I’m in awe as to where this journey has led so far. About four months ago when I started writing my first full lyric I literally couldn’t spell lyricist (I thought it had an “a” in it), and I thought the words to a single song were called “lyrics”rather than “lyric”.

And if you had told me four months ago that I’d get to listen to Steve Seskin (a great songwriter who has seven hit songs that made #1) sing and play two of his newest songs in concert, and then sit down with him one-on-one the following morning to share and discuss songs that Denis Loiseau and I co-created, and that instead of feeling panicked or intimidated I’d feel excited and confident, I’d have asked you what you were smoking. But that is exactly what happened this weekend.

During our discussion Steve Seskin was friendly, insightful, and supportive as he listened to and evaluated both of our song demos. 

Steve said he liked “What Kind of Man Does That?” and thought it was a cool idea and journey.  He recommended changing only a single line of the whole song. It was one of the two lines of the bridge and although he liked both lines, he felt they didn’t tie in to the hook and chorus well enough. I agree.

“WKOMDT” is the song that was screened and selected by Ted Hewitt this weekend, and it was the first song I began writing four months ago when I decided for the first time to seriously try my hand at completing a lyric. Back then, Denis Loiseau saw my first draft and offered to collaborate with me on it, and I wisely accepted. 

Steve Seskin said he loved the lyric/writing of “Rebelry!”Although he thought “Rebelry” was an interesting idea and title, he believes that the song has premise issues. Essentially, it is too happy/upbeat for a song that involves someone dying, and the story is too sober for a song about partying and enjoying life. He said it’s a good idea about how one should live and view dying, but the music fits most of the lyric and we should just scrap the dying thing and focus on something more along the lines of ‘We’re not gonna live forever, let’s have some fun!’

So, I suspect that when Denis and I discuss the feedback we’ll decide to change “WKOMDT” slightly and make substantial changes to “Rebelry”. 

In the meantime, I plan to soon include the versions of the lyrics to both songs that Steve evaluated for me.  

After this amazing weekend, I am indeed a grateful man.