Focal Point
Conversations with artists across all industries, taking a deep dive into the nuances, techniques, and philosophies of society's talent.
Focal Point
What If Songs Spoke Like People Do? #55 w/ Grammy Nominee Sandy Knox
Grammy-nominated songwriter Sandy Knox, known for her work with artists such as Reba McEntire, Dionne Warwick, Neil Diamond, Patti LaBelle, Liza Minnelli, and Donna Summer opens up about how heartbreak, reinvention, and an unshakable love of words shaped her life’s work. From being fired as a receptionist to writing timeless hits like “Does He Love You,” she shares what it means to stay true to your craft when the world changes around you.
We talk about grief, empathy, and the magic of melody meeting truth, and her newest creation—a five-hour musical audiobook “Weighting: My Life If It Were A Musical” is about body, identity, and healing, told through twenty-one original songs. Her honesty and humor throughout the book leaves something for everyone.
Welcome to the Focal Point Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Riggs. Here I take a deep dive into my personal interests of the hidden craftsmanship, philosophies, and passions behind society's talent. If you're intrigued by artistic nuance, please subscribe and follow on my YouTube channel, Spotify, and Buzz Sprout. With that being said, let me introduce you to today's guests. Welcome to the podcast. I appreciate you coming on.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Happy to be here, Tony.
SPEAKER_00:Well, just go ahead and take a second to introduce yourself. Um, you've been in the um music scene for quite a number of years. Uh and you also have an audiobook, but it's also kind of it's it's an audiobook hybrid musical, which is really interesting. Um so just go ahead and introduce yourself and uh tell me what you do and how you got started into it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Well, um I'm I've made my living as a songwriter, singer songwriter, um, for many, many years, for over 30 years. Um I've been lucky enough to have uh I'm a Grammy nominated songwriter. My songs have been recorded uh by Reba McIntyre. I had three singles on Reba. Uh Reba and uh Liza Manelli, Neil Diamond, Donna Summer. Uh, I'm trying to remember who else. Um, but um, you know, I got started, I started writing songs when I was about 11 years old. And I announced to my parents I'm I'm gonna be a songwriter. And lucky, I was very lucky, I had parents that were supportive of dreams. So that was helpful. Um, and so, you know, when I was 20, I moved out to LA. I got accepted into AssCAP's uh um workshop West. Um they accepted at that point, that was in about 1979, they accepted 12 new writers a year, young writers. And so I went out there.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, only 12.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they would only at that point the I don't know if they still do the workshops, but yeah, they only accepted 12 writers a year and uh or per, or I think the the workshops went on for like eight to twelve weeks. Um, so maybe it was uh 12 per uh workshop. Anyway, um I I went and did that and uh met a lot of writers, uh, other writers, like-minded people, and um, but I didn't want to stay in LA. I uh LA wasn't my jam, so I decided to come to Nashville eventually. I went back home, worked in a department store, saved all my money and moved to Nashville when I was uh 24.
SPEAKER_00:And uh uh when you were 24, so what year was was that was 83, 83.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sick, I'm about to be 67 in a here in about f 10 days, 10, 15 days.
SPEAKER_02:Oh well, early happy birthday.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Um so um yeah, so I came here, I I was a little reluctant because I don't really write country music. Uh I write all kinds of music. And I thought, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna last in Nashville because I don't really not a country writer. And I was here probably maybe two, three weeks, and I realized I was never leaving this place. This place, I mean, songwriters are the are the bread and butter of this town. They're respected, you know, they're loved. They're you're originally from Texas, though, right? Yeah, I'm from Houston. Houston is pretty what what I consider my home hometown, although we moved around a lot.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, but Houston is where I went to high school. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So what what what about Nashville? Um, at least at that point in time, did you think would serve as an advantage compared to LA?
SPEAKER_01:Um, well, Nashville just was such a the center of music row. I mean, music row is a really condensed area of this town, and songwriters ruled. I mean, songwriters were everywhere. You I mean, in Houston, there wasn't very any songwriters living in Houston, but in Nashville, they were everywhere and they were opening, they were encouraging, they were welcoming. Um, it was it was a whole different scene. It was it was lovely to be. I remember the I tell this story, but I I uh I I owed about$600 and I wanted I went into a bank that was on Music Row, and um I was gonna do just a small personal loan to try to pay off that you know that$600 in credit card debt or something. And um, and when I went into the loan officer and filled out the forms, and she looked at it and she said, Oh, you're a songwriter. And I said, Well, I want to be. She said, We love songwriters, and she gave it the okay and gave me the$600. I had never had that, like somebody like camping what I was deciding to do with my life. I had people say, uh, don't you think it's time you stop chasing that dream and you know, things like that, the what I call the the the dream killers. And uh, but here I was in this place that loved songwriters. So, you know, I've been here. I've been here ever since. I went back to Texas, I went back to Austin um about 1998 to 2006 because my dad was declining. So I went back to be there um while he was aging out, and um, then I moved I moved back here in 2006. I I will never leave. I love Nashville, I I love the soul of this town and the musical soul of this town.
