“From cassette demos to digital production — the journey continues.”
Meeting My Younger Songwriting Self
While digging through some old boxes recently, I stumbled across cassette tapes, lyric sheets, and letters from my early songwriting days. It felt like opening a time capsule — one that reminded me how my journey as a songwriter really began.
As I started sorting through everything, I found cassette tapes with handwritten labels, old lyric sheets that had been typed on my typewriter, and letters from publishers responding to my submissions. Some of them even had the small response cards I used to include in the envelope, where they could simply check a box and mail it back.
Most of those boxes were checked “Thank you for sending, can’t use.” But holding those cards again reminded me how hopeful and determined I was back then — mailing songs out into the world and believing that someday one of them might find its place.
The other night I was looking through some old songwriting material I saved from the early days of my writing journey. Inside were cassette tapes, typed lyrics, letters, and even demo recordings from the 1990s.
Reading through those old lyrics felt a little like meeting my younger self again. Back then, I started out writing poetry in my teens and moved into lyric writing in my mid-twenties. I didn’t play an instrument, didn’t sing, and didn’t write music. I simply had a love for words. My process was pretty simple: write the lyric, send it to someone who could put music to it, and hope for the best.
One of those collaborators was a gentleman named David Bultman who lived about an hour from me. We corresponded by mail, and he would take my lyrics and turn them into full demo recordings using his keyboard workstation. Those demos were then recorded onto cassette tapes.
Yes… cassette tapes.
At that time, songwriters often used a book called Songwriters Market to find publishers. I would mail those cassette demos out to different publishing companies. Sometimes I even included a small response postcard they could check and send back saying things like “Not interested,” or “Send more material.”
Most of the cards came back checked “Thank you for sending, can’t use.” But one day something different happened.
A song I wrote called Love Is Worth the Risk (later retitled Matters of the Heart) landed me my first single-song publishing contract with Woodridge Publishing.
For a songwriter just starting out, that moment felt huge.
Looking back now, some of those early songs make me smile. My writing has certainly evolved over the years. Some of the lyrics feel like little time capsules from another era, but they remind me where my songwriting journey began.
I’m especially grateful that I saved everything — the letters, the demo tapes, and the lyrics. Those pieces of history tell the story of how it all started.
Back then I was typing lyrics on a typewriter, mailing cassette demos, and hoping a publisher somewhere might listen. Today the tools are different — computers, digital recording, and producing music in ways I never imagined back then.
But the heart of songwriting hasn’t changed one bit.
It still begins with words.
Sometimes looking back reminds you how far you’ve come. And sometimes it reminds you that the spark that started everything is still there.
So here’s to the younger songwriter who mailed cassette tapes across the country — and to the songs still waiting to be written.
And somewhere out there, I’m pretty sure my younger self is still sitting at that typewriter, smiling, dreaming big, and saying the same thing I once wrote in an old bio:
Always believe. Never give up. Keep reaching for that star.