By Scott Coner
Country Artist
I have been thinking
quite a bit lately. This isn't always a good thing for me, but it happens from
time to time. I've been thinking about my music to be honest. I have been
working on the writing side of it pretty seriously since I was around 15 years
old. You know, early on, you find yourself taken back with this private love
affair you have with writing songs. Being the stupid kid I was, and I was
really a stupid kid, I wrote about my undying love for whatever cute girl stood
by her locker that day. When you're a teenager, you have all of these crazy
feelings running through you. You want to stand for something, but you don't
have anything to stand for. You want to be heard, but you don't have anything
of value to say. And as it was, I found myself alone quite a bit with a guitar that
played a lot like a barbed-wire fence and piece of paper and pencil.
That's how this process
for me started. Truthfully, I would have been a singer in a band doing covers,
but most of the music people my age listened to back then I couldn't begin to
sing. I played a lot of those singer-songwriter types on my record player, and
I studied their phrasings, their dialects, and the lyrics. I didn't have access
to much where I lived, so I had to make do with whatever I could find. I didn't
know many chords, so I would look through songbooks and copy down the little
dots on the strings that represented fingers on chords. One of the early ones
for me was "Sister Golden Hair" by America. Those chords killed my hand, but they also allowed me to
move around a little bit on the neck and work on my rhythm playing as well.
Another early song, maybe the earliest, was "Highway Song" by Blackfoot. I actually tuned my guitar
to an E-minor from that song because I didn't know how to tune a guitar.
As I have said, I don't
do covers very well at all. But because I could halfway play some of those
songs, I began to realize that I could piece chords together and create new
songs. It started then and continues now. You probably knew some guy early on
in life that loved working on cars and still does all of these years later?
That's me, but I don't work on cars. I work on songs. I think the other thing
that I spent a lot of time doing that has helped me has been my addiction to
reading. There has always been something about reading and writing songs that
go together for me. It's like reading excited the part of my primitive mind
that writes lyrics and hears melodies.
So all of this being
said, I have been doing a little thinking lately. I think about those early
days of playing and the excitement it brought. I can look back now and see the
slow process of my development as a writer. I'm not saying I'm a good writer,
but I have evolved to some degree I suppose. Even a monkey would evolve, so
it's safe for me to say this.
I put things on hold 19
years ago to attempt to be a husband and a dad. I never quit writing. I never
quit hoping. And I never stopped believing that some day I would get a chance
to play music at some other level. I have been so lucky as far as things go,
and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't find myself thanking God for
allowing me to play music and be a small part of something I love and respect
so much.
If you're reading this blog right now,
there is a fair chance that you and I haven't met. But I do hope that life has
been good for you. I hope you haven't lost that passion that you held a long
time ago for something. My advice? Do something for yourself, something that
you love no matter what anybody else says. As a Rock once said, "Kick the
door in and introduce yourself!"
Scott Coner is a singer-songwriter who
has recorded with legendary artists such as Tanya Tucker, T. Graham Brown and
Charlie Daniels. Listen to his music or watch his videos at www.ScottConer.com,
www.YouTube.com/user/ScottConer, or www.Facebook.com/ScottConerMusic.