SPEAKER_00:How did you go from you know arriving in Nashville to slowly working your way up to you know eventually your Grammy nominee where you co-wrote uh the song with Billy Stitch, isn't it? Billy Stritch. Strich, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Billy and I are both from Houston, so we met in Houston and we wrote Does He Love You in Houston. Uh, and then Billy went to New York. I came here. Billy ended up being musical director for Liza Vanelli for Tony Bennett. Um, you know, I mean, so we both followed our dreams and our our our little uh you know, where we needed to be, and he needed to be in New York. So um, so Houston, you so what was the I'm sorry, tell me what was the original question. How did I get here?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, you uh eventually you you you start working with these other artists that um you know have been in the industry for a you know a good bit. And there's you know point A to point B because the the growth of that journey is kind of what uh at the moment I'm particularly interested in. That because that shaped you very early on, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay. So let me just tell you that I'm a big believer that if you want to be a writer, you better be a reader. And I would read everything I could get. When and I'm talking about when I was, you know, in my early teens, into, you know, from at the time I was 11 until I was 24, I was eating up anything and everything that I could find on the music industry, on on publishing, on writers, on biographies, biographies of other people who went before me, whether they were producers or singers or songwriters. I was really eating that stuff up. And that was kind of my learning tool. Um, so I knew at that point I needed to be in one of the meccas, which was either LA, Nashville, or New York, if I was serious about this. Um, and so I picked, like I said, I picked Nashville thinking I wouldn't last because I didn't write country music. But one of the things I found out when I got here is that the songwriters here wrote everything. They didn't just write country, they they wrote everything. When you'd go to a writer's night, you would hear the guy that wrote, you know, this hit song of that you you know was recent, and then you'd hear all the other stuff he was writing. So everybody was just writing. So, anyways, you know, here in Nashville, uh, I don't know what it's like these days, but when I got here in 1983, it was all about um, you know, what we what we call meeting and greeting and gripping and grinning, going out, being going going out to the the the writers' nights, being seen, being heard, meeting people, um, schmoozing. Uh, you know, people call it schmoozing. But that was really important because you you wanted to get into the inner circle of Nashville. I mean, Music Row at that point was only two streets, 16th and 17th Avenue. Now it's bigger now. But at that point, um, you wanted to be in that inner circle. I got a job at a department store, and I kept my ear to the ground uh wanting to I wanted to work on the row because that was how I was going to get my foot in the door. I didn't tell anybody I was a singer or a songwriter. And lo and behold, I hear about a job opening at MCA Records, which at that time MCA was the most successful label. Um, and I went down and applied. And I'll never forget that Jim Fogelsong, who was the head of MCA Records, a lovely, lovely man. I still, you'll not you won't hear anybody say a bad thing about this guy. And I'll never forget that Mr. Fogelsong, he he was a singer himself in the past, and he, because of my voice, my tone of my voice, he said, uh, you're you've got a very rich speaking voice. Do you by any chance a singer? And I said, No.
SPEAKER_00:Because when you moved to Nashville, you exclusively wanted to be a songwriter then.
SPEAKER_01:No, I was still a singer songwriter, thinking that maybe I'd be singing my own stuff or something. But that wasn't that wasn't at the top of my list to be a an artist or a star. That was not the main thing was I wanted to be a songwriter. But he picked up on my voice, my speaking voice, and said, Are you a uh singer? And I said, No, because I did not, I didn't want to lose, not I did not want the opportunity to get that job as that receptionist to be dashed because I admitted I was a singer or a songwriter, because they don't want a singer-songwriter on the front desk. That is not what they want.
SPEAKER_00:Well, artists tend to have their heads in the clouds a lot. So, like, you know, a second, like somebody at the front desk kind of needs to be paying attention.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. And I could do that. I had a background in working in offices and and and people and everything. So, and he said, and he said singer, and I said, No, and he said, songwriter, and I said, No. Well, years later, when I was a successful songwriter, I would run into Mr. Fogel's song and he'd say, I'll never, he said, Congratulations on all your success. And I'll never forget that you lied to me and we'd laugh about it. But but um, yeah, so I got the job and um and started working as a receptionist of MCA Records. Um and then what happened is you know, label heads change. And about six weeks after I started working there, they brought in a new label head, a guy named Jimmy Bowen. That's very fast. Yeah, very well, Mr. Fogelsong had been there for years and years and years and years. So I had I, like I said, I had been the receptionist there for about six weeks when Jimmy Bowen came in as the new um uh uh label head, and um I got fired. Everybody got fired, everybody got fired because he wanted his own crew, his own new crew that was only had allegiance to him.
SPEAKER_00:Oh goodness.
SPEAKER_01:It's very common. It's very common. So, anyway, um, I'm getting my water, I'm swiveling on you.
SPEAKER_02:Cheers.
SPEAKER_01:So um I because of that, I got severance, I got health insurance for like six months, whatever. And that freed me up to now really go after pursuing my songwriting. Blessing in disguise. It was a blessing in disguise, and I met a lot of lifelong friends working there, you know. So uh so that's so that's and then I started from there. I got my first staff deal um as a songwriter that lasted for a while. I left that, and then I went on to another staff deal, and I was with that company for almost 10 years, and I still work with that company. They administrate a lot of my stuff, and they administrate all of the new stuff on the the new uh audiobook, musical, which I c I've coined the term boozical. It's an audiobook musical, mash mash them together, and I call it a boozical.
SPEAKER_00:Those I think are actually picking up uh in terms of it being a trend because I was talking with uh a composer that I had on, I think actually last week that episode's done has yet to come out. Um and a lot of these audiobooks are starting to become similar to how like old radio shows when uh they would narratively tell the story on the show as if it was happening live, you know, like War of the Worlds or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00:And it was really it's it's interesting because the a lot of the art industry right now is it's in a weird spot. It's pivoting. Like the margins aren't there like they used to be. Um and you know, people are trying to figure out what they do, and then you know, suddenly now we got AI coming around the corner, which is just that's throwing a whole wrench into the works. What would you describe uh how would you describe the music scene currently compared to when you first showed up?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I tell you, I may be the wrong person to ask because I don't have my fingers in that pie as much as I did 30 years ago. Uh it has changed quite a bit. Um, I know that staff deals are fewer and farther between. Whereas when I got here, that was your whole goal, get a staff deal as at a publishing company. Um you know, I think, you know, I have to say I don't know how the young songwriters are paying their bills because streaming doesn't pay very much when you've got, you know, millions of streams, it doesn't pay very much. Um so I don't know. I mean, I would be really sad to see if a lot more people use AI to write a lyric. Um I'm I'm a predominantly a lyricist um first, and um I can sing and I I do drive the melody a lot when I'm working with my co-writers, but uh you know, I I would just hate for uh for it to be dumbed down by something like a AI. I mean, I think there are there are certain aspects like chat, we call it chatty G um Chat GPT. Um you know, there's a that can be utilized in some really great ways. Um, but would I ever use anything like that to write a lyric? Hell no. No. Um, you know, I think, like I said, I think it's a lot tougher for the new songwriters as far as just paying their bills. Um, you know, I don't know how they're doing it. I I don't, and I don't at this point in my life, I don't go out to a lot of writers' nights and stuff like that. Whereas I used to go to those things all the time. Those were so important to get connected, to meet other writers who you might be working with, to get to know who they're who they may introduce you to.
