JIM COLYER

1963-1972 - Early Years I wrote 400 songs in 40 years. It began as I was turning 18. I began hearing songs that did not exist. That made me a songwriter. There was a cheap, beat-up guitar at my grandmother's house. I tried to play chords I learned from books. Chords were easy to make, and I quickly understood how they fit together to form patterns. I could transpose from one key to another. My problem was, I had no rhythm. Bill Davis would help me with that years later. The neck of that guitar was horrible. Its strings dug into my fingers like barb wire. The pain in my fingertips would wake me at night. Calluses formed. I was determined. My first songs were about breaking up with my girl friend. This is true for most writers. Self-pity is a big factor. Many songwriters are introverts as I was. Schizophrenia and the creative process are related. Writing songs that no one else identifies with isolates the writer. He quickly finds himself cut off from the rest of society, misundertanding and misunderstood. That is how it was. My mother bought me a red Gibson SG Jr., an electric. I was no guitarist. I would bang out chords and scream, the sweat pouring out of me on hot summer days. My first songs were imiations of what was on radio. Elvis Presley and The Beatles were influences. My most coherent efforts were She Must Be Some Girl, Welcome Mat and You'd Better Go. The culmination of this period was the Gospel songs I wrote after coming out of the Army. My religious phase was wild. As America rejected the Vietnam War, I began reading books of a spiritual nature. I delved into Buddhism, Edgar Cayce and the later works of Aldous Huxley. One thing led to another. I fell in with a group of Jesus freaks in Louisville. We went to a Pentecostal church in Indiana where the congregation danced in the aisles. We spoke in tongues. I threw away all my possessions except for my clothes, Bible and guitar. I went off the deep end, and my mother had me put on the mental ward of the Veterans Hospital. I was given shock tratment. My spiritual and Gospel songs originated from these experiences. Jesus Paid My Debt, Living Within Ourselves and Thank You, Lord are the best. I recorded Jesus Paid My Debt with Veda Radanovich 28 years after I wrote it. It reeks with old time religion. As we were going into the studio, a homeless black man stopped us and asked for money. Veda gave him money. She believed he might have been an angel sent to test us. She was as crazy as I was. 1973-1984 - The Comeback I rose from the ashes. I began going to The Dipperwell, the restaurant where my mother worked. The Dipperwell was run by Thelma Lee Humphrey, my mother's cousin. Thelma introduced me to Barry Davidson, a drummer in a band. We devised a plan whereby Barry would produce a song called Long Live Rock 'n' Roll for me. We recorded the song in a Louisville studio. I did the vocal. We took it to Nashville and pressed 1000 vinyl singles. I mailed them to record companies, publishers and radio stations across the nation. Doing the record was a resurrection. Good songs followed, the strongest of which were Phoenix and Somebody's Taken Your Place. Phoenix was based on the bird of Greek mythology, and I was that bird. I soon found myself in Nashville recording with Bill Davis in a makeshift studio in his back yard. I had a 4-channel Teac, and Bill bought a Docoder. We used the two decks together. Our work eventually led to an album with some students from Castle Heights Military Academy where I was working. We called the record "Rising from the Ashes." My renditions of Leaving, Belle Meade Blues and Enough were on it. They were comeback songs. Lori Powell recorded Losing Makes You Stronger. Tim Morrison recorded Too Late For Love. It was a misadventure. I recorded with a girl named Amy Plummer. My first girl songs were really male songs. I simply changed pronouns to fit gender. So Much Better and Sailing Out came out good. I put them on 45s to no avail. As this way of things was playing out, I did two last cuts on Jim Colyer Records. My son's mother, Karen, did Somebody To Love. It was weak. I backed it with I Am The Greatest. Silence! I realized the futility of putting out records on my own label. It would be years before I recorded again. 1985-1994 - The Rewrite Burn out! After becoming a parent, I questioned music and my involvement in it. I had a newborn baby to take care of and had wasted my resources. My songs suddenly seemed second generation imitations of what I heard on radio. Few held up, and they were mediocre and reflected my life at a particular level. Entering middle age with a child to raise and send to school gave me a different perspective. I retreated to my parents' basement after the divorce. Nothing sounded good, and I did nothing in music for a long time. The rewrite began unconsciously. I wrote the lyrics of Agnetha over an old melody. I did the same for Stockholm Lady and Feed The Children. When I Was A Boy evolved lyrics more relevant to my life. I pieced together what might have been the first jukebox musical called Phoenix Rising, 30 of my songs strung together with a story written around them replete with characters and dialogue. It was about an American soldier named Frank Logan who had a daughter he had never seen by a Swedish woman. Frank was on the verge of fathering a second child with a young British singer. The plot was an extension of my own infatuation with younger women. I discarded Phoenix Rising, feeling once more that it was a Jim Colyer phase and not what I ultimately wanted to say. The rewrite continued. Fragments sprouted verses and bridges. I wrote Jesus Died For You & Me over an existing melody. 