Write You A Song Podcast

Tracking down songwriters for this podcast can be challenging. Publishing companies don’t return your email . A  songw riter doesn’t return your email .  Publishing companies really don't return your emails. But, just when you think it’s time to hang it up, the universe throws you a bone and you get a random email from a podcast listener named Keith, hooking you up with...

If the name Johnny Bulford sounds vaguely familiar, then maybe you used to watch the Colgate Country showdown, a country music talent show sponsored by the toothpaste company. In 2008, he won it and was given a $100,000 check by the evening’s host, Leanne Rimes.  But here's the thing: The Showdown was a singing competition...and as much as Johnny loves to sing- and is good at it –...

When you think country music and Australia, the first person who comes to mind is that guy married to Nicole Kidman. But he wasn’t the first. He was beaten to the states by a then teenage girl, who arrived here in the 1980s with her parents. But her first job wasn’t singing, or writing. It was as a character on an iconic 1980s TV show. If you remember The Facts of Life, think back to t...

The goal of most performers is to be so good, their audience is captivated. A captive audience. But ...what if your audience has no choice because they're literally captive?  This episode’s guest isn’t really Country. He’s more folk, or Americana, or whatever you want to call it. I just think he's amazingly talented, with a fascinating story to tell. I heard about Matt Butler one morning when I he...

A drummer? On a podcast about songwriting? What is this abomination?? Truth is, it's not an abomination at all! An aberration, maybe but a cool one. Or at least, I think it is. I hope you do too. No, the format of Write You a Song isn't changing. I simply had the opportunity to interview a professional Nashville drummer named Will Johnston, whom I got to know a bit last summer when the artist he t...

Ray Fulcher had no plans on ever becoming a songwriter or a singer. Teaching and coaching. THOSE were his plan. But they got set aside one fateful night Ray went to a club in his college town and saw a young country artist named Eric Church. Seeing and hearing Eric lyrics lit something inside Ray, and that flame was helped along by a second incident of fate the day he met a fellow couch surfer in...

Florida native Jordan Fletcher was a drummer. Is a drummer. Still. But, his hands are usually busy with an acoustic guitar these days.  Jordan came to Nashville to play drums but somewhere along the way, he discovered he was pretty good at writing songs. And singing them. And thanks to what he calls some “stupid optimism”, he decided to go all in as a singer/songwriter.  Nashville though can be a...

It’s truly amazing how one simple, polite gesture can utterly change a person’s life.   As a teenager, songwriter Luke Laird took a family vacation to Nashville. And even though he was already deeply interested in music, he had no idea somebody like him, a young man from Pennsylvania, could do it for a living...until the writer of one of country music’s most iconic songs spent a few moments talkin...

they say 3 of the most disruptive things a person can go through in life are a job change, a move, and a new child. Drew Parker had 2 of those 3 things happen on the same day his first song went to #1. Drew's initial country music dream didn't actually include songwriting. He wanted to perform. But it was a chance meeting with another young, unknown performer by the name of Luke Combs that prompte...

Starting in the mid-80s, Jeff Stevens has written some monster country hits, including songs that could fairly be called classics- Carrying Your Love With Me from George Strait, for example. But, as his career has gone on, he hasn’t just gone back to the same well again and again and as such, some of his more recent stuff has actually gotten blowback for not being country enough. If you listen to...

The podcast is back after a three month hiatus and what a great guest to return with. Kent Blazy was a young songwriter in Nashville but didn't have enough hits to quite make ends meet. So he opened a recording studio and recruited a stable of demo singers who would go on to become some of the biggest stars of 1990s country music and beyond: Joe Diffie, Faith Hill, Martina McBride, Billy Dean...an...

  If you listen to this podcast at all, then you’ve heard Walker Hayes' name dropped by a few other writers who’ve collaborated with him- Nicolle Galyon, Josh Jenkins, to name two. There’s a lot of respect in Nashville for him, especially since he’s been there since the early 2000s. But all this time he’s been mostly under the radar. Heck, at one point, he was wo...

