A Conversation with Beth Nielsen Chapman (continued)

PM: You've made such a lot of magic, and continue to, with Annie Roboff. Maybe you'd tell our readers a little about her.

BNC: Oh, she's amazing. That's one of the greatest writing relationships I've ever had. And, of course, she's a real good friend of mine, too. We hang out a lot. But our chemistry as co-writers has been just effortless, from the very first thing we wrote right up to today. Sometimes she'll go out and play in my band--she plays keyboard--because I do a lot of songs that we wrote together. And we'll sit down and try to be practicing, but we can't sit down without starting a song. We're like, "We're not going to write! We're not going to write!"

PM: [laughs]

BNC: "Oh, stop it!" And then, damn it, I've got to get the tape recorder out, and we don't get anything done, except new stuff.

PM: Wow. Imagine chemistry like that, "We're not going to write! We're not going to write!"

BNC: Yeah. I teach songwriting a lot, and I do that as an exercise for writer's block. One of the great things you can do is sit down and give yourself fifteen minutes and an egg timer, and say, "Under no condition am I going to write."

[laughter]

BNC: And see if you can stop yourself. It's funny. But anyway, Annie is brilliant. A genius, in my opinion.

PM: Where does she come from?

BNC: She's from New York, and has done so many different things. She wrote a lot of the theme songs for NFL Football, like commercial stuff.

PM: Really?

BNC: She was one of the writers of the cut-away music for Prince Charles and Diana's wedding on ABC, the ABC cut-away music to their wedding coverage.

PM: Holy jeez!

BNC: She was in that whole world. I think that's one of the reasons that her strength in songwriting is often structuring the song so that it's just infectious, and you move to the next section, and then you're heading toward the bridge, and then she drops you back off in another key, and it's like a roller coaster ride that's really smartly put out. That's what happened when we wrote "This Kiss" with Robin Lerner.

PM: Which is a complicated little song. For an infectious hit song.

BNC: Very. It's simple and complicated at the same time, really.

PM: Yeah.

BNC: It's complex, but it's very easy to follow, and to me that is really what her strong point is as a writer.

PM: She seems like a real fun person, too.

BNC: Oh, yeah. She's great.

PM: You mentioned it briefly, why don't we discuss that Celestial Songwriting Workshop you're soon to do with Paul Reisler and Julie Portman.

BNC: Oh, yeah! Well, that's really exciting for me. I've gone and taught songwriting quite a bit through the years. In fact, Paul Reisler is the first person, years ago, who got me into it. He called me, because he was doing a workshop in his area, and he said, "I want you to come and teach." And I had really only taught at Berklee in Boston one time, so I wasn't even somebody who thought of myself as a regular teacher. And that just got me going. Since then I've taught in several workshops, in the Rocky Mountain Folk Fest and various things like that.

I went to the Observatory not too long ago, and I was so knocked out with it as a place. It's this incredible place right here in our backyard. And I thought, wouldn't it be great to have a workshop in this kind of environment where we're looking into a telescope. I mean, to me, songwriting is like that, where you go into this space where you're connecting into the wonder of creativity, which is a very amazing magical thing. And I thought, well, this would just be so conducive and analogous to the process of writing, at least the way I teach it. So we just started talking, and I started working with Rocky, the man who runs the Observatory. He and I have just had the most fun putting it together, and just kind of creating it. We're going to have a great time. We want to have a great turnout. Paul and Julie are coming, because they were the most natural first choices that I could think of for co-teachers.

PM: I don't know Julie. Could we say something about her? I know Paul is a very well-known songwriting teacher.

BNC: Yeah. Well, Julie is an amazing teacher as well. They're married. Julie is an Obie winning playwright. She teaches workshops herself quite regularly, a life stories workshop, which is teaching people how to write about their life, and write their story, which is a very important part of coming into a flow creatively. She also teaches classes on performance, and how to present the full spirit of who you are in a performance. And it's amazing. I learned so much going to one of her classes one time. And I perform all the time, but I learned a different aspect about it, something that I had never even thought about. So I thought it would be great, not only just to learn it from a songwriting standpoint, or the detail of melody writing or that kind of thing, but also to--even if you're a songwriter and not a performer, at some point you have to present your songs. So even if it's about that, it's still a very useful aspect of being a professional songwriter, being able to present yourself with confidence. So it's going to be great. And we're going to have this other thing that I'm really excited about, which I call "Drive-By Hit Songwriters."

PM: [laughs]

BNC: I'm getting some of my hit songwriting friends to come by at odd points, for surprise cameo appearances. And they're going to come and interrupt the classes and sing a song and talk about their songwriting for about ten minutes, and then they're going to leave. [laughs]

PM: That's totally cool. We'll link to all the details, because that's something that a lot of people should know about. That sounds amazing.

BNC: Well, as workshops go, it will be a unique experience. I know Darrell Brown is going to be a drive-by, and Annie Roboff. And I'm working on Marcus Hummond, I haven't got a confirmation yet. But there will be no slouches in that group. Darrel Brown has just written a couple of hits for Keith Urban. It'll be great fun.   continue

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