Clay Mills:
If a line is great, but it's not right for the song, then I don't think twice about putting it on the cutting-room floor, and you can save it for another song, maybe it inspires a whole new song. It's all about learning to work with other people and putting together that team.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution with today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right. I'm excited to be here today with Clay Mills. He's a songwriter that's recorded over 200 songs, including a number one hit song, Beautiful Mess, 16 ASCAP awards, multiple Grammy nominations. Not only has he done this for himself, but he's also the founder, or one of the founders of SongTown, which is an online community of songwriters, mentors, and now you guys have a team of literally dozens of mentors that are hit songwriters. Of course, what can we focus on today? I was thinking songwriting would be a natural fit. It's so, so important as a musician and as a songwriter and artist. Yeah, song writing is really at the roots of everything, so I'm excited to take some time to explore that together.

Clay Mills:
Yeah. I'm excited to be here. As we say in SongTown, it all begins with a great song. I've heard it often said, well, it all begins with a song, but no, a song is not good enough. It's got to be a great song, to open doors and move people.

Michael Walker:
That's good. That's true. That's true. It's like, you can't just make noise. You've got to make some beautiful noise. I'd love to hear a little bit about your story, just how you got started and how you got to a point where you recorded a number one hit song and multiple Grammy nominations. What did that look like for you?

Clay Mills:
Man, it was a long journey for me. I mean, I grew up Mississippi and Alabama, didn't know anyone in the music business, but I'd kind of played in bands in high school and a year of college I just up and decided on a whim, when I was 19, to move to New York City. Had $300 in my pocket and a friend that said I could sleep on their sofa. I take an Amtrak from Alabama, a train, couldn't afford to fly, so I took a train all the way to New York City, and within a few weeks found a job working at Manny's Music on 48th Street in their keyboard department, selling keyboards to people that would come in and synthesizers and samplers.

Clay Mills:
It was at the beginning of when computers started entering into music. It was kind of exciting time. I remember distinctly though, at one point, I'd been there probably two months, and I went into work on a Friday. I paid my landlord, and I was counting on getting a paycheck on Friday because I was out of money. I mean, I was literally broke. So, paid my landlord that Friday morning, went into work, and was expecting to get a paycheck, and they go, "Oh, we messed up your check. We're not going to have your check till next week."

Clay Mills:
I literally left work that day going, I don't have any money to eat until Monday when I get my check. I started thinking I should call home, I should ditch this whole New York thing. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this. I was walking down the street and there was a sign, it said, karaoke. I was like, well, I moved to New York. I'm, at least before I call home, I'm going to say I got to sing in New York. I went in, sang a song at their karaoke and I started to leave, and the owner of the club came over to me and he said, "Hey," he goes, "I love your singing." He's like, "Let me buy you a drink."

Clay Mills:
I sat down, was talking to him and he says, "What do you want to eat?" And he's like, got me a hamburger. I was like, you don't know how much this means to me because I literally didn't know how it was going to eat until Monday and I was thinking of calling home, maybe moving back to Alabama. And he went over the cash register and pulled out $50 and handed it to me. He was like, "Don't give up your dream, man." He's like, "You got talent." That made an impression on me because as creative people, no matter what we're trying to do, we need people to come along at the right time to encourage us.

Clay Mills:
That's always been my mission, and especially now since starting SongTown eight years ago, with Marty Dodson, where we mentor thousands of writers around the world. It's my mission to try to be that positive voice. Not solely positive, because our members turn in a song that sucks, we're going to tell them it sucks because that's the reality of it, but we also try to help them make their writing better. We don't just say, oh, you got what it takes or you don't. If your writing's not up to par, then we show you how to get it up to par. It's working. We've had a lot of members having success. Man, that was long winded.

