Latest / The Scene Projects / Greig Watts on Music Career Insights, Mentorship, and AI Tools in Songwriting

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Greig Watts on Music Career Insights, Mentorship, and AI Tools in Songwriting · The Scene Projects

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  This program is part of the Scene Projects podcast network.
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  Scene Project features interviews with independent musicians, comedians, and artists
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  from across the Midwest.
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  Become part of our community and support local art wherever you are.
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  Welcome in to another exciting episode of the scene.
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  I am your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today is songwriter and author Greg Watts.
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  Greg, welcome to the show.
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  Great to be here.
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  Nice to see you.
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  Nice to meet you, Impa.
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  I'm I'm here.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  You got it.
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  Before we get into the book and everything that you're doing now, I just wanna give you the
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  floor here for a few minutes, and let us give you a little bit of your backstory.
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  Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  So I'm from The UK, and I guess I grew up listening to music in the eighties surrounded
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  by music.
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  My parents had a youth group.
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  I had older cousins.
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  Just music in the house everywhere, and I think, really, my destiny was to become a
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  songwriter.
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  I didn't wanna do anything else.
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  I just sat down, tried to learn instruments, did learn them a little bit.
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  But by the time I was playing a few keyboard lines, from Axel F or Howard Jones or things
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  like that, I was starting to write my own songs, and I guess I was just passionate about
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  that.
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  I remember my teachers telling me that I needed you know, what what was my ambition?
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  What was my dream?
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  And it would be being a songwriter and being in the music business.
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  And they would sort of say, no.
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  You need to get a real job.
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  And I carried on, remember I'm saying, no.
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  No.
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  I'm gonna be a songwriter, and run my own business.
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  And they were several times said, no.
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  No.
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  No.
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  And kind of was already writing songs, and I was already selling records in the playground.
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  So I think from then on, I just had this determination that I was gonna make it as a
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  songwriter in the music business, in the pop world.
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  I was a singer every now and then in the bands that I put together to sell the songs, but,
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  really, I became that person behind the scenes writing the songs and became very successful in
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  places like Japan, Belgium, places where where I'd never have imagined as a teenager wanting
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  to be number one in the world.
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  I did achieve those goals, but through sort of Japanese artists.
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  And then I moved into publishing and looking after other writers.
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  And I've again, I think when I'm I learned my my biggest skill set about 40.
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  In my forties, I realized I was a developer.
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  And I was coaching football teams, and I was coaching writers.
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  And I was even remember back to the writing sessions, I actually was coaching people within
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  the writing.
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  I was helping other people write.
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  So that's what I've become now.
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  More into the mentorship, more into the publishing.
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  I sell other people's songs.
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  I develop other writers.
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  And I've just finished my first book, Keeping the Dream Alive, which is basically that.
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  Tells you the story of my dreams and how I overcame lots and lots of setbacks and
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  rejection.
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  And I wanna share that with others about how you can overcome them too because it's a long
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  journey.
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  There's lots of setbacks along the way.
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  But, actually, if you keep on dreaming and get the right people around you, you can make it.
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  And it's frustrating, isn't it, that in every other profession that you wanted to do, it
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  would be just as hard to succeed.
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  Now maybe there's easier paths to walk in different professions, but I feel like music
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  and maybe, you know, film or or something along those lines in the arts that our our elders
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  encourage us to get a real job.
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  And Yes.
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  It takes that perseverance, right, to just say, no.
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  This is a real job.
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  And, you know, for myself, I I work in media exclusively developing these podcasts and more,
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  but I'm a songwriter myself.
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  And because of that mentality that was always pushed on me, like, you're going to have to
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  have something else in addition to the music.
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  Maybe I never went after it in the way that I I would have or should have.
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  It was always, well, you're gonna have to do something and then maybe you could play music.
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  Where if we were encouraged from an early age to say, okay.
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  If you're going to do music, these are the things that you have to do and the stream is
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  completely attainable.
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  You just need the right road map.
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  And the fact that teachers don't have that road map, they just kinda poo poo it right from the
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  get go and say, no.
