Another late night – I have a feeling that when I get back to Chicago, I’m going to have to sleep for a few days straight to catch up after all of this. So completely worth it though – I really must write and thank the folks at FameCast (and the critics who picked me as the winner!) for sending me to the ASCAP Expo. Imagine wanting to play football for your entire life, dreaming of playing for the Packers for instance, and then getting to spend three straight days just hanging out, talking to and listening to advice from the whole damn team.
Okay, that’s a bad analogy. It’s late, sue me. 
Today I met one of my heroes, Jonatha Brooke. I first heard her CD in high school, immediately fell in love with tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11, and placed at the top of my “life goals” list: Open for Jonatha Brooke. She runs her own label, on which she releases her own CDs; tours for a living; and writes with this ferocious honesty that just makes me fall apart. I cannot hear the opening chords of “Inconsolable” without flashing back to the times in my life when I’ve lived those lyrics, and I was accepted to both USC and the University of Miami thanks to applications that included a writing sample which I’d based on “Crumbs,” still one of the best written songs of all time as far as I’m concerned.
So Jonatha was part of a panel of pros who were critiquing songs today. I’d entered mine for consideration but wasn’t accepted – bah. So instead, I sat and listened to the four of them talking about other people’s songs, agreed with some things, disagreed with others, then went up after the session to introduce myself. And hand her a press kit. And relate a story that Bruce Winter had shared with me about her last show at the Pabst. And tell her that I’d like to open for her when she comes back.
I was feeling ballsy.
The Expo is being held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel at Hollywood & Highland, right next to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Kodak Theatre (which is also home to the Academy Awards), and across the street from Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum. When I moved to LA, this part of town was seedy as hell, and definitely not a shopping (or even much of a visiting) destination. I remember being pretty disappointed by “Hollywood.” Now, though, they’ve rebuilt the entire block, and within the same complex as the Kodak and Grauman’s is a 5-story outdoor mall, tons of restaurants, and the hotel. It’s posh. It’s nice. You’re not terribly likely to accidentally step on a used needle anymore.
So I arrived there after a late night last night and then a crazy run-in at Rite-Aid (more on that later), picked up my badge and goodie bag – and then realized I didn’t want to attend the Member Meeting that would start in 5 minutes. No good reason, just didn’t want to make the trip all the way up to the top floor Grand Ballroom right then. So, I went shopping. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m broke, but the boutique right next to the hotel main entrance looked so good I had to go in and browse, and when I discovered it was super affordable too, well… I promise, both items I purchased were well worth the time and effort, and will be put to good use this weekend.
The songwriting panel was the first event I attended, and also where I began meeting the people I will now run into and chat with for the remainder of the Expo. Solitary males always approach me at these things – I’m wandering around on my own, and random men will come up and ask for my card or what kind of music I write or whatever. It’s fine, I get it, I’m one of the younger members of ASCAP still and was definitely dressed to attract attention because, frankly, I was hoping I could use that to get my press kit to some important people. Which I did. But thankfully, I’ve long since mastered the “friendly-chat-then-excuse-to-leave” trick, which I use consistently with anyone I’m not actually interested in talking to. Creepy guy who kept following me around the room even as I looked anywhere but at him and even engaged in conversation with other people while ignoring him – not interested. Chicago-based producer with a good sense of humor and a definite professional feel about him – worth talking to.
I handed my press kit to both Jonatha and Tom Sturges at this particular panel, learned some really interesting things I plan to apply to my future songwriting and recording endeavors, then headed out to get lunch with a group of people I’d loosely attached to. After lunch I headed for the panel on Licensing and Selling Music Online, which featured another musical hero of mine, Derek Sivers, founder and President of CD Baby. For you non-musicians, Derek’s a hero because he made it possible for performers and songwriters to sell their music online without having to go through a major distributor or record label. You sign up, you send in a box of CDs, you tell your fans they’re available, and when you sell them, CD Baby sends you a check. It’s simple, and he nailed it before anyone else even thought about the idea – CD Baby currently sends checks worth about $1.2 million a month to its members for physical and digital sales.
Anyway, much was learned there also (I’ll spare you the details, don’t worry), and then – I got tired. Just hit the afternoon slump and had no energy left. So I wandered around a little, sorted through the goodie bag, and finally around 5:30 a friend from my home town, who is now an aspiring screen writer in LA, joined me for dinner. We had a good time catching up and talking about our respective projects, and by the time he left, I was feeling a little guilty for skipping the interview with Jon Bon Jovi, but had energy again.
