And that"s my mother"s influence again. Because I remember, I grew up in the times when-I was the first black kid to go to a Catholic school, the only black kid in that school. And my mother paid for that and insisted on that. And her favorite statement-which I share with every elementary, middle school, and high school cla.s.s I speak to-was: "It"s what you do with what you have that makes you what you are." Because some people will put limits on you because you"re black, or because you"re a woman, they"ll put limits on you because you"re Hispanic or because you live in a poor neighborhood. My mother said the only thing that limits you is you. Yes, you may have to struggle a little bit more because of people and their prejudices but you can always find a way around it. But you cannot let people put you in a box and make you feel inferior. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. [Laughs] Those are all Momisms, but they"re true.
And I just followed her lead, you know? I"m-I"m my own person. I"m not your usual anchor. I am pretty much what you"re hearing here, that"s what I"m like on the air. I will laugh when I feel like laughing. I"ll do it on the air, if I feel like it. I don"t have any problems with that. And I might mention some of the things my mother may have said in a part where it applies to weather or whatever. I"ll say what I"m thinking.
Like, for example, I can and do offer my suggestions about the way we cover stories-the angle we take. And I argue very strongly sometimes for certain things. In the end the news director makes the decision [laughs] but luckily, we have a news director here who does listen.
I"ve been trying to do something now-the politics of breast cancer. Because I had breast cancer last year, and there was a real decision I made to go public with it for viewers and it was really good that I did because there"s a lot of viewers who are women who had not been for a routine mammogram finally went, because mine was found through a routine mammogram.
So it"s an issue, obviously, that concerns me. And now I want to do this story-you know, there"s some two hundred and thirty-three breast cancer organizations. Why is that? I want to look into these breast cancer organizations. And my news director and I, we argued about going forward with it. He wanted to be sure that we weren"t going on a witch hunt or that we weren"t going to raise one organization over another. And my point was I just want to pose the question: "Why do we need two hundred and thirty-three different organizations for breast cancer?" And the answer is greed. Like I"ll be pointing out that I think the Avon Three-Day Walk is a very good walk, but why did Avon leave the Susan G. Komen Foundation which they have worked with for years? Well, the reason is-breast cancer is big business. So everyone is splintering off and forming their own organization to get some of the money. And when I explained to my news director how we would look at this, he agreed that it would be a good story. So we"re going forward with it and I"m very excited about that. The special is going to be coming out soon.
I love my job. It"s everything I"ve ever wanted to do. There"s the writing and the acting, listening to people. I love to listen to people. And there"s a social work arm to it-the stories that I do that can move people to work for change. After I did my story on the Georgia High School a.s.sociation, they added two women to their board of directors-and they hadn"t had a woman on their executive committee in the eighty-seven years they had been established. So the report I did on that brought about change.
And it"s great, just on a personal level, you know, to feel like you"re having an impact on your world. [Laughs] I have people all over Atlanta-the viewers-they"ll stop me in like shopping centers and say, "I liked that story you did" on whatever. Or they didn"t like it. Or they want an autograph. Or even-my husband and I were on vacation in Amman, Jordan-we get in the elevator of the hotel and a man looks at me and says, "Monica, what are you doing here?" He was over in Amman helping to build the emba.s.sy in Jordan. I nearly fainted. I have no privacy, and that"s not great-but it"s part of the job. And in a way, I like it, too. Because I like feeling that connection to the public. And I mean, I"ve had children named after me. Just from me reading the news. [Laughs] Just because of who I am.
n.o.body wants to look at ugly people
on their TV.
TELEVISION GUEST COORDINATOR.
Andrew L..
A year and a half ago, I was working on The Dating Game, getting guests for that. It was like my first real job out of college and from a girl I worked with there, I was referred to this new show, Change of Heart. It was basically a friend-of-a-friend lucky kind of thing. That"s what happens a lot in television. No resumes or anything. Pretty simple. And it was an opportunity to move up a little in the guest department, so I took it.
What Change of Heart is, is we have a couple come on-a boyfriend and girlfriend-and they have issues, problems in the relationship. So we talk about that with them and then we fix each person up on a date with a single guy or girl. They get to pick their date. Then they go out with this single person and they come back on the show and they tell us about the date and they decide if they want to stay together or have a "change of heart." Get it? The couples decide to stay together or break up. And we get about a fifty-fifty split between couples who break up and the ones that stay together. It"s conflict. It"s great.
