Cary, North Carolina
60 Years Old
Songwriter

writer profile >

BIOGRAPHY

Hot damn! The wonders of technology. Now anybody can get their stuff out there. Not that I ever had any pretensions of doing that. I wrote for myself—inevitably so, since I can’t sing or play the guitar worth a damn. On the other hand, there was nobody I had to please “or else.” When a song came, it came. If it was “too long,” so what? Same thing if it took a tune 20 years to get finished. The luxury to write whatever you want with no pressure to produce . . . oooh, songwriter heaven.

The down side was writing in a vacuum for 30 years—Japan, of all places. (Hopefully, there’ll be a book coming out before too long about my three-year stint at a Zen monastery in a small fishing town, hanging out with the local yakuza and working as a doorman at a Nagoya cabaret, but that’s another story.) With a day job as an advertising copywriter, I learned to write to client specifications. So I do understand that writing a commercial song means, for the most part or unless you’re Bob Dylan, following rules.

Ten years ago, I began running into some really hot over-50 Japanese musicians who, to different degrees, had fallen on hard times. With specialties ranging from country and rock to classical and bossa nova, we formed a loose project dubbed “The Music Bank.” They contributed their considerable writing and playing talents. I write lyrics and music, but as the only white boy—as in English speaking white boy—by default I became the salesman. So give a listen, drop a line. Looking forward.

Contact

Administrative: Gordon Hutchison

DAY JOB

Advertising copywriter/translator

I AM INTERESTED IN

in co writing in person
in pitching songs to artist
in pitching songs to tv
in getting a publishing deal

experience >

AWARDS & ACCOLADES

Two 2nd place finishes in American Songwriter's lyrics contest.

>>

Legends: Bobby Braddock

In Nashville, most successful songwriters have a fairly short run. On hit, one year, two years, five years. Occasionally, we get one whose career approaches the length of a real career or, more often, one who has a few years success, then slips into oblivion, only to emerge again for another brief era of hit-making.

>>

Legends: Rickie Lee Jones

She speaks softly, not unlike the way she sings --soft, soulful passages, almost like secrets to the closest of friends --punctuated by bursts of exaltation. It's much like the span of emotion in her work, and in her new record, Balm in Gilead, which veers from the pure, naked heartbreak of "Bonfires" to the elation of "Old Enough," to the beautiful "Wild Girl," which celebrates the 21st birthday of her daughter, while simultaneously reflecting on the unchained fervor of her own wild days.

>>

Legends: Robert Earl Keen

As singer/songwriters go, Robert Earl Keen doesn't seem like the kind of artist who could honestly be accused of sloth. But despite a catalog choked with characters and conversations pulled from a colorful life, he makes that very claim on "Something That I Do," a track where he brags of his ability to not let work get in the way of an otherwise pleasant afternoon.

>>

Townes Van Zandt: Facets, Faults & Fractures

It's 10 o'clock at night on an abandoned Music Row. The year is 1985. In a third-floor office in an old house that serves as the offices for the Oak Ridge Boys' Silverline/Goldline Music Publishing, Steve Earle brings the chair he's leaning back in down hard, flipping his hair out of his eyes for emphasis.