I started out in Iowa and grew up in Wisconsin. In 5th grade I discovered there were such things as songwriters when one came to our elementary school and spoke to an assembly about her craft. I went home and wrote my first song on the piano just to see if I could.

In my early teens, I spent a summer in West Virginia and often watched a local TV show that featured a bluegrass band called Flatt and Scruggs. I returned north, bought my first guitar out of a catalogue, and started performing professionally at 15. During my last two years in high school I worked with Tracy Nelson, who has become a great blues singer.

I started writing songs seriously in college. A few years later, "On The Drift Again," was published by a Nashville company, along with a couple others. A Colorado duo had recorded some of my tunes, and several were noticed during a road trip the guys made through Music City.

For a decade I wrote and produced music in Denver, doing anything for anybody -- demos, commercials, soundtracks for short films, you name it. A trucking song I wrote for White Trucks turned into a single and briefly made the Billboard Country Charts, my first chart recognition. My first hit single was "Moonlight Marvel," recorded by an Australian EMI act.

During the 1980's I moved to L.A. where I got involved with Russian rock. For a decade I flew back and forth between California and Moscow writing English lyrics for Russian songs.
In 1985 I was the first American to produce rock music officially in the Soviet Union.
When the Wall come down it was a moment of considerable personal satisfaction. I believe that Ronald Reagan had little to do with the fall of Soviet Communism. The Russian people did it, with help from The Beatles.

I moved to Nashville in 1996 and shortly thereafter met John Van Meter through a friend at Sony/ATV Tree, where John worked. He started helping me shape songs and we've been working together ever since.

Early on I wrote with Eric Heatherly and one of our songs, "I Just Break 'Em," made his Mercury CD, released in 2000.
I'm presently writing a lot with Simon Bruce, an Australian singer/songwriter whose first CD is to be released in February 2005 on EMI-Essence. It's a gratifying collaboration. Simon is an amazing talent, very precocious and focused.

My influences over the years: The Sons of the Pioneers, Otis Blackwell, Chuck Berry, Marty Robbins, Dylan, Lennon, Cohen. I love the story songs of Gretchen Peters, the pithy observations of Don Schlitz, the California country energy of Jeff Steele, the beauty of Irish melodies, and Martin guitars.

I believe songwriters are born, not made. It is the oddest calling, requiring a diverse collection of skills. In my career I've written a bit of everything, poems, short stories, scripts, magazine articles, screenplays, even a novel. Songs are the most difficult things to write but I enjoy the challenge. Anyone can write a bad song, to write a great song is almost an act of god, just dumb luck. A song is its own little cosmos, a delicate, sparse mechanism so intricate it's almost impossible. And yet the circles that songs draw are large and powerful.

If you're born to songwriting, well, have at it. It's painful and demanding yet rewarding. If you're not born to it, however, the pain may likely at some point become prohibitive.


Tim Schumacher
New Deputy Music, ASCAP