My job is to bring in guests for the show-couples and singles that want to do this. The main focus is on the couples. We don"t really care too much about the singles. They don"t have to be that interesting, they just have to look good and be someone that one of these couples will want to go out on a date with. We"ll use wannabe actors for the singles if we have to.
But we work pretty hard getting the couples. They"re always real couples and we interview them a lot. We go into their lives to make sure that they"re not two people that are phony, trying to pretend that they"re together. We ask them tons of questions. And when we"re done with them, the producers call them, and they ask them a bunch more questions. If anyone suspects at all that they"re not really a couple, we drop them right away. The biggest concern is that they don"t want fake people on the show. They have to be real exclusive couples dating at least six months, no longer than a year. Because a year is too much. They may be too invested in each other to break up. Also, we won"t use couples that live together. Because, again, they probably won"t break up because they"re living together. So those ones we weed out right away.
We have a hotline, but the people that call into the show are the worst. They"re usually singles, and they come in like fat with no teeth and they want to get an interview to try and find their ideal mate. They think they can date some hot s.e.xy chick or some stud with money. They"re really bad. We hardly ever use any of them. The best people are the couples we find in various places: the beaches, the mall, or the college campuses. Those are great, but you"ve got to talk them into it. That"s a big part of my job. I just cruise the beaches and malls and if I see a couple that looks good, I say, "Hey, you and your mate can get two hundred and fifty bucks apiece, that"s five hundred between you and you"ll have a lot of fun."
I maybe get a hundred couples to say yes every week. Of that, maybe ten will survive the interviews and two will be on the show. We"re only looking for the ones that we know have problems in the relationship. They"re not couples that really like each other, they"re couples that we know can be broken up if we find somebody who"s right for them. We want to do good TV. And this only works good if you know there"s a possibility of breaking up those people.
We usually start out by asking, "How did you guys meet? What attracted you guys to each other?" And then we go into, "What are your issues? What is it that you don"t like about so-and-so?" The number one thing with guys is they play Playstation too much. Or, they do the thing at the beginning of the relationship where they open up the doors and, after a while, they"re lounging around the couch and watching television and they don"t give a s.h.i.t. They"re lazy and the girls get tired of that. With the girls, it"s a lot of: "She"s too flirty. She dresses too s.e.xy." Basically, kind of jealousy issues around the guy.
Then we go into their s.e.x stuff. It seems that somebody always wants to have s.e.x in weird places, like behind the garbage can. And maybe the girl won"t do it, so that bothers him. The issues are pretty much the same with the majority of the couples. We"ve had weird ones-guys putting on their girlfriend"s underwear when she"s not home, guys getting turned off because the girl peed on him or s.h.i.t on him. But even that stuff, you get used to hearing about it. It"s a rare thing if I"m shocked.
We love s.e.x problems, those are definitely the best. But all we really insist on is couples that have good issues and talk a lot and argue a lot. If they"re a couple that"s quiet, they"re axed. If they look like they like each other and they"re holding hands the whole time, hee-hee-hee, they"re obviously in the giddy love stage-they"re axed right away, we never use them. Because it"s pointless to put two people on the show that don"t even want to try and go on a date. We know they"re not going to break up. We want them to have this thing in the back of their head that there"s a possibility they are looking for somebody different. And there are tons of people out there like that- people who feel they"re stuck with somebody that they"re not really right for. It"s eye-opening.
It can get very interesting. One of my favorites was we just had this couple where the guy sleeps in a closet, doesn"t have a job. He"s twenty-six and the girl is twenty-one, just out of college, hasn"t seen much of the world and this is what she"s ended up with. That"s a good issue right off the bat-they"re probably going to break up on the show. Plus, they"re good-looking.
And that"s another thing-we always try and use good-looking people. Every show is like that. Because n.o.body wants to look at ugly people on their TV. You don"t want some guy with busted-out teeth. You don"t want fat people. I think that"s probably the worst part of my job, actually. I spend so much time scrutinizing people that I think I"m developing this inferiority complex. Because, it"s like, you look at people and n.o.body"s perfect and you"re not perfect, either. You kind of feel like s.h.i.t about it. But that"s like TV-you can"t give a s.h.i.t about stuff like that, even if it kind of wears you down. You"ve just got to suffer with it.