SPEAKER_00:Before the internet.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, before the internet. I mean, that was yeah, the internet changed a lot of stuff. And there's some good ways. I mean, you can announce a gig but and you know, by just hitting a button and sending it out to, you know, a thousand of your closest friends. But uh back then we had to do mailers and and all kinds of stuff, you know, go around stapling uh little things to telephone poles all over. So uh I'm glad I don't have to do that stuff anymore, to tell you the truth. Well, I think about gig, you know, when I think about gigging, I'll just say this. I had a 10-piece band um and uh full horn section and background singers, and we would gig about um, you know, about every eight eight to ten weeks we'd do a gig and it would be standing room only. And we wouldn't even start singing. The night wouldn't even get kicked off until 10:30 at night. And when I think about that now, I think, oh my god, I wouldn't want to be doing that right now, starting starting the whole performance at 10:30 at night.
SPEAKER_00:I've already go to bed personally.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. I've already been I've already been watching Brit box for a couple of hours by that time.
SPEAKER_00:So what aspect of um songwriting do you think artists today would benefit from either implementing more or paying more attention to when it comes to structuring their lyrics?
SPEAKER_01:Um, good question. You know, uh what when I listen to new stuff, um, and there are a lot of writers that I like, uh new writers and songwriters and stuff, my playlists are very diverse. But I'm always wondering, like, I I don't like when they really are forcing a rhyme. I don't mind off rhymes, but when the rhyme is so far from where it needs to be, but the guy has said it with a weird tone or weird accent, or the woman, the singer has said it in a way that they've forced it to make a rhyme. Uh it's like somebody saying, Okay, I'll give you an example. Uh if somebody said uh if they're trying to rhyme door, um no, that didn't write. Um they're trying to rhyme the word so like I love you so with the word more. Those really don't rhyme more and so. But if the singer says, I love you mo, the rhyme has worked, you know. So I see a I see a lot of that cheating rhyming going on, and that that can make me a little crazy. Um uh and and you know, there's a lot of ad placement in songs, there's a whole lot of stuff in you know, mention mentioning uh that kind of stuff. Uh you know, when I when I was writing, um you weren't you weren't you if you had the word damn or hell in a song, forget it. It nobody was gonna cut that. Nowadays, there's a lot more uh license with uh the language that is uh used, you know, in song lyrics.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think a lot? Do you think like um because songwriting is it's very poetic, or at least in country music it tends to be more poetic because that particular genre lends itself to being much more of a a storytelling format.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um do you think there when it comes to songwriting that some artists fall into a pit hole of making it too poetic, that way, you know, music, the music that accompanies it later on just can't quite extract or you know, time the music in a particular tempo or something like that in order to actually make it work. Do you think people go overboard with it?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, I I taught songwriting classes for many years at very various places, workshops, National Songwriters Association, etc. One of the things I I believe as a writer, my style of writing, is that the the lyric needs to be conversational. If it's something, if it would flow in a conversation naturally, that's really what I prefer to hear in a in a song lyric. If you take the music away and you say the lyric without singing it, does it work that way? A lot of lyrics don't. There's a lot of people who are inverting the syntax, you know, instead of saying, um, you broke my heart, they will say, My heart you broke. That is not how you would speak in a conversation. Like Yoda, you know, yeah, yeah, that's exactly you're the second person. So you that is not how you a natural form of conversation. Um, so I I I like it when the the lyric is very conversational. And in other words, you don't it doesn't have to be attached to the melody to make it make sense and work. Um, yeah. Uh I've had writers want it to be very Shakespearean or but I have a couplet here, and I'm and I'm like, just walk away from that that kind of lingo and just try to write the lyric, write what you feel, write what you're thinking, and then go back. And you know, you can start figuring out the um what words you can do without, um, what words you need more of. I'm a word counter. If I've used one a certain word too many times, I start figuring out how I can not use that word so much.
SPEAKER_00:Immediately starts googling cinnamons.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we didn't, you know, it's funny. Now, you know, I do sometimes use uh an uh a website called Rhyme Zone, but when I was starting out, we didn't have anything. And then when I was probably in my um late 20s, early 30s, I I discovered a rhyming dictionary, and that was very helpful. If nothing else, it helps you step away from what maybe what you're locked into and make and it kind of offers up some other ideas and opportunities which will make you think outside the box you've been in.
SPEAKER_00:So does your personal sense of creativity thrive more in solitude or in an environment of collaboration?
SPEAKER_01:Um, well, I never did I never really did much co-writing until I moved here. Nashville is a co-writing town. Um but I uh I so I don't really write solo anymore. I prefer to write with someone who's on the keyboard, who's someone who's really good at the piano, because that's just a vast opportunity of chords and and and everything. Um I I do write with guitar players, but normally I I prefer I lean toward my piano playing co-writers. Um and I think you I think uh just just a specific chord will take you into another another place, maybe with your word choice or what needs to be said there, because the chord maybe be lush or romantic or whatever, and you'll it'll it'll change your your train of thought. Um so uh I prefer to write, but when I'm actually sitting there working on lyrics and stuff, I I don't want my co-writer around. I just want to go work and get it done and then come back to them and say, here's what I'm thinking. Um and because I'm a singer, I normally know where the melody will need to change or get bigger or get whatever you know needs to match the the word message, the lyrics, word message. I don't know what I meant by that word message. That's a new way of putting it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's when you um when you're writing a song, obviously you have some type of melody or or chord progression in mind when you know you're structuring the lyrics in a particular manner. How do you know that the song that you're currently writing is going to be carried more by the chord progression when it comes to the listening experience, or by the message of the lyrics?
