photo by Rachel Briggs Quinten Collier, the grand-prize lyric contest winner for 2009, flew into Nashville this past week to lay claim to his coveted prize package. The spoils of victory included an all-expense-paid trip to Music City, as well as a co-writing session with the legendary Rodney Crowell. The Clifton, Colorado, resident flew into More
Matthew Francis Andersen won the September/October 2012 Lyric Contest with his song “Blue Line” which led to a “Dream Write” with Hayes Carll and then him cutting a song written prior, “The Devil Lives In Kansas.” A few years later, Andersen dropped an album called, ‘Slow, the Summer Burned‘ that featured that song as its More
Ryan Tanner, who won American Songwriter’s Lyric Contest Grand Prize in 2010, played the Americana Music Festival in Nashville earlier this month. The show marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based songwriter has played Music City. Tanner, who won the Grand Prize with the song “I Never Did My Best,” stopped by our offices More
Ryan Tanner: 2010 Grand Prize Winner(Co-write with Jim Lauderdale) Those that know me will say I’m given to hyperbole on occasion. I like to make large sweeping statements, driving flags of monumental achievement and profound realization into fresh earth, only to later have them reveal themselves as plain and ordinary everyday events that are neither monumental More
Who said dreams don’t come true? On Saturday night, amateur songwriter Matt Hoggatt – a detective from Gautier, Mississippi accustomed to gigging at dive bars on weekends along the Gulf Coast – performed in front of 14,000 screaming fans at Jimmy Buffett’s concert in Birmingham, Alabama. Hoggatt won the American Songwriter January/February 2012 Lyric Contest More
Bill DiLuigi 2011 Grand Prize Winner Dream Co-write with Chris Young & Anthony Smith I am proud to be a past Grand Prize Winner in the American Songwriter Magazine lyric contest. It is a true lyric contest because only the lyric, without music, is judged. Sometimes a great demo or melody can take the focus More
Many songwriters set out to write with a specific goal in mind, be it writing for a national act, for a certain genre, or trying to write a hit for themselves as an artist. Then there are writers like Bill DiLuigi, who writes day after day and takes advantage of the opportunities as they present More
Quinten Collier 2009 Lyric Contest Grand Prize Winner (Co-write with Rodney Crowell) My experience with the Lyric Contest was unexpected, first off, because I had no intention of winning the Grand Prize; I just wanted the bi-monthly guitar. I was of course thrilled to be flown to Nashville, where I was treated extraordinarily well by More
“If Chris is going to sing it, it’s got to be a song for the girl.” That’s how Bill DiLuigi (known as Bill “D” to most) summed up “Parking Lot Dancer,” the song he penned earlier this month with RCA Recording Artist Chris Young during his “dream co-writing session” in Nashville. As part of his More
