Songcraft: Spotlight on Songwriters

SUMMARY
Stax Records legend Deanie Parker talks about writing songs for Otis Redding, Albert King, William Bell, and Carla Thomas, dives deep on what made the Stax environment so special, and shines a light on the recently-released box sets of forgotten Stax songwriter demos.
PART ONE
Scott and Paul discuss the wild story behind the monumental box set Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos.
PART TWO
Our in-depth interview with Deanie Parker
ABOUT DEANIE PARKER
While still in high school, Deanie Parker won a Memphis talent contest and an audition for Jim Stewart at Stax Records. He signed her and released her debut single, on the Volt label, in 1963. The self-penned “My Imaginary Guy” became a regional hit, but the life of a touring artist was not for Parker. She became the first Black employee at Stax’s Satellite Record Shop before joining the label staff as the company’s first publicist in 1964. Learning on the job while studying journalism at Memphis State, Parker eventually became the company’s Vice President of Public Affairs. One of the first female publicists in the music industry, she worked closely with Isaac Hayes, Booker T & the MG’s, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, and others.
Wearing many hats at Stax, Deanie continued to write songs with colleagues such as Steve Cropper, Booker T. Jones, Eddie Floyd, Bettye Crutcher, Mack Rice, Mable John, and Homer Banks, with whom she penned the soul classic “Ain’t That a Lot of Love.” The list of Stax artists who recorded her songs includes Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Sam & Dave, The Staple Singers, and more. Her other writing skills were put to use penning liner notes for classic albums such as Sam & Dave’s Hold On, I’m Comin’, Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign, Otis Redding’s Live in Europe, and Shirley Brown’s Woman to Woman.
From 1987 through 1995, Deanie served as the Assistant Director of the Memphis in May International Festival. A tireless champion of the Stax legacy, she became the first President and CEO of Soulsville, the nonprofit organization established to build and manage the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Stax Music Academy, and the Soulsville Charter School. She was appointed to the Tennessee Arts Commission in 2004 and, in 2009, was awarded two Emmy awards for the I Am a Man documentary short, for which she was an executive producer and the title song composer.
The list of artists outside the Stax family who’ve covered Deanie Parker’s songs includes The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Darlene Love, Taj Mahal, Three Dog Night, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Band, New York Dolls, Simply Red, Hall & Oates, and many others. She is a co-producer and co-liner notes writer of the seven-CD collection Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos, and was recently announced as a 2023 inductee into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

SUMMARY:
Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and four-time Grammy nominee Nancy Wilson of Heart joins us to chat about self-penned classics such as "Crazy on You," "Magic Man," "Barracuda," and "Never," as well as her work scoring films, and her upcoming debut solo album, You and Me.
PART ONE:
Paul and Scott chat about demos, their friends at Pearl Snap Studios, the grand finale of their Women's History Month series, why Nancy Wilson paved the way for little girls to aspire to great guitar heights, and what one Heart song each of them plans to blast after the interview.
PART TWO: 9:02 mark
Our in-depth interview with Nancy Wilson
ABOUT NANCY WILSON:
Four-time Grammy nominee and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Nancy Wilson is best known for her work in the band Heart, which she and her sister Ann helped propel to rock superstardom in the 1970s, thanks to self-penned classics such as “Crazy On You,” “Magic Man,” “Dreamboat Annie,” “Barracuda,” “Little Queen,” “Heartless,” “Straight On,” “Dog & Butterfly,” and “Even It Up.” In the mid-1980s they reinvented themselves as mainstream radio hitmakers with a string of successful singles, including “What About Love,” “Never,” “These Dreams,” “Nothin’ at All,” “Alone,” “Who Will You Run To,” “There’s the Girl,” “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You,” and “Stranded.”
Though she has sold over 35 million albums worldwide as a member of Heart, Nancy’s songwriting efforts extend beyond the confines of the band. She has written songs and scores for films, including Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, and Elizabethtown. She is also a founding member of the bands The Lovemongers and Roadcase Royale. Though she previously released a solo acoustic set called Live At McCabe’s Guitar Shop, Nancy’s debut studio album as a solo artist, You and Me, will be released on May 7th.

The Los Angeles-based songwriter, who has written with and for artists such as P!nk, Kesha, Afrojack, Adam Lambert, Katharine McPhee, and Backstreet Boys while establishing his own celebrated artist career, joins us to talk about his life and art. EPISODE DETAILS: PART ONE Scott and Paul chat about Pearl Snap Studios, extending the Marty Stuart book contest for one more episode, and the phenomenon of "feature culture" in pop music. PART TWO - 10:44 mark The guys call up Wrabel and find out why he dropped out of Berkeley to write songs; the reason his first few years in Los Angeles were rough; how his debut international hit was born when an artist didn't show up for their writing session; why he called his manager questioning if his first single was too raw and autobiographical to actually release; the time Lady Antebellum let him down; the song he wrote with Kesha the first day the met; why he cried while recording with P!nk; and which of the Songcraft questions gave him goosebumps. ABOUT WRABEL Singer-songwriter Wrabel is best known for his hit “11 Blocks” and buzzworthy follow-up singles such as “The Village.” Signed to Island Def Jam Music, his first big break came when Dutch DJ Afrojack released a version of Wrabel’s “Ten Feet Tall” that became an international hit. Wrabel garnered further attention thanks to his EDM collaborations, including “Ritual” by Marshmello and “With You” by Kygo. He collaborated on “90 Days” with P!nk, who later shone a national spotlight on Wrabel when she spoke about his song “The Village” on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in the spring of 2019. As a songwriter, Wrabel has written “Here Comes the Change” and “Woman” for Kesha, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by the Backstreet Boys, “Devotion” by Ellie Goulding, “Nirvana” by Adam Lambert, “Everybody Knows” by Idina Menzel, as well as songs for Phillip Phillips, Katharine McPhee, Pentatonix, Lea Michele, Fitz and the Tantrums, Ben Platt, and others. He was a 2018 GLAAD Media Awards nominee and was named to Out magazine’s Out100. In 2019 Billboard named Wrabel their Pride Artist of the Month. Soon after, he was named “one to watch” by People magazine.

