How to Write a Country Song
An idea while running emerges 4 years later into the real deal
In 2018, I ran the New York Marathon. But if you’ve ever known a marathon runner, that’s not the important part. It’s not actually about the 26 mile race that takes place over ~ 4 hours - it’s about the training that takes months and months and takes over every single conversation runners have with anyone. The miles they’ve run, the diet they’re sticking to, the beers they aren’t drinking, and the muscles they definitely are hurting.
Runners training for a marathon turn into nonstop talkers for one reason - they are compensating for the unprecedented amounts of time they end up spending with themselves. Because at mile 18, your head can become a pretty wild place.
Fortunately for me, four years later, I have a lot to show for my efforts. I now have under my belt a completed marathon, a complete dislike for running, and a completed, radio-ready, country song.
Wild Thoughts
You see, during one early training run, as I was rounding the Southern tip of Manhattan and emerging into the weird, shadowed, underpassed streets of the Lower East Side, a chorus popped into my head. A country chorus.
“She got that bodysuit and denim, baby don’t you let em down easy…”
It was summer in New York, girls wearing bodysuits and denim shorts were everywhere, and somehow my runned-out brain took my Southern college experience and my 2018 reality and bust out the beginnings of a country song.
I literally ran with it. For the rest of training this chorus faded in and out. I toyed with lyrics and tune.
“The way those hips are swaying, those boys don’t know you’re playing their heartstrings…”
I started to imagine nights out when I was down South, quickly realizing that “bodysuit” made absolutely no sense in any memory I had, real or imagined. “Cowboy Hat” it became.
Every few miles something new would hit and I’d chew on it. How would a night out start? A dusty bar, a jukebox in the corner, everyone eyeing everyone else.
“Look across the room and baby you don’t belong. Flipping through the jukebox trying to find your song.”
There it is. Who would react? And how?
“The girls they just can’t stand it… the way their men keep staring… each one thinking they could be the one…”
Bingo.
Getting In My Own Way
And just like that, it came to an abrupt end. The marathon came and went. The song? It came and went too.
Because what was I actually going to do with a country song? I had a tech company in New York City; that’s who I was and who I could be. It was my definition. At the time there was never one thought about the ability for that song to feasibly be anything more than half-finished notes on my phone. The steps to get a real person singing it seemed as complex to me as arranging a trip to Jupiter. It was a whole different planet.
So for 3 years the song sat there. Then, ironically, came this blog (or is it a newsletter?). I started writing The Reflection Point semi-regularly in mid-2021. I loved writing. I enjoyed writing. So I wrote more and more. The juices started flowing. “The more you do the more you do.” “Creation breeds creation.” Whatever pithy phrase you want to use, writing here gave me the inspiration to keep writing over there.
Lyrics turned out to be the easy part. I settled back into the dreamworld I had created in 2018. A guy and a girl, going bar to bar, but the night ending with her leaving him wanting more.
“I leave without her number… the memories they last longer… she said them country boys, they’ll break your heart.”
I was getting closer and closer to a song that I would want to drive to, chill in the backyard to, and most importantly, sing in a stadium to. I was making a country song that I would love - the intro, the verses, the chorus, the bridge, that one part where everyone really starts belting it out. I was loving every second.
Songs Are Hard
I reached a point where I figured I should probably start recording something. Steve Jobs thankfully gave every clueless amateur access to Garageband so I took my iPad and sang straight into it. Steve Jobs did not, however, give every amateur flawless musical instincts. I soon realized that my verses had some wildly bad timing. Words that looked great on a page either had to be stretched out past any point of acceptability or jammed together like subway commuters. I had reached the editing process.
Remember haiku’s in high school? Remember counting out syllables? I was snipping and rearranging to get my song back on track. Fortunately, the tighter it got, the better it sounded, and the more excited I became.
As I got closer to a vocally-finished song, the question of how I would take my iPad version and create a real song out of it loomed larger. In talking to a few industry pros, the music biz has turned into one where song demos can’t just be roughly-sketched ideas. There is enough technology and talent where they are expecting it to sound like a finished product, even if someone else will be the one singing it in the end.
Thus came the Google search: “can you pay someone to sing your song professionally?” Eventually I found that Fiverr and a few other sites have a whole industry of people who are great musicians that make side money quickly spinning up other people’s ideas. They have the studio equipment and voice. You bring the song.
My first attempt was a miss. I chose a Spanish guy who I mistakenly thought had no accent but who instead was incapable of pronouncing “J’s”. “Flipping through the yookbox trying to find your song…”. Perhaps my song would be a hit in the South… of Spain…
The second guy was a hit. I sent him my recording, he re-sang it, added instruments and mixed it professionally. He sent it back, I paid him a couple hundred for the great work, and the song was mine.
I grinned like an idiot the first time I heard it. It was the first time I actually believed it should go beyond me.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
That brings us up to today. In my free time I’m embarking on a journey to get this sung by a great country singer, purely because that would make me happy. I think the song would make other people happy too. I’m finding email addresses of agents and managers of top singers and reaching out. I’m hitting up artists known and less-known on Instagram. I’m networking with anyone I know in the industry to see if I can slide in somewhere.
This journey is a benefit in itself, talking to people I never would have connected with, and learning about a world I only tangentially experienced during my 18 months acting in LA. It’s all gravy, it’s all upside.
The End.
Just kidding. Can you imagine if I didn’t post the song? Love it or hate it, I hope it will at least make you smile. Here’s to trying new things and seeing them through.
I really do like this song....