188. Back on the right track.
I received an interesting piece of mail a couple of weeks ago. It was a letter from the president of Hilltop Records. When I saw the envelope I was skeptical. When I read the letter my skepticism was confirmed. In essence, Hilltop wanted me to send them songs. Then they will record them and put them on compilation CDs. They will then, of course, send me royalties.
Sounds good right? No. They want you to pay for the demos. You pay them $400 per song and they will record them. No thanks.
You may wonder, as I did, how they got my address. A few months ago I applied for copyright protection for 3 of my songs. Hilltop and a few other companies peruse the new submissions from time to time and then solicit the authors for songs. No thanks!
On the up side, 3 of my songs now have registered copyright protection! Here’s the proof:
I’m pretty excited about that. Not that it’s any great accomplishment. Basically, you fill out the form, pay $35, and wait 3-4 months. There you are. Your copyright is registered with the US Government.
We played at Merrill Gardens, an assisted living facility, this past Tuesday night. It went much better than I could’ve hoped. The audience seemed really engaged in what we were doing. I liked that. They even sang along on a song or two.
We played one of my songs, “Live Free.” When we finished a couple of Merrill Gardens employees came up to thank us for playing. One of them commented about “Live Free.” She talked about how much she liked it and said we should record it. I told her we had already recorded it. She asked if she could buy a CD.
I’ll be honest, I don’t get it. I have absolutely no songwriting talent whatsoever. What little I’ve written, I’ve struggled through. For the most part, I don’t like them. I don’t think they’re good.
Others disagree. We have played 3 of my songs and recorded 2 of them. Each time we play them we get positive comments. I made a CD for my dad of the two we recorded. Every time I’m in his car he goes on and on about how good “Live Free” is. I don’t see it.
I don’t get it, but then I guess I do. God can use even a talentless hack like me to reach the world (even if it’s a very small segment of the world). God can take some thrown together words and a few chords on a guitar and use them for good. For that I am honored.
I’ve mentioned before that I am not good at accepting compliments. I’m not. Accolades embarrass me a little. It is nice, though, to know that God can work through me. Even me.
As a songwriter, I’m not that good. Thank goodness, God is great. Because of that I guess I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep writing in hopes that I’ll crank out something else God can use to speak to his people.
I guess you can judge for yourself. Click on the FA4C FaceBook widget on the right and you can listen to the songs there. I hope they will be a blessing to you.
[edit: I turned off comments for this post. I'm not fishing for compliments.]
