In honor of a real mentor
All you need is one person to say: you might be onto something.
They don’t have to clear the road. They don’t have to usher you behind the velvet rope, much less take you by the hand and lead you to the spotlight where the important crowd they’ve assembled is all waiting for you to unleash your genius and then smother you in praise. They don’t even need to say you are onto something. Just that you might be.
You just need a little. A little encouragement1. Even the very intimation of potential.
I can easily point to several people who were crucial voices as I started to overcome my insular introversion and fearful perfectionism and low self-esteem—the fantastic artist Kathy Peterson and her husband Steve (not to mention the rest of that whole family2, to be honest), my friend/bandmate/producer Scott Wiley, the creative writing teacher3 at the University of Utah who made me feel like I was the next (Insert Fantastic Famous Writer here), any number of musical confidantes, more than a couple of LDS bishops, and so many more. Each deserves their own tribute post someday. Hopefully before it’s too late for them to actually read it.
Which is a sad way of getting to the reason why, today, I just want to pay tribute to one of them:
Ron Simpson, who passed away so recently I can’t even link to his obituary yet.
Ron—among multiple careers’ worth of accomplishments including songwriter and DJ and teacher and president of a record label—taught several courses at BYU for the Media Music major (which wasn’t my major). The class I was interested in was Songwriting, for obvious reasons.
I almost didn’t even get to take the class. I had—without being signed up and in hopes of adding the course—attended the first day of class with my friend Eric, who made it sound fun and like a good chance to hang. Why not?
Well, the reason “why not” is because, before anyone even had a chance to get their hopes up, Ron Simpson announced adamantly , “Sorry, none of you who are hoping to add the class will be able to add. Thanks for your interest. Try again next semester.”
All of the unenrolled gathered our belongings and left, heads down. Eric told me, after we’d all left, Ron had told the enrolled class, “Hopefully I didn’t just tell the next James Taylor that there was no room in the class4.”
I don’t recall exactly how it eventually worked out. Maybe some student dropped the class. Maybe Ron had a Grinch On The Top of The Mountain Above Whoville experience. Maybe it was just dumb luck. However it happened, by the time the next class session rolled around, I was in.
I don’t remember what our first assignment was except that it was a lyrics-only exercise. Maybe Ron assigned a topic and we had to write a verse and chorus to it. Whatever it was, I tried to write something poetic but also a little country, just to see if I could thread the needle (I couldn’t). When I got my paper back, Ron had scribbled on top, “This is good. Do you have any other songs?”
My self-esteem basked in his question.
You might be onto something.
Our second assignment was to write a children’s song. I don’t know that there could’ve been a more ideal starter project for me: an opportunity to use my musicality without having to worry too much about the emotional vulnerability and perfectionism part that often derailed (and still derails) my songwriting process. So, I wrote a song about a monster named Bliffety Bloff (the name helped with the rhyme scheme). It was an utter ripoff (in modern Hollywood’s IP-desperate craze, they’d call it a “loving musical adaptation”) of Shel Silverstein’s awesome poem Sharp-Toothed Snail5, with the twist that I used each chorus to illustrate that the narrator was testing their luck and, in the process, losing fingers.
”I won’t pick my nose again, with any of my fingers 10…”
”I won’t this nose of mine, with any of my fingers 9….”
You get the idea.
Ron took me aside and told me I had real talent as a writer. I told him about the Shel Silverstein poem. He knew the poem. He maintained his position. (This may have been my first exposure to the creative tenet “It’s not where you take ideas FROM, it’s where you take them TO.”) That was a huge moment for me in terms of believing I had anything.
You might be onto something.
Over the rest of the semester, I presented different songs. Ron continued to give me equal parts encouraging applause and mentorly6 feedback. Suggestions. Nudges. Sometimes just a wry smile.
The class ended, so obviously I went out of my way to sign up for Songwriting II. I got assignments that helped me try new things (key change! point of view! song structures!). I heard other students’ songs and was inspired by their talents. We inhaled each others’ courage and craft and creativity7. It felt like a really supportive musical lab.