Michael Walker:
That was beautiful, man. I love that story. It's a great example of ... I think it's true. A lot of times we need that encouragement. We need support. Having a mentor, it's not a coincidence that in every great novel in Harry Potter, there's Dumbledore and Luke Skywalker and Yoda. There's always these mentors and they can point out, they can see something inside of you that you can't necessarily see for yourself. Like you said, it's not always like positive feedback. They're going to be honest with you, and sometimes even direct and hard and say like, hey ...But it's all given in love and in constructive feedback that help grow.

Michael Walker:
I think that's amazing that you're providing that service for artists. Now that you've had the perspective, both as like an artist yourself writing songs, and also working with a lot of other songwriters, and I'm sure that you started ... There's like these patterns or there's like certain challenges or mistakes or common misconceptions or things that come up over and over again, the similar questions. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you see a songwriter struggling with when they first come to you?

Clay Mills:
I would say 99% of all problems in a music career is that you're not doing something good enough yet. You're not on a high enough level. Understanding that you can't do everything great and building that team around you. If you're a great singer, maybe you need to team up with some great songwriters or a great track person, or you need to be a front man in a band with somebody who plays guitar well. It's all about learning to work with other people and putting together that team. When I was in New York and I was putting together my team, I was working in music store. Somebody came in that ran a jingle company.

Clay Mills:
At that time, writing jingles was the furthest thing from my mind, but sometimes you have to go with opportunities that present themselves. This person came in, I got to talking to him, and he's like, "Well, give me a tape of your songs," because I told him I was a songwriter. I happened to have a tape, I gave it to him. The next day he calls me and he goes, "I've got a commercial for lemon-lime crush." He's like, "All I got is, don't just quench it, crush it." And he's like, "Tomorrow morning, you got to have something for me."

Clay Mills:
I stayed up all night, put together a demo, wrote the tune, gave it to him, and then that led to me getting my first jingle as a songwriter. I did that for about five years in New York, where they would give me a project. They would say it needs to be like ... One day it would be, we need something like the band Queen. Then the next day would be, we need something literally like Paula Abdul. I mean, it was like art, then it would be classical.

Clay Mills:
We need this orchestra piece. It was just great training for the music business. I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do the rest of my life, but it was paying the bills and it was like going to music school. Later on, when I finally got the songwriting going where I'm writing for country bands, I'm writing for R&B bands, I'm writing for rock bands, I had all the training to walk into any situation and be able to adapt my sound and go, okay, this is what they're looking for, and I was able to do that. Just, I went to school, but I went to school in the real world of you sink or swim.

Clay Mills:
Here's your project. You're either going to succeed or you're going to fail and you're probably going to starve. It was learning by hard knocks, kind of.

Michael Walker:
I hear this reflected in a lot of different stories of success is sort of that moment, it's like jumping in the deep end of the pool. And it's like, all right, well, you're either going to learn how to swim or you're going to drown, right? It's funny out motivated you can be to learn how to swim when you have no alternatives and all you have to do is learn how to swim.

Clay Mills:
Well, my buddy of mine that I wrote my first number one song for, is a song called Beautiful Mess, and that's gosh, it's been like 20 years, and knock on wood, it's still been playing on radio, but Sonny LeMaire and I wrote that together with another artist, Shane Minor. We used to always say, the three of us, we had this mantra burn your bridges. It just literally meant to us, there was no retreat. The bridge behind us is burnt, so now all you can do is move forward and fight. I think if you have that attitude and you have just the little bit of talent, you'd be surprised what burning those bridges behind you.

Clay Mills:
There's no other option, but to succeed. If you put yourself in, gosh, it's hard. I'm not going to say everybody out there should quit whatever they're doing and just go for it, because you have to be prepared for what does happen. It's hard. When I had my first number one song, I had a six month old baby, was married, didn't know how I was ... Some months I could barely make my house payment. I got fired from my publishing gig at EMI music, and the whole world just seemed like it was caving in on me, but I stuck it out. Just when I needed it the most, that first big hit came. I think it's literally, sometimes when things look the bleakest, if you don't give up, it's like the universe says, okay, you stuck it out, we're going to reward you.

