Steve Leslie

Songwriting is an apprenticeship to a demanding and difficult craft where melodies are a gift, and lyrics are a curse.  Knowledge of and respect for the best that came before us is essential for rising above our mediocrity to a point where the real work begins, until one day, energy flows from some hidden source and the song writes itself. Working through my teenage and early adult years with the help of self-confessional songs, and after moving to Nashville in the early 90s, I discovered the power of story and became a playwright in song. I abandoned my “self” for other “selves”, and like the songwriters of the Great American Songbook and Brill Building traditions, I began “casting” songs. I wasn’t so much writing songs as I was solving them. After a long and varied apprenticeship, I have come to rely on three fundamental precepts for good songwriting: 

1. Form is an extension of content.
2. Limitations are liberating.
3. If lyrics are nouns, chords are adjectives.