SPEAKER_01:Um, well, I think they they have to go be hand in hand. They're s they're so important that they be, I mean, that's a marriage of the words and music is is a serious marriage there. Um the first thing I think about is like if I come up with a song idea, a hook, uh first thing I'm gonna I'm intuitively I'm gonna know what style of music I need to be thinking about. Is it up tempo, is it, is it mid-tempo, or is it a ballad? There's your first choices, you know. Um uh is it uh then and then when you figure out that then you need to start thinking about what style is it a is it RB, is it a shuffle? Is it is it country, is it pop? Is it right, you know, you know, what what your style is. Um and so I start breaking it down like that mentally, and that kind of guides me. Did that did that even begin to answer your question?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was it was more of a vibe question.
unknown:Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um I've noticed in some of your work when I was preparing for this podcast, it some of your work carries a particular sense of like quiet grief. Interesting. Why, why, why do you think that is? Like, give me a peek.
SPEAKER_01:You know, uh that is a really good question. I love that term. Quiet grief. That's wonderful. Um, yeah, I really like to make people feel something. I kind of had the have this running saying that I say, I want people to either want to laugh, cry, or make love when they, you know, I need a feeling to occur. I I need I want a feeling to occur when somebody listens to one of my songs. Um I I've had people say you're very raw in your your lyrics. I don't think I'm that raw. I think um, and when I say raw, I just mean you know, open, vulnerable. Um I um I do like to be I do like to be honest. I only write about things I I know about and I feel like I can represent. I often say, you know, you're not gonna find me w writing a song about winning a gold medal and in downhill skiing because that's never happened. Um but um a quiet grief, that's interesting, because yeah, there is on a few of my songs, there's a song called Childless that I that's on my Push and Forty Never Married, No Kids album, which I did about 25, 30 years ago. And um a lot of people respond to that song because a lot of people can relate to not having children. And um that that song gets pointed out a lot, but uh, that's how I was feeling that day. I thought about it. I thought about all my friends who didn't have children, and I came up with the idea and I started working on it. And I always try to write from my personal experience. Um, you know, uh the other song you may be talking about is She Thinks His Name Was John, which is the uh about a woman dying of AIDS.
SPEAKER_00:Um that was a controversial song, I think, once it first came out, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was um because nobody had done a song about HIV. And that song came about because my brother died of AIDS. He had gotten acquired, he had gotten HIV through a blood transfusion. And I put myself in his place. Like, what if I had gotten that news? He was 29. What if I had gotten myself uh gotten that news at that age? Um, I was about 25 when he died, and so that is how that song was born. I could I could relate to his uh predicament because I had watched him I had watched him go through that.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sorry to hear that. That's rough, especially to experience that type of loss at the age of 25.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and he was like I said, he was 29, uh almost thirty, he was two weeks before his 30th birthday. He had gotten he had been um he had been battling can't testicular cancer and he needed a uh a blood transfusion flightlets. And um, yeah, and that's why um he had gotten a blood transfusion. So um, but he was it was, you know, on a it was a history-making case because it was the first time they realized that HIV could lay dormant for over two years. At that point, they thought HIV could only lay dormant for two years.
SPEAKER_02:I see.
SPEAKER_01:And with and with his case, they discovered it could lay dormant for at least five years. Because he had had the transfusion five years earlier. But anyway, uh, so that's that song was born, you know, from that. And that was a very powerful song. That song was never meant to be a single. Um, I had uh Does He Love You? I had three singles on Reba in a row. Does he love you? Why Haven't I Heard From You? And then she thinks his name was John, and Why Haven't I Heard From You was what they were promoting, and they the label was behind and pushing up the charts. And then the DJs started playing John because at that time, um 1994, AIDS was so in the news and the headlines, and um uh and the the label of the radio station started playing it and it started getting legs of its own. Um, and they had to make a decision do they get behind it or do they just not push it and let and you know it would go away. And you know, kudos kudos kudos to MCA Records and Reba McIntyre. They chose to get behind it. And um they continued to promote the song and get behind it, and I think it went to number five. Uh, and it was the first song about you know HIV uh that anyone had ever done. And um, you know, it it was there's not it's not your typical radio song, it's three verses, there's no repeating chorus, it doesn't have a happy ending. It's one of the few story songs that I've ever written. I I'm not pr prone to write story songs, and um and it and I wrote it all around the target of HIV and AIDS. I purposely, in my mind mentally, had a bullseye, and in the mark middle, the red target was the subject of HIV and AIDS. I wrote all around it lyrically, and I purposely never used the words death, dying, ill, sick, AIDS, doctors, medicine, HIV. I never used any of those words on purpose because I was painting the picture of the woman's um situation. And and I I didn't want to be uh so obvious in the the message.
SPEAKER_00:Ri Reba performed that song beautifully, I think. Like I I don't know what it is about her voice, especially when it comes to some of the songs that I I looked up that you've you know you've written and that she's performed for. Do you have a when you're writing, do you think about maybe who this song is going to be sung by?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_01:I don't uh a lot of writers do. A lot of writers do what's called target writing. They know that certain artist is going into the studio in three months and they're looking for stuff. I mean we used to you we used to get pitch sheets so we knew what artists were looking and and normally what they were looking for. I never did that I just would try to write a great song and hope that it found and and I hoped it would find its home. I didn't like target writing quite frankly I I to me that that was um that was putting me in a box and and and you know giving me a bunch of rules and I you know even though there are rules in songwriting my my philosophy is learn all the rules and then forget them and then go you know just let them be unconscious if you break them or whatever you know yeah let them be there to like be some guardrails but don't don't don't live by them. My goodness if if everybody did that we we wouldn't have some of the greatest one most wonderful songs in the world you know um that went on to be classics but um but yeah I don't I don't I never did that every once in a while my publisher would say hey so and so's looking why don't you try to write something for so and so and it would be an artist that was so not my natural inclination.
SPEAKER_00:Can you give me an example?
