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How about you? I ask this question because the why of it all is important. I think it’s important to be who we really are. We’re not going to kid anyone if we assume the wrong role while we’re on this planet. I think that in the case of recording artists… we’re going to stand out even more than most when things are mismatched… we do our work on the world’s stage and there’s nowhere to hide.

Singer‐Songwriters have to know who they are. Johnny Cash could not have gotten on stage at Folsom Prison and sang to those inmates if he didn’t honestly feel a kinship with them. Taylor Swift obviously loves her young fans enough to help them articulate meaningful words that they would like to be able to say, but can’t yet. She validates her fan’s feelings through her remarkable songs. Johnny did the same thing. Johnny Cash was, and Taylor Swift is transparent, at ease and delighted to be singing. I dig that.

The juice of this whole star business magically switches on when fans love you and you love them back just as much. The power of this reciprocal relationship transcends any artistic limitations too. Quality of voice, depth of musicianship and perfection mean little when stars and their fans unite. All that really matters is the connection, and the rest is as natural as an evening stroll.

So back to you… why do you want to be a star? This is a tough field we’ve chosen. Writing songs that stand up to the competition is hard. Singing beautifully night after night is hard. Keeping a band together is hard. Why do we do this? It’s personal for all of us and I’m really looking forward to seeing your replies on our blog. I do know this much… the friends, clients and prospective clients of Artist Development Network are a devoted and serious group. I’ve been here for a year and a half now and I’ve enjoyed every single minute of my time co‐writing beautiful music and getting to know many of you well. I am energized by your motivation and you keep me young. I feel your musical desires and make it a point to help you co‐write the most original music possible. Our whole songwriting team feels the same way. Cathy Lemmon has that same force about her as well. She’s been steering the ship here for 16 years in Nashville. Our dream is to help you with your dreams. We love our work. And there’s that reciprocal‐relationship thing popping up again ☺

I’m not a big Nascar guy. I’ve watched a few (yawn) and made some observations that relate to the music business. In particular, I’ve witnessed the smallest mechanical part take down a million dollar racing car. The same thing can happen in the arts. A single, unforeseen disaster can trigger a series of events that can pull an artist of his or her path permanently. It’s a bad day when this happens. The genetically hard wired singer/songwriter does not have a personality or temperament that will be well suited for a stock and standard 40 hour per week job. So let’s examine the things I consider to be the most important for keeping your singing career on track:

1) Relationships
I could write a book on this particular subject. In the interest of time, I’ll keep this one short. Healthy, give and take relationships require time, attention, commitment. Generally speaking, artist types tend to be what non-artistic types label as selfish. It’s true. If you take a poll of all your artistic friends; you’re going to find that they have quite a history of being labeled as “selfish” by their mates. Is this true? Probably, but mostly because their mates don’t understand artists. Our first love was probably music. It will always be our first love and our mates can’t change or compete with that. So the thing about relationships is: try to avoid the wrong ones with people who don’t understand your artistic personality. Don’t confuse horny with love.

Avoid relationships with serious commitments as long as you can. When you find that person that you really can’t live without… that’s the Come To Jesus Moment where you’re going to have to really assess this person and how compatible he/she is with your artist personality. Guess what score this potential mate needs to score in the compatibility department? 50%? 60%? Personally speaking, I’d say they’d better score 99‐100%. If they’re not completely comfortable with your career and personality type, you’re putting yourself on a path of pure agony. Music will win. The relationship will fail and you’ll be dealing with the fallout, which will lead to depression and take you further away from your music.

2) Nutrition‐Drugs‐Addictions
This one is going to sting a bit. When you were 16, you could’ve eaten at Taco Bell seven days a week and looked great. Flat out, straight up, this will not be the case in your mid 20s, 30s and beyond when you really need to look great in front of a camera. Pretty people become stars. And even if you’re not drop dead gorgeous or on the mainstream star path, you still have to look as good as you can. Looks start within. Junk in junk out. We’re just like cars in that respect. If you put sugar in your gas tank your car will run like crap. If you constantly fuel yourself on Grand Slam breakfasts you will wind up old before your time. Read. Learn. Consult nutritional experts, not Jenny Craig. Jenny sells food. Nutritional experts aren’t selling anything but life skills and knowledge. Big difference.

I think it’s pretty much common knowledge that alcohol and tobacco will make it that much harder to maintain good health. You can’t smoke and expect to sing beautifully, breath efficiently and have the high range you’ll need to deliver most pop songs. You can’t drink and expect your body to deliver the hydration needed for healthy vocal cords. This is all common sense stuff. Life is demanding enough anyway. Why increase the probability of failure with bad foods, alcohol, drugs, energy drinks, cigarettes, pot, spice, pulse, weight loss supplements or any other addiction, legal or not? This is not rocket science, folks. If you’re sleepy, don’t drink coffee… take a freekin’ nap. Exercise is one of the greatest natural drugs ever. Partake in that one with a clean conscience. That’s the real deal, and it will improve your sex life dramatically. Hmm… Tough choice.