Michael Walker:
That's powerful, man. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a reason there's a saying, it's always darkest before the dawn. Certainly in my own life, every thing that's precipitated, the biggest growth periods have always been some sort of like adversity or some sort of challenge and it's kind of catapulted into something else.

Clay Mills:
If you're uncomfortable, you'll never accomplish anything. I really believe that. I mean, you can accomplish things, but I don't think it will be ... It won't be your best. It won't be that groundbreaking thing that you're capable of if you're comfortable. Hunger is the mother of invention, right?

Michael Walker:
That's so good. One thing I want to come back to that you said that I think it's really interesting, and I'd love to hear your take on this. Because it's something that I wonder myself is kind of finding the balance between specialization and really focusing or really honing in .... Like we talked about like finding what you're really good at and building a team around you, the value, how much we should be doing that versus what you talked about in terms of learning different genres and being like, learning how to navigate and be able to be flexible and having this base foundation that you can pull from.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, what are your thoughts on that balance? How do you balance the specialization versus the ... Making sure that you have a basic understanding of everything?

Clay Mills:
Well, it's hard to be world-class at everything. I suggest you try to find that one thing that you're good at and really become amazing at that. Whether it's programming tracks for pop music, or you're a world-class lyricist that can walk into a room and write with people. That's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is, when you're talking about multiple genres, I think every artist, no matter what kind of music you're doing, you need to be pulling from multiple genres. If you're a country artist and all you do is listen to country music 24/7, you're going to get very stale in that genre.

Clay Mills:
You won't bring anything new to it. All the way back to the date when Ray Charles was amazing groundbreaking artist, he was taking R&B lyrics and blending it with gospel music. Whether you run DMC years later, bringing in Aerosmith to collaborate, where you're putting rap and hip hop together with rock music, those kind of things, where you blend genre, that's a necessity, I think, to break ground. You always have to listen and be open to all kinds of music.

Clay Mills:
You've got to be open to a lot of things in that respect. But I do think specializing is on your skills in the beginning. You can branch out later. Then the other side of it is, not to confuse people further, but you know how in baseball you have a utility player that can go in, maybe he's not great at any one thing, but he can go in and play center field one day, and then the next day he's at shortstop. There are writers and musicians that make a great living because they're capable of being jacks of all trades. So, you kind of have to decide, am I going to be this person that can walk into any room and do what's necessary that day, maybe today I'm playing guitar, maybe tomorrow I'm writing the lyric, maybe the next day I'm writing the melody, depending on who you're collaborating with.

Clay Mills:
Are you that kind of utility player or are you a specialist? I think you could do it both ways, but you kind of have to decide what your personality is. For some people, specializing is just way too limited. I think you have to have an honest assessment of who you are and then go with that. I can say, for my own career, if I jump on a tour bus to write with Darius Rucker, I'm going to be doing lyrics and melody. If I'm writing with Tia Sillers, she's amazing writer wrote, I hope you dance, was one of the biggest all time hits in pop music.

Clay Mills:
If I'm writing with her, she's an amazing lyricist, so I'm going to do more of the melody that day. For me, being that utility person, I'll do whatever is necessary in the room. That's kept me going for a lot of years, but some people, they're better. My partner in SongTown, Marty Dodson, he's a lyricist. Tia Sillers, she's a lyricist. That's what she is. Be honest with yourself and figure out what you do best.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. It sounds like what you're saying is that, it really depends a lot on a person to person basis. If it's someone who is more of a natural jack of all trades, then that could be a really useful tool, to be able to kind of be open to and blend into needs of the room. But then also, you have to be honest with yourself and figure out, what is it that really sets you apart, and is there anything that you're really, really good at, that sort of your genius on? And leaning into that so that you can really go deep on that. But regardless, it's really valuable as a philosophy to always be blending together several different genres. You don't want to just focus on one genre because if you do, then it gets stale.

