Mark Cawley Interview

Doug Burke:

Mark Cawley has had a multi-decade career writing songs in London, Los Angeles, and Nashville. He's had songs recorded by artists like Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Joe Cocker, Taylor Dane, Chaka Khan, and British pop superstars, Billie Piper and the Spice Girls. He has global experience having worked for songwriting publishing houses around the world. His songs are on over 16 million records sold. He began his career as part of the Faith Band in the late 1970s with three albums and a hit, Dancing Shoes, and the band, Blinding Tears. Then he made the career transition to full-time songwriting in the '80s and he has never looked back.

Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke, and today I am thrilled to have with me, songwriter Mark Cawley. Welcome, Mark.

Mark Cawley:

Thank you, bud. Nice to be here.

Doug Burke:

Mark, you're based in Nashville?

Mark Cawley:

I am, yes. Not born here, but I've been here about 23 years now.

Doug Burke:

Writing a lot, a lot of songs. I noticed on your BMI registration, there are like seven pages of songs that you've registered. And we're going to talk about a handful that has been recorded on this episode. But maybe you can take us back to when you started writing songs and why did you start writing songs?

Mark Cawley:

I grew up in upstate New York like born in Syracuse, New York, grew up in Binghamton basically. It was in the era of a garage band, literally garage bands. So we'd start in the garage. It was kind of fun because you were watching Ed Sullivan every Sunday and seeing this wealth of like from The Beatles to every, every band that was coming out at the time and trying to learn those songs. But like 15-year-old kids, so usually couldn't learn the songs. We weren't that good. So I started making up songs, I think out of necessity in the beginning. I was sort of the only guy in the band, so I was writing songs and I got all the other gigs that went along with it like loading the car, and I did all the grunt work in the bands. Writing songs became a real passion, but it did come out of the idea of like you could watch Ed Sullivan, you could hear the Stones and go, "Well, I think I can do that." But then you'd hear The Beatles or somebody with great harmony and all that, and my bunch of guys that are 14 and 15 trying to look like we're all British rock stars couldn't pull it off. So writing songs was it and wrote a lot of really bad ones in the beginning, of course, and always on your own because then I didn't really know anybody else writing songs. I didn't know any songwriters for sure.

Doug Burke:

So you had some bands back in this or were part of some bands. I noticed on Spotify that there's some of your early work out there in the '70s.

Mark Cawley:

Yes.

Doug Burke:

Which I've added to your Spotify playlist. I don't know if you knew that. They'll be on the website for our listeners at the bottom, songs written by Mark in some of your early bands.

Mark Cawley:

Uh-oh. Those might be cringe-worthy, but we'll see.

Doug Burke:

I know you didn't want to talk about them on the episode, so if you don't like them, we'll take them down.

Mark Cawley:

No, I'm fine with it. I'm fine. I mean, probably the best one of all that was called Faith Band.

Doug Burke:

Yes, the Faith man stuff is... And the critics loved the Faith man.

Mark Cawley:

It was a legendary misstep probably. Actually, I moved from New York to join a band that was already in existence in Indiana called The Chosen Few and they got a record deal and they asked me if I would come to write some songs with them because they didn't really write. So I thought I'd go spend seven days or a week or I don't know, 10 days in Indiana, and I spent seven years. I ended up joining the band. The band got picked up by Terry Knight who at the time had Grand Funk Railroad and he was kind of the Svengali of the music business. He's creating these supergroups with a lot of hype, and I'll give you the short version of the story, but it became quite an amazing music business tale because he took this band from Indiana, had us eliminate our names from the record. He remixed the record, changed the band's name to Faith, took out any information about who was who, who wrote anything, took us to Richard Avedon to have the album cover done, which was I didn't know who he was until much later, but it was pretty awesome. So Richard Avedon had us... We couldn't figure out what's going on at first because we were young and he had us turn around with just our backs in the photo. So long hair backs. What it became was Terry Knight decided to put the record out there and let the reviewers and people imagine who it might be. He told us it'll stand on the strength of the music and we thought, "Okay, that's different." I was a little bummed about not having my name on there at 18 years old or something and it was all over the place, double-page, ads in Rolling Stone, billboards on the sunset strip. Incredible hype. Rolling Stone was the one that got a hold of it finally and said, "Wait a minute. These are five guys from Indiana. This is not who we were thinking it is, which was Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, all sorts of rumors that Terry Knight kind of helped along, I think." So we went from thinking we were going to be superstars rehearsing for a tour to start in Madison Square Garden to having Terry call one day and go, "I think this is kind of blown up. You guys might want to reconsider getting back in the clubs for a while."

