together. That is four songs a month. At this rate I would have 48 songs in one year. It is about odds. The odds of writing a great song are stacked against songwriters. The more songs I write the better my odds are of writing that one killer song. 

        This is why I have not blogger much lately. Just wanted to say, Hi and let you know how the songwriting is going? Have a great day. It is suppose to get up to fifty degrees today. We got ourselves a heat wave in Kansas. 

      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.