If you’re at all familiar with the ocean, you’ll know that while most swells on a given day will be roughly the same size, every once in a while that pattern gets upset when, out of nowhere, a wave twice the size of the others, or even greater, suddenly appears. They’re called rogue waves and while they don’t happen very often, and they can’t be predicted, they cannot...

This month’s guest has wasted little time making the most of his growing career. It hasn’t been that long since he was literally living out of his car on the streets of Nashville. His debut single shot to #1 in November 2018. His 2nd single also went to number 1 and as I put together this podcast, his 3rd single has cracked the top 10. He’s also won awards (2021 CMA New Male Arti...

This month's guest didn't set out to write some of country music's most romantic ballads. But then...Clint Eastwood called.  There is no doubt Steve Dorff is talented beyond measure. But how he found country music - or rather, how country music found him - is a tale all to itself.  Sit back and enjoy the incredible story of an incredible artist: composer, arranger, director, lyricist...h...

If you were to take just the number 1 country songs Ashley Gorley has written and, supposing their average length is, say, 3:30... played them back to back to back... you’re gonna be listening for just over 3 hours.  With his current tally of #1 songs at a ridiculous 51, Gorley seems to have a gear nobody else has. The awards he’s won and honors he’s received alone take up 1...

This month’s guest, Matraca Berg, grew up in a musical family. Her mother Icee Berg (yep, real name!) was a songwriter and session singer who at first wasn't crazy that her daughter wanted a career in country music but later became her best teacher. Her stepfather, Dave Kirby, was a songwriter whose credits include the Gene Watson classic I’ve Got Memories to Burn and Charlie Pride&rsq...

Over 30 years in ANY business is impressive but in the world of songwriting, it's especially notable....even more so when that writer is still very much at the top of their game. Tommy Lee James was the "bigshot songwriter" our last guest, Ross Copperman, talked about. Ross grew up in the same town as Tommy Lee, and drew inspiration from his success as Ross embarked on his own music career. ...

30 number one singles as a writer and a producer...six of which he wrote in 2015 alone. He’s been nominated for and won multiple BMI, CMA and ACM songwriter awards He works with the biggest names in Nashville, including songwriters like Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, and artists like Dierks Bentley, Brett Eldredge, Jake Owen and Darius Rucker. He just released an EP of solo material that i...

Singer/songwriter Niko Moon has one foot in the country, and one in the city. He can write as traditional a country hit as anyone (Zac Brown Band's "Homegrown", for example), and he'll show off his Atlanta hip-hop influences on his solo hits, like "Good Time". And while traditionalists may cluck at his more progressive tendencies, Niko himself makes a good case as to why it may not be so much abou...

Sometimes in life, you have to find out what you don’t want to do, before you figure out what you do wanna do. And that’s definitely part Nicolle Galyon's story. Originally planning for a career in artist management, Galyon moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University. But, she took an interest in the artist/creative side after attending a few songwriter open mic nights, w...

"There's nothing like this town. Songs are in the air". That's how James T Slater sums up Nashville, where he's made his home and his living for past 15+ years. Before that though, he lived and worked in a lot of places- and not necessarily places you'd consider "country": Panama. L.A. Switzerland. He wrote a hit song for a European group and played piano standards at a bar owned by Carroll "Archi...

" As long as you've got a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, you're still in the game ". Singer/songwriter/producer/entrepreneur/opinionated son of a gun John Rich has been at the top of his game for going on two decades now. But before that, he was adrift, between gigs and without a record or publishing deal. But, with a pencil and a lot of blank sheets of paper, he managed to write "a couple tho...

If Aimee Mayo had never become a successful Nashville songwriter, her story would still be worth telling.  Growing up in a dysfunctional family in Gadsden, Alabama, Aimee dreamed of a life beyond constant personal chaos and somehow, against all odds, she achieved it. Her book recounting that journey, " Talking To The Sky: A memoir about living your best life in a sh*t show " is available now...

Surprise! This is the first extra Write You a Song podcast that is actually a full interview. Granger Smith's image is that of a good ol' country boy- he's got songs galore about pickups and dirt roads. And, of course, he's got his comic alter-ego, Earl Dibbles Jr.  But Granger is a lot more than that. He's a bright, creative, enterprising (Yee Yee Apparel) and above all honest: honest about...