SPEAKER_01:Well it would be somebody who was really really well you know and this when I say this please let me just uh precursor this by saying I I love bluegrass but I don't write bluegrass kind of stuff so if it was an artist who was solid solid bluegrass that that's that that's not something I listen to and it's in my ear a lot although I have a lot of friends who are you know really great bluegrass gr grass players um but um yeah so I've never been good at that kind of target writing is what I call it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What would you but I'm a re but I'm a rebel Tony well I mean artists that that that is kind of the nature of an artist because you know you you have an idea uh about something and you know the the nature of creativity is like I think I can make this better and then you kind of mess around with it and it's like okay now so there's with comes to you know creativity and artists there's a level of dissatisfaction that kind of we kind of feel about a lot of things that are just kind of always idling in the background and that kind of fuels um I think honestly our unconscious uh idea factory that we have somewhere tucked down inside of our skull and you know a lot of things I love I love that it's a factory this is my manufacturing um oh great well where was I going with that oh okay we're gonna abandon ship on that one are there any topics because I think in today's uh um world and culture uh artists for better or worse I think try to be edgy or talk about things that are controversial just because that seems to be the only thing that helps you stick out and get a little bit of attention to your music or you know your film or whatever uh work that you do. Are there any topics that you think should be off limits to for commentary for artists? Because the nature of art is to point either point things out or relay your experience about something. It's either personal or very um you know third party objective commentary. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah I think a writer is a writer I don't I don't think you can put a uh you know put a governor on that so to speak um of telling people what to write about and what not to write about. Yeah if they write about something and and people don't agree or like it's probably not going to do anything. So you know um I I the as far as topics you know I tended and I still do I write about something that I can relate to that is that is an experience that's been in my life. So I'm not like I said I'm not gonna write about winning a gold medal because that's not a that's not part of my story. But yeah I do see a lot of times I do think you know um a lot of times there I think that there's writers and this goes for TV writers screen writers everything I think um sometimes they overuse like the the F word to the point where like I don't know one time I was watching watching some some show and I'm not a prude by any means but I was watching watching a show and all of a sudden that word was used so much and I started counting how many times had they used do they use that word in like a two minute period and I've set a timer and I counted like in a two minute period they had used that word 17 times and I went what does that have to do with the story of this show that has nothing if you stripped it of that word the story should still be able to hold up without all that so I do think that sometimes that though when like if I if if a if a song has already got the explicit you know mark on it in in in the the whatever place you look platform um I think okay I now I have to listen to it just to see if it's valid use of the word normal and normally it's not you know so sometimes there it is I will tell you that well recently you you uh you know you released your audiobook um which is a very personal thing to you tell me a little bit about that okay well waiting uh my life or a musical um I had gotten I had gotten out of a bad relationship with a bad boyfriend and I wanted to go somewhere healthy um just to get out of town and a friend told me about this wonderful place that was kind of it wasn't a it wasn't a high-end uh health spa uh uh it was more and I I referred to it as a diet college it was kind of a place where you could go you could be healthy eat healthy food work out da-da-da and I went to this place and it was just wonderful and the people there were so interesting and I stayed there for uh about a month I think and when I left I was thinking man what what is this there's there's there is so much fodder here that could be germinated into something else you know a a musical or a book what is this place and at first it was going to be just a straight ahead musical I have a background in theater that was my major in my one year of college and um I uh I started thinking about it so fast forward 20 years later uh I finally finished it as an audiobook musical the boozical that's what I call it and you know it's it's um it's a five and a half hour listening experience and it's all about um people's relationship with their bodies and with food and with dieting and the core the seed that planted those relationships um so it's about um 28 chapters and 21 original songs and they're interwoven through the audiobook. So that's like two albums. Yeah yeah it's a lot because a lot of the the songs uh I've harvested a few songs for my old catalog I think like four or five but everything else was written specifically for the storyline and for the characters and stuff. So I just kind of take you on a journey of um this place that I went to and the people that I met and their stories. I also talk a little bit about my life um you know growing up with a mother who was a model and uh you know controlled her food very much. But then my father and I were oh my God we were foodies and we loved to cook and we loved to talk about food and wine and my mother had to have drove your mother insane like all those smells coming out of the house just like well and she hated and I talk about this because a couple of the chapters don't have songs attached to them and they're about my personal story. There's one called Easy Bake Oven lovin' which was uh you you you may be too young to know about an easy bake oven but it was a I remember oh you do okay I was on the edge of that I was right on the edge of that. Okay. Well I remember when I first I got my easy bake oven. I mean it was it was like a Christmas miracle and I talk about how baking with this toy up in my room it's so much fun. But my mother my mother would hate it when my dad and I went to the grocery store together because we were we wanted to experience new food and try things and buy things and and yeah that wasn't her that wasn't her jam at all to make a food pun. That was not her jam but um but uh anyway so I talked a little bit about that um yeah but for the most part you know it's like I said it's a five and a half hour listening experience and an hour and 21 minutes of that is music original music written for the thing. So you know some audiobooks are you know 1920 30 40 literally 48 hours long there's one book out last year that was 48 hours long uh audiobook uh I purposely kept it really concise and keep kept it moving uh because I I would love to see this eventually become a live theater production uh on the stage oh I see what kind of have you have you written any um works that have end up in theatrical productions no no new bucket list item you know I think you know one time uh okay uh childless that song I referred to Jason Alexander who is an acquaintance who was George on Seinfeld he was doing a benefit show somewhere in LA and Joe Beth Williams the actress who was in poltergeist and everything he had her sing childless so that's the only thing I can think of which one of my songs ended up in a theater production um and that was probably 30 years ago how long did it take to go through the recording process for for the book oh well that over that took over a period of about three three or four years. Oh my yeah yeah just the music alone and then I'm recording the narration because I'm the narrator so now we're recording the the chapters and everything and I had a crack team uh helping me I call them the dream team in the studio Lawson White uh on the board and producing the narrations Man and Ward who was the project manager and the creative director also helping with editing um they had us they had a their own little language that you know they came up with uh when we were recording and editing and Ethan Greek and then my co-writer and co-producer on the majority of the music Stefan Oberhoff so once those four people once I got those people in place we