Interview with Dan Harr (Music City News)
Dan Harr: So, you're originally from New York. New York to Nashville.
Annie Roboff: New York to LA to Nashville.
DH: New York to LA to Nashville. That's a different kind of transition. Tell me about it. Tell me why you didn’t remain in New York, why move to the LA scene? Was it the type of music? And why from LA to Nashville?
AR: Well, I love New York, and I never wanted to leave there. But in the late 80’s, a lot of people from New York had gone to LA. I ended up going out there and liked it. I didn't mind being bi-coastal at all. I had signed a publishing deal with a gentleman by the name of Dennis Lambert, who wrote Ain't No Woman Like The One I've Got and Night Shift and many other hit songs. He was in LA, and I just felt it was important that I be where my publisher was. Plus a lot of my friends who I grew up with in New York were in LA. The writing scene, the New York writing scene, was starting to trail off a little bit but it was still flourishing in LA. Plus, California was a nice break from New York for me at that time.
DH: What year did you head to LA?
AR I think the late 80’s. I was in New York definitely through '85. I started going back and forth around '85. So then I moved there, and Dennis gave me every opportunity he could. At that time, several things started to happen in the music industry. One was that the records became much more producer-driven by the guys that were doing the tracks themselves, like Babyface. So, if you wanted to get on a Whitney Houston album and Babyface is producing the record, it's going to be very hard to get a cut.
DH: Because he wants his own material on there.
AR: Yes, as it should be since he’s producing. It was great music. It just made the competition that much fiercer. Think about it - you have tens of thousands of songwriters vying for the same Celine Dion cuts, and the album producer is an exceptional songwriter as well. The second thing that started to happen was that R&B began to turn into Hip Hop, which I thought was great because, at that point, R&B, I believed, was very stale. I'm a huge R&B fan. I mean, I grew up in New York, I grew up on urban music but I didn't think R&B at that point reflected the street. And so I loved it when Hip Hop came in. Also, at that same time my options became narrower because a lot of cuts that writers were getting in LA were on Gladys Knight or Temptation records or the Commodores or Diana Ross…
DH: Parliament...
AR: Parliament, right. So those two things happening simultaneously and it really cut down my options as a songwriter. The third thing that happened was that I found the pop music scene in LA increasingly superficial in terms of the music itself. Not all of it... there are some great songs from that time by great writers. But it wasn’t working for me. I didn't feel any sense of soul.
Dan Harr: Was it becoming like the Henry Ford production line?
AR: Yes, it was the Henry Ford production line of pop music. It was the Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, you know...
DH: Every song sounds the same.
AR: Exactly. I was writing a lot with a woman named Robin Lerner, who ended up with me and Beth Nielsen Chapman writing This Kiss. We started doing demos with a singer out there named Bekka Bramlett. And when we did those demos it reminded me about why I had gone into the music business. We started writing for Bekka, and it was true rock and roll, true musicality, true soul. The gap between what we were writing in those situations and what we were writing otherwise, what I wanted to write otherwise, became so evident to me. Around the same time, I signed with Rondor and Lance Freed, who was one of the greatest publishers ever. He really nurtures his writers. He took me under his wings and treated me well. He sent me to the Castle, which was the Miles Copeland getaway where writers meet with artists in the south of France. I wrote and tried to get cuts on their records.
On one of the trips I went on, there were a lot of writers from Nashville like Jon Scott Sherrill, Steve Seskin, Gary Burr… even Keith Urban was there. We're talking close to 10 years ago. I loved writing with those guys. I had such a blast. It was at the same time that Mary Chapin Carpenter was doing very well here, as were Tricia Yearwood and Patty Loveless. I loved the music that was coming out of Nashville. It didn't feel cookie-cutter, it felt soulful. I mean, there's good and bad everywhere, but when I came back from the Castle I thought I better go down into Nashville. Rondor, which in Nashville is Almo Irving, had the most incredible stable of writers. There was Mike Reid, and Kent Robbins, Craig Wiseman, and Gillian Welch. It was an amazing group of writers, and I think Emmylou was still in there.