Mostly, I"m very into this job. And I"m good at it. My boss has this thing called "Superstar Goal Maker." She puts your picture on the wall with a star if you find the best couple of the week. If you don"t bring in your two quality couples a week, she lets you go. But I"ve never been in danger of that. It"s easy for me. I"ve won a lot of stars.
Once you get the couples, then you get the singles to match them. The most important part is pleasing the couple. So if the guy says, "I want a date with a chick with a club foot," we"re going to find that girl. Even if that girl is not so much into the guy-maybe he"s a little bit chubby for her or whatever-we only care about pleasing the couple, giving him the opportunity to say, "I"m going to have a change of heart." The single is really just along for the ride.
A lot of singles come in and we"ll flat-out tell them, "Make this guy like you. Make good TV." If they can"t do that, they can"t be on the show. "Cause there"s plenty of singles out there and only a few good couples. So they"ve got to play along. It"s television. It"s not a dating service and I think that almost everybody who"s actually been on the show understands that. Or else, if they don"t, they"re crazy. [Laughs] In any case, we"ve never had any problems with the guests complaining or anything like that. We have been having a harder time finding couples because they see the show now. See, before the show started airing, n.o.body knew what it was like, but now people know because they watch the show and they"re not sure if they want to embarra.s.s themselves by breaking up on TV and bringing their issues to the show. But we still find them. It"s just maybe a little harder now.
And, I will admit, I understand the people who don"t want to do it. It is embarra.s.sing sometimes. I would find it embarra.s.sing. Especially some of the "s.e.x shows"-you know, where they go on a date and it"s a s.e.x date and they come back and talk about it. We had this one girl went on this date with this guy, and the guy put in a p.o.r.no film and he m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, came on his stomach, and then asked the girl, "Hey, what are you gonna do?" And she said, "Nothing." He"s like, "Well, get the f.u.c.k out of here!" That was really funny, but we couldn"t air that because the guy was obviously so f.u.c.ked up. So we had her go on another date with another single guy.
Even the more typical s.e.x ones-where they just go on a date and have s.e.x-it can be kind of weird and embarra.s.sing to hear them talk about it. We had one girl who went on a date with a guy and she hadn"t had s.e.x with her boyfriend in like six months, and the date she went on with this guy, they had this thing where they had this Cheez Whiz or Easy Cheese or whatever and they squirted it all over each other. She jacked him off and she gave him a b.l.o.w.j.o.b or whatever. They can"t say it on the show, of course. They said something like, "We got crazy with Easy Cheese." They"ve got to water it down. But there"s some hardcore s.e.x stuff going on, like, in public. A lot of s.e.xually dysfunctional people come on the show. These are just a few examples.
I personally would not want to go on the show. My s.e.x life is my own business, you know? But I don"t really care about that-it"s good TV, people want to watch this. And it"s a good time for me. Everyone I work with on the staff are really fun people. We all like to have a good time. Even the guy at the top, the creator of the show, he"s a very funny guy. He wears these dirty shorts, flip-flops, and a dirty T-shirt. He"s got like a shaved head, except with these long Jewish things-the wisps of hair, what do you call those things? But he"s not Jewish at all, he just grows them long and puts like flower clips in them and stuff "cause he likes the look. He created that show Studs, too. And he"s a really smart guy. He knows what people want to watch on TV. He knows a lot about a lot of stuff, but TV especially. And TV is different from a lot of things. You only care about what people want to watch. Whether it"s bad or good or whatever, people are watching the show because there"s conflict going on. There"s people breaking up with each other. Take it or leave it, that"s what the world wants right now.
Of course, these things only last so long. I don"t see Change of Heart lasting more than three more years. It"ll get old. But right now it"s hot. It"s a hit. Half the people I know hate the show because they think it"s too mean, the other half love it, think it"s really funny. But they"re all watching it. And that"s what it"s all about: making people watch the show. So you can call it bad or whatever, but people are watching it. So then my company makes money and I make money and that"s great.
