Songwriter Brian White works with students on 'Blue Squirrel' at SESAC in Nashville, Tenn. on January 21, 2014 (photo; Steven S. Harman/The Tennessean)
Of all the songs penned on Music Row on Tuesday, none will be like “Blue Squirrel.”
The toe-tapping blues number was co-written by local songsmith Brian White and 15 hitmakers-in-training: students from Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School and Nashville School of the Arts.
The students came to the Nashville headquarters of SESAC to get a crash course in songwriting and the business behind it, courtesy of SESAC and Leadership Music’s Songwriting Day, in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools.
SESAC is one of three major performing rights organizations that assist songwriters and publishers in receiving compensation for public performance of their music. Tuesday’s students learned about that world with a schedule focused on licensing, copyright law and royalties.
“If you want to be a performer or a writer, (you need) to have that business sense because it is a business, and it’s a challenging marriage of the two,” said Debbie Linn, executive director of Leadership Music. The nonprofit educational organization encourages dialogue and collaboration among entertainment industry leaders.
After lunch, the students spent their afternoon diving into “Songwriting 101” with White, who has penned tunes for Christian and country stars including Mandisa and Trace Adkins. The “Blue Squirrel” session was a free-for-all, with students calling out lines, rhyme suggestions and story arc ideas as inspiration struck them, while White strummed an acoustic guitar and sang.
Tim Fink, SESAC’s vice president of writer/publisher relations, stood in the back, grinning as the song took humorous turns.
“Every time we’ve done it, the kids always go away having learned something, but even bigger than that is that they’re excited about what they just went through,” he said. “And hopefully that will blossom into future hit songwriters.”
Debbie Linn, Executive Director of Leadership Music, left, Tim Fink, vice president of writer-publisher relations as SESAC, Cathy Grizzell, vice president of HR at SESAC, Oceana Sheehan, assistant principal at Nashville School of the Arts and Sam Lorber, instructional designer at Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School at SESAC Tuesday, January 21, 2014 in Nashville, Tenn. (photo: Steven S. Harman/The Tennessean)