3) Professional Improvement
Never, ever stop learning. You might be a kick‐ass singer with a 3 octave range, but you won’t keep that range unless you exercise that voice and check in with a respected vocal coach every once in a while. This is hard to explain in a short paper, but singing is all about muscles. Muscles, as we’re learning, have their own memory. If we begin to develop bad habits in singing, it will take a LOT of time and effort to re‐teach the muscles how to do things right again. You will not be able to cruise on auto pilot if you’re trying to break bad habits. And when you have to start nitpicking the details of your creative process, you will lose something. You can get over this in time, but you can’t be 100% creative and monitoring your actions. That means you can’t be a great singer if you’re “thinking” about singing. You have to be able to sing as easily as you breathe. So the moral of this lesson is: regular checkups in the
voice department will keep bad habits away.

4) Debt
As of this writing, 2010, credit is hard to obtain. If you’re not already in debt, it will be easy to stay debt free for a year or two. But this will not always be the case. Years ago, department stores, home improvement companies and big business figured out that the real profit in business is in the sale of MONEY. They can sell you things for almost no profit if they’re making 20% on that revolving charge card. Learn to live within your means and without the credit cards and high interest rates. If that means postponing that new car or a living room furniture set purchase, by all means… postpone it until you have the cash. Owing money to credit companies means you’ll make decisions about your career and your art based on having to pay these companies back. Not good. Don’t go there. Stay debt free…100% debt free. Rent, food, utilities, gasoline, those will be hard enough to tackle. Don’t pile on any more.

5) Routines
Exercising, practicing, songwriting, rehearsing have to be done. If you’re reading this you are hopeful singer or singer/songwriter. All of the above tasks have to be done and you might just as well set aside time right now to insure that they happen, every day, every week. This is your passion, right? Treat your passion with the ultimate respect… put it on the calendar and make certain you do what you need to do to make your dreams come true.

Contact David Harper at musicbydavid@gmail.com

Chet came on board as a song writer client in 2009, and he’s an example of what all serious song writers should be doing…..Chet is always writing, always promoting his songs, networking with other writers and singers and getting his songs heard by radio and internet stations, competitions, and wherever he can share and promote his music.

Here’s one of Chet’s songs he co-wrote with ADN song writer Larry Clark, called “Before She Can’t Remember”. It’s a tender heart-felt song about Chet’s mother. The song was nominated and won “Song of The Month” on www.songramp.com.

Way to go Chet! Keep up the good work! Twist of Lemmon Music is proud to be your publisher!

BEFORE SHE CAN’T REMEMBER

Chet A Blum / Larry Wayne Clark
C2009 – - – All Rights Reserved

I say, Mom how was camp Switona
That summer of thirty-three?
She says, Oh it was great I swam the lake
All the boys were after me
I say mom did you have fun yesterday?
I don’t know what did I do?
I remind her that we were together
Oh that’s right I had lunch with you

Chorus: I tell her it’s not her fault
She’s outlived her memory
I want her to know how much I love her
Before she can’t remember me

I wish I could make her young again
Give back what the seasons stole
Once I leaned on her, now she leans on me
As parent and child change roles
She looks at me with frightened eyes
Says, why did things end this way?
And I put my arms around her
There’s really not much to say

Chorus: I tell her it’s not her fault
She’s outlived her memory
I want her to know how much I love her
Before she can’t remember me

Bridge: Yesteryear’s faded glories
Are there for her to claim
But I see the clouds in her eyes
When she call me by my brother’s name

Chorus: I tell her it’s not her fault
She’s outlived her memory
I want her to know how much I love her
I’m trying to show how much I love her
Before she can’t remember me

Here’s a little ditty… about Jack and Diane. What a great song. What’s the message of the Jack & Diane story? I think it goes way deeper than just small town football stars and their girlfriends. Scratch and dig deeper; it’s a multi-layer lyric. It’s also a story about self-made obstacles. We’ve all seen these mini series play out in our hometowns. Take a snapshot in time and someone owns the world; then fast forward two years later and they’re not even on the radar. The usual culprit is an abrupt change of direction. Enter drama.

I’ve seen the routine over and over. The promising star or starlet gets the industry machinery going, camps get set up, big plans get made, label deals get inked and lots of money gets spent. And then, out of nowhere, the next big thing pulls the plug. Sometimes they don’t even know they’ve pulled it and it’s over. Doesn’t matter though. The end result is the same.