Michael Walker:
The analogy that came to mind when you were describing that was, I like this analogy a lot for a few different things, but like a running river, if it's not running and there's not any fresh water going through it, it turns into this like stagnant pond and there's all this bacteria and this like yuckiness, and it doesn't ... It's like a breeding ground for death, basically stagnant versus like a running river where there's fresh water constantly going through it, then it keeps things moving. It sounds like having that fresh water, having the other sources of inspiration is one of the best ways to keep the current moving through you.

Clay Mills:
Yeah. It always makes me laugh. You know who Chris Stapleton is?

Michael Walker:
Yes.

Clay Mills:
He is held up by hardcore country fans as this guy who is hardcore country. He's sticking up for real country music. Well, what they didn't realize, before he was this "country traditionalist artist." He was writing songs for Thomas Rhett and Luke Bryan, some of these people that were more on the pop side of country. To him, when it came time to do his artist thing, he knew what style fit him as an artist. But when it came to writing songs for other people, he loved that process too, and he loved blending styles, whether he was taking from Etta James or he was taking from Motown, or he was taking from '80s rock. He was in the '80s rock band for a while.

Clay Mills:
He was in a Bluegrass Band, The SteelDrivers, and won all kinds of awards in that band. Blending styles was what he loved, but when he decided to do his artist's career, he really had to figure out, well, what do I sound best doing? Yeah, it's fun. It's a fun game to try to figure it all out.

Michael Walker:
One thing that, that leads into is, I think a lot of people, a lot of songwriters struggle with, I mean, obviously just the inspiration for the creativity and kind of, where does the song come from? How do I write these songs, and what's the best process for doing that? I know sometimes there's mixed opinions on using like references or how much to lean on references and inspiration and pulling ... Sometimes people have mixed feelings about that. They're like, oh, I'm doing something wrong by borrowing from this. I should be totally original, authentic and just myself. What are your thoughts on the songwriting process and influences and people being able to pull in references and be able to use those?

Clay Mills:
I've been in rooms with pro writers, pro producers, been around publishers, hit publishers. I mean, my whole career, for almost 30 years now, every single person I've ever met needs inspiration, but the best people use it as a starting point. If you get a vibe off a record and go, "Oh, I like that chord progression," or maybe, "I like what the Toms are doing, how they're doing this beat. Maybe I'll try something like that." But then you completely get off of that original song. You don't want to be so close that you do get sued.

Clay Mills:
You can tell when people get too close to that line, but fortunately, knock on wood, I've never been sued. I just shy away from getting too close to anything. I want to be inspired and go, wow, that's a cool kind of thing they're doing on this song, but once you soak in the energy of that, you got to let it go and you got to go into a new direction. It's a hard thing to explain, but everyone, I don't care if you are Stevie Wonder, he was borrowing from people when he was a kid, I mean, everyone does it. Whether you're U2 or The Rolling Stones, or whoever, you have leaned on your influences and steal like an artist. If you know that book, Steal Like an Artist, it's a great book.

Michael Walker:
What's up guys. Quick intermission from the podcast so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public. They're normally reserve for our $5,000 clients that we work with personally. This is a presentation called 6 Steps to Explode Your Fanbase & Make a Profit With Your Music Online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel. It's going to allow you to grow your fanbase online in a system designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music.

Michael Walker:
We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really say what's working best right now for musicians. I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. If that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you click on to go get that. The other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating new podcast is, if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy, and that people actually want to hear, and so that'll help us reach a lot more people.

Michael Walker:
If you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right. Let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's so good. In some ways, I think it's kind of funny that like, it seems like, trying to be completely original, something totally new, when it's like, we all, we're part of the same world, the same universe. We're not apart from this. We all came from the same place, and were, of course, we're all influenced by each other and it's not like we just live in a vacuum where we can kind of bring something that wasn't, energy from some other form, like high up in the clouds here.