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  You're gonna have to take a different path, and your music is just a far off dream that will
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  never happen.
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  And I think that's so unfortunate.
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  Yeah.
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  Agreed.
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  Mate, lots of people lots of songwriters I meet, you know, have been told, you know,
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  what's your real you know, I do songwriting.
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  What's your real job?
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  And as I said back at school, my school my music teacher said, Greg, drift through class
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  not being very interested, which is completely the opposite of what I was like.
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  I was loving songs.
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  I was loving pop music.
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  But, But, of course, in music lessons, it was a lot about theory.
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  It was a lot about classical, and it just didn't engage me.
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  So it took another music teacher when I'd stopped doing music.
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  It basically, they had a recording studio, and I said, can I come in and reuse your recording
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  studio?
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  And you saw him light up.
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  At last, someone wants to use the recording as a know, something to do with pop.
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  And, actually, that's where the dreams again, his dream hit mine, and we were actually able
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  to to make some, know, some some recordings together.
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  You just have to have the right people on your path as well, I think.
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  Well and that's what I love about what you're doing now.
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  And I think in some ways, you've always done it.
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  Once you achieve a status where you can help others, right, and status not being necessarily
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  a name or a title, but just experience.
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  You reach a certain experience level and and you know that you can help people that are that
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  don't have that same experience no matter where they're at on their journey.
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  Right?
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  Someone could be a very accomplished songwriter and have hits.
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  Know, I don't know if people have hits anymore these days, but they could be a very
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  accomplished songwriter, but still you could impart some wisdom to them.
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  And I think that's what's wonderful about the music business, and I I love your passion for
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  that.
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  We here at the Scene Projects, we have, what we call the academy.
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  So in the exact same vein that we we are not any of us necessarily the foremost expert in
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  any one field, but we have wisdom and tools and experience to share with others that may be
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  coming from a different place or maybe just starting their careers or restarting their
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  careers.
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  And if you were in the music business thirty years ago and trying to come back now, well,
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  you need a whole different skill set than you did back then in the marketing and production
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  and everything in that.
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  But songwriting, I think, for the most part, has remained the same, although we have tools
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  like AI with Suno and many others that are changing the
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  Yeah.
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  I got the end of that.
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  So Suno's changing things, definitely.
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  I could we we're starting to embrace it ourselves.
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  Not so much in the songwriting aside, aside, more in the developing of the production and
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  using it as a tool in the same way as we would synthesizer, you know, or splice.
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  Actually, it can bounce ideas off it.
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  I think the same as we do with ChatGPT.
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  You bounce ideas back and forth off it, and, actually, you can create music.
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  I've used mass something called MasterWriter for many, many years as a lyricist.
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  I used to you'd be stuck on one line, put it in rhyming dictionary, and up comes a line.
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  You think, oh, that's quite good.
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  I'll, you know, I'll put that.
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  So it's it's just using the tools around us, I think.
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  Just have to be careful about it as well.
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  We actually we're hot on the agenda.
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  We've within my academy and within my mentorship, we have a EU lawyer who works on
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  AI.
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  So she's given us a talk tonight.
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  So just to tell us about the law behind it.
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  So because that's the diff the difficult bit.
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  You if I write a song with you and you're in The States and I'm in The UK and someone else
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  is in Spain, for instance, there's three different laws about the copyright.
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  So you it's it could be interesting.
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  So
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  Yeah.
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  No doubt.
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  International copyright law.
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  And and because of the Internet, you didn't necessarily have that in decades past, because
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  even if the songs were written by different people from different places, they were
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  probably written in one place or the other, not from, you know, working remotely.
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  And gosh.
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  You just gotta love the Internet for, the fact that we have the opportunity to communicate
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  with each other, to share ideas, to produce these music.
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  I mean, what Suno can do now with an idea and to be able to spit out, you know, demo
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  versions, I mean, I I know that they're being taken onto the billboard charts now and
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  everything as well.
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  But if you're a songwriter and you've never really done it for the money, you do it because
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  you have these songs inside of you, and this is how you communicate with the world.