I see myself working here for a while longer. I eventually want to go into producing. It"s more money. It"s the natural progression. You do something like this for a few years, then you work up into a.s.sociate producing, then you produce the shows. Then maybe you create them. Each step on the ladder you make more money and in the end you make a lot of money. You always have to deal with these people- hear about how they hate their boyfriend, they hate their girlfriend- my boss does that same as I do. It gets old after a while, you get sick of hearing it, listening to the people gripe, but you climb the ladder. And when you get paid, it"s always good. The paycheck-that"s what it"s all about.
That front desk is my baby.
TELEVISION STATION RECEPTIONIST.
Ann Peycke.
Should I go now? Okay. My name is Ann. Ann Peycke. p.r.o.nounced "Pike." I"m a receptionist at KULR-TV, in Billings, which is an NBC affiliate.
I"ve been here full-time for just over three years now. This is the second time around for me. The first time I worked here part-time for three years. I loved the job, but then-oh I don"t know. I was just turning forty, and I thought I really needed to do something with my life. So I quit and went to hair school.
I worked in a salon for two years, and I enjoyed that because I enjoy the public-being out there with, you know, dealing with people. But I had arthritis in my hip, and the joint deteriorated, so I had to have a hip replacement. It got to be a real problem being on my feet all the time. Then my boss here called me out of the blue one day and asked if I wanted to come back to the station full-time. And I jumped at it.
What I do here mostly is just answer the phone. I sit right inside the front door. When you come in, here I am at my desk. I"m the first thing you see. There"s a TV next to me and there"s my phone, and as I get the calls, I just put "em through to the extensions. I have a board right here with all the b.u.t.tons of the extensions that go into each area-news, sales, engineering, production.
I would say fifty percent of callers ask to speak to a specific person. They"re our clients, you know, calling for business reasons. I can send "em directly to an individual, or I can hit the transfer and speak to the person before I release the call. Most of the time I just send it through directly. The other half of my calls are the public, the people out there. And I have to screen those quite carefully.
A lot of these callers are living in what I call TV Land. [Laughs] It"s a weird place. When the soap operas are interrupted or programming is changed it"s like people just-they"ll call and tell me that it"s me, personally, disrupting their life. Sometimes they get irate. I get some of that. And I go, "Well, it"s not me." But people, they feel I"m personally the one who"s doing this to "em. Like I"m back there flipping the switches. Picking the programs. [Laughs] People have no idea how TV works.
This week was a perfect example. They had Wimbledon tennis on. And we"re not in control. It"s NBC"s decision. We"re just an affiliate station, we have to go air what they tell us. So this week, Days of Our Lives was preempted Thursday and Friday by the tennis. And when I first found out about the program change, I almost wanted to call in sick [laughs] because I knew what was going to happen at three o"clock when the soap opera didn"t come on. Even though they had a thingie at the bottom of the screen saying Days of Our Lives was going to be preempted, and rescheduled later, still, three o"clock Thursday, the phones light up on me. So, that"s-yeah-TV Land.
And they go, "Well, is Days of Our Lives going to be on?" And I go, "No. The network has preempted the program." And they go, "Why?" And they just get all concerned that they"re going to miss an episode. A lot of them really feel that I"m personally responsible for that. A lot of people really believe that we-you know, it"s coming right out of our building, our facility.
Like we have a Mr. Food program. He"s a chef that comes on at the end of our news. He does little recipes and that. And in actuality, Mr. Food is out of California. We get him on tape and we put him in our news show. But we get a lot of, you know, people calling and asking me to step into the next room and ask Mr. Food about something for a recipe they"re cooking. [Laughs]
It"s an all-day thing. There"s one gal, her name"s Tina, and she thinks Days of Our Lives is produced right in our station. She wants me to talk to Bo and Hope-they"re two of the characters on the show. She wants them to get married. Because-this has been going on for months and months-it"s a soap opera and Bo and Hope are trying to get back together and get married. So Tina calls and she wants me to talk to Hope. And she wants our sports director Chris Byers to talk to Bo [laughs] because, you know, she believes that they"re all right here. In our station. She feels they"re-you know, real. And that they ought to be married!
She calls every day, normally after the show is over. Every day. I tell her, "Okay, Tina. Yes, I"ll talk to Hope." I kind of appease her. Because she"s-oh, what is-mentally disabled or-one of the-oh, what do you call those-like she"s a Down"s syndrome lady. So I"m real nice to her. I"m nice every time. But, I mean, this is a daily occurrence. Oh, yeah. And if I"m away from the phone and someone else is covering phones for me, they can"t even understand her barely.