Which was perfect, because the last event of the evening was a Writer / Producer Discussion and Jam in the Grand Ballroom. Glen Ballard (Jagged Little Pill, “Man in the Mirror”), Mike Bradford (Madonna, Uncle Kracker), Mark Hudson (Bon Jovi, “Livin’ on the Edge”) and Linda Perry (Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys) were the featured guests, and I have to gush for a second, because this particular event was probably one of my favorite 2-hour time blocks ever.
These guys are monsters. And I mean that in the good way – monsters of their craft, the kind of artists that all 500-600 of us in the audience would kill to be. They’ve sold millions of albums; they’re sought-after by artists, producers and labels; but most of all, they just know their shit, and it shows. Walking around all day talking to other people at my level, people who write but haven’t hit it big and maybe never will, can be exhausting; putting yourself in the presence of your idols is kind of the opposite.
Each of them told stories about their early songwriting careers, about how they got into producing, how they came up with the song that broke them into the major scene or even just a song that we’d all know; they played acoustic versions of major #1 successes (Glen Ballard did a piano version of “Ironic,” accompanied by the most smooth and tasteful bass line from Mike Bradford, for instance); and they told us the stories behind the songs, working with artists who weren’t big yet or artists who were already huge and left them star struck.
But it wasn’t all touchy feely, and that’s the even better best part. Each of these people has a personality that is unique and strong – they stand out in a crowd, they know their shit, and they aren’t afraid to be themselves in front of anyone. Mark Hudson, for instance, came in looking like this:
His advice to up-and-coming songwriters? “Do not be afraid to tell the truth, every day. Be who you are and don’t ever lie about it. Look at me – I’m up here in front of you all and I look like I’ve had oral sex with a bag of Skittles.”
The man was batshit bonkers, and had us all rolling in the aisles every time he told a story. On meeting Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler for the first time: “He came in with his child-bearing lips and went *yeah yeah yeah!!!* [imitation of Steven Tyler's screaming]; his mouth is so big a Puerto Rican family could live on his tongue!” And on and on…
Glen Ballard is simply a legend, and though he had a cold and was clearly struggling to keep up the energy, I adore his work.
Mike Bradford…I want to work with this man. Do you hear me Mike? Wherever you are, when you read this, my email address is juliemoffitt.net@gmail.com or MySpace me – I want to be in the studio with you. Good god. He wrote the song “Follow Me” for Uncle Kracker, which is a sweet song that I (and the majority of America, I’d assume) have always thought was about love. It sounds like it’s about love. Turns out it’s not – they changed a few lyrics to make it playable on the radio, but before that, it was about drug addiction.
Listen to that song again, with the real basis for its lyrics in mind. Then tell me you don’t think Mike Bradford is a frickin’ genius. Add to that his bad-ass bass skills and, well, yes, I want to make an album with this man.
But the cream of the crop, by far, was Linda Perry. And I have to qualify this statement, because the reality of the situation is that Linda Perry was technically the least informative panelist, by traditional standards. She, unlike most songwriters, does not remember any of her own songs well enough to play them; in fact, she intentionally forgets them after they’re recorded by the artist for whom they were written, because they’re not hers anymore anyway. She does not know the chords and words to every major pop song of the past 3 decades – in fact, her attempt at covering The Eagles’ “Hotel California” was painful, forgotten lyrics and flubbed chords and stopping and starting throughout, even with the other 3 panelists joining in. She does not remember the first song she wrote, she does not know all the technical details of the equipment in her own studio – she proudly told us that when she first sat in the engineer’s chair, she simply turned knobs until things sounded right, and that’s what she does to this day – and she sat in her chair with a hat pulled down over her eyes, looking like a teenager who’s stuck in a class she wants to get out of.
But in spite of all these potential negatives, the truth is that she is a fucking rock star. She has balls of steel this woman, elephant-sized balls of steel, and she is completely unafraid to show it. While the other three showed off their most famous songs, some by memory and some with a little lyric sheet, she flat out said that she didn’t remember any – then proceeded to sit down at the piano and write a new song, on the spot, in front of an entire ballroom filled with her peers. And honestly, the lyrics were clearly scratch lyrics, but the damn song wasn’t bad. She just turns knobs in the studio until things sound good, okay, but when things don’t sound right, she knows it; and when they do, she and the artist she’s working with sell millions of albums.
Linda Perry is fearless. It radiates from her the entire time you’re in the room, it’s evident in her laughter as she flubs the same chord for the fifth time on a song that 90% of the people in the room could have played better, and it is one of the first things that’s been said in any interview I’ve read about her. She is not held back by technological advance, by uncertainty, by rules or standards or being flat out told to shut up and stop asking so many questions – she just knows what feels right and what doesn’t, and goes with what does.
Linda Perry is my new hero.
