By Mark E. Waterbury

MM: You've been in music awhile. Have you always performed professionally?

MPS: I started performing professionally for my living in the 70's on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. I was playing six nights a week and six or seven hours a night. We had a band called Wyler that played psychedelic folk; a mixture of country rock and punk rock if you can believe that. We did some gigs with the Neville Brothers back when they were the Meters. We were also instrumental in getting the New Orleans Jazz Festival started, even though we weren't jazz. It was going good and then it dropped off. We helped get it going again, and now it's one of the biggest fests in the country. Wyler turned into a seven piece touring band, and we secured work during the disco era, which was tough to do. We made about three grand a week which doesn't seem bad, but when you divide it up among seven members and take out expenses, we all made only about fifty bucks a week. (Laughs) At one point we were about to get signed by this agent Steven Cory in Dallas. I went to his office and he had all these legal forms, and I started thinking maybe I should go to law school so I could negotiate my own contracts. So I quit the band, went to law school, learned how to read contracts, and in the next twenty-five years no contracts were forthcoming. (Laughs)

MM: Did you do less music while pursuing your legal career?

MPS: No, I've been performing and recording records ever since. I've currently been with the band Dive Bomberz for about five years. Before that, it was a band called Ga-Ga Law, and before that it was Good Question, and before that The Windows. But I haven't really tried to market myself beyond the band context. I'm now trying to market myself as a songwriter for the first time ever.

MM: What made you decide to push your songwriting more at this time?

MPS: I always knew that the money was in the copyright, but playing out was so much fun that I kept pursuing the band avenue until I got tired of lifting my own amplifier for gigs. You eventually start to think about what is really valuable in your music career, and what really means something to me is the song. I have some wonderful songs, and more people are going to hear them if Alan Jackson sings them then if Mark Paul Smith plays them, I guarantee you.

MM: Have you done that in the past - have other people record songs you have written outside your own bands?

MPS: I have had songs used in award winning children's videos; "Grandpa's Farm" and "Airplane Airplane." They have sold quite well nationwide. I also won two Telli's, which are kind of the poor man's Oscar for non-broadcast video.

MM: Once you decided you really wanted to market your songwriting, what was your first step to get your music out there?

MPS: I do have many contacts in the industry, I made records with John Mellencamp's band backing me up. I've played with some of the best musicians in the world and have really gotten nowhere because I didn't have the right person promoting me. The music business is like anything else - it's who you know, and the people I knew didn't seem to know the right people. So I got a copy of Songwriter's Market and started sending letters around to a lot of publishers, and one of them steered me to a PR firm who is now representing me, and I am very pleased with what they are doing.

MM: Do you still do some promoting on your own at a grass roots level?

MPS: Yes, I'm still talking to publishers and I have a couple of producers interested. I have many irons in the fire, but you know the music business is a tough one to crack. It's much tougher now than it was when I started in the 70's. As a lawyer, I represent a lot of artists, and the hardest thing I have to tell them is that the contract that they have been offered is not something they should sign. The unscrupulous companies get a list of copyright applicants and send them letters saying, "You have talent! Let us record you and we'll get you a record deal!" And all they are doing is trying to sell them their studio time.

MM: What sort of genres are you looking to market with your songwriting, and are they songs you have had for awhile or written more currently?

MPS: I have hundreds of songs, and everybody was saying that I was drifting into a (Jimmy) Buffet mode. What I am doing now is rerecording these songs into a current day Nashville sound. One thing about Nashville is that they know what they want to hear and if you are not in the ballpark, you're not going to get in the game. It's a pretty closed little community, and can be pretty nepotistic, too. I do feel that a good song has a life of its own and can rise to the top. I still have not lost that perhaps naive faith in the power of the song. I am realizing now if you want your song to sell, you have to record it in a certain way and target your market. I never tried to do it that way before. I always thought that I would do them my way, and play them in my band and wait to get discovered in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Well, guess what? (Laughs) Here I sit a number of years later trying to take the obvious road of good business sense.

MM: What aspect of your songwriting do you feel will make it stand out and make you successful in your new endeavors to market it?

MPS: I'm trying to connect with people at a real visceral level, a gut level. The level that says you might be afraid of the dark, but you are not going to get outside unless you open the door. The thing is all it takes is one and I will be off to the races. Most kids when they get a deal, it's everything that they have ever written. It's their greatest hits record. I got fifteen records in the can. All I have to do is bring out the old ones and make them better and produce them the way I want to. I have punk songs that I wrote that I can turn around and make country. Country is where it is at right now. It has the coolest hooks and the best beats. When it comes to lyrics, I think of the Beatles song "Help." "Help I need someone"...what a great lyric! That's what I mean by the gut level connection, because we are all in trouble. I'm still idealistic enough to think that there is still a oneness and music can bring people together. Music has a great power because you hear something, and you relate to it and realize that you are not alone. Some of the greatest songs are real personal. It's fun for me to not be a kid anymore, but still be excited about music, and I think my best songs are yet to come.