American Songwriter Podcast Network

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and multiple Grammy nominee Chris Hillman joins us to talk about his songwriting with The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Desert Rose Band, and much more. EPISODE DETAILS: PART ONE Scott and Paul talk about the Motley Crue movie and the pros and cons of musical biopics. PART TWO - 9:45 mark Scott and Paul head up to Ventura to meet Chris Hillman and find out how he got hired to play bass with The Byrds without ever having played bass before; the reason that Miles Davis and Bob Eubanks deserve a lot of credit for The Byrds’ success; how playing bass on sessions for South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela inspired Chris to write his first songs (which became country-rock classics for The Byrds); the band he and Roger McGuinn were mocking when they wrote “So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star;” what happened on a particularly memorable trip to Stonehenge with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; the song he and Gram Parsons were inspired to write following Gram’s motorcycle accident; what he says really killed Gram; why Chris was so shocked by his major country music success with The Desert Rose Band; how spirituality has impacted his songwriting process; and the inside details of creating his most recent album with producer Tom Petty. ABOUT CHRIS HILLMAN: Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Chris Hillman first came to songwriting prominence as a founding member of The Byrds when he wrote or co-wrote several of the band’s classic songs, including “So You Want to be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” “Have You Seen Her Face,” “Time Between,” “Thoughts and Words,” “The Girl with No Name,” “Natural Harmony,” “Old John Robertson,” and others. Departing The Byrds following their landmark Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, Hillman teamed with Gram Parsons to launch the Flying Burrito Brothers. The pair penned a series of now-classic Americana standards for the band, including “Sin City,” “Wheels,” “Christine’s Tune,” “Juanita,” and “High Fashion Queen.” Chris spent time in the group Manassas, where he co-wrote the charting single “It Doesn’t Matter” with Stephen Stills, before releasing a handful of solo albums and collaborative projects with several other musicians, including Richie Furay, J.D. Souther, Gene Clark, and Roger McGuinn. Hillman found his greatest commercial success with the Desert Rose Band, which he founded with Herb Pedersen and John Jorgenson. Chris penned a dozen of the group’s charting singles, including the Top 10 hits “Love Reunited,” “One Step Forward,” “Summer Wind,” Start All Over Again,” “Story of Love,” and “I Still Believe in You,” which reached #1 on the Billboard country chart. The group was named Band of the Year three years in a row by the Academy of Country Music and earned multiple CMA award nominations. Hillman is a country rock pioneer, a four-time Grammy nominee, and the recipient of the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. His songs have been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Ron Wood, Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Beck, The Hollies, Roxette, Crowded House, Uncle Tupleo, Dan Fogelberg, Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, Steve Earle, Nazareth, Black Oak Arkansas, The Oak Ridge Boys, Alison Krauss, and others.

EPISODE DETAILS: PART ONE Scott turns the microphone around to ask Paul about the four songs he co-wrote on the album that just debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 album charts behind Paul McCartney and Eminem. PART TWO - 6:58 mark Scott and Paul call up Jeff Hanna to get the inside scoop on the early days of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when Jackson Browne was playing kazoo; how Jeff first got into writing songs during the era when he was playing in Linda Ronstadt's backup band; why he didn't want his record label to release "Mr. Bojangles" as a single; how "yacht rock" made its way into the Dirt Band; the time Steve Goodman kicked his butt in racquetball with a chemo pump in his arm; how one of their singles flopped but became a hit record 5 years later when they released the exact same record again; the reason he and his wife, Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Famer Matraca Berg, set co-writing aside; and how it's possible that Jeff never met one of his "Bless the Broken Road" co-writers until they showed up at the Grammy awards together. ABOUT JEFF HANNA Jeff Hanna is a founding member of the pioneering country-rock and American roots music institution, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. As a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist with the group, Jeff has found success with songs such as “Buy For Me the Rain,” “Mr. Bojangles,” “House at Pooh Corner,” “An American Dream,” and the #1 country singles “Long Hard Road,” “Modern Day Romance,” and “Fishin’ in the Dark.” As a songwriter, Jeff has written or co-written many of the Dirt Band favorites, including “Bayou Jubilee,” “Make a Little Magic,” “Fire in the Sky,” “Face on the Cutting Room Floor,” “Partners, Brothers, and Friends,” “Baby’s Got a Hold on Me,” “I’ve Been Lookin’,” and “Down That Road Tonight.” Hanna has found songwriting success outside the band with songs such as “High on Love,” which was a Top 20 country hit for Patty Loveless and “Bless the Broken Road,” which Rascal Flatts took to the top of the country chart in 2005. The latter earned Jeff a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year and a Grammy win for Best Country Song. The CMA Album of the Year honoree and four-time Grammy winner saw his band’s legendary Will the Circle Be Unbroken album inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Archive and the Grammy Hall of Fame. He continues to tour with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and has been a consistent presence in the group for more than 50 years.