Pop music with meaning. Radio play tunes with an edge and a hook at every turn.

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POP: Today's Top 40, GOSPEL: Contemporary Gospel



Details:
I started writing my own music when I was in Jr. High School. I had taken classical piano starting at age 5, but only after quitting lessons in my early teens (much to the horror of my parents) did I begin to use music as a form of self expression. My family lived in La Mesa, California, and my momâs piano, a Baldwin Acrosonic, was placed right up close to the big front window of our house. I sat down one day, stole a few chord patterns from my childhood icon, Barry Manilow, put my own melody and words to it and called it my own. Bang! Done! That wasnât hard. How much does Barry get paid for doing this? At age 13, if thatâs all it took to write a song?! "Regurgitation" was my middle name!

Musically, I knew even at an early age that there was nothing truly "new under the sun". I also knew those Barry Manilow chords and melody had been used a million times by a million songwritersâ¦and now of course, one Jr. High student. What I didnât know but soon came to realize, was that there was a foundational difference between my song and Barryâsâ¦something strange in the way Manilow presented it. I didnât even know what "it" was, exactly. I only knew that when I heard "it", I was instantly overcome and enveloped by "it". I also knew even though I had copied his song verbatim, my song had not copied "it".

I can still remember as a child, riding in the back of my parents â74 Volvo wagon with my ear pressed against the backseat speaker, tears coming to my eyes whenever Stephen Bishopâs "On & On" came over the air. I donât know why I cried. I just did. "It" moved me to tears. Little did I know at that time, I would spend the rest of my life pursuing that God given passionâ¦to capture "it".

Even now, after years and years of writing and playing my material in front of people, I still canât say with any real certainty that Iâve ever actually reached my goal, to capture "it". I have been told by a few people (probably paid friends), thereâs a few times that Iâve come closeâ¦