Michael Walker:
But I think that everyone that I've talked to that's had success, like you're talking about right now, has given the same kind of answer that's like, no, absolutely, you can be influenced, but also there's a balance to you're using it for inspiration, but then also bringing something new to it and being able to play off of it and create something that's your own.

Clay Mills:
Yeah. Most definitely. But that's the key, make your own is ... Not just crafting something from someone else. It's like you're using the bones of something, but the blood and the flesh has got to be totally different.

Michael Walker:
Let's say that someone that's listening to this right now wants to kick things into gear, to get back into a really solid routine, maybe with like songwriting or they want to take things to the next level, what would you recommend for a habit, or do you recommend a daily songwriting kind of ritual or routine, or what are your recommendations for someone to take their songwriting habits to the next level?

Clay Mills:
Anything you do in life, if you do it on a routine, you're going to get better at it. Whether you want to be a professional athlete or you want to be a songwriter. I mean, could you imagine, you play guitar right? Or what instrument do you play?

Michael Walker:
Primarily piano, but I dabble out on the acoustic guitar a little bit.

Clay Mills:
Could you imagine when you were trying to learn piano and go, no, I'm only gonna play every once in a while when I'm inspired, and I'm certainly not going to sit here and practice these chords and these rifts and these ... For songwriting, it's no different. It's a muscle. If you get up every day and you try to create something, you're going to build that muscle. And you're also going to build your skills. That's what I try to do at SongTown in my masterclasses, is help people build their skill so that when they do get that inspiration, they have the tools.

Clay Mills:
Every songwriter I know it makes it easier on their self by setting up co-writing appointments. I know tomorrow I'm writing with Joe, whoever. The next day I'm writing with Frank, whoever. If you have regular co-writing appointments that you keep, you got to show up, you got to have an idea, and that's what you need. You need those goals to motivate you. If you just sit down by yourself and go, I don't know, maybe I should be answering emails today or ... It's too easy to get distracted. You start looking at your phone, social media, maybe I need to be posting more, but if you've got an appointment to co-write with somebody, then you're going to keep that appointment. You're going to show up and you're going to be productive and you're going to finish the song that day.

Clay Mills:
Co-writing is probably ... Not just that, if you're trying to network as a songwriter or an artist, co-writing with other people, that's what opens the doors in this business, is collaborating with other people. Every publisher I've ever met will tell you they sign new writer because those people are writing with writers they already have signed. And then I go, well, wow, this person's really good, you're writing with him a lot. I want to sign that person too. Co-writing, you can't go wrong with co-writing.

Michael Walker:
That's really smart. Yeah. Sort of the accountability of throwing your hat over the fence, scheduling the call with so-and-so that you absolutely know that you're going to do it. And just the way that you can play off each other. I mean, how many times, I'm sure people listening to this right now have had, where they're sitting down and they have an idea for a song, and then they second guess themselves for an hour straight. It's like, what about this line or this line, or this line, when literally you're in five seconds that you just spent like, oh, do you think? And they're like, nope, that's a terrible line. Or, oh, no. That's awesome. They love it. It seems like there's a lot just more freely flowing creative energy when you can be doing it and bouncing ideas off of each other.

Clay Mills:
I'm that first guy that second guesses himself a lot. My best collaborators are, when I'm sitting in the room and I throw out an idea, and they're the second guy that you were just describing and go, oh, that's awesome. Those kind of people keep me moving forward. Where if I'm just writing by myself, I'm going to start second guessing, no, this could be better. No, this could be better. And then you tend to get bogged down. That's another thing that you have to learn about your own personality. Are you that person that can never finish because you're too hard on yourself, so maybe you need to be co-writing with people that are more encouraging. That's definitely something that you have to be conscious of.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. With co-writing, if someone's listening to this right now like, okay, awesome, so I want to start co-writing. Where would you recommend that they start looking for co-writers? Obviously SongTown is an incredible community that they could make it happen too.