I have a lifelong relationship with a very talented guitarist friend. She’s not only a brilliant player, but an excellent singer/songwriter as well. I’ve watched her systematically destruct label deals and almost everything good in her life for over two decades now. I’ve been in many bands with this talented woman. They all implode in short order. Once the perfect combination of excellent players is found, we’ll have a brief moment where everything’s coming up roses. Then, like clockwork, she’ll begin to have huge mood swings, her personal life will begin to fall apart, she’ll get short and disrespectful with her band members, and then one-by-one, the supporting talent bails. Ultimately, the labels and the agents get nervous and her phone stops ringing. She will then go through a period of depression, usually a couple years. She might even move hundreds of miles away. Then, one day, like the sunrise, she reappears and the cycle begins a new. Unfortunately for her, she’s now in a position where her looks are slipping, she’s tired and too old to really set the world on fire. This routine has been going on since she was a kid.

What’s the deal? Is this chance? I don’t think so. Maybe once or twice might make it chance. This is a simple case of destructive behavior (the symptom) coupled with insecurity (the real problem). Yeah. I bet if we could get a little sodium pentathol in her (the truth drug) we’d get to the bottom of things. I honestly think she’s scared of success. She’s scared of competing. Real competition seems to be the great leveler. I don’t care how big you are in your small town, things will be different out in the real world. You won’t be the one and only and the focus of everybody’s attention on the world’s stage. All your little insecurities are going to come back to haunt you if you’re lucky enough to make it that far.

There’s always something about ourselves that we don’t particularly like. It might be our nose, our vibrato, bingo arms (that flappy part of the upper arm skin that is all too noticeable when someone stands up and yells BINGO!) or our butts or even the sound of our own voice. Whatever it is, it becomes the focus, our obsession, and given the right set of circumstances (the prospect of real fame), these obsessions can become overpowering. We develop temporary OCD and focus on things that don’t matter while ignoring all of our positive attributes. Then when it’s all too much to handle, we’ll set fire to our careers so we’ll have a good story down the road as to how and why we’re a victim of circumstance. Oh the drama.

Victim? Yeah…we’re the victims of our own self-made dramatic circumstance all right. Cathy Lemmon recently pinged her email list letting everybody know that we have a reality show in the works at Artist Development Network. She asked for real-life stories from people. And you wouldn’t believe how many amazing stories we’ve received or the depths of despair people have plunged into. This is all good stuff for reality television, and we can use these stories! But let me assure you… you’ll need to get past all of it if you really want to do something with your own musical career.

No drama boys & girls. That’s got to be the rule when it comes to the stage. The old saying the show must go on is the main rule the pros live by. Drama might keep people glued to a reality show, but when it comes time to perform on stage there had better be no excuses. And believe me, as the ringleader of your own career, you’ll need to have emotional headroom and compassion to help those in your crew through their own nightmares. Disasters happen. You have to be available to help key band members and personnel through difficult times. Straight up: the last person that can afford the luxury of chronic self-made drama is the star of the show.

Contact David Harper at:

musicbydavid@gmail.com

In the music business, I have found that in general, the bigger the bio, the smaller the talent. My dad used to say, “Empty barrels make the most noise.” I think he knew what he was talking about. As for musical artists, we’re put a rather precarious position, which is unique to performers. To really get a jumpstart on a performance career, we have to impress people. We have to give them a good indicator off stage that we belong on stage. So how does one go about doing this with humility? The answer is with a short, but amazing display of talent. Unfortunately, for some artists, they feel that they have to keep proving themselves long after they’ve gotten through the door. Others stay sane and level. I don’t know why some go overboard, but I suspect it has to do with insecurity.

So where should the line be drawn? What’s over the top? Cathy Lemmon and I have seen the entire spectrum of egos at Artist Development Network. We love the humble ones, of course. But we also have to deal with the not so humble and the ego-less personalities too.

People without egos are deadly in their own way. They rarely stand up for themselves. They also have a seriously hard time saying “no” to anyone. My single largest professional annoyance is working with a co-writer who has been cursed with one of these egos-less personality. They tend to have little direction, never speak up when things aren’t right, allow an entire 3-hour writing session to go by without so much as a hint that things aren’t working for them. A few days later, I find out in a roundabout way that they didn’t really like that song we were working on anyway. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen very often; but when it does, I’m left shaking my head. Why would this person shy away from the simple act of honesty? They’ve traveled many miles. They’ve paid dearly just to sit with me. Honestly, they won’t hurt my feelings. I’m a big boy; I can handle rejection. Wouldn’t it be in everybody’s best interest if this co-writer had just said, “This isn’t working for me, let’s try another approach…” I can deal with that. I embrace that.

