The Song Writer's Contest

"...Like a preacher stealing hearts in a traveling show. It's all over money, money, money, money....and fever, getting hotter. Desire." u2

Last night was the finals in the Central Alabama Country Music Songwriter's contest.

You can read the story of this origins of the song here.

I wrote this country song as a joke. My friend Jennifer, a very talented artist, musician, and home-schooling mother of four thought it was funny and wrote the music to go with my lyrics. She performed it in my kitchen for the first time last summer. You can watch the original performance here.

Later on, my mom saw an advertisement in her small town newspaper about a country music songwriters contest in Central Alabama. We decided to enter with our song--again, just for fun.

Jennifer stole the show in the preliminary, winning first place. We had an automatic bid to the finals.

We arrived at an old high school gym in rural Coosa County last night to an audience of about one hundred mostly elderly country folks. Jennifer performed first, followed by ten other preliminary winners. As before, my talented friend absolutely stole the show.

We won third place. I was happy for Jennifer, but disappointed in the results. It was advertised as a "Country Music" contest, but first and second place winners sung "Gospel" songs with long spoken "tear-jerking" introductions about how Jesus helped them through this or that miserable situation in their lives.

Now no disrespect to my Savior intended here, but I'm not about to use Him to try to win a contest where the top prize is $300.

We did receive some justification in the end. Nashville songwriter Troy Jones was in attendance. He has written songs for country music stars like Kenny Chesney ("Shiftwork" and "Like Me"), Joe Nichols ("Shade"), and one of my favorites "People are Crazy.'

Troy made it a point to seek me out after the contest. "I liked your song," he said. "I thought it was the best in the contest."

Thanks Troy. We did too.

Here's the performance. Jennifer should be in Nashville, don't you think?