Clay Mills:
We have regular co-writing matchup events where ... I mean, our members are literally, this morning, somebody emailed me and said that they were fixing to going to co-write on Zoom. One of them's in Canada and one of them's in the UK, and another one's in Australia, and they were all co-writing. With SongTown, man, our members, it's an easy place to meet other writers. We'll have co-writing meetup events every couple of months where you can meet other songwriters. We'll have a big Zoom call with a hundred and something people, and we put you in these little rooms, and you can get to know other writers.

Clay Mills:
We do fun stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, getting involved in a community like SongTown really helps, because it's hard. Especially if you're in a town out there where no one else is really writing songs or, you know how it is, if you're in a band and maybe you try to bring in songs and nobody else in the band likes them, or we should be playing covers. Nobody wants to hear our originals. Whatever it is, SongTown's a place where it's a tribe of songwriters, so they get it. And we have a lot of artists, and it's working well. We had one of our members recently at a Tim McGraw cut. Somebody got a hold with a major artist right now. We've had dozens of members get staff writing deals, sync placements, TV shows, movies. I mean, it's just mind-boggling.

Clay Mills:
It all came about from our members co-writing. Number one song in Australia, two guys met in of our classes, started co-writing, now they've had two number one songs in Australia. It happens.

Michael Walker:
That's incredible. It kind of reminds me of, I'm rereading the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which-

Clay Mills:
I love that book. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Amazing book. He talks about this mastermind principle, and also just recently joined a mastermind, was one of my business mentors, and it's like a $25,000 a year mastermind and just had our first meetup, and there's 12 people in the group. There's something really special that happens when you have this group of people come together and there's this third presence, maybe not third, but it depends on people who are in the mastermind. There's like this third mind. That's the idea of the mastermind is that there's like one mind that's shared between everyone and it's something that we can tap into that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Michael Walker:
What you're describing right now as well with the community coming together and there's sort of this giant mastermind that sort of is the community. I bet that, that's a big part of the reason that your community is having the success, is because of all the resources within the songwriters and the different channels that can come out of it.

Clay Mills:
Yeah. We've also, right now, we employ like 10 publishers. When members get together, they co-write. If they're writing great songs, then we have groups that they can meet monthly with a publisher. If the publisher likes a song, he can sign the song or sign the writer to their publishing company. Our first rule is you've got to learn to write a killer song. You've got to learn to co-write, and once you have those down, if you've got great co-writing skills and can write great songs and we can easily match you up with the music industry, that's the easy part. The hard part is getting your skill level up so that a publisher goes, wow, this person's better than some of the writers on my staff already.

Clay Mills:
That's where you got to be. You can't just walk in and be okay. You've got to be really killer at what you do. We help people level up their writing then we hook them up with the industry. It's kind of like a farm system for the music business.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Let's dig a little bit deeper into the first thing that you talked about in terms of being able to write a killer song. You learned how to write a killer song, learned how to co-write effectively. What are some of the biggest, either mistakes or challenges you see when it comes to songwriting and what are some of the most important tips that you have for songwriters to improve?

Clay Mills:
Honestly, I start off all my masterclasses with an exercise called inspired listening. It's so easy when we listen to music as fans, we go, oh, I love that, or I hate that. That crap, that's not even music, or whatever. People are so opinion-based with, they love something. Opinions only reinforce what you think you already know. You're not going to learn anything from having opinions. What I challenge my students to do is each week, I say, listen to 10 tunes and find two things in each one of those songs that you would like to incorporate into your own songwriting.

Clay Mills:
It could be anything. It could just be like, wow, I like how on that song, the verse is real busy, but then the chorus has these long held notes and they're really high, whatever it is. I say that, if you found two tools a week that you could put into your songwriting toolbox, by the end of the year, you've got a hundred plus tools. By the end of five years, you've got 500 tools, 10 years, you got a thousand tools. But not just that, by the time you're five years into it, you're going to have way more than 500 tools, because by that time, you're instantly able to hear something and go, I want to try that and instantly put it into your writing.