Sometimes there"s complaints about a commercial that was aired. Someone just called about an ad and they said the people in the ad weren"t respecting their elders. I had one not long ago where somebody called and asked if we could come and fix his TV!
You know, all this-the majority of people, that"s what they, you know, they spend their time with the TV. They record it when they"re at work, and they come home and spend a lot of their time [laughs] with TV. Sometimes too much, I feel. [Laughs] You know, they can be very critical. It"s just like when-during Clinton"s impeachment-I know it went on a little longer than we all cared it to, but, you know, the president of our country was being impeached! They didn"t want that on the TV. And they felt that that one especially was our fault. Like we had total control. Like we could-and we should-adjust everything just for this one particular person. Like, do it for me. It"s all about me. The network is just for them. And then they get upset if it isn"t. Because their day is structured around it.
We also get a lot of people [laughs] that think their ideas are worthwhile to have on the news, you know? Like-oh, boy-something happened to me. They think we"re-I have people ask for our investigative reporters thinking we"re Dateline. [Laughs] I"ve had a gentleman call and ask to speak to Katie Couric from the Today Show. [Laughs] I said, "Well, I"m sorry, she"s in New York City." And apparently he was off his medication [laughs] and I know I shouldn"t laugh, but this is funny, because he wanted to ask her to stop-he kept hearing her voice in his head. He said she was up in his head and he just wanted her to stop. He was totally polite. But you know, what can I say? She"s not here!
But it"s not all loonies. A lot of regular people call in that they have an idea for a local story. Some of them are pretty interesting. There was a gentleman that worked in the kitchen of a restaurant and felt that the company was in cahoots with the health department. He felt their conditions were really bad. That they were being warned when the inspector was coming. He apparently felt that there was a conspiracy [laughs] and that we should investigate. And we do do that. Our news reporters do check out stories, and they try to get both sides. But we don"t have the opportunity to do everything or go real far outside of Billings. And this guy was quite a few hundred miles away. So, you know [laughs], I kind of referred him to Dateline. Gave him the Dateline phone number.
So, I don"t know, the public-it"s TV Land. [Laughs] I don"t really care. You know, overall I love the job. It"s never boring. There"s always something. Most of the time it"s very pleasant. There"s a share of angry callers, but it"s a small share. Most are perfectly nice.
And the people here at the station, that"s the best part. It"s like a family. There"s fifty employees, but it"s-it"s wonderful. The environment. They"re caring people. Each department has their little quirks. And I"m kinda like the centerpiece of the whole operation. People come up to the desk, you know, in the mornings, and we kinda talk. Or they"ll be having a problem and they"ll kind of vent it with me. You know, get it off their chest. And then they go on and everything"s okay. And that makes it the place that it is.
I mean, we really are like a big family. We have a good time working together. And I fit in here very well. When they hired me back, after I was out doing hair for two years, they"d had I don"t know how many people doing my job. They"d gone through a lot of "em. None of "em could deal with the calls. You know-the people, the angry customers [laughs] and all that. They just could not deal with it. Even the ones that fill my place during my lunch, there"s a gal, Vicki, who just-she hates it when I go on vacation. She can deal with the lunch hour, but when I go on vacation for a week [laughs] she"s real glad to see me back home.
Because the fact of it is-there"s pressure. When it"s nonstop call after call it gets pretty intense. Because you"re alternating these, you know, your soap opera nuts with clients dealing with, you know, with real people dealing with the business of the station. And being in the front like I am-you"re it. You"re the heart. It gets tough. You get a little dizzy some days.
But I take pride in my job. I really-it"s my baby, you know? That front desk is my baby. I just take a lot of pride in what I do. And my ability to handle the position, I don"t know why I can do it. It"s just something about my [laughs]-you know, I"m easygoing. Basically, I like people. I do-I do get a little upset with the rude ones. But mostly, I just let it go. It just slides off me. You know? That"s the right way to live.
Once I"m finished writing a song, my
job is done and my only input is:
please perform it often and loudly and
sell many, many copies.
SONGWRITER.
Kevin Bowe.
I write songs that hopefully get cut by performers or for TV or movies. It"s the best job in the world-one that many, many people want and few have-mostly because it"s really hard. I mean, I"ve spent basically twenty years learning how to do it and getting to the point where I"m making a living at it.
