Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Allen Shamblin.
By James Rea
There aren’t too many producers in Nashville who haven’t cut an Allen Shamblin song or two since his arrival in Music City. In 1992 Shamblin received his first Grammy nomination for Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” co-written with longtime friend Mike Reid. To date he has penned six No. 1 hits including “He Walked on Water” (Randy Travis), “Walk On Faith” (Mike Reid), “In This Life” (Collin Raye), “We Were In Love” (Toby Keith), and “Don’t Laugh At Me” (Mark Wills).
He co-wrote Miranda Lambert’s first No. 1, “The House That Built Me,” with Tom Douglas. The song dominated the 2011 awards shows by taking home Song of the Year honors from CMA, ACM, ASCAP, NSAI and MusicRow (2010), and earning Shamblin’s second Grammy nomination. His 13 top 10s and over 150 cuts have further garnered a dozen ASCAP awards and a Dove Award for “In God’s Hands Now,” by CCM group Anointed. In 2009 Shamblin was inducted into the Texas Heritage Music Honor Roll with Willie Nelson, Guy Clark and Michael Martin Murphy; and in 2011 he was made a Distinguished Alumni at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. That same year, Shamblin was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame with Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Thom Schuyler and John Bettis.
Growing up in Huffman, Texas, Allen’s first dream was to become a professional baseball player, but in high school he came down with mononucleosis and started to teach himself to play guitar on his father’s old Gibson LG1. When his baseball dream didn’t work out, Allen attended Sam Houston State University where he majored in marketing and continued to learn guitar and began to dream of becoming a songwriter.
After college graduation, he took a job loading airplanes, then got a real estate license and moved to Austin. There, after hearing Townes Van Zant and Billy Joe Shaver perform at the Soap Creek Saloon, Allen began to pursue songwriting in earnest. He recalls, “I saw dignity and truth in what they were doing and was profoundly moved by the poetry in their songs. It was during this time that I prayed and asked God to help me be a songwriter because I knew it would take a miracle. I only knew a few basic chords and didn’t read music.”
He came home from work every night and wrote, but after six months no songs had come together. He prayed again and finished six songs the next week.
Pivotal Moment No. 1: The morning after he wrote the sixth song, a chance meeting in a cafeteria with Linda Orsak—whose best friend in Nashville was Martha Sharp, Exec. VP of Warner at the time and whose brother-in-law just happened to be legendary fiddle-master Johnny Gimbel—served as the first pivotal moment in Allen’s journey to songwriting stardom.
“I was so fired up that I wrote four more songs the following week, then I had 10 songs. So Linda invited me over to meet Johnny and we played all ten songs, Johnny recorded them and Linda sent them to Martha in Nashville.”
Three months later when Shamblin called Martha to follow up, she told him that she and Barry Beckett were going to be flying to San Antonio to see an artist they had just signed by the name of Randy Travis. She asked Allen to perform for them while they were in town. He agreed, though he had never performed in his life.
Martha and Barry weren’t there when it was time for the show to start so Shamblin did his “B” songs, figuring he’d play his best songs after they arrived. When he came off stage, he realized they had been there since his first song. Nonetheless, they liked what they heard and encouraged him to move to Nashville.
This experience greatly encouraged Allen but at the same time, it threw him into a two-year writing funk. “I went from a young man trying to express my heart, to a young man trying to impress somebody. I began second guessing everything. This was 1985 and I was 26 years old.” During this time, Shamblin decided to visit his parents in Charlotte, N.C., hoping to glean some inspiration.
Pivotal Moment No. 2: At Kinkos in Charlotte, he was making copies of lyric sheets and met a gentleman who was good friends with Cliff Williamson, a prominent Nashville publisher at Multi Media at that time. Cliff flew Allen to Nashville and demoed four of his songs at Don King’s studio and signed those songs to single-song contracts.
