By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College
Songwriting is very much in the news today. Whether it’s Taylor Swift’s interviews, debates over the greatest living American songwriters, tributes to John Prine, songwriting competitions or Van Halen singer David Lee Roth giving Southern rock its due, songwriting is instrumental to the music industry’s $200 billion value, a figure that Goldman Sachs expects to double in the next decade.
To find out more about the craft of writing lyrics and music, I interviewed Zach Stich, who is not only a musician and performer, but also an award-winning songwriter.
When did you decide to first become a songwriter in your life?
At some point, people you look up to as a musician give you a compliment about your songs. Then they start to view you as a peer, and that’s when you can start to take becoming a songwriter seriously.
I had a Zoom session with a songwriter I admire, and I played him one of my songs. He told me my songs reminded him of John Prine’s. Then he told me about being able to open for Prine and doing a few shows with him. That’s when I thought I might be onto something.
There is a long way to go from where I am to where I want to be. But the things I’ve done as a songwriter, many people would say, qualify me to say that I’m a songwriter.
What motivated you to go from just thinking or dreaming about it to start writing about it?
When I was a senior in high school, I wrote a song as part of a class project. I remember my teacher carrying me — not literally, I’m a big ole boy — from class to class to play this song for the other teachers. I should have known then.
But I didn’t write a song again until 2022, which was about 15 years later. I wrote “Bristol TN,” and I was like, “If I can write one, I can write two.” Then, when I wrote “If I Had a Box,” I played it for Charlie Gilbert at Capricorn Studios, and that turned into a whole album.
Now I’m starting to write songs for the next one. It probably will be a project that happens next year. But I like the challenge. That’s what brings you back. Can I write a better one? Can I write a song about this? Can I write a song about that?
Did you read any books on how to write songs?
I haven’t read any books about songwriting, although they are out there. And I’m not saying they wouldn’t be helpful.
I do watch a lot of interviews with songwriters I admire, especially if they talk about their process. You can get something from them even if you don’t copy their process. It’s about making it your own. But knowing how others do it is helpful.
I do read about music theory, which is hard and complicated. For someone who only uses four chords at most in his songs, it’s a whole thing I don’t understand. They say when rocket scientists want to learn something harder, they study music theory. But a grasp of theory helps keep you from being derivative.
Other than that, I don’t really read books about songwriting. There is a YouTube channel called “SongTown” that I would recommend to people who want to write songs.
Did you get ideas on songwriting from other musicians or songwriters?
Ideas? Definitely. You might hear a chord change in a song and think, “I like that. I’m going to use that.” My song “Run On” came from that. I saw someone play a cover of “Sixteen Tons” with that chord progression. I liked the progression and wrote a completely different melody, but it was inspired by that progression.
Sometimes I look to artists and their styles for inspiration. I came up with the line, “Her face lit up like a trailer park at Christmastime.” That line made me think of Jerry Reed, so I decided to write a song in the style of Jerry Reed. That’s how my song “Commercial Company (The Way It Goes)” was born.
My friend Hannah Murphy has this song where she kind of does this double rhyme at the end of some of the lines, and I love that idea. I want to write a song with a rhyme scheme like that. So yes, you can get ideas from other artists all the time.
I listen to a lot of John Prine and Willie Nelson. So when I’m looking for inspiration musically, I listen to stuff that is different. Sometimes, when I’m looking for lyrical inspiration, I turn on Eminem or Big Pun. Or maybe a movie or show written by Aaron Sorkin.
Or I just try to passively listen to conversations. Sometimes someone will turn a phrase, and you know you can use that for a lyric one day. One day, my friend David was describing this person he knew who is not trustworthy, and he said, “The truth ain’t in him.” I got out my phone and put it in my lyric ideas notes. I will eventually put that line in a song. I’m not sure if I’ll give him a co-writing credit or not.
What’s the recent contest that you won? Was it your first, or have you won others?
There’s a songwriting contest every month at Abide Brewing in Newnan. I won it in March. It’s been going for a little over a year now. There is a fantastic community of songwriters in our area. If you go there, you will hear some real talent.