DH: So you pretty much strolled in a door that most people would kill to knock down?
AR: Well, yes, and I'm very lucky. It’s because I met Lance Freed, and because I have a great representative named Herb Jordan. We were looking for different publishing deals and I was offered a couple. I won't mention any names but it really felt like they were going to be slavery deals, and I felt like there wasn't a real understanding of who I was although I was grateful to be offered the deals. I remember being on the phone one night crying with Jordan and saying, “How did I get in this position? I have worked so hard, as hard as anybody. I know my writing is competitive right now with other peoples’ writing, and I can't get any notice. How did it all come to pass”? He said, “Let me call Lance one more time, he usually returns my calls.”
I’d sent Lance a tape a couple of months earlier and I hadn't heard from him. So Jordan called Lance and Lance said he’d lost the tape. He asked for another one to be sent again. Jordan sent him the tape on a Friday. On Sunday, he got a call from Lance saying I should be in his office on Tuesday, and by Wednesday I was ostensibly a signed Rondor writer. So you create your own opportunities, but you also need some luck along with it.
I mean, I would have the same skills whether I signed with anyone or not, but the opportunities that the publishing company gives people, not just me, were phenomenal. To me, one of the great heartbreaks was when Rondor became one of the last great independents to be eaten by a conglomerate. When David Conrad was here and was a big supporter, I was shocked because I knew that he understood the real deal in Nashville. He was so embracing of what I did.
DH: He saw the talent that existed.
AR: I was a lucky person and I was in the right place at the right time, after many years of trying to be in the right place at the right time.
DH: In Your own words, who is Annie Roboff?
AR: Well, that's an impossible question. Musically speaking, I'm just driven by being who I am. I'm a huge music fan who's driven by being around great music. I don't care who does it, I don't care if it's country, hip-hop, roots, jazz, world music… I just love it. I've been fortunate enough to be allowed to become part of that world and make a living doing it. But I could be a milkman and I'd still carry my Bose speakers in the truck and be blasting the music. I always tell people I think I live my life within a three minute and twenty second song.
I had to adjust to life, real life, where the ups and downs didn't happen with a crescendo at two minutes. It's interesting, because sometimes it's a real disadvantage not to be an artist. As a songwriter, you have little control over what happens to your song once the label gets hold of it, and you have much less control over which songs get heard. Oftentimes, history is written by those whose face is out there in the public, as opposed to those who are behind the scenes. But I was fortunate, in that there was this need for a lot of songs in Nashville when I came here.
DH: I guess when I think of your writings, I kind of think along the lines of Jason Blume as well, of being an “outside the box” Nashville writer. You have the cuts in pop, you have the cuts in R&B, on Tv, in movies, and in Nashville as part of the Country scene. How do you feel about being boxed into the Nashville writers' scene versus being part of what might be described as an American writers' scene?
AR: I prefer an American writers' scene, meaning I don't want to be a part of any assembly line. I want to be a part of great music, and I want to go to the party where I'm invited. I've had some incredible opportunities in country. And I feel that given similar opportunities, I could do just as broad stroked in other forms of music. I just want to be around great music.
DH: Is there a particular genre you would prefer more than the others to write?
AR: No, it's just kind of what's happening at the time. Music's a journey. If you're an artist, you don't get to choose where you go. You go where your soul puts you. And if you're lucky, that journey intersects with commerce. If you're going to keep your sanity you don't let commerce take over, because when you do, you start being driven by forces that aren't true to why you got into it in the first place. So I follow what my soul wants to do, and sometimes that's more intersecting with commerce and sometimes it's less. I love trance music and I love soul music. There are songs on the radio in country right now that I love. I've definitely made a decision at some point not to stay on the assembly line path, just so that I could follow my own path better.