were like a fine-tuned machine running and rolling and um I'm gonna say Manon is actually sitting right here I'm gonna say Manon with the the recording and narrations about two and a half years yeah we started October yeah about two and a half years to get all the narrations and while I'm recording the narrations then we're also working in the the studio the other studio recording the songs and getting all the voc vocals done i i hired over a hundred people on this book and that's engineers musicians background singers um how many of them got fired and you had to replace them that's a lot of people how many people are does it take to like do that I will tell you there's only one one person I had to walk away from during the work that everybody else was a true pro and and worked thoroughly yeah yeah but again we're in a town where everybody this is everybody's business and people they take this seriously you know music and and being in the studio that's man that is the that's the jam there and you know I don't know if you know this about Nashville but sessions always happen at 10 2 and 6 so anytime you're or just as a rule of thumb pretty as a rule of thumb if you're gonna rent if you're gonna you know book the studio and book the musicians most of the the sessions are starting at 10 that's your day that's that's your downbeat and uh everybody may get there at 9 30 to set up or the cartridge comes in with drums or whatever but normally you know you know uh we do have a musicians union here but yeah you start you normally your sessions sessions are from um 10 to 1 break for lunch two two to uh 5 lunch dinner 6 so normally when you're booking a session you know you're booking 10 2 or 6 and i always preferred for 10 10 a.m to start earlier I didn't I didn't ever yeah I'm an early bird and that is when and that's also that is when my mind is very free my creative mind is very free um I I very very very early in the morning uh let's say 4 35 uh that's when I would naturally wake up to write the book the narration the spoken word part and I call that the golden hour because your mind was just loose and free and and your creative process was was was just easy and it came easy you know in editing us songwriters we have a tendency to edit as we write um I would do a little bit more after editing with when I was writing the story for the for the book for the audiobook um but yeah I'm an early bird uh I like for my day to kind of be done by by two or three I like I like at that point I want to move into not thinking about work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah right I think honestly artists underest or they don't appreciate sleep as the fuel for their creativity you know because the the the disturbed um artist that stays up till like three in the morning or something like that because their their mind is stirring is I think honestly kind of over romanticized in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01:Very much so I I always have said those there's people who are working way too hard to earn the right to sing the blues I haven't heard that one but that's a good one.
SPEAKER_00:How do you get into the flow state for creativity?
SPEAKER_01:Um you know just it just normally happens like I'm already working I am already stewing and working on a new idea for a new audiobook musical so I'm already thinking about the songs I'm already developing my characters I'm already writing all that down um I run a lot of you you hear me refer to man and she's sitting she's sitting back here because she came over to help me get this stuff set up for the podcast today. And I'm already running talking to her about the characters because believe me if I'm gonna do another audiobook musical she will definitely be involved because they just they just knew how to do it. But um so I'm not in a hurry to get this one done because we're still promoting and and and work and getting you know dealing with having this the the the current one it was just released in the latter part of June so we're still doing promo and press and stuff on it.
SPEAKER_00:But I'm already starting to work on it and I just kind of let it flow uh I'm no longer a starving singer songwriter you know so marvelous yeah I'm not I'm not as uh anxious to uh turn things over at this point yeah well anxiety fuels a lot of uh artist creativity especially when they're younger because there's a lot of things that you know we either don't have experience in yet or it's something that we just we're we're worried about. And at what point did you think uh for you personally that you kind of started relying on your experience about things um versus when you were younger that you just didn't know well listen uh I remember one time when I was about 15 uh there was a there was a I'm using air quotes around this there was a publishing company in Houston and I I went and and uh played them some of my songs and I remember the guy saying to me boy and and at this point remember I'm 15 and he's probably pushing 50 years old and I remember him saying um boy I can't wait to hear what you're writing when you've had your heart broken a couple of times.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my yeah and and unfortunately that is true we write better from experience you know experience fuels that um you know uh I'll I'll just give you an example when I was 11 the very first song I ever wrote was called Oh Since We Broke Up Chuck but I called it upchuck because I thought that was so clever because Up Chuck you know if you know this well yeah and upchuck is another term for throwing up and I thought that was so clever and my parents actually thought that was pretty funny but you know I don't write about I wouldn't write about anything like that now there's there are other more important experiences to write about so um you know I noticed a minute ago you used the word we so I'm assuming are you are a write are you a writer singer songwriter creative also? Screenwriter screenwriter okay yeah because well the I appreciate you know the poet poetic nature of some music when I can actually you know find it because in screenwriting you only have a little bit of space you can't it's not a novel you can't pontificate over the same you know these pages I don't have the leg room you know I gotta do it very very efficiently and so it lends itself to being very poetic when it comes to describing a scene or how a character is feeling um so that's yeah that's kind of where it comes from okay because let me make a comment about that I've noticed because I have a couple of friends who are in the business out in LA and everything one is a screenwriter and I have noticed that a lot of times in uh film whether it's film TV series whatever there's a lot less dialogue and a lot more facial expressions that are being used to to communicate the feeling and stuff is that is I mean is that a trend that y'all are aware of when y'all are writing working with screenwriting it well uh it depends because when see that's a good question.
SPEAKER_00:I wasn't expecting that I know sorry I didn't mean but you when you said you started using the royal we of talking about at least for me personally when I'm when I'm writing dialogue um what I notice about most dialogue just like conversationally you know in real life between people most uh most of the time people aren't saying what's on their mind they're saying something that's alluding to either what they're it's implicit you know a lot of the thing a lot of the real dialogue of good dialogue is implicit in my opinion um it's only in like very particular scenes or parts of the story where the character is like at a breaking point where they just like they just say it um overtly exactly yeah so I like to save on point dialogue for very very special moments and I think honestly a lot of um movies nowadays they're very it's very on the nose and I I don't know why necessarily that is because if you go back older to you know older films uh you know particularly and I mean older films like 30s and 40s 1930s and 40s um all of those writers were coming out of theater where it was very very um you know it was the dialogue back then was beautiful in its own way because of the way literature used to be written and how theater used to be experienced. But nowadays uh a lot of people don't necessarily read as much as they as as they used to so it yes if like I love reading. And when I go to read something I want I want what my own writing to feel like a piece of literature even though I don't have that lake room and maybe you can relate to this as a songwriter because you don't you know you have a lot of space necessary to work with either.