Pivotal Moment No. 3: Almost two years later, back in Texas, Allen’s co-worker, Tim Janacek, who was with him the day he met Orsak, asked Allen if he was ever going to move to Nashville. Later, Allen went back to his office only to find a little pink memo from Don King, so he called him. Don offered to hook him up with other writers if he moved to town. Allen gave his notice at work, packed up and moved to Nashville on August 11, 1987.
“It was one affirmation after another that this was the path I was supposed to take. At that point, Martha and Cliff were inviting me to send songs but it had been two years since I first met Martha and I hadn’t written another song.
“Shortly thereafter, someone recommended that I give my cassette to Ken Levitan, who was an attorney at that time. I did and he took my cassette over to Chuck Flood, Pat Halper and Don Schlitz, who were starting a new publishing company called Hayes Street Music. I came home from parking cars one day and there was a message on my coda-phone from Don Schlitz about co-writing. The first day we got together, it was like going to school. Don and I hit it off and they offered me a publishing deal. After about six months there wasn’t a whole lot of activity so I had a heart-to-heart with Pat Halper and she encouraged me to go back to Texas and re-connect with my roots and come back to Nashville and write by myself. She said, ‘The kind of songs you’re writing are not the kind of songs we signed you to write. They don’t reflect the songs you brought from Texas.’ At that point it had been three years since I’d written a song by myself.
“My first thought was, ‘I’m busted, they’re fixin’ to find out that I don’t know what I’m doing and they’re paying me $300 a week.’ That was a very healthy draw in 1988 and I was extremely grateful to be getting it.
“So I went back to Austin and while I’m there I get a call from Don Schlitz who was performing on Austin City Limits that Saturday. So I went for the sound check and a man walked up and introduced himself as Mike Reid. I told him my story and he said, ‘Great! You’ve been learning the craft, now go back to Nashville and start writing about something you care about.’ After sound check, we went to lunch with Harlan Howard, Mark Wright, Mike and Don Schlitz, and Harlan started talking about writing by yourself. He said, ‘You young writers need to write more by yourself. Your career will advance five years faster if you do. You need to keep that muscle strong, so that when you co-write, you can bring something to the table.’
“That was Saturday. Sunday I got on a plane and flew back to Nashville. Monday morning I got up and turned on the TV and walked away, and behind me I heard a televangelist say, ‘There’s somebody out there fixing to give up on a dream. Don’t give up, the race always gets toughest before you cross the finish line.’ I got in my car and about 30 minutes later, at Trousdale and Harding, the words to this song came out of nowhere:
He wore starched white shirts, buttoned at the neck/ He’d sit in the shade and watch the chickens peck/ And his teeth were gone but what the heck
“I hurried to my office and wrote the three lines out neater and I started walking around the room and it hit me, ‘He Walked On Water’ and I remembered my great grandfather. The song poured out like honey out of a jar, as fast as I could write it. When I played it for Pat she said, ‘that’s what we’re looking for.’ I was so excited. I’d written my first truly honest song, with some of the craft that I’d learned in Nashville. About two weeks later we put the song down on tape.
“Almo-Irving and Hayes Street Music were my co-publishers, so I went over to Almo and Chris Oglesby set up two Shure microphones and rolled tape and James House was there behind the glass with Chris and I sang one pass, live, and Chris said, ‘you’re not touching that, come on out, that’s done.’
“Pat Halper took the tape over to Martha Sharp and she played it for Randy Travis, who loved it and it became my first No. 1, in 1989. His recording of ‘He Walked On Water’ helped change my life.”
Two years later, Allen married Lori, who he’d known since high school, and they have since raised three children.
“After writing ‘He Walked On Water,’ my whole approach to writing and my intent changed. It went from looking out there for ideas and chasing things, to exploring what was in my heart and telling my story or my co-writer’s story, and trying to serve the ideas as best we could and not try to force it into a genre or force it into anything. Then writing became fun again.”