DH: I got that impression when you were talking about the publisher and how they wanted the form music. Do you see a problem with the way a lot of publishers in Nashville do it, i.e. come in, we'll hire you on as a writer, we want a song a week from you, we want it in this style? As an example, I've heard the people over at a certain publisher weren't getting cuts for a period of time so they told their writers, “listen to so-and-so’s last seven albums, hear what she’s doing and write songs.” And they got cuts. Is it that type of form which actually turns you off the most?
AR: What turns me off the most is when a format puts boundaries on an artist's growth, and when conglomerates run music as opposed to music making money for business. I believe that’s what’s happened in publishing. I don't think it's necessarily bad to tell writers that they have to learn to write for someone’s next album. I think it's a good exercise for writers. Not all writers are like that, though, so you can't say that everyone.
To me, what is terrible is that, as an example, artist X is on Warner Brothers and has to release an album by the fourth quarter of 2006. Therefore, whatever songs are on that record at that point are what's going to go out. They want to make sure this artist fits country, and the songs they're going to demand from this artist have to fit what they now consider country - what's the latest trend.
The problem is that publishing companies are owned by those record labels and they support that instead of supporting the writer, and saying let's step back a bit, let's try this another way. They're under the thumb of the record label, so the writer is really being told that they're lucky they even have a publishing deal. Nobody is really investing in their creative growth because all that matters, truly, at this point is what the fourth quarter profits end up to be, what the year end profits end up to be and what the stockholders think. That has been a disaster for the music industry.
One of the great things to happen in recent years is, of course, the internet. There is no question that writers should get their cut if a site is making a profit. The writers should get their share of that profit. One of the great things about the beginning of the internet is that it wasn't money driven, it was art driven. You'd hear things pop up because of what people wanted to hear, not because of what the stockholders needed. And that's where you have kind of a rebirth going on because of all the peer-to-peer opportunities that are out there. They just kind of gave the bird to the record labels and to the music industry in general.
As another example, I had a Dixie Chicks cut and they were coming out with a new record, Top of the World Tour. The publisher that was involved both with my share and with my co-writer's share asked for a 3/4 rate because the label asked for a 3/4 rate. I don't do 3/4 rate, but the publisher said it's possible that if you don't do a 3/4 rate on this, the whole project might not get finished because it's so late. Well, that publisher, as much as he has been one of the great publishers in terms of championing writers, was representing the parent company at that time and not me. Instead of feeling bad for us and telling the label “don't you ever ask a writer to take less than what their legal bottom-line is, what their minimum wage is,” he was telling us that we’d “better do this for the good of all the other writers.” And that's how publishing has become infected.
DH: I’ve had different writers tell me they believe the labels are using the scare tactics. If you want to get your material cut, this is the way it's going to be, or else. I’m talking specifically about what some call “forced contribution.” Do you have that same feeling?
AR: Well, Beth Chapman really coined that phrase. Here’s what it’s… if an artist decides they want to put 14 songs on their album but the label’s only budgeted for ten or twelve, that's the artist's problem, not the writer's. But we’re the ones they want to take money away from to put the song on the album. It's like the artist saying “I want three dresses more than my allowance. Hey, writer, will you buy me the dress? I'll wear your pocketbook if you buy the dress.”
Beth has always said if Warner Brothers or Sony or any of the others are so broke that they can't afford to pay the legal rate to writers, we'll be happy to do a charity for them at the Bluebird and raise the money for them. But they do have the money, they just don’t want to pay it to the writers. Writers are desperate. They need their cuts and they're told if they don't do it they won't get their cuts. Writers don't have the capacity to go on strike, because if they ever do there will always be some writer that says “goody, now I can get my Faith cut.” And it's a terrible situation that pits writer against writer. I think it's totally wrong to give somebody a 3/4 rate, and it should be never allowed.
DH: Are you seeing the same thing from the independent labels, such as Broken Bow or Lyric Street or any of those, versus the major labels?