1995-2004 - The Explosion I had written an environmental song called Save The Planet. It seemed to be my strongest piece and I thought it could be an international hit. I advertised in a Louisville music paper for a female vocalist. This set off a chain of events which I never could have predicted. A gal in Indiana recorded my song, but it was no good. Shortly thereafter, I was talking to a girl in a video shop. She said her cousin in the west end of Louisville wanted to be a country singer. I gave her my phone number. Three days later, Ron Coogle called me. Ron was Rachel Coogle's father. He was looking for songs for his daughter. I went to their house. I took a song called Satisfied. We did a work tape. We took it to Doc Dockery's basement studio in New Albany, Indiana. We demoed it. Rachel performed Satisfied on Tom Thompson's public access show for songwriters. Doc introduced me to Pam Ingold. Pam was in a band called Inkahoots. We became friends. She recorded 8 songs with me, including He's Got Something That's Got Me, Half Crazy Half The Time and Old Time Country Song. Suddenly, I was back in Nashville in an apartment on Music Row writing songs full time. Wasn't that what I wanted? I bought Doc's white Takemine guitar. Songs began pouring out of me. Many of them were female. I wrote Free for Dana Medley, Always The First Time for Donna Carter, The Common Man for the Gentry Cousins and Live My Dreams for Jeni Dockery. My best songs came in my 50's during the Shania Twain decade. The girl songs I was writing were different from the early ones. There was a female psychology in them. I was writing like a woman. People joked about my feminine side. It came with being older. By now, women sang like the men used to. They were strong and independent. They worked out. They like my tough girl lyrics and rockin' beat. We recorded with Kenny Royster at Direct Image. For the money, Kenny does great work. He is efficient, and his musicians play inspired. I produced a 9-song CD with Veda Radanovich. Veda performed Hard Earned Love at Exit/In in Nashville with her band. Her favorite song of mine is All Roads Lead To You. All Roads Lead To You has generated a lot of response. Veda did a rocker called I Looked Twice! One Night Stand, an Illinois-based band is recording it and putting it on their CD. A sleeper is I Promise (Wedding Song) which gets a lot of play on the web. Calling it (Wedding Song) was a stroke of genius. I began to think it is better to identify songs with entrenched institutions. Country was the last song Veda recorded. It is filled with flag-waving and the 4th of July. I wrote the lyrics for Merry Christmas using the Country melody and sang it myself over the track. It was listened to over 5000 times in December, 2005. I will promote it again next year and take it to ASCAP to see if I can pitch it to a signed artist doing a Christmas album for 2006. It is hard to write good Christmas songs. All the good ones pre-date the rock era. Music Row is tight. Signed artists are surrounded by attorneys, managers and A&R people who work with top publishers. But, who knows? Merry Christmas rocks! Its words are good! Everything has come down to the Internet, and jimcolyer.com is the definitive website. I met Megan Conner on the web, at tunesmith.net. Megan is 25. Her birthday is September 20, 1980. She was born in North Carolina bu grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. She majored in theater at Baylor University in Waco, then tried acting in New York for 3 years. She moved to Nashville to try country music. She is making progress. She has a job as a fitness trainer in the Roundabout Plaza. She has written 50 songs and met Keith Stegall and Colin at EMI. She knows of Mike Dungan at Capitol and has investors, a producer and a Christian manager. We met at the Longhorn for lunch. I showed her God Given Talent. She likes its edginess and sass. Turns out, Megan already knows Kenny Royster at Direct Image. I need to book a session and take Kenny a work tape. 2005-2025 - Commercial The time has come for me to give up other people's music and to concentrate on my own. It is time to stop losing money because of music. My catalog will stand on its own and generate incole if it is worthy. If not, so be it. Music is a luxury. It is not a necessity. It is ego-based. "I" is the songwriter's favorite word. John Lennon could stretch the word "I" over several seconds. From my own catalog of 200 titles, 71 of them begin with "I" or a contraction with "I." Music people care about themselves and their families. They want money. When they get it, they are gone. They are self-centered. Every generation produces its own and can not understand the music of other generations. Music is language. It is tied to the sexual mores of the people who produce it. Everybody writes. Writers care about their own songs, not someone else's. Ego and money. Radio hits are recorded using state-of-the-art technology. Production can not be overestimated. Audiences hear and respond to production, the sound. A song is an intellectual thing. A bad song with a good production can be a hit. A good song with a bad production can not. The ideal situation is to have both a good song and a good production. I will publish my catalog using the Internet. If people like what I do, they can use their own resources to record it. I am at my limit.
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com