Benmont Tench Quotes

I've been writing songs all along, and since moving to Nashville in the late-'80s, I'd begun writing something like 15-20 songs a year, instead of the typical three or four in previous years.

I thought, when I came to Nashville, I was going to hook up with some of the top country writers in town and write some country tunes.

When I started out, I was what they called corny. After a week in Nashville they were calling me hillbilly.

I'm a pretty successful songwriter and known in some circles, but I didn't think the story of my career was of any real entertainment value.

I knew I would always be an artist, but when you move to Nashville, this is a writer's town. I moved here to focus on that and started pitching demos and immediately was asked to be an artist.

A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared.

My plan was always to leave school and live in a flat with some friends, have a 9 to 5 job, and try to get as many gigs as I could. I wanted to keep writing and then eventually, in my twenties, head to a record label and hope they'd sit down and listen to my book of songs, sign me as a songwriter and maybe an artist in development.

I don't think people really understood what I did. And you know, in my book, 'A Helluva High Note' deals with my back story, that I was a songwriter, that I spent years trying to hone my craft and being rejected and then finally becoming a successful songwriter, record executive and publisher.

Most of my friends in Nashville - almost all of them - seem to have had hits in the '70s, either as artists or songwriters or producers.

Honestly, when I got to Hollywood I was trying to sell my songs.

At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, 'I can do this for real and not go to college.' When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.

I'm gonna sing, and I'm going to make me a lot of money.

I had no idea when I moved to Nashville people just were songwriters. I had no idea. So I guess I was selling myself as a singer when I first moved here. But then right after I first moved, I started writing a lot.

But I'm a rock 'n' roll singer; that's my livelihood, my occupation.

I moved to Nashville at 17 to make music, and since then I've put everything I have into doing it right.

I've just signed a contract to make records in Nashville. It won't amount to much at first, but after a year or so, I will really be in the money.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.

I came to Nashville in the early '90s, and I thought, 'OK, enough is enough. I write songs; I just don't have the backbone to show it to anybody. I want to go to Nashville and learn how to properly write a song.'

I wanted to become a better songwriter, so it seemed like a no-brainer to move to Nashville, where some of the best writers in the world live.

I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.

Even at my biggest, I want to be writing for other artists. Even at my peak - the highest I can be as an artist - I always want to be keeping my creative juices flowing, keeping money in the bank, putting my intellectual property out there.

Well, I had a record deal since I was 18, and it got me where I am.

I have very much enjoyed being in the music business in different roles through five different decades.

No, my son's a songwriter and he does that.

I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.