AR: I haven't been in a situation that would have required that from one of those labels. But I think the record industry in general is trying to hold on to their money and get things for free. They're like the Wicked Witch of the West while she's melting and trying to hold on to life. They don't distribute the songs anymore in trucks, they don't package it in wrapping, but they still want the same cut out of the dollar. Most people don't realize we get 8 cents, and they get huge amounts.
Another thing is that the labels want the song on iTunes as well. But, like with CDs, they don’t want to pay the writer a fair share. I'm very concerned and believe that writers need to demand a fairer share of what their income should be from downloads. It should not be 8 cents. We're contributing the song, and to me that’s a quarter of the final piece of the pie. The writer, the artist, the publisher and the label should each get a quarter of the final dollar figure.
The labels are going to have to realize at some point that there's not enough room for them to keep their profits and for Macintosh and Apple to get their share of the profit and for everybody else to get it, while still trying to cut out the writer’s share. They're not supplying the same services that they used to, but they want the same money.
DH: As songwriters, we all have that one song that we wished we'd written. What would yours be?
AR: That’s an impossible question because it depends on what's on my mind at the time. There's so many. I wish I'd written songs that Ravel wrote... I wish I'd written songs that Clifford Brown has played. I wish I'd written In the Wee Small Hours of the Night. I wish I'd written What a Wonderful World, and What Becomes of the Brokenhearted. I wish I'd written, I Want You Back, Let's Get it On or Save the Country.
DH: Well, then let's narrow it down a little bit, make it easier. Is there anything currently on the radio that you've heard in the last week that you'd wish you’d written?
AR: Last week… that's a really good question. I'm trying to think about what I've listened to.
DH: ...and it doesn't have to be just country.
AR: No, no, don't worry. A new song that's currently out? That is a hard question. There's a Sheryl Crow song called On Your Side that I heard recently that I wish I had written. I wish I'd written Since You've Been Gone. I'll tell you, I think that is a phenomenal record, phenomenal. It will stand the test of time. Let’s see… the latest song I heard today that I wish I had written was Quiet Now by Bill Evans. That's what I heard last night for the first time.
DH: And it caught your attention…
AR: ...and I was like, oh my God. I mean, sometimes I listen to the radio and say, “damn, wouldn't it have been great if I wrote all these songs?”
DH: You know, you've written with some of the top people in the world as far as songwriters go. Is there any one person that you haven't written with that you would like to?
AR: I get asked that question a lot, and the real answer is this: I’d like to write with anyone who's really excellent, that has a similar sensibility. I definitely wouldn’t turn down writing with Sheryl Crow. I wouldn't mind writing with Kanye West. There are so many great writers that it's more a question of what artist is out there that you would like to hear your input from them.
In terms of writers, there's so many great writers that I don't even know their names. I just know the songs that they've written. There's always somebody up and coming that nobody knows that it would be an honor to write with. I've been really lucky. The greatest thing about being successful is that you get access to opportunities that you would never have otherwise, and so when I wrote with Mary Chapin Carpenter, or Beth Chapman, or Bonnie Raitt, I’m like, “how did this happen?” It's such an honor. On one hand you tend to underestimate how lucky you are to get in that situation and, on the other hand, you have to be careful not to get greedy, get a big head from it.
DH: Now when you do look back at some of the people that you've written with, do you ever find yourself in awe thinking about that list? Do you ever lie in bed at night and say to yourself, “my God! Bonnie Raitt!”
AR: Yes, but I don't believe the hype about it. Somebody taught me in my early 30’s that I believed the hype, so I learned to not believe the hype. I don't get excited because they were stars. I get excited because they're poet laureates. Beth Chapman is a poet laureate, and Marcus Hummon is a genius, and Mary Chapin Carpenter is a poet laureate. And, despite what she's done to herself, one of the greatest singers on the face of the earth is Whitney Houston. So to have my work funneled through these people, that is what I find phenomenal. I know I listen to certain demos I've done of records, where I've gotten to work with the best, and I'm like, “oh my God, I was a part of that?” That's when I'm in awe.
