Performing Songwriter
Performing Songwriter was a magazine first published in 1993, with 8 editions a year, and aimed at songwriters who toured and performed. It closed in 2009, but continues as an online publication.
30 articles
List of articles in the library
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 1997
FUNK IS one of those words, like cool or hip, that is difficult to define. In music, it's an amorphous thing, an attitude, a looseness, ...
Interview by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, March 1998
BRIAN KENNEDY is caught between a pillow and a soft place. On the one hand, he's an emerging solo artist whose debut album in 1990 ...
The Chieftains: Paddy Moloney: The Abundant Life of The Chieftains
Interview by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, March 1998
IF YOU'VE EVER visited Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the most memorable legs of the tour (not quite as touching as the meditation garden ...
Paul Brady: The Ever-Changing World of Paul Brady
Interview by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, March 1998
A MENTOR ONCE told me there were two rules to writing about other people's lives: First, always remember that as the journalist, you're not the ...
Report by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, March 1998
IF YOU HAD said to someone twenty years ago that Ireland was hot, they would have assumed you'd never been, because, truthfully, the place is ...
Peter, Paul & Mary: What Makes A Song Endure
Interview by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, May 1998
IT'S APRIL, 2048, the year of the cockroach. The lines curve out the door of Radio City Music Hall, around the block, and down Sixth ...
Aretha Franklin: Arif Mardin: A Man For All Musical Seasons
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 1998
READING THROUGH the list of artists that producer/arranger Arif Mardin has worked with is like looking at a chapter of history from American pop music. ...
Tori Amos: The Loudest Voice in the Chair
Interview by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, September 1998
My scream got lost in a paper cup you think there's a heaven where some screams have gone?I've got twenty-five bucks and a cracker do ...
Willie Nelson: The Lone Star Spirit of Willie Nelson
Profile and Interview by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, December 1998
THERE WAS, of course, Texas music before Willie. Problem was, nobody outside of Texas heard it. The eclectic styles growing from lone star roots before ...
James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt: Peter Asher: A World Of Sound
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, April 1999
"I ALWAYS found the studio a fascinating place," says producer Peter Asher, "and the process of assembling a track and figuring out what each musician ...
Townes Van Zandt: A Far Cry From Dead
Review by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, 15 July 1999
STEVE EARLE ONCE gushed, "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world, and I'd stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my boots ...
Beth Nielsen Chapman: The Lightness of Being Beth Nielsen Chapman
Interview by Debbie Kruger, Performing Songwriter, September 1999
WHAT STRIKES YOU first about Beth Nielsen Chapman, and then again repeatedly on further meetings, is her lightness. She is a woman who has been ...
Interview by Paul Zollo, Performing Songwriter, 2000
"Music was what bothered me, what interested me. I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it. That's why I ...
Retrospective and Interview by Paul Zollo, Performing Songwriter, January 2000
IN MANHATTAN, a couple weeks before the final Christmas of the 20th Century. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have arrived together at the 12th floor, ...
Interview by Debbie Kruger, Performing Songwriter, March 2000
EDDI READER ready to do it alone. After a decade of drawing heavily on collaborations with other writers, she realizes it's okay – in fact ...
Interview by Debbie Kruger, Performing Songwriter, December 2000
IT'S A LINE so stark in its humility that it has some American reviewers looking for irony and missing the point altogether. ...
Alan Lomax: A Life Less Ordinary
Obituary by Chris Smith, Performing Songwriter, September 2002
SUMMING UP ALAN LOMAX'S contributions to folk music in a single magazine article is like trying to list everyone you've ever met on a single ...
David Bowie: The Sound and Vision of David Bowie
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2003
PLANET EARTH is blue and David Bowie's beige. Dressed down in khakis, a light tan T-shirt and a matching ball cap, he looks more like ...
Bread, David Gates: Legends of Songwriting: David Gates of Bread
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, December 2003
REMEMBER "soft rock?" You don't hear the term much anymore, but in the early 1970s, this musical genre floated onto the AM airwaves in the ...
Harlan Howard: Legends of Songwriting: Harlan Howard
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, January 2004
THE TYPICAL songwriter who rolls into Nashville is an unknown hopeful with an acoustic guitar and a notebook full of half-finished songs and titles. When ...
The Chi-Lites: Legends of Songwriting: Eugene Record of The Chi-Lites
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, May 2004
IN 1969, WHEN The Chi-Lites scored their first hit with 'Give It Away', it was a well-earned triumph. ...
Bill Withers: Legends of Songwriting: Bill Withers
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 2004
A BLACK MAN wearing faded jeans and an orange turtleneck sweater sits on a stool. He's hunched over his acoustic guitar. Eyes closed, sweat glistening ...
Elvis Costello: A Man with a Mission (In Two or Three Editions)
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, Fall 2004
ELVIS COSTELLO is about to take over the world. No, he's not going to reveal himself as a nefarious arch-villain in league with Doctor Octopus ...
Sergio Mendes: Legends of Songwriting: Sergio Mendes
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, October 2005
ON TIMELESS, the latest album by Sergio Mendes, there's a line in the title track that goes, "Kindness is timeless/Love is so easy." ...
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, January 2006
WHEN DAVE Stewart and Annie Lennox formed Eurythmics in 1980, they drew up what they called "a manifesto." A list of their intentions, along with ...
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 2006
When Don Kirshner hired Jeff Barry as a producer and writer for the Monkees, then the Archies, he knew he was getting a guaranteed hitmaker. ...
Paul Simon, Simon & Garfunkel: Surprise Surprise: Paul Simon
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2006
"THE TRUTH is flexible and complex," says Paul Simon. On the eleven songs that make up his latest album Surprise, the legendary songwriter sizes up ...
Jimmy Webb: Legends of Songwriting: Jimmy Webb
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, March 2007
"SOMEONE LEFT the cake out in the rain." No single lyric is more infamous in pop music than the one Jimmy Webb wrote forty years ...
Herb Alpert: Legends Of Songwriting: Herb Alpert...
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 2007
...plus an interview with Dolores Erickson, the lady beneath the Whipped Cream ...
Legends of Songwriting: Diane Warren
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2007
ASKED WHETHER she could ever love a person as much as she loves songwriting, Diane Warren doesn't miss a beat in answering an emphatic "No." ...
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