Smitty: Yeah. When did you get to that point where you said “All right, I wanna take this out of the house and onto some stage somewhere. I don’t care if it’s at the parking lot at the car wash,” you know?
BT: My first real band that we were actually playing out and making money, I was only 15 years old and they had to pick me up and drive me to the gigs.
Smitty: (Laughs.)
BT: Because I was 15 years old and at that time I had a Hammond organ, or a B3.
Smitty: Yeah, man!
BT: A Porta-B, actually, so thank God that the band members were all older gentlemen and I’m 15, they’re 30 years old, 25 and 30, and they have a van and the strength to pick up this thing with the Leslie speaker (both laugh) and that was the start, you know? That was absolutely the start, and when I tell you we played every high school prom in our area of Connecticut and every night club. Back then, night clubs used to run live entertainment five, six nights a week and I did that at 15 years old and still went to school the next day. And that’s what it was like and it was cover tunes and even though it was cover tunes, I still remember to this day I always had a notebook with me and started writing my own words no matter where I was and just kinda playing my own chords because I knew that sooner or later I had something to say or a sound that I wanted to get across.
Smitty: Oh, that’s so cool, man. I love that whole approach that you just mentioned. You knew in your heart you knew you had something to say musically, and when you have that kind of conviction, it’s coming out.
BT: Yeah.
Smitty: Yeah, well, I must say, man, that your band members must have really appreciated your talents because to pick up that B3, and that’s heavy… (Both laugh.)
BT: Yeah, they’re probably swearing at me now. They’ve probably all got bad backs and blown discs and stuff like that, but you know what? It worked back then.
Smitty: Yeah, man. I have a close friend (Joe Kurasz) who’s a great B3 player. So I know how heavy it is.
BT: And then thank God for technology because then when the synthesizers came and basically got that sound out of such a smaller, more lightweight thing, then I had no excuse. I had to start lifting and moving my own gear. (Both laugh.) It was no more “Well, little Bobbi can’t pick that up. You guys gotta help him.” So yeah, that all changed.
Smitty: Yeah, man. Well, speaking of change, man, your career—and we’ll probably fast forward a little here—but you’ve done some incredible things as far as creating music for TV, for movies. When I think of things like Beverly Hills 90210, General Hospital, you were into the soap thing…Young & the Restless.
BT: Well, you know what’s really cool is, like they say, you can sit home and practice all day, but until you get out and network, the world is your oyster, and it’s true because until I started going to the songwriting events and letting people hear what I do, that’s really when things started happening, and I really wish those days would come back because there’s less and less music conferences and people to hook up with these days, but back in the day, there was a group called LASS, the Los Angeles Songwriters Association, and I was living in Connecticut and I was a member of the Connecticut Songwriters Association and there would come an article on the Los Angeles Songwriters Association about this big music event coming, and sure enough, you know what?
I’d save my money and I’d say “That’s gonna be my vacation this year.” “We’re not going to Disney World, I’m not going away for this, I’m going to this songwriting workshop,” and that’s what it was, and they’d put you in a workshop and there were some publishers there telling you what they needed, and there was open pitch sessions, which was a wonderful thing. It would say “Smitty Smith from ABC is looking for songs to use in General Hospital” or “Joe Smith is looking for music for his new R&B artist” and that was very common back then.
Smitty: Yeah, absolutely.
BT: And honestly, that’s where a lot of my contacts happened because I came ready. I mean, I’d been working on music before I even went out to those things, so I came with a repertoire full of different songs and styles and originals, so when I saw what the pitch sheets had lined up and who was gonna be there, I just came with a little checklist and said “Okay, I wanna be in this meeting and I wanna play them this song” and good things just start happening when you do that.
Smitty: Yeah, and you know, Bobbi, I think that those type conferences yielded the best music.
BT: They did. You could go back and just listen. If you take in that music that happened then and you listen to it on the radio today, you’ll notice one very important characteristic: it’s timeless.
Smitty: Yeah.
BT: It still sounds that good today that it did back then and I’m talking about the Boyz II Men, you know what I mean?
Smitty: Yes. You are so right.
BT: That kind of music, it’s just timeless. They weren’t fad sounds, there was substance in the music, there was a romanticism in the music, the songs said something.
Smitty: Yeah, and the right people were always at those conferences, you know?
BT: Yup, yup.
Smitty: On both ends of the spectrum.
BT: Yeah, and it’s funny because I remember sitting in the opening, the keynote speaker, who would say “Give yourself a round of applause because you’re among the people that are actually doing something with your career by attending.” Sure enough, that’s a decision you make, and I’d really like to see stuff like that come back and it’s actually one of the reasons why I kinda put out a DVD on songwriting to help upcoming songwriters because I’m like, wow, this is missing today.
Smitty: Yeah, talk a little bit about some of the key points of that DVD because I’ve read about it and I think songwriters and aspiring songwriters—I mean, this is something I think is cool for anyone that’s looking to do songs and that kind of thing and really wanna get some great music out there because it really talked about how to write a hit song.
BT: Yeah.
Smitty: It’s one thing to say that, but to really get down and dirty with it, that’s a cool thing.
BT: Well, I mean, I entitled the DVD Songwriting That Gets Results and my goal was—the one thing I can honestly say for my company since I started producing and having my own production company, people hired me a lot to write and produce songs for them, and I can honestly say that over 80% of the demos that I’ve done have gotten signed in some way for these people. And what happens after it gets signed, I’m not in control of, but my goal was “Listen, you give me a song to produce, you tell me what direction you want.”
You could say “Hey, Bobbi, I’m just a songwriter, I don’t sing, so I want this to sound like Celine Dion” or “I want this to sound like Boyz II Men or Usher,” and “You give me that vibe and I’m gonna go ahead and do what’s right for the song. I’m gonna do all the music for it, I’m gonna hire the right singers to do it in that genre of music, and then you definitely need to market it when I give it back to you.” But I can honestly say that after they’ve gotten it back, over 80% of the people at least got signed contracts or under agreements on the songs that we’ve produced, which is excellent, and that’s one of the reasons why I said it’s missing today because there’s more to just throwing a hot beat on something and throwing some words on it and saying it’s a hit song.