DH: Beth Nielsen Chapman talks about how a song comes into from above, down through a hole in her head. She also compares it to the song being up on a shelf and pulling it down. Do you have any type of particular philosophy about where the songs come from for you?
AR: No. I don't. I'm not even that self-conscious about it. It's more like there's a door on my ears, and when the door goes up I sit down at a piano. Sometimes, somebody does something that sparks my mind to write or I'm in a certain kind of mood that I can feel in the pit of my stomach and some music comes out. Then there are other times when I can't stand what comes out. It’s like I feel my limitations and I feel like - get me out of here.
I think what Beth is onto is that you just have to have faith in what you do, and your job is to be ruthless with yourself and make sure that what you're doing is really as good as it should be. If it's not, then make it a hobby instead of a job. But if it is that good, you know you have to stick to keeping high standards for yourself. It’s all about having faith that you can do that.
Also, I think what Beth is on to is to leave yourself open and to not be self-conscious, not to lose yourself in the present, to have no third eye looking at yourself while you're doing something. For Beth, that image about something coming through her head works. I think it's different for everybody, but it's the same feeling as if you see a bird and you go into a daydream, looking at how beautiful that bird is. You don't sit there going, “oh, I'm in a daydream, looking at how beautiful that bird is.” Your whole body is open to nature and that bird. It's the same thing for songwriting, or painting.
DH: Do you remember the first song you wrote?
AR: Yes, the first song I wrote was a song called On Your Side. It was my first official song. I wrote songs from the day I was five years old.
DH: Now your instrument is piano...
AR: Yes, keyboards.
DH: Do you play any others, like guitar...
AR: No, I'm trying to learn guitar but I do play keyboard bass, and I love it.
DH: Do you remember your first cut?
AR: I think my first cut was Angel of the Night by Phil Perry. It was either that or a Lea Salonga song or Tina Arena song.
DH: Tina Arena…
AR: (laughing) It was a long time ago. The first stuff that really had mass production was the work I did for television. My partner and I wrote three college football themes. I think we wrote the CBS and Turner Network themes, and then we arranged the ABC. I did the theme music for the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. It was a three minute expansion on the ABC News theme, those seven notes made into three minutes of Royal pageantry. There was a time when my partner and I had a lot of music on TV, and I'd come home and my boyfriend would be so proud of me because his girlfriend had written the pro basketball theme. We did the NBA Basketball for Turner, we had the ESPN Sports Center theme. We did so much stuff.
DH: Do you remember the feeling you had when your first royalty check came, or your first phone call telling you about having a song on someone’s album?
AR: I'm embarrassed to say that I was a punk, and I was an idiot. The first thing I ever saw of mine mass-produced was the movie "Fame", and I didn't even want to do it. They had to get me there kicking and screaming. I was too busy smoking pot doing other goofy things. The first song I remember getting a thrill over hearing on the radio was Angels of the Night. I was also thrilled when, being a political buff, I heard my news theme arrangement over the '84 Presidential election, even though the wrong guy won.
But I still couldn't believe that when they were playing the music for the Presidential election, it was my work. But I will say one thing… to hear somebody like Mary Chapin Carpenter or Trisha Yearwood sing a song of mine on the radio, there's no feeling like that.
DH: Personal question… have you ever been married? Any kids?
AR: Common law marriage. I lived with a gentleman for 12 years. No kids – I’m too much of a gypsy. By the time I was settled down it was probably a little too late. And I would say that was the closest to marriage I've been.
DH: You talked about you and Beth, that you'd go to the Bluebird and do a charity for Warner Brothers. Do you play many of the writers’ nights in town anymore?
AR: Not too many. Mostly charity nights, actually. Hospice, Vanderbilt, cancer... every once in a while we play a regular night. I do it when I'm asked, but I try not to volunteer.
DH: Are you going to be participating in Beth's Stargaze seminar this year?
AR: I am, and I play all the time with Beth on the road. We're going to San Francisco next week and I love being in her band.