SPEAKER_01:No a song you know basically you've got to begin the story tell the story end the story make it rhyme set it to music have it you know attach it to a melody and you got to do all of that within three to five minutes because that's how that's about how long you know a commercial song lasts. Yeah you know you made a point that a lot of the writers were coming uh from theater but also vaudeville too so you know vaudeville morphed into theater you know in the theater and because uh I'm really familiar with a lot of old film and stuff you know you can get great song ideas from some of those old movies and stuff I mean there's a there could be a turn of a phrase that could launch a whole song idea but um theatrical dialogue has a rhythm to it too yeah yeah yeah yeah I love a lot of the old black and white films too um there's not a lot of distraction with the color and the stuff when you're you know and though I think the dialogue can be a lot better in those old films. Um yeah what do you think in the music industry nowadays is missing from um lyrics lyrics wow I don't know I've never had that's an interesting question um you know I I said this earlier but I like it when a song makes me feel something now that can mean it makes me like I said laugh cry or want to make love you know you know one of those things but it also can make me if a song makes me want to dance or move or feel good if it's just a feel good song. I mean I have I have great playlists and uh they're very eclectic. I have lots of different um artists on all my stuff and um it can be just just the groove the the the groove the bass player whatever it could just be just a great groove um but lyric wise you know uh I don't know um I think sometimes sometimes I feel like people just kind of um it's a throwaway what's what what what we what we would call a throwaway line it's like the line really didn't mean anything they could have done better but like they were really yeah it's a filler filler line you know um they could have done better a lot of times I will actually pull up the lyrics you know on the credits to see did they did they really just say that so and a lot of times yeah they did just really say that you know so um yeah um describe to me your own personal high that you get when you finish a piece of work and you're like yeah that's it oh you know there is nothing better than when when something's done and it's produced and and uh you know the the your co-writer or your co-producer sends you like okay here's our first rough mix and you get to listen to it there's and you just you play that over and over and over again if you play it once and you're like I don't I don't want to hear that for a while or whatever but when you get it and you play it over and over again because it feels so good it sounds so good it is it I that's when I say that lays well in my ear. I love that um uh you know there are times when you know your your co-writer or co-producer uh will send something and and you've got to call call them and go hey listen okay right here could we pull up pull back on that and you know take out the banjo and put in something you know whatever but um but for me I just think it's I just want I just want lyrics to move me in some way I want them to make me feel whatever that feeling is make me feel something what makes the headaches and heartbreaks of working in the industry worth it well you know um this is a job I would have done whether I ever got paid for it or not um it it was what I it was my calling it was what I wanted to do I I was making up songs and paying attention to lyrics and songs since I was a child I remember my first 45 that my parents got me was uh Elvis Presley's Don't Be Cruel and I like that song yeah I mean great song um I want to say that it was released the year I was born I was born in 1958 so I I I remember being about five years old when I got that record uh I was always you know music was always glued it was a glue in my life so I you know I moved here to Nashville I pursued this dream of being a songwriter knowing full well I may never be able to pay my rent with it there there's just you had realistic expectations yeah I mean that's why I always had a job and worked in a department store and at one point I worked in a for a pet food manufacturing company um I always knew I could pay my rent because I I was good at getting jobs uh and I was reliable but I was always gonna I don't think you know it's funny if I hadn't had uh gotten my success when I did I was about 3 32 33 when I had my first uh number one record um you know I don't know what would what uh what would have happened if that didn't happen when it happened I don't know I would probably uh be still working at a department store waiting tables or something I don't know are there any pieces of your work that you wish was more well known or appreciated well let me tell you every songwriter all of them yeah exactly we we all have songs in our catalog uh that we wish found the light of day yeah but but you know uh nothing in particular nothing in particular and like I said there were a couple of songs I harvested from my uh old catalog uh to put in the uh in the audiobook waiting I'm supposed to say this on a regular waiting my life if it were a uh waiting waiting musical yeah spelled W-E-I-G-H-T-I-N-G um the uh and I use there's a song that Billy Stritch and I wrote called Since You Left New York that I I feel is a standard um and uh there's another song that I really love called um Body Braille which is a very sensuous sexy song that uh I wrote with Steve Califf who's a really I like the title. Yeah thank you a body braille it says it's kind of says everything says it all in the name yeah yeah and that was a song that he and I wrote and um and uh I always wanted that to find the light of day and so I I purposely wanted to use I wrote a storyline that fit bringing that song into the into the uh musical yeah that's a great song I always love Body Braille yeah yeah go have you listened to any of the the books uh any of the audio music I did yeah I did yeah it was okay it was very it's it's very at times it's very whimsical yeah well yeah yeah yeah whimsical so I'm gonna say that that would be uh shut up and eat it and or uh the salsa it is a dip it is a dance yeah yeah uh the salsa it is a dip it is a dance which is one of the the songs that was one of the that was the first idea I had pertaining to this project that came to me as I was driving away from um the the foundation out which is the fiction uh fictitious name of the the uh place that I went fictional name um that was the first song I yeah I had is that's wow the salsa salsa is something is a dance and oh wow it's something you chips in that could be a song so the English language uh is very very good for word play oh my god I love language yeah yeah I love words uh I I interviewed a um uh a gentleman who was originally from Mexico and he moved up here and um you know he writes both in Spanish as well as English and to my surprise when I asked him which language he prefers for it he actually prefers English and I'm like well why it's like it's for that very reason and it's uh because you know Spanish is a very romantic language in that sense um sometimes the uh lyrical
SPEAKER_00:Bandwidth that you have to work with doesn't give you the flexibility that you want necessarily all the time to express yourself like English, you said. And I'm like, I've never thought about it that way because we speak English.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I I speak a little Spanish, and I'm also my co-writer and co-producer on this project musically is a guy named Stefan Oberhoff. Stefan is from Germany. Stefan speaks like you know seven languages fluently. It's kind of crazy.
