I've been working with Steve Schalchlin, recently, on an amazing show he's writing (with Jim Brochu) called "The Last Session," about Steve's own struggle with AIDS. I have always told my students they should have a "burning desire to communicate" something, before they start writing, and this advice is exemplified in Steve's recent work, perhaps better than I've ever seen it. Steve is writing what he's experienced, what he feels and what he has a burning desire for people to know--that they should value every moment of their lives, among other things. He communicates this by telling his own personal truth, with such a sense of irony and wisdom, that the specific begins to touch that universal nerve. At the bottom of his email messages it says, "Steve Schalchlin is in the bonus round." After two serious bouts with HIV related illnesses, he describes this holiday season as the second Christmas he wasn't supposed to be around for. He's not only around; he's writing some of the best songs I've heard.
Most songwriters in Los Angeles know Steve from his many tireless years helping songwriters and fighting for songwriters' rights at the National Academy of Songwriters. During that time, I always acknowledged him for his wonderful work in this area, but I would always end my discussions with a reminder to him that he was also a songwriter. One time, I even lured him into taking my class so he'd have a songwriting deadline every week -- and he did write some good songs then. But now, by his own admission, he has connected his skill with his deep intention to communicate something, to reveal something and to illuminate. The result is a group of songs that knocked out the few people he has shown them to: John Bettis, Marie Cain, Alan O'Day, and me, among others. When he finally begins performing these songs publicly, it will amaze everyone. (He's been invited to debut the work in progress at the January meeting of the group, "Wine, Women and Song" and he performed one of the songs at the recent Los Angeles Women In Music Soiree to great response.) Steve had already developed the craft of songwriting from many years of work. What he has added to it recently is the fire.
"I respect honest, articulate expressions of the heart. It either 'grows corn or it don't.'" (Steve is a fellow Texan.) He goes on, "If I hear a real person who's alive and thinking underneath that horrible demo, I'm going to search deeper and see what this person is capable of, but you can't give a person something to say. People either have something to say or they don't. This means they must be alive and attentive. And not just to the rest of the world, but to each other, too. To each other, sometimes, most of all." Steve is Creative Consultant for Kim and Ronda Espy at Bob-A-Lew Music.
It's so interesting to talk to people I respect and hear them all say the same thing, and it's especially gratifying when it corroborates what I've been thinking and saying, of course. But I heard the wonderful David Wilcox last week, in concert. And he said, in introducing a song, that he writes from little realizations. I couldn't agree more. Nik Venet is constantly asking for a realization or a win in a song, when he's listening. And he's created a group of songwriters who are taking that message home every week to thousands of high school students for whom they perform--not an easy audience. As Steve Schalchlin went on to say, "It's our job to lift mankind into a higher state of living. The songwriter must accept the responsibility that he must think and feel and appreciate and observe and then find the truth in these things and write about them." (Echoes of Nik Venet's mantra about "Starting from a sentence of truth" and his prodding to "keep a journal, learn to observe people and find the remarkable in the everyday."
I have students who don't realize they have something to say until I ask them certain questions. They look for the answers and discover they have something to say. They never thought to write a song about that, but that is where their song is. It is in the fire of their burning desire to communicate. You can tell by talking to someone if s/he has a particular viewpoint. Think of the people you know who enlighten you by talking to them. They are the ones who think like writers. Perhaps they are writers. To quote Steve again, "The problem for most writers is they have nothing to say--period. If you do not know why you are writing a song, the audience will not know why you wrote it either. And they won't care."
Performing with the Campfire Conspiracy in the Grammy-in-the-Schools project has made me realize how impactful a unique viewpoint is. When Robert Thornburg sings "Superbowl Sunday" about a little girl in a dumpster, her brother, her grandmother and a head of lettuce," the students are seeing a slice of life cut with a unique knife. And the same can be said of every single performer. But they don't write that way to be different or unique. They write that way because each one person IS unique and s/he is writing from a unique, personal viewpoint on a subject where there's a burning desire to say something.
When I witness the urgency with which Steve Schalchlin is creating the best work of his life, and the honesty and courage he is employing to write it, I have less and less patience with people who try to manipulate the market to get a hit. It rarely works and when it does, it doesn't last. It's a waste of energy and talent, not to mention that valuable commodity, time. "The Last Session" is rekindling my belief in the fire of honest, direct and powerful communication--in songs and in life.
© 1996 Harriet Schock
Webmaster: Jeff Mallett (jeffm@lyricist.com)