DH: Were you in South Africa with her?
AR: No, I didn't go to South Africa. I haven't traveled as much overseas with her lately, for a number of reasons. I used to go to England with her, and Europe more often. But we pick our spots now.
DH: Fifty years down the road, when people look back on the life and times of Annie Roboff, what would you like them to say about you?
AR: In the music industry, you mean?
DH: In any industry. Just somebody looking back and saying, "Annie Roboff, that's right!" What would you like them to say about you?
AR: That I had integrity, that I was kind to people and a decent person, that I stood up for what I thought was right, that I was really good at what I did.
DH: Do you have any hobbies that you like to do? In other words, what would I find you doing if I walked through the door and you weren’t writing or playing music.
AR: Well, I've had a reading disorder my entire life, and over the past 5 years I've really started to tackle it. I guess better help is available now than in the past, and I've really been able to start reading books. So to me the greatest thrill in my life, especially in the last couple of years, is being able to pick up a book and read it. It's something that I don't take for granted because I was never able to do. I'm very good orally at knowing when lyrics say something or when they don't. But writing music has been very hard for me sometimes. My disorder doesn't allow me to conceptualize words visually. I can read the letters, but I can't put a conception together by reading it off the page or seeing a recipe. It's like a dark color. I learned how to cheat, how to get around that. It's still very difficult. It takes me ten times as long to read a book as it would you, and the books aren't "War and Peace", but it's such a thrill.
So, I do that, and I'm always on the computer, downloading music and deleting music and taking loops off. Even though it’s part of my business, it's also my hobby. I love pop culture. I get a real kick out of, you know, chewing the fat on pop culture. I'm very interested in politics and world affairs. I love horseback riding, I love hiking, I love anything athletic. I love bike riding, I love dogs.
DH: What kind of dogs?
AR: I have an Ainu dog - that's a-i-n-u - it's a weight class up from the Shiba Ainu and a weight class down from the Akita. It's a Japanese dog that's a national monument in Japan.
DH: What's next on your plate? Do you have any projects coming up?
AR: I'm in one of those periods where I'm doing certain things I always do, writing with a small group of people that I love writing with, not paying any attention to what market I'm writing for. I'm also getting into other things like helping mentor kids. I'm letting my ears take me where they want to go with me not trying to intellectualize it, trying to see what kind of music I'm in the mood for making.
I think I might want to just do a lot more charity work. I'm not the kind of person that does the same thing always. I change my careers or my focus every ten or twenty years. My mind is too active and I feel like there's so many things that I'm capable of contributing to, and I don't want to ever stop writing, because that's not good for me.
I feel like I could have a lot more to give back and I've been given an opportunity to be able to do that, especially with the way things are in the country now where the only people that seem to get breaks are people who already have money. If I'm fortunate enough to be comfortable, I want to help and give something back. Somehow it's become popular not to help anymore.
DH: If there was any one thing you would tell a brand new songwriter to Nashville, wanting to get a cut, wanting to get in the door somewhere, wanting to learn what they should do, what would that be?
AR: Go to the ASCAP workshops that they run, where they're run by successful songwriters and they tell you everything you need to know. Write what you know is your best work. You have to be willing to be in it for the long haul and be poor for a long time. If you can live without writing, you should probably not do it as a living because, that's what it takes – you need to live it. I mean, there's no health care, there's no retirement, there's no nothing. The odds are completely stacked against you.
You have to be insane. You have to literally not be able to live without writing. Get to that ASCAP workshop, meet the best people you can find. Always surround yourself with good people. If it doesn't happen one minute, have patience, ride the wave, surf, and just stick in there. Do great work, write with the best people you can, even if it means not writing with other people. Leave that space, so that there's space for great people to come in. And try to find a publisher that loves you, and understands you, and is somehow not answerable to a bean counter.
DH: That’s a great answer, and I think we’ll close with that one. Thank you so much for your time.
AR: Thank you, Dan. I’ve enjoyed speaking with you.