Growing up, I wanted to play guitar. That"s all. I started dabbling in songwriting only as a necessity at the age of nineteen because it was uncool to just play cover songs, but my emphasis was always on the guitar playing or on the band"s style-never the song. Which is probably why none of my bands were very successful. But then, over the years, because the band thing wasn"t working out, I started focusing more on songwriting and conceiving of writing songs to sell, rather than songs just for me to perform. So now I do both. Although it"s the songwriting that pays.
I"m signed with a publishing company called Leiber and Stoller, founded by two songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, whose big break came when Elvis covered their song, "Hound Dog." They also wrote a lot of his other early hits, plus a bunch for the Coasters and Peggy Lee-in fact, most of the songs that ended up defining the tenets of rock and roll songwriting, which remained pretty unchanged until Dylan. Sometime in the fifties or early sixties, they started a publishing company to keep from getting screwed, and from that, they kept growing and buying other publishing companies, and then they hired me. I"m the first writer they"ve signed in many years.
They"re sort of like an agent for me, only unlike an agent, they really do get me work. The way it goes is pretty simple: I write songs and they sell them and I get a yearly advance against future royalties. If/when they recoup the advance, we split the income seventy-five me, twenty-five them. I don"t have a specialty genre or anything. I mean, I"m not the resident country songwriter. They just like my stuff.
A typical day for me is I get up early in the morning and I start with the dubbing. That"s the big drudgery part of my job. People don"t realize how much time goes into dubbing. Every song you write, you have to dub a tape and send it to your publisher and all the producers you know who may be looking for songs like it. Plus you"re also generally sending stuff out to your co-writer, and other writers, artists, labels, et cetera. I can spend two, three hours dubbing every day. At this point [laughs], when friends ask for a tape of my music, I just say no.
Anyway, dubbing is good mindless work to do in the morning. So that"s the first thing I do. And then, especially if I have the house to myself, I"ll usually start recording-working on tracks for whatever demo tape I"m doing on at the time. I have an eight-channel harddrive recorder. There are a lot of different ways of doing demos- sometimes it"s just guitar and vocals, sometimes it"s full production. For me, the way I do it is first I record a very rough version, which is called a work tape, then I record a real demo. So, just like writing words is very much about rewriting, demoing songs is all about redemoing. Because all the problems with a song come up as you"re doing the demo. It"s very time-consuming, but when you send that tape off, it"s gotta demonstrate the song perfectly. There can"t be any ambiguity at all. Everyone in the music business says they can "hear through" rough demos. But I"ve met maybe three people who can actually do that. Without high production value, it"s hard for people to listen well.
Some days I"ll have a co-writing appointment where someone comes to my house. It"s usually an artist who"s trying to develop a catalogue of their own material, or another writer, and maybe we"re trying to co-write for a film or TV thing or a specific artist or whatever. Sometimes I work with lyricists, in which case I am just doing the music. Otherwise, if I"m working alone or with a co-writer, I try to develop the music and the lyrics simultaneously so they fit better.
I get my song ideas from everything. Daydreams, books, the media, my life-everything. Sometimes the music comes first, sometimes it"s a lyrical phrase, a line, a t.i.tle, or just a concept. I don"t get calls from artists saying, you know, "Write me a song about my exwife," or anything like that. That does not typically happen in this business. You might get the word that a producer is looking for an uptempo number to fill out an alb.u.m, or a ballad for artist X, but that"s about it. When that happens, you are writing on spec, so you have to be familiar with the artist"s previous work to know what kinds of lyrics and topics are appropriate. But n.o.body"s really telling me what kind of songs to write or anything like that.
Artistically, my bosses are Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, Sr., Harlan Howard, and Paul Westerberg. I keep coming back to them, but I try not to repeat myself very often. My favorite song right now is one I wrote for myself a couple of days ago, "The Horrible Truth About Anne." I like it the best "cause it"s new and I can"t get it out of my head and the guitar part turned out very, very rockin".
Anyway, that"s the writing part of this work. The rest is phone calls and traveling. My long-distance phone bills are insane. My publisher is in L.A. A lot of my co-writers are in L.A., Nashville, New York. Then there are producer pals all over the globe. I make a lot of phone calls.