Clay Mills:
I heard a record one time, an old country record by Tim McGraw. It goes ... (singing). I was like, that's kind of neat. They have the melody playing off the snare drum. (singing). I walk into a co-writing session and I'm going, okay, I want to write a melody that dances around the snare drum. I'm not taking their melody. I'm not doing their rhythm. I'm going to write something completely different, but I'm going to take that concept. To make a long story short, I just encourage people, when you listen, to not have any opinions into the equation. Your sole purpose for listening is to find something you like and to say, okay, can I incorporate this into my writing?

Clay Mills:
You build a file. Like John Mayer says, it's like flipping through a record collection and go, oh, I'll use this for this song or I'll use this for this song. You literally want to have a file in your brain of all these listening exercises that you've done. I don't care where I go. I could be in a dentist chair, and I go, and it could be the cheesiest music in the world, but I can find something in there that I can use that would really be cool. If you can develop that kind of mentality, where you don't trash people's music, get away from your opinions and look for what you can use, and let that inspire you to write your own songs. If you can do that, then pretty much anything in the music business is possible.

Michael Walker:
I love that. You called that, was it inspired listening?

Clay Mills:
Yeah, inspired listening versus reactive listening. I have a book that I spent the last two years ... For 10 years now, I've taught a melody master ... Six weeks every year, put together college degree programs in songwriting for colleges. I've amassed all this knowledge, plus my own songwriting for the last 30 years and having hits. I condensed, it took two years, but I condensed it all down into a book called Mastering Melody Writing. It's coming out next month. I always, I'm terrible at plugging things. I'm glad that the conversation got around to this, because it's literally like the cliff notes for writing memorable hooky songs in any genre, that it's my cliff notes from the last 25 years of writing hits.

Michael Walker:
That's amazing. I wish that we already had the link for it. Well, here's what we'll do. After it comes out, because I'm sure there'll be people listening to the podcast after the book is out, we'll come back and we'll put a link in the description because that sounds amazing. I love that idea too, inspired listening. Having a document and two songs a week, you're writing down two ideas, and literally just having that as a system that you'll be able to pull to look at that. You could even, I'm imagining like a Google doc right now, you just have everything listed out, or like a MindNode where you just have everything listed out, and you can even hyperlink to point to the song so you could check it out. That's a really cool idea.

Clay Mills:
Yes. I call that having my own music research lab. The beauty of it is, once you get good at it, you don't need to take a class and go, okay, show me what I should be doing. You're going to be learning to do it yourself. If you hear a song and you go, "Wow, I've never heard that chord progression before. I want to try that." And then the next time you sit down, you try a completely different melody, completely different groove, but you might go, "I like that one chord change. I'm going to put that in a song." If you build up a file, and I do that, I have a spreadsheet of cool stuff in case I ever forget it, and I do it religiously and with the hyperlink, so I can go to YouTube and listen to it. I'll put, check this out at two minutes and 10 seconds.

Michael Walker:
That's so smart. I bet too, for co-writing sessions too, if you had this idea, you're like, oh, here's what I'm referring to., something like this. We can play off of this. That's really cool.

Clay Mills:
Exactly. Especially going into any writing session, being intentional. If I go into a writing session and say, Blake Shelton is cutting in two months, we need to write something today that he can cut. I know Blake, he has certain themes that he likes to sing about. If you can be real intentional about it, maybe you don't hit the mark 100% and Blake doesn't cut it, but then maybe another artist that is in the same genre will cut it, or in a different genre. I've had songs that were hits in country that got remade by a dance artist and became a number one club song. You never know where songs will go if you learn to write great songs.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. The other thing that you had mentioned, so learning how to write a killer song, but then also learning to develop the skill of co-writing and becoming a really good co-writer. What do you think are some of the most important traits or skills developed that makes you a better co-writer, or what are some of the things to avoid?