On the flip side is the egocentric, and I’ve seen those people in my work as well. I have seen promising songs go into cardiac arrest because an ego maniac co-writer has to have his or her own way. They usually wind up destroying all the good stuff just to control the entire process. One comes to mind immediately as I reminisce. This particular artist wound up watering down her entire 3-song demo by eliminating brilliant lines of songs simply because she didn’t write them. She also made life miserable for the producers,

musicians and staff. Not a single co-writer on the team enjoyed writing with her. Our best writer wound up texting our boss from the writer’s room, midway through the session, pleading with her to never book another session with this client. That’s pretty bad! Not surprisingly, this artist’s career has gone nowhere.

What I’ve chronicled for you above are the lucky ones that have at least gotten on board with us and out of the gate and had their shot. But here’s an example of the saddest scenario:

At least once a month I wind up talking with someone that kills any prospect of working with our team long before they even get here. I had opened up a dialogue recently with a young hip-hop artist. This young man was very anxious to work with us. He had several recordings with astronomically high play counts on MySpace. It was clear that either he was a very successful indie artist in his own right, or he was manipulating the song play odometers. I asked him about his play counts on MySpace and he assured me that they were real. He also assured me that he had sold a substantial number of singles and albums on ITunes as well. I took his word for this up front. And we began to discuss marketing him to recording labels. Concurrently, he was working on new tracks to be released in 2009. It was all very exciting. But when we finally got a sneak preview of these new tracks, the rhythm of the singing and rapping had huge problems. Either an engineer botched this (doubtful) or he has really poor rhythm (much more likely). I suggested he listen to these tracks again, and that’s where everything began to go downhill. He couldn’t hear the poor timing! So I then pointed out specific places where the problems were. He still refused to admit that there was a problem.

I knew that he was looking forward to working with us. So we tried offering options. Perhaps his current producer would be willing to open up the files and fix things? “No” was the answer to that. I suggested that we produce a three songs demo for him locally with a white-hot, proven R&B producer. I even sent him slammin’ demo tracks done by this local hip-hop wizard. “No” was the answer to that, too. Even after hearing demos that were clearly heads and tails above his, he just dug in that much deeper. He fought us at every single stage. Ultimately, I had to politely pull the plug on this guy. My alarm bells were ringing loud as Big Ben at this point. He would have fought us all the way through negotiations and through marketing. And it’s sad. He’s going to release this new product shortly and it’s going to be very deflating for him. Who wants to listen to a hip-hop song that’s out of rhythm? I don’t. And I don’t think the world does, either.

So, remember folks…ego can be a plus or a minus. Next time you go on vacation, check to see how many friends and business buddies have left you a message after 7 days. If you’re gone for a week and the only message you get is from your mom, perhaps you need to reassess your ego. People really don’t like to be around know-it-alls that are full of themselves. You have to be a good listener if you want to be heard and valued. And the bottom line is: you have to show you care about someone before they will care for you. That healthy place, my friends, is exactly in the middle… tilting toward humble.

Oh, talented souls…strive to get and stay there.

Contact David Harper at:

musicbydavid@gmail.com

So many heroes have gone without knowing our appreciation for putting their life on the line to defend our great country. LeeAnn said, “I was inspired by the dedication of our military, their families, and the support of their communities who count the days until their safe return. God bless them all.”

This is a beautiful and touching song we hope you will enjoy listening to. The demo singer is Craig Campbell, who just signed a record deal in September!

Congratulations to both LeeAnn and Joe Sins for the wonderful song, and for Craig’s gift of voice!

As it turns out, the music that was once organic and full of truth has now been boxed up and shipped out as a commodity that is publicly traded day in and day out on Wall Street. You read that correctly, all the major labels today are now public corporations that are only concerned with pleasing their shareholders. If their artists have a bad quarter where they aren’t profitable, then chances are that they will find someone else who is.

What does it mean when money lovers replace music lovers at the top of the chain? It means that artists aren’t given the chance to DEVELOP. Once upon a time, if a label thought you had real potential but it would take a few years before you truly blossomed, they would give you a development deal on their dollar. This would provide you with the opportunity to grow as an artist under their supervision and eventually come to realize those chart-topping dreams the label saw in you from the very beginning. Today, if you aren’t at the top of your game in every category, and you don’t have “hit” potential, then you can’t realistically have success as a major label artist.

Before you continue with your inflated dreams of hitting it big as an average performer, singer, and songwriter, make sure you take the time to develop yourself as an artist so you can be profitable and successful in the music industry. That doesn’t mean you have to try to fit the mold that these labels build. Be your own unique self and put your own spin on the music you make. It is important, however, to be aware of the changing playing field that we are all stepping on. I am confident that authenticity and originality will win in the end, but having these business skills is crucial to your future career. It pays to have the heart of a poet and the mind of a suit.