And then there"s the travel. That"s actually one of the great things about the job. I travel, but just the right amount. I get to meet interesting people. I get to meet famous people. Sometimes the famous people are even interesting. [Laughs] Sometimes they"re not. I once spent four days in a motel room with this pretty famous artist, watching him smoke pot and squirm. He"d flown me in, but he didn"t know what he wanted, so he shot down all my ideas and didn"t offer any of his own. "We" finished one song which he then didn"t use. It was very boring and a waste of time. I would not work with him again.
My main destinations are Nashville and L.A. They"re pretty different. In Nashville, it"s very-well, some people find it rigid. But I like that. You get up in the morning and people typically have two writing appointments a day. One from about ten to two and one from about two to five. Something like that. You go to the person"s publishing company that you"re gonna co-write with and you show up at ten and write until two. They have a little office there with a boombox and a couple guitars or keyboards or whatever and you show up and write. And they do the demoing during the day, sometimes at night. Usually demos for songs written in Nashville have to be recorded in Nashville to get exactly the right sound. Otherwise, all those people who say they can hear through demos won"t think its a good song. [Laughs]
In L.A., people mostly work out of home studios. They don"t start working until around noon or one, and then they work until late in the night. Partly because no one wants to drive during rush hour- which is like six to ten in the morning, then two-thirty till seven in the evening. [Laughs] In Nashville, you show up on time, ready to work, with a good att.i.tude. In L.A., no one thinks you"re the real deal unless you have a bunch of att.i.tude. Bad behavior is rewarded in L.A. In Nashville, no one tolerates it. So-you know-I just do what the Romans are doing. [Laughs]
In general, I feel really, really lucky. I would guess that out of the millions of people out there with guitars, writing songs, there are probably just a couple thousand who earn a living at it. And I"m one of them. So when somebody buys one of my songs, they play it the way they want. I don"t feel any proprietary artistic thing about it. Once I"m finished writing a song, my job is done and my only input is: please perform it often and loudly and sell many, many copies. If I want to do an artist thing, then I"ll go write a song for myself and go perform it the way I want to. But if you buy it, you can do what you want to and I"ll be happy. I don"t want to be a producer or a performer, I want to be a writer. And letting it go after you"re done writing it is a big part of being a writer. I"ve never had any problems with the way any of my songs have been recorded and I"m not sure I"d tell you even if I did. My mama says, "Don"t s.h.i.t where you eat."
I"m pretty hopeful and confident about the future. I think I"ll continue to make a good living at this and have lots of fun. Unlike performing, this is a field you can grow old in. The performers have to put up with the youth culture bulls.h.i.t more and more lately which is one reason MTV looks so good and sounds so bad.
But the writers can be old and ugly "cause no one ever sees them. A lot of writers are in their fifties or sixties. I see myself like that one day. But whether I"m successful or unsuccessful, this is something I have to do. I mean that. If I don"t spend a certain part of most days with the music, I get very unhappy and cranky. I"d do it even if I weren"t getting paid for it. So right now, I am very grateful that I don"t have to have a day job to support my songwriting habit.
Why is a white person doing this?
ADVOCATE FOR RAPPERS.
Wendy Day.
I"m the founder of what"s called the Rap Coalition, a not-for-profit organization that helps rap artists. I started it in March of 1992. Before then, I was the vice president of a liquor company, had two secretaries. And although I made quite a bit of money, I wasn"t happy with the corporate America thing. I wanted to do something with the black community and I settled on the Coalition because I"d loved rap music since the early eighties, but the system always bothered me. I mean, I have a master"s degree in African-American studies, and white folk have been robbing black folk since time began, and I wanted to do something as a white person to sort of balance out that injustice.
So, to start, I dumped half a million dollars into this organization, all my own money. Sold my car, cashed in all my stocks and bonds. I knew there was a need for it, but I wasn"t sure how feasible it was, and I wasn"t comfortable playing with other people"s money. Then I started sort of acting as matchmaker between up-and-coming rap artists and very powerful attorneys who could afford to do some pro bono work. That seemed the first piece of the equation that was missing: the average rapper does not have access to Madonna"s attorney. This is still a big part of what the Coalition does, and it"s been very successful. We have about seventy different attorneys working with us now. And these are not kids right out of law school, they are very busy professionals who take one or two extra cases for rappers.