A Nashville Writing Appointment
For songwriting collaborators, the practice of scheduling appointments has become an enduring Nashville tradition. Many music publishing houses on Music Row have writing rooms where songwriting teams gather with guitars, keyboards, notebooks, laptops, and mini-recording devices to work out ideas for new songs. The art of this process was evident during a session with veteran songwriters Joe Doyle ’87 and Dillon Dixon ’91. Over the years, they have written several great tunes, and the duo understands the value of collaborating.
Doyle has had a lot of success, including the number-one hit “In Pictures” recorded by Alabama. Kenny Rogers, Reba McEntire, Joe Diffie, Luke Bryan, Dan Seals, Jason Aldean, and many others have recorded his songs. He’s currently signed to Amylase Entertainment. Dixon, also signed to Amylase, scored his first cut with country icon George Jones and landed tracks in six motion pictures. Josh Gracin and Rodney Atkins have recently recorded his songs.
“When a writing appointment begins, you just visit,” says Dixon as he picks up his guitar. “As you talk, you try to find out where your cowriter is at that day. Sometimes everyone’s creativity starts flowing, and ideas are flying all around the room. Other days I figure I’m going to be the one doing most of the driving.”
Doyle pulls out his notebook of ideas for lyrics and titles. “If I’m walking in the woods and something strikes me as a song idea, I write it down. If it’s not a hook, it may be an idea for a story line.”
Doyle and Dixon approach writing differently, hence they’re a good match. Dixon likes to start with a musical idea and see where it goes. During the cowriting session, Doyle starts with a concept. He throws out a lyric theme, and Dixon starts to improvise chords and a melody, imagining a story line. But Doyle isn’t feeling it and throws out another line with the word shadows. Dixon offers a scenario. Doyle says, “Maybe” and then begins to explain his idea more fully. They discuss possibilities of the shadow metaphor. Could it be a shadow cast on the barroom wall by a neon light, or is the character afraid of shadows more than the real thing? Dixon says, “I’ve never written a song about shadows, so let’s roll with this.” They consult All Music Guide online to check for titles using the word shadows. “You never want anyone to think you ripped off your idea from someone else,” says Doyle.
Ultimately, they move on to other concepts. And according to Doyle, this is all part of the process. “Sometimes you’ll land on something after going through a handful of ideas,” he explains. Dixon prefers to complete a song in one sitting whenever possible, but Doyle likes to live with the music and lyrics a bit and work on them at home.
“We usually take two or three sessions to complete a song,” Dixon says. “I can throw out musical ideas all day long, but Joe likes to work systematically. He doesn’t just write a song for the sake of coming up with something that day.” And before leaving a session, they book another appointment.