It seemed like the ride was over—I’d taken all the songwriting classes BYU offered; it was like running out of episodes of Freaks & Geeks or Pushing Daisies or My So-Called Life8 and realizing there was no next season. Luckily, Ron offered some private 1:1 songwriting lessons, which I leapt at.
Ron also periodically invited me back to his class to play songs that he felt illustrated concepts in a good, clear way. He asked me to be a special guest at a couple of his student showcase concerts9. He referred his new students to me as a cowriter or feedback-giver. And, after I released my first album, Ron wrote one of my very first reviews, which weren’t exactly growing on trees for a first-time artist.
I suspect there are several students, from every semester of his career, who could write something similar (or better) about their experience with Ron.
I can say, without hyperbole, I would never have written the songs for my first album10 without the help and influence and kind, prodding mentorship of Ron Simpson.
And today, rounding out the work for my fourth album, I can’t help but think of Ron’s advice—when I get stumped on the second verse, when I’m trying too hard to force a perfect rhyme, when the song could use a more colorful chord, when I’m tempted to phone in a lyric, when I wonder if anyone cares or if all this songwriting even matters at all, when I start worrying I’ve lost the thread—all the time.
You might be on to something.
I’ll do another post someday about how a little discouragement has a similar effect, sadly.
Alex & Eric’s band Big Suckin’ Moose—combined with my cousin Mark’s music-making—made it seem far less exotic to make an album. Album-making always seemed to me like some impossible feat for the average mortal. But Big Suckin’ Moose and Mark both made records in a more homemade way that still sounded great to my ears and captured the essence of both artists. If someone I knew could make an album, maybe I could too.
She was so complimentary and inspiring. This may seem small, but, as a tentative and confidence-lacking person, even the smallest encouragement—smiling at a phrase she liked, a fist pump at the finish—was huge.
Just to be clear, I do NOT see myself as The Next James Taylor in this particular story. I just tell the story to illustrate that, even then, Ron had a sense that it could be a Sliding Doors moment for someone, which it very much was for me.
Not a word.
One of my favorite songs was a co-write by two guys who came up with a new gospel tune called “You Better Be Right.” It felt like it could’ve been written in the early 1900s or anytime, really. It was blues-based and had a strong POV. There are a few songs from those classes that I remember sitting there, purely envious of the writer. This was one of them. I think the first verse went something like…
”You say there’s no heaven
There ain’t no hell below
The way you’re living, brother, let me tell you…
You better be right.”
I could hear Aretha singing it.
The other song was by this brilliant guy named Lamar Holley, who combined my favorite parts of Ben Folds and Burt Bacharach with something entirely his own. I believe the song was called “Only Once” but most of his songs kinda blew me away.
90s Claire Danes Hive unite!
At one of the showcases, I made the ill-fated decision to try to use a then-trendy looping pedal on a song of mine called “The Way We Go To Get Back Here.” I hadn’t accounted for either my nerves or the monitor mix or, really, just the basic technical need to “start it just right or face the consequences the rest of the performance.” And it was a mess. I had imagined it as a triumph—the successful student returning to school and impressing everyone with his cool trick—and it ended up a gigantic serving of humble pie. Ron didn’t say much afterwards, but I got a look that showed he respected my daring to try something but that maybe I should’ve saved the experimentation for another format.
Songs of mine that first tried out their wares with Ron, between the class and 1:1 sessions were:
Doomed
Black & Blue (the assignment was to write a song like an artist you loved, mine was Aimee Mann)
Ashes
Every Day’s Another Turning Page
Sorry (this class was responsible for emboldening me to try the key change)
Don’t Say Goodbye (this was my first experience with writing a song that felt really, personally specific to me, only to have someone come up and say “I can’t believe you captured my exact experience.”)
and then a few that never quite made it out of the Potential Phase, like
Tired of Thinking About Myself
Makeshift Promised Land
and, yes, I Won’t Pick My Nose Again.
Paul, I loved reading this. As a Ron fan and a Lamar fan and a Paul fan.