Allen had a great run with Hayes Street Music and Almo-Irving for five years and loved his time with Halper, Kim Jones, David Conrad and Mary Dale Frank, but in 1993 he and Lori started Built On Rock Music.
“I haven’t done it alone, I’ve had the best of the best helping me pitch my catalog along the way like Robin Palmer and Celia Froehlig and Janie West and I’ve had great administrators and great co-writers with great publishers pitching our songs, so I’ve had a whole lot of help. I wouldn’t necessarily encourage a writer to do it the way I have because that was just my path. It’s so important to have a really good publisher and I did for five years, and then I’ve had great independent pluggers for the next 20 years and great people around me. You need a team. BMG is my administrator now and they have a great creative staff. I’m working with Daniel Lee and Kevin Lane over there and I’m real excited.”
The Producer’s Chair: How much plugging do you do yourself?
Allen Shamblin: I don’t do a whole lot, except when a song comes through that I feel will fit a particular artist and I have a relationship. But my main focus is to keep writing and turn it in. Every now and then I’ll bump into somebody at an event and they’ll ask me to send them songs. I love those kind of opportunities.
Do you place any importance on when you pitch a song?
I’m usually pretty excited to get it over there. But I defer to my plugger or co-writer’s plugger as to the best timing of a pitch.
Is the producer, head of A&R or the artist your first pitch?
I prefer to try and get it to all of the above at the same time and cover all the bases.
When you get a hold do you continue to pitch the song?
I continue to let the song get exposure but I’m upfront about the fact that it’s on hold, because this town is built on relationships and trust.
What do you do when you are approached by unsigned writers who want to co-write?
It’s too much of a slippery slope when you don’t know the person to say “yeah, tell me your idea.” I try not to let it get to that point. I help young writers in different ways. I try to be an ear for them and listen to their songs and be a mentor in certain situations.
What is the one thing in a single-song publishing contract that is the most overlooked by new writers?
I don’t know if it’s the most overlooked, but the most important thing to me with a single song contract would be to have a reversion clause, especially if it’s early in your career and you don’t have a large catalog. There’s a lot of weight on every song, so you can’t just sign it away forever.
When a new writer is offered a publishing deal, what are the most important questions he/she should ask the publisher?
In my opinion one of the most important questions a new songwriter can ask an established publisher when considering a publishing deal is how the publisher sees you fitting into the overall plan and future of their company. It’s very important to know your publisher’s vision and perception of you as a songwriter. If that vision/perception squares up with your own convictions, then you will have a better opportunity to help each other accomplish each other’s goals. I believe we achieve our dreams by helping other people achieve their dreams.
If a writer gets a publishing deal and doesn’t need a draw, should they take one anyway, so the publisher is invested?
That’s a great question. In my opinion, if you don’t need it, don’t take it.
What are other important income streams for songwriters besides film and TV, video games, etc.?
I think songwriters need to be aware of live performing. As long as you can’t download a human being, the value of a live performance is going to go up. And I can actually see that going on right now, especially for songwriters.
What is the biggest challenge you face as a writer?
Maintaining the courage and faith it takes to believe that I can write or co-write a song that will make its way from an idea, to the legal pad or laptop, through the system and into the hearts of the listeners and that the listeners will somehow find it meaningful. That’s the biggest challenge I face as a songwriter.
Most producers produce more than one major artist at a time. When you pitch them a song, do you specify what artist it is for, or do you leave it to the producer to decide?
I have my dream, but at the same time, these great producers are producing so many good artists that if they love the song and I see they have passion for it, I’m excited for whoever they cut it on.
If an indie artist wants to cut an unsigned writer’s song, what should the writer take into consideration before he allows that artist to cut his song?
Exposure for your song is good, so if there’s an independent artist who I’m a fan of, I’d love for them to record my song. But if it’s an artist that you don’t have passion for, then I would re-think it.
For more, visit www.theproducerschair.com.
