Pro Guitar Tracks

Typically, when songwriters and musicians come together, the musicians outnumber the songwriters. Not so last night!

The awesome band was Rob Mathes leading from the piano, Shawn Pelton on drums, Shane Fontaine on guitars, Zev Katz on bass, Bashiri Johnson on percussion and Henry on extra keys. I jumped in to play with John Bettis during his award segment. Seven players, including me…pretty typical.

Songwriters? Hundreds! Too numerous to mention, too mentionable to enumerate! The inductees were John Bettis, the team of Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, Leon Russell, Drake, Hal David, Garth Brooks, Chaka Kahn, Alan Toussaint, Ervin Drake, and the team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

Several writer/artists were on hand to perform songs written by the inductees. Featured were Boz Scaggs, Chrissie Hynde, Skylar Grey, Billy Joel, Sam Cooke, Bill Medley, Trisha Yearwood and Dwight Yoakam.

In the audience were Victoria Shaw, Gary Burr, Jimmy Webb, Jimmy Jam, Paul Williams and a long list comprising of some of the best songwriters on the planet!

Was I a little nervous walking out onto the stage to play in front of this bunch? Darn right! John Bettis sang “Top Of The World” with all of the unapologetic exuberation he built into the song when he wrote it! And Skylar Grey sang his hits “Crazy For You” and “Human Nature” while accompanying herself on dulcimer! It was a stroke of brilliance on her part, and truly one of the highlights of the show. She’s a very down to earth person, a very musical person who is obviously comfortable across a wide range of musical styles. Keep your ears and eyes on her!

Chrissie Hynde and Boz Scaggs sounded as great as ever, performing for team Kelly/Steinberg and Alan Toussaint, respectively. Dwight Yoakam totally impressed me with his masterful and moving tribute to Leon, singing “Superstar”. Closing the show, Garth Brooks and Billy Joel rocked out with “Shameless”.

We had soundcheck and dress rehearsal this morning here at the Marriott Marquis in NYC…OMG what a lineup of powerhouse, history making songwriters and performers! Chrissie Hynde sang the Billy Steinberg/Tom Kelly hit “I’ll Stand By You”, Dwight Yoakam sang the Leon Russell hit “Superstar”…and sounded amazing…followed by Leon himself singing his classic, “Song For You”. John Bettis and I ran through his”Top Of The World”, and during the show Skylar Grey will perform John’s hits “Crazy For You”and “Human Nature”.

Stay tuned, I’ll post all the details later…after the show! In the meantime, get busy and go write YOUR hit songs, you’ll be in great company someday in the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame!

I have been quite privileged to work with many great songwriters over the course of my career, from the completely unknown all the way up to the very well known. This week I’m honored to be heading to New York to play guitar for legendary songwriter John Bettis at his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Many thanks to Ric Olsen and Mike Mullin at Gibson Guitars for providing me with a beautiful guitar to use during the rehearsals and show!

So, you may be asking yourself, “Who is John Bettis?” You can Google him for the full story, but the short version goes something like this: John is an exceptionally bright and talented guy who has had an outstanding career as a successful songwriter for four decades! Among his many hit songs are Top of the World and Yesterday Once More for The Carpenters; Slowhand for Conway Twitty and The Pointer Sisters; As Long As We’ve Got Each Other aka the theme for the TV show “Growing Pains”; Crazy For You for Madonna; One Moment in Time for Whitney Houston; and Human Nature for Michael Jackson.

If I had written even ONE of those songs, I’d be very hard to live with! But John is as down-to-earth as they come, a great gentleman and family man.

I’ll be tweeting and blogging from NYC in the next few days as we work on the show…stay tuned!

And congratulations to one of the very best songwriters ever, John Bettis…no one deserves it any more than you, my friend!