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  And I don't know that AI will ever wholly replace that.
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  It doesn't have a human experience to just create out of thin air.
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  It still needs the input to be able to create.
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  So I feel like songwriters are are safer now.
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  I think they're becoming even more valuable, and that value will come back where really the
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  value to songwriters and performers because of the streaming platforms like Spotify, the value
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  has been completely sucked out of the recording industry as a whole and fully extracted, and I
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  think now we have an opportunity to bring that back.
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  Tell us a little bit more about your music mentorship and and what you're doing with that.
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  Is it a regular group that's meeting together?
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  And and, of course, tell us how people can get involved.
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  Yeah.
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  So, I started it June 2022, as trying to gather basic I've I've run lots of songwriting camps.
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  So I go to Spain or I go to Barbados recently.
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  I'll go to and I run the songwriting camp.
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  And I've noticed in that the biggest thing that about songwriting and cowriting was the
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  connection.
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  So what I've tried to do is put together a mentorship, which is a slow songwriting camp
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  online.
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  Again, because we came out of the COVID years.
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  So online cowriting was you know, we we we'd already connected with lots of different
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  countries.
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  So the mentorship basically is three months of we do one one night a week teaching.
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  We do one night a week where we're listening to songs, and we do a co write once a month, which
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  sounds not very many.
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  But when you're online and someone's in Singapore and someone's here and someone's
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  there, it takes a bit longer.
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  So and what I want them to do is write one song and present it to the group.
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  And if it's good enough, we'll start pitching it because I'm a publisher.
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  If it's not good enough, we'll say go back and rewrite it or reproduce it.
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  And usually by the end of the four co writes that we have, we have one, two, three, four,
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  they're delivering really high quality because they know and understand the quality that we
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  need to actually be pitching in the music business.
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  So they have four co writes during the actual three months.
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  And then at the end of that, they have a live camp.
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  So they come ready for the songwriting camp.
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  They're all equipped because they've got to know each other on a a video a do a ninety day
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  video journey as well.
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  So it's basically about we're building a community of people to be with, the people to
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  co write with, people to collaborate with.
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  And at the end, you have the experience of the songwriting camp, which everyone is is is
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  usually quite magical.
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  And they write amazing songs because they've already connected.
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  The connection for me, again, is always the amazing thing that happens in a co write.
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  They don't know each other, and suddenly they connect to know each other.
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  But I noticed when I was doing the summer camp, some of the best connections were over dinner
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  or over breakfast.
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  And, actually, then if you put those people in a group, great songs come because they've had
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  that discussion of something about their day, something about their life.
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  So you're not you're going into the writing knowing something about each other already.
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  That's incredible.
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  And I love what you point out there with the connection, and that's what it truly is and and
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  why a place like Nashville is so special.
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  I I just got to go to Nashville for my first time, in November 2025.
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  I was covering the Josie Music Awards, an independent awards show.
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  I got to work the red carpet, and I got to connect with a 150 artists who I interviewed in
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  that time.
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  And now we've gotten to you know, from that, I had everyone sign an autograph book.
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  It was my guest list.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  And and getting to go back and several of them gave me their demos or gave me, you know, a USB
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  with some songs or their business card and then going back and connecting with all of these
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  individuals.
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  And truly, that's what it was about to me.
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  It wasn't necessarily about the award show itself.
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  I live in rural South Dakota, Greg, so I'm not surrounded by our I need the Internet.
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  I need that connection and to have that availability to go and to experience some of
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  these places where artists are gathering.
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  And what I was alluding to is that Nashville is so special because you have a such a large pool
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  of songwriters and performers and artists all in one place that are doing that, that are
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  connecting with one another.
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  And that's where you really get the great songs from.
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  Yeah.
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  So I've often found that traveling and going somewhere is the is also a key.
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  You're coming out of your your comfort zone, not just for the songwriting, but connecting.
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  I mean, I have so many stories of when I went somewhere to do a job, and I bumped into
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  someone else who then led me to the next co write, which was a big hit.
