Ray,

That does happen. Actually, that is how Jeffery Steele and Craig Wiesman get as many cuts as they do. In addition to writing ALL the time, and having a TON of contacts in addition to continuous track record, they often have a brand new song just as an act is tiring of all the songs they have been listening to and working with.

It takes about a year to 16 months for a CD project to come together. Most acts are on the road about 8 months of the year so when they come home(which are most likely early weeks here and there, they are meeting with family, doing the home things, buisness meetings etc. And recording. They record a little bit at a time, maybe three or four songs. Then they are back out on the road. All the time they are getting songs from Management, friends, writing on the road (Steele is on the bus with many of them) and performing some of the songs during their live shows to see how they test out with live audiences.

It is not unusual for acts to wear out on a song or several songs. Since you are always most excited about the most recent thing, they are always on the lookout for new songs. But the filters they have to go through, producers, record labels, A&R. etc, keep all that filtered out. That is why it is so hard to get something through.

In my own experience, I got a John Berry cut on a song called "Rescued Me" after they were finished recording. But they liked my song so much they went back in, added it (actually ended up as the title track) and bumped another song off of the record. Oddly enough, that person had bumped me off a Patty Loveless record about 8 years before.

So it does happen. But the fact that I wrote it with David Vincent Williams, who was coming off a number five song called "Hands of a Working Man" for Ty Herndon, and the fact that his song plugger worked for Warner Chappel, the second largest company in Nashville AND the fact that he had gone to colledge with the producer on the project, all played into getting the cut.

It is about access. That is what is the key to everything. If you have a song written that is really good, and your friends like it, that is great. But unless one of those friends have access to the upper levels of the artist's world, able to breach through the producer or the label people, it is going to be screened out unless it is just magnificent. Which does happen.

Then of course you have to go through those teams to make the final product, which is why 15-20 songs are cut and 12 are used on the CD. Ever seen the "Special three bonus tracks" on a "Greatest hits" CD? That's where they come from. And everyone have competing interests in the project. Right now with Frankie, I have 15 songs. Those are competing with the songs he has written with Steele, Wiseman, etc. Then the existing catalogues of those guys, along with Rutherford, Dipeiro and company, that are pitching their other songs to him that he didn't write. There are songs that are coming from everywhere. It gets kind of funny actually.

I saw him last week and he is being pitched songs by artists who don't get their own songs on their own projects. he is getting songs from Dierk's Bently, Blake Shelton, Jason Aldeen,
Jamie Johnson, also. These have all become friends of his as well. He even gave Dierk's Bently a guitar. it is a VERY inside business.

So Ray, the deal is "upping the level of your odds." You co-write a song, you double your chances of getting it out there. You co-write it with a known entity in a place like LA, New York, Nashville, you get it up the ladder a little further. Everything has to be competitive, from the writing, to the demo. It has to fight it's way up the ladder. Get represented by a well known publisher or song plugger, you have better odds. But nothing is guaranteed. I saw Sherril Blackman last week. Sherril is the top independent song plugger in town. He and the other song pluggers are getting virtually no meetings any more due to the artists writing everything. It has become almost totally self contained, just like rock has been for many years.

The deal is finding new artists on their way up, writing songs on them BEFORE they get deals, or get inundated by the outside world. It is kind of funny in a way. Right now I am very good friends with three people with some pretty large deals. One is Frankie, another is a bass player in a band on Warner Brothers, and a third pair are people that just won a major television show. All three groups are just like talking to the same people. They are all frustrated, because they have to wait on dozens of people, places and things to happen before they can even start recorded, nothing they bring in seems to get total approval from the "powers that be" and the music industry has totally lost every bit of fun and interest. Each one of them are ghermed to death and the only reason they confide in me is that I am the only one who doesn't gherm them. And I actually have material for them,but I know how the game is played and have to wait on my turn if it works out.
As I always say, the more you know about the music business, the less you want to know about the music business.

MAB