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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Does T-Bone Burnett deserve half of Ryan Bingham’s song?
Musician Ryan Bingham read the script of “Crazy Heart” at the behest of director Scott Cooper and wrote the Bruce Springsteen-sounding song “The Weary Kind,” wisely including lyrics about a crazy heart. Then he played it for Cooper and music supervisor T-Bone Burnett. “Right off the bat, T-Bone looked at me and said, ‘That’s the song we want to use’” for the movie’s theme, Bingham recently told New York magazine.
With Burnett eventually listed as the song’s co-writer, New York asked Bingham what T-Bone added to it. “That line at the end of the song — ‘You are the man who ruined the world — he came up with that,” Bingham said. “I can’t really remember all the little things he did. But that was the main thing, he helped on that last verse. I pretty much just had a couple of verses and the chorus, and we added a little more to it.”
For such tweaking, does Burnett deserve to own 50 per cent of a song that could win the Oscar and potentially earn half a million dollars? “Absolutely,” says Austin song publisher Brandi Warden. “Song doctoring is very important in making a good song a great one.”When Bingham sought Burnett’s help in finishing the song, he made him his partner on it. “That’s just understood in the business of professional songwriting,” says Warden, 41.
That rare Austin-based song-pitcher, Warden opened her Moonkiss Music publishing company in 2002 to publish songs by her husband Monte Warden. She has since added other writers to her stable and placed songs on albums by George Strait, Blue October and Travis Tritt.
Although some co-writers divvy up songs like a pie chart, according to how much each writer contributed, Warden says it’s much more common to split them 50- 50 without discussion. “Harlan Howard used to say ‘sometimes you get the coffee and sometimes they get the coffee’,” says Warden, whose father Phil Thomas wrote several hit country songs, including “Baby Your Baby” for Strait and “Colorado Koolaid” and “Me and the IRS” for Johnny Paycheck. Brandi’s grandparents, Gladys and Don Scaife also penned hits, often with a third co-writer.
“‘Write a word, get a third,’” Warden says, reciting a family adage. “Without every person in the room’s creative input, it wouldn’t be the same song. It wouldn’t have the same energy.”
Brandi Warden will be among the panelists at next weekend’s (Jan. 29- 31) 6th Annual Austin Songwriters Group Conference held at the Wyndham Hotel in South Austin.
Here’s more on the conference, which will feature a performance and keynote address from singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell.