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  You know?
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  So going and doing stuff that's not necessarily in your own studio, going connecting, I think
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  that really sort of opens doors for songwriters as well.
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  Yes.
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  And travel was a big part of my life.
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  I mean, it still is.
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  I I've done several tours in 2025 all over the country from, you know, the shores of Lake
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  Superior all the way to Austin, Texas, and from Chicago to the Rocky Mountains.
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  I covered a lot of ground this year, and I haven't necessarily taken the time to write
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  about it yet because, well, this is kind of my writing time.
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  Right?
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  The the winter comes and in South Dakota, it gets cold and snowy and travel becomes harder
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  and harder.
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  That's my time to kinda sit back in the studio to process the year that was.
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  And for me, I have so much video footage and memories and photos now with, you know, the way
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  that we capture our lives on our cell phones and and other ways that now I can sit back and
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  to process that and to write.
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  And, unfortunately, for me, I've never had the experience of cowriting.
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  I I've never had that experience.
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  Most of my songs have been written in a vacuum of me by myself with my thoughts and my own
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  experiences and refining that.
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  But I look forward to connecting with more people like yourself and people inside of your
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  group and other songwriters around the world to move into this next phase of my own music
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  career.
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  And, you know, I was fortunate enough this year to release a new EP for the first time in ten
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  years that I've had a batch of works.
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  I've done a few singles, but I would love for you after the show here to have a listen to my
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  songs if you have a few minutes, and I'd love to share a few with you.
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  And we have a daily review show where we play five or six tracks from independent artists on
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  our YouTube channel as well.
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  Called unsigned spotlight.
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  So maybe you can find, that next big hit and some more people to help along their journey.
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  Greg, why don't you share with us how everyone can find you and get ahold of you, where they
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  can find your book, which we didn't touch much on, but I'm sure this story kind of encompasses
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  a lot of what's inside
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  of the book as well.
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  It's it's all in it's all in there, and this story is, you know, it's it's just a part of
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  it, really.
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  So I can show it on here.
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  It's called keeping the dream alive, and it's basically on Amazon.
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  Get it on get it on Amazon.
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  You can get my my name's with an I.
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  You can easily search Greg.
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  What's with an I?
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  Because there's not many Greg's with i's.
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  Keeping the dream alive on Amazon.
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  It's an audiobook.
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  There's a a paperback or Kindle.
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  You can get it there.
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  That's the main place it's it's it's going.
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  It was a it was a bestseller in October in the songwriting of of Amazon, which was good.
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  Finding me on my our website is www.dwbmusicgroup.com.
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  My company is called d w b.
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  And Facebook, look find me on facebook.com.
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  Gregwatts/.gregwatts as well.
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  And, yeah, I think if you search my name on the Internet because I have an eye, which I really
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  hated as a kid, but I don't now that again, this is in the book.
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  There's a story in the book that I I thank thank my parents now because this Internet
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  search engines weren't around fifty years ago, but they are now, and that eye has made all the
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  difference to my career because people can find me.
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  So well done, parents.
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  Yeah.
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  It's like they knew something.
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  Right?
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  The They
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  did.
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  They they they basically didn't want anyone to call me Gregory.
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  So they thought they'll put an I in, and there was a famous cricketer called Tony Greg.
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  And everyone asked, is my name Greek?
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  Or is it or called me Gregory.
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  And, actually, he even had some teachers insist that my name was Greg.
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  And he's like, I'm 10.
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  I know I'm not called Greg.
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  I'm called Greg.
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  But some teachers, you know, can't teach him anything.
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  So
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  Nope.
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  You sure can't.
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  And those same teachers, would be amazed to see you now having made it in the music business
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  for a very long time now and helping others and teaching them how to do so as well.
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  Greg, this was a wonderful conversation.
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  I appreciate your time from across the pond to jump on with us and impart some wisdom on our
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  audience of songwriters and artists out there.
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  Thank you for that, and thanks for being part of the scene.
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  Thanks very much for having me.
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  It's been great.