Songwriters Bleed Ink
So I ran away from home at the ripe old age of 27. I just had to be in Nashville....had to walk the yellow brick road of Music Row...soak up the neon light at Tootsie’s on Broadway....feel the whine of the steel guitar at Grand Ole Opry...stare in awe at the Mount Rushmore like faces of Cash,Kristofferson,Willie,Hank and Waylon.I soaked it up..I breathed it in...I gave blood at the Blood Bank...worked as a house cleaner...got in a Dodge Van and travelled the highways and backroads playing piano for a singer with a dream...but it was his dream...not mine....I loved it but I hated it...I slowly disappeared day by painful day..toiling during the day and trying to write at night...on the outside looking in.If you don’t have the talent and the discipline...Nashville is the loneliest city in the world.I gathered what was left and headed down I-40 West to Dallas Tx....going to re-invent myself yet again this time at the ripe old age of 31.Most of my friends were married,buying their first houses,having children...establishing careers as doctors and lawyers and rocket scientists.... Lord,if you have given me the passion....and the desire...why have you closed every door...slammed it in my face...discouraged and bitter....tried not to talk about my time in Nashville in my new life as a Real Estate Broker in Dallas...didn’t wanna write....if I couldn’t be Springsteen or Dylan...surely I was a failure right? Wrong..it’s not either/ or...it’s both/ and..I could be a husband and father and real estate broker and songwriter all at the same time... when I finally came to terms with the fact that creativity was a God given gift...and a gift I should treasure and enjoy.....things started to fall into place....one gleaming Saturday morning at age 39,I sat down at an out of tune piano and opened up my black and white composition book and told the truth...I opened up a vein and bled on the page.....
Songwriters Bleed Ink
I wrote a song about a guy starting over..I wrote my story..it is a metaphor.....staring down his demons....asking for forgiveness....broken....needing and finding redemption....”I think I’m on a roll here in Little Rock...solid as a stone baby wait and see..got one small problem here in Little Rock....without you baby I’m not me” Went an NSAI songwriting seminar in Austin Tx ....re-connected with Paul Worley ...a friend whom I had known when I lived in Nashville ten years earlier...there is a plan after ALL! He signed me to Sony Publishing...Collin Raye recorded Little Rock...it went to #1...the Red Sea parted and I walked to the Promise Land....and I lived happily ever after....not quite...that was the summer of 1993...I commuted to Music City for 4 years (one week a month).I still had a healthy mistrust for the Music Business and with good reason....it’s Heartbreak Town...now I have been here for over 20 years and have had the opportunity to write songs and make a living.I am blessed and remember that on the good days...on the bad days...I am scared and lonely and insecure and unsure why I am here...GRATITUDE is the antidote for what ails me....I am grateful I can play the piano..I am grateful I can read The Great Gatsby..I am grateful I have a wife and children that love me...I am grateful I have the opportunity I can stare at a blank page and sometimes write a song that I am proud of...and for Bart and the NSAI team that works diligently to protect the creative rights of writers the world over. I have to stay in the process...detach myself from the end result..is it commercial ...will anyone like it ...I don’t know...I shouldn’t care as much as I do...write the next letter...and the next word and play the note and the chord...do the next thing...that’s what I would tell you...tell your story...I want to hear it...I need to hear it...I want to be inspired...open up a vein and....tell the truth...that is what we do....
Songwriters Bleed Ink
-Tom Douglas
Register to hear Tom teach at our Spring Training event next month.