Clay Mills:
Here's the number one premise for co-writing, the song is king. What I mean by that is, your ego needs to be checked at the door, and everyone that walks into that co-writing session, the only thing that matters is what is best for the song. Some days I might write 90% of a song, some days I may write 10% of a song, but it's like in basketball, if the other person in the room gets hot, then you just start feeding them balls so they can shoot because they're scoring points. You've got to kind of figure out who you are in the room that day, what's needed.

Clay Mills:
Before when I was saying, maybe today you're writing lyrics, maybe tomorrow you're writing melody, figure that out, and figure out what the song needs. You never want to get into a situation where you're fighting with somebody over what should be in a song because you want your idea in the song and they want their idea. I think if you could remember that golden rule that the song is king, and you're only wanting to do what is best for the song, then I think that keeps you moving ahead in a positive direction. It's not easy, especially when people are starting out, they want to prove themselves.

Clay Mills:
But you got to learn that skill of getting along with other people in the room and fighting when you believe in something, fighting for it, but nothing goes in a song that everyone in the room doesn't agree upon. If I can get everyone in the room to agree on the line, then it goes in. But if two people in the room don't want it and I do, then that line doesn't go in the song. We try to come up with something that everybody is happy with. Sometimes it'll be where one person in the room is really passionate and the other people go, well, "I'm on the fence, so we'll go with the person that's really passionate." But you just never want to get into that mode where you're fighting, my line's better. That is what amateurs basically do. It's not what pros who know how to work together do.

Michael Walker:
That's really good. It sounds like what you're saying is that one of the most important things, in terms of being a good co-writer, is checking your ego at the door and not taking things personally, and it's okay to express if you think something is a good idea, like absolutely share it, but don't be so attached to it that you're stuck to that viewpoint, and make it more about what's best for the song and not necessarily about whose ideas are what, and taking ownership of it.

Clay Mills:
Yeah. I love how you say in one sentence what it took me five minutes to say, and I'm the writer, so I should be better at that. One of the best phrases somebody told me early on was, the hardest thing in songwriting is getting rid of a great line in your song for the right line. I think when we're starting out, we get attached to line, oh, this is the best line I've ever written, but if, once again, the song is king, if it's not the best line for the song, then being a great line doesn't matter. Every line's in service of that song. Learning to be okay with, Stephen King said, "Killing your little darlings." He was referring to ripping a paragraph out of a novel if it doesn't belong there, but it's the same with writing songs.

Clay Mills:
If a line is great, but it's not right for the song, then I don't think twice about putting it on the cutting room floor, and you can save it for another song, maybe it inspires a whole new song.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Cool. Well, Clay, this has been a lot of fun. I've had a couple of conversations with songwriters and people who were like masters, like you, and I always come away from it feeling really personally inspired to start writing more songs again myself. I always appreciate being able to have conversations like this. For anyone who is listening to this right now and is interested in learning more about SongTown or connecting more with you, where would you recommend that they go to learn more?

Clay Mills:
Songtown.com. You can also, if you have questions, just email me. I answer all my emails, clay@songtown.com, and I'll get back to you. That's the cool thing about SongTown, is Marty Dotson and I, who started it, our members email us every day, and they're like, so-and-so is offering me a contract on this song and they want to take all my publishing and never give me a reversion clause. So, we're like, no, don't do that. That's a terrible idea. It's like, when you join SongTown, you're part of our family, and we're going to help you out. If you have questions, you can email us anytime.

Michael Walker:
I love that. Yeah. That's one thing I really appreciate about you, and as we've had this conversation, it seems like really, the community is a huge part of what SongTown, what you are all about, is about building this network. We talked about this mastermind and this coming year that it happens. But I've seen that reflected in all of my mentors, and it's something that I've started to appreciate more and more with modern musician as well, is that the roots of everything is it comes down to this community. Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to share the lessons that you've learned and the fact that you're building this community to be able to serve songwriters in this way.

Clay Mills:
Awesome. Thank you for having me, and let me know when this comes out. We'll blast it out to all our members and spread the love.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast, then there's few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. Third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music career to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.