SPEAKER_00:And so I think Europeans are just made different.
SPEAKER_01:I know they are. They are. And because of that, I started taking German uh online to see well, how hard is you know, like I said, I grew up in Texas, I speak a little um Spanish and was raised in Madrid for a year, year, year and a half of my life as a child. But I thought, what about what's what other language? So I I'd started diving into German, his uh his mother tongue, or Muttenspaschen, as I should say, because now I've been I have now been taking German once a day for 886 days in a row.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:So because I just like it was funny because I didn't think I thought it would be really hard. But a lot of our words are derived from uh German. It's really interesting. Um, Anglo-Saxon. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, there's our little foreign language uh uh bit.
SPEAKER_00:Do you have any advice for uh music artists that are trying to get into the industry now? Because it's a very different world and it's constantly changing.
SPEAKER_01:It is such a different world, and I can honestly say uh like I said earlier, if you want to be a writer, be a reader. That's so important. If you expect people to be interested in what you've written, you better really know what's went before you. Um, you know, fatten your mind with some of that stuff. Uh I think knowing the history of music is really important. If and I'm talking songwriters and music, but I just think knowing history is very important to someone who wants to be a creative, whether it's an art or screenwriting or movies or film or songs or music, learn the history of this job you've chosen, you know, um to do. Um and yeah, what you said, it's always changing changing, and you you you have to learn to be adaptable big time because it does change constantly, not only the technology, but the styles, the way that music uh or and again, I'm talking as a creative music person, the way that music is delivered to the public, that that's changing all the time. I remember, I remember being I I've been on in the music industry, I've been on several boards and committees and stuff. I remember the first time someone walked in with a C D and said, This is what this is what this is, it was a prototype. This is apparently what albums are gonna be. And I remember going, What? Yeah, this is the future. This is all music will be delivered on this, and they showed us a CD, and we were just like flabbergasted. You know, it's you gotta be adaptable.
SPEAKER_00:Was it still were they was it still vinyl records uh right before CDs, or was there some intermediary technology?
SPEAKER_01:It went from you know 78 records to 45 records to 33s, which are LPs, and then uh cassettes and uh cassettes, right? I forget cassettes, and then for a while, you know, everything on our catalog at our publishing were uh was on dats. That didn't last long, and then CDs, and now you just hit a button and send the file, you know, online. So I but when I started, you had to go hand deliver your stuff on a on a cassette, right? Yeah, and you had to have a copy of your lyrics in there and the cassette, and you were only allowed to have three to five songs max on the cassette.
SPEAKER_00:I was born in in '97, and I vaguely remember like cassettes still being used, and some of the old um or the older uh technology and cars, they still had a cassette player.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Along with a CD. And I I I vaguely remember that. I don't know why I played on cassettes. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:But and they can and now they come, you know, I have one uh I have one system here in my house that's in the garage, but it plays CDs, it plays uh cassettes, it plays uh three 33s, it pays plays 45, it plays every genre of music delivery. And the only reason that I keep that machine is for that reason because you know now vinyl, they keep trying to bring the vinyl back, you know. Uh, you know, so and people are pressing vinyl again, you know.
SPEAKER_00:I know some people personally that collect vinyl vinyl records. Yeah, I know. There's a couple stores here.
SPEAKER_01:I got rid of all my vinyl, I got rid of uh all my uh my albums. I had a I inherited my parents' collection of 78 records, which was all jazz. Uh, and so it was anywhere from the late 20s, early 30s up until 19 uh 45, 50. And I had over 778 records, and I finally emotionally broke up with those and donated them.
SPEAKER_00:What do you think is the best format to listen to music on?
SPEAKER_01:Is it is it well I like I said, I haven't listened to anything on vinyl in probably 20 years, 15 years at least. I I love the fact that everything's in my phone. I'm one of those people that loves that I can build a playlist and and play it, you know. So I like the ease and the um accessibility of the digital uh delivery. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I have to a lot of people my age are kind of there's always a period, you know, every like five or ten years where something gets romanticized previously and then and then it becomes like a niche hobby and something like that. But it's interesting to hear your perspective because you're like, no, my phone's the best.
SPEAKER_01:Like I love my my iPad, my phone, but you but see, it's good because I can feed it into my whole house system and I can hear and I can hear it everywhere I go in my home. So I love that. Yeah. So all right.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Sandy, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Where can people go to find your audiobook?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, audiobook is available on all um audiobook platforms, but if they want to go to our website, which is waiting, W-E-I-G-H-T-I-N-G dot com, um, there's a link tree there that'll take you to all the music platforms and all the audiobook platforms. So that's where they can get it. And you can also on that website, you you know, click on the menu in the upper left-hand corner and you can see behind the scenes photographs of the sessions and everything. That's kind of fun. Yeah. And let me just say this: the other reason I wanted to do the website, the website acts as liner notes. So if you want to know who's playing the piano on that song, you can go. Yeah, that's that was very important to me that everybody got their credit. That you know, everybody involved from the background singers to the horn players, you know, the musicians, everybody's got their uh howdy-do on there. So the liner notes are totally on the website too.
SPEAKER_00:What do you hope people take away from the book?
SPEAKER_01:You know, I hope people take away that just love yourself, accept yourself, everything's gonna be okay. There there are some happy endings out there.
SPEAKER_00:So do you have any final thoughts you want to leave with the audience?
SPEAKER_01:You know what? I don't know, drink lots of water, get plenty of sleep, follow follow your dreams.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Sandy, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for coming on.
SPEAKER_01:All right. I appreciate it. It was fun, Tony.
unknown:Thank you.