Originally Posted By: bobcflatpicker
There's a song I wrote years ago that I would love to hear it done by Vince Gill. It even fits with some of the styles he plays.

I know. Dream on.


No. Don't "dream on". How bad do you want that to happen? What have you done in all those years to try and make it happen? Have you contacted his management and asked for permission to submit that song? (Don't send it to him cold. It will come back unopened with a letter explaining that due to the possibility of legal repercussions in the future they will not accept unsolicited song submissions.)

The worst that could happen is that they say they are not interested. They will try to discourage you from doing it, but that is just some phone answering person playing goalie. Be persistent.

Vince ain't coming to West Virginia looking for you anytime soon.

As far as the old argument that many singers don't write, yada yada yada. Every time this comes up I have to hear about how Sinatra never wrote a song. That is not the point. Nobody is going to come and see an artist at a "real" venue for a "real" concert to hear rehashed a Beatles song, followed by a rehashed Merle Haggard song, followed by a rehashed anything else. Performers need an identity. A thumbprint. More will fail than succeed, but you miss every shot you don't take. You won't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket. You won't get a degree if you never go to college. You can fit your own metaphor to that idea, but for people who say "I can't write", my answer to that would get bleeped, so I won't say it. You won't write a song if you don't try, and you will write more bad songs than good. That doesn't mean you don't try.

I quit a job delivering mail, earning a salary and medical care, because I didn't want to look back when I was 60 and say "what if". And to MY lofty goals and expectations, I failed badly. If people are happy being a "gigging musician", god bless them. I wanted to be a "touring musician", recording for 6 months then touring to support that album. I would have accepted touring as an opening act at the start, but by album 3 I would want to be a headliner. I didn't come anywhere close to that, but I tried. And it is a deflating, defeating feeling when you are told "You aren't good enough", one that chased me away from music for years. And I have no delusions at 69 that it can ever happen. But man, low likelihood of success should never deter anybody from trying.

Last edited by eddie1261; 10/01/20 05:53 AM.
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