I was a prize winner in the Cohutta SongFest last year. I’ve been a finalist in the Eddie’s Attic weekly Songwriter Shootout before.
A lot of songwriting festivals have application processes, so getting to play some of those is essentially like winning a contest. Or at least to me it is. I was lucky to be selected for the Old Bolivar Station Songwriters Festival last year. That felt like a win. This year, I’ve had that feeling with Newnan PorchFest and hopefully more festivals this summer and fall.
What’s a myth about songwriting that everyone who isn’t a songwriter just doesn’t get?
I think a lot of people think the songs they hear on the radio are sung by the people who wrote them. That’s not often the case. In fact, it’s rarely the case. And a lot of songs have multiple writers.
I also think people just think inspiration hits a songwriter and then, bam, you write a song. Sometimes it happens like that. Maybe your first draft happens that way, but you end up tweaking a word here or a line there. It is rare that you have this idea and it just magics itself into a song in 15 minutes. That doesn’t happen.
If you watch the Beatles documentary “Get Back,” you can see the process of how McCartney wrote “Get Back.” It’s more like that. You might have one core idea, and then you keep throwing other ideas until it all sticks together.
What’s the hardest thing about songwriting?
The second verse. Talk to most any songwriter. They’ve written great first verses or great hooks. It’s about building a song from there.
I have a song that I’ve been working on for a while called “When in Rome.” I’m still not happy with it, so I haven’t really played it out. I love my choruses. The verses I’m not pleased with. That’s where the craft comes in.
You go from a lump of clay to a song. Sometimes you have to rewrite and rewrite until you’re satisfied. The better the part you have is, the more you have to craft so it’s not a silver-engraved handle on a $4 Home Depot bucket. No offense to Home Depot buckets, but you know what I mean.
What’s the part about songwriting and playing that’s the best part?
When there’s chatter in the room, and people are chitchatting, and then you sing a song that just silences the room. Everything disappears. You disappear. It’s just the song.
Then the song finishes, and it’s like there is a quiet breath from the crowd. From you. Just the last resonant tones sustaining from the strings of your guitar. And then the applause.
That silence right before the applause, when people have taken it all in, that’s the best moment. The key is writing an album full of songs like that. Or making a career writing songs like that.
Sometimes you want to write a song that might be more rowdy. But the quiet ones — those are the ones that bring the best moments.
Bono once said that writing songs is easy, but writing good songs is hard. Agree? Disagree?
I think that’s true. How many times do you hear a little kid singing to themselves some song they’ve made up? That’s a song. Is it good? Probably not. Unless it’s your kid. Then it’s good. To you.
But writing a good song is hard. Convincing yourself that you’ve written a good song is also hard. That might be the hardest. The first few that come out OK make all the next ones harder. As you get better at it, you start to hold yourself to a higher standard.
Would you rather write your own music and be pretty successful, or would you rather see a music icon perform a song you wrote?
Somewhere in the middle, probably. I like the idea of having someone cut my songs.
The song that the title of my album comes from is a song I wrote about being a kid and wanting to be all sorts of things when you grow up, and all you really want to be is a good partner. I wrote it to my then-girlfriend, now wife, Katie. That song is really my song, but as I listen back to it, especially the work we did on it down at Capricorn in Macon, sometimes I can hear Brad Paisley singing it. I like the idea of him cutting it.
I want to be respected by other songwriters and to make a living, but I don’t necessarily need that level of fame. There are lots of songwriters I admire who have had bigger artists cut their songs but have a smaller following — guys like the late, great John Prine, Hayes Carll and Robert Earl Keen. I love their songs.
A great example of someone who did this and also has a massive amount of fame is Willie Nelson. He wrote “Crazy,” “Hello Walls” and “Night Life” before he ever had real success as an artist.
While the face of the music industry is often the performer, it’s good to see songwriters — who often remain in the background if they aren’t the performers themselves — being featured in contests and festivals, and being ranked by The New York Times. With awards and media coverage, the art of putting together the song, not just playing it or singing it, is increasingly getting its well-deserved recognition.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” a thriller novel, has been published by the Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/branded).
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