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Episode 4: Untraceable Magic · Women's Writes

• 0:03
  Hi, I'm Parker Welling, and this is Women's Writes..
• 0:27
  I've spent my career writing songs in Nashville,
• 0:30
  and on these many episodes, I'm taking you with
• 0:32
  me on deep dives behind songs and songwriting.
• 0:35
  Stories, questions, history, creative mysteries
• 0:38
  that I can't stop thinking about. Let's get into
• 0:41
  it. Before I knew Matraca Berg, I knew Wild Angels.
• 0:45
  Before I knew Gretchen Peters, I knew You Don't
• 0:47
  Even Know Who I Am. And then there was Strawberry
• 0:50
  Wine, Independence Day. These were songs I loved
• 0:53
  before I had any idea who had written them. And
• 0:56
  once I started paying attention to the names
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  and the liner notes, I noticed something. The
• 1:00
  songs that I gravitated towards were a lot of
• 1:02
  times written by the same people. I was drawn
• 1:05
  to the voice of writers I had never heard of.
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  I knew the artist. I knew every word. I knew
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  how those songs made me feel, but I didn't know
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  there was another person hiding inside them.
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  Eventually, I followed those songs backward and
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  it led me to Matraca. It led me to Gretchen.
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  The songs became the doorway to the songwriters,
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  and the songwriters became the heroes. Which
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  got me thinking, who made your hero? We talk
• 1:31
  about influence like it starts with us. Who did
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  you grow up listening to? Who made you want to
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  sing? Who made you want to write? But whoever
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  your answer is, they had an answer too. And sometimes
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  you don't even know who you're inheriting something
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  from. Taylor Swift has inspired an entire generation
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  of young writers and artists. But how many people
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  who would name Taylor Swift as an influence know
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  the name of Liz Rose? Liz co -wrote some of the
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  songs that helped define Taylor's early sound.
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  Tim McGraw, Teardrops on My Guitar, You Belong
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  With Me, White Horse, and later All Too Well.
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  Taylor is absolutely part of their creative inheritance.
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  But isn't Liz too? And even if they don't know
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  her name, is she still the inspiration? Sometimes
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  the artist is how the song finds you. The songwriter
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  can shape you before you ever know they're there.
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  And that's really the heart and the backbone
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  of Nashville culture. The legendary Bluebird
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  Cafe and venues like it all over town fill their
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  stages night after night with these unsung heroes.
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  I play songwriter shows all over the country
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  and most people have no idea that I exist. but
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  they've gotten married to songs I've written,
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  they've been through breakups with them, they've
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  rolled the windows down and screamed them at
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  the top of their lungs with their best friends.
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  And that's not a unique experience for a songwriter
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  with cuts. There are hundreds of me in Nashville.
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  People whose names you may never know, whose
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  words might already be tangled up in some of
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  the biggest moments of your life. And that's
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  the strange thing about being a songwriter. You
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  can be a part of someone's story without ever
• 2:59
  being a part of their world. When I first started
• 3:01
  thinking about creative inheritance, I pictured
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  a family tree. Somebody influences you, you influence
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  somebody else. Nice, neat, straight lines. Except
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  influence doesn't really work like that. Nobody
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  has one hero. You hear a song when you're 12
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  and you never forget it. Your dad plays the same
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  record so many times, you know every word without
• 3:21
  ever deciding if you like it. A friend puts a
• 3:24
  song on in the car, a writer says something in
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  a room that changes the way you think about songs
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  forever. You fall in love with a line, and 20
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  years later, you can't even remember the song
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  that it came from. And eventually, all of it
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  gets mixed up with everything else you've heard
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  and loved and lived. You could try to separate
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  it, but I don't think you could even if you tried.
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  And that's the untraceable magic. How much of
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  what we love, or even what we make, came from
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  somewhere we don't remember. How much of it was
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  handed to us by somebody who got it from somebody
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  else? Eventually, you can't draw a line anymore.
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  It's just become part of you. And the strangest
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  part is, sometimes you don't even know what you
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  inherited until years later. Sometime in the
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  early 2000s, I went to 12th and Porter during
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  Tin Pan South to see Matraca Berg, Gretchen Peters,
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  and Suzy Bogguss play Wine, Women, and Song.
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  I stood up in the balcony and I watched them.
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  And yes, I remember the songs. But I also remember
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  them. The friendship, the mutual respect, the
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  way they shared a stage, how cool and effortless
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  it felt to watch these women who genuinely loved
• 4:27
  one another and each other's work. Years later,
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  Lydia and I ended up at an all -female writing
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  retreat, almost by accident. We loved it enough
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  to intentionally plan another one. Eventually,
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  that idea became Women's Writes. I wasn't standing
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  in that balcony at 12th and Porter thinking,
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  someday I'm going to make my own version of this.
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  I can't draw you a straight line from that night
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  to this podcast, but I know something got planted,
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  and that's the untraceable magic. Sometimes you
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  don't inherit someone's sound, you inherit their
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  example. And here's the thing I hadn't really
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  considered until I started thinking about all
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  of this. Songwriters aren't the only people carrying
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  this inheritance. The listeners are, too. A songwriter
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  writes something. An artist sings it. You fall
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  in love with it. You play it in your car until
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  your kids know every word. Twenty years later,
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  another artist covers it. Someone else hears
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  the cover before they ever hear the original.
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  A song written decades ago lands in somebody's
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  life at the exact right moment, and it becomes
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  theirs. The inheritance isn't just songwriter
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  to songwriter. It's writer to artist, artist
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  to listener, listener to another listener, back
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  to an artist, back to another writer, those tangled
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  binds again and again. And this is the thought
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  that I can't get away from. A songwriter from
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  50 years ago can affect the way a 15 year old
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  girl hears a song today without that girl ever
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  knowing she existed. Maybe somebody she influenced
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  influenced somebody else. And maybe that person
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  wrote the song that this girl can't stop listening
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  to. She doesn't know any of that, but something
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  still reached her. The song is the inheritance.
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  So if the song can travel all that way without
• 6:00
  us knowing where it came from, why does knowing
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  the writer matter? For me, Wild Angels could
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  have just stayed Wild Angels, but I followed
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  it backwards. As a songwriter, I found a hero.
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  But if you're a fan, maybe you find something
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  else. Maybe you find an invisible friend, the
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  person who's unknowingly been writing pieces
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  of your story for years. The person who somehow
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  found the words for your first heartbreak, your
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  hometown, your marriage, your mother, the version
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  of yourself you were at 17. You've known their
• 6:28
  words half of your life. You just didn't know
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  their name. And maybe that's the part of why
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  telling these stories matters. Because if we
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  don't tell who made the songs, part of the story
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  just disappears. The song is the inheritance,
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  the feeling it gave you, the thing it made you
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  want to make. All of that is part of this untraceable
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  magic. And if you start figuring out who handed
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  all of that inspiration down to you, you'd start
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  discovering your own little musical and maybe
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  even emotional family tree. So here's something
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  to think about. What are your five favorite songs?
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  Do you know who wrote them? Because you might
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  already have a favorite songwriter. You just
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  haven't met them yet.