Doug Burke:

You guys are like the original Milli Vanilli.

Mark Cawley:

Oh, man. It was so good.

Doug Burke:

I mean, not to insult you, Mark, but you didn't know that was being done to you either.

Mark Cawley:

No, we did not. The band was actually very good too. And to the band's credit, it crawled out of the trenches. I mean, it took years, plugged away back in the clubs again. Finally did get a record deal with Mercury and did three albums and a hit, Dancing Shoes, and toured with Fleetwood Mac and Hall and Oates and Doobie Brothers. The band had a pretty good run for a while, but boy, as a story to begin with, amazing.

Doug Burke:

We're going to talk about one of your sort of most well-known songs by Tina Turner dancing in my dreams. You co-wrote this with Kye Fleming and Brenda Russell and both of those writers you've written a lot with. So let's talk about Dancing In My Dreams.

Mark Cawley:

I'll take you back to the beginning of it. I knew Kye first for quite a long time and had written with her and had some success. Brenda, I always loved but I didn't know her and I was at a songwriting retreat in the south of France run by Miles Copeland and Brenda was there as well. So I met Brenda, wrote with her loved writing with her, and suggested that she and Kye and I get together. And they didn't know each other at all. So in Nashville, we got together, but we also talked for a while and said we've all been trying to write to briefs. You get briefs from publishers and producers and we'd all been kind of missing out lately. Sometimes you write this song too brief and someone else does it maybe or the artist doesn't do it. Something was falling through at this particular time. So the three of us got in a room in Nashville for two days and said, "Let's write something that knocks us out and screw everything else. Let's forget it. Let's forget writing for an artist, a brief, any of that music business stuff. Let's just see if we can knock each other out. And we did."

I mean, we spent two days and we wrote something really different that we all really loved. It started with like a Celtic drum loop that I had. Kye did her thing wrote a terrific lyric, really terrific lyric. Brenda was incredible with some melody and music as well. We both did that. The cool part of the story is we went out of there thinking well, "If no one ever records it, we don't care. This is mission accomplished. We loved it. We went and did a really rough demo, Brenda and I. We thought this could be the end of the story but how great. Meantime, we had separate publishers. All the publishers got it. They all loved it, but said, "No idea who to pitch this to at all. It's a very odd song." Brenda's publisher had someone working in the office and Tina Turner was looking for a song to start a new album and didn't really have a brief. They didn't really know what they wanted, but publishers... Not knocking publishers ever. Publishers and record labels can tend to think, "Well, do part two of whatever the last record was." And that's not what this song was. So somebody in Brenda's publishing company said, "You know what, I'm going to send this to Tina Turner's producer. I just have a feeling." And what came back was hilarious in a way. Whoever heard it at the label said, "You guys, this is so far off a Tina Turner song that you're wasting our time and we're not happy about it. And whoever actually did this ought to get fired." The story I heard later was I actually did get fired. Yeah, and that's how crazy this story has been. Then what happened was she persisted and got it through to Tina somehow. Tina heard it and said this is absolutely going to start my new album. This is what I want to do. This is a direction that I love, everything about it." We're watching Oprah one time. This dates way back and Tina is on Oprah saying this song came through to me and was the inspiration for this whole album. She did it, and the album sold about 6 million. And the end of the story was a tremendous learning experience for Kye and Brenda and me. Together we thought, "You know what, we need to spend more time just trying to knock each other out when we write and not write to briefs and not write part two of someone's hit." I know it served me really well later on with some major artists.

Doug Burke:

So why do you think Tina liked the song?

Mark Cawley:

Boy, that's a great question so hard to pin down. I think she just identified with the emotion in it. It's an emotional song. Kye's lyric is really fantastic and I think she just got inside the lyric and got inside the kind of almost sort of mystic Celtic beat of it and stuff. Just a very different song. It's hard to tell what resonates with an artist has been my experience. Sometimes the really great ones don't want to repeat themselves and that's where writers can mess up, I included for years. So she was looking for something different and it just resonated.

Doug Burke:

Have you seen the video?

Mark Cawley:

I have, yeah.

Doug Burke:

What do you think of it?

Mark Cawley:

I think somebody just put it together. I don't think it was done by Tina's label when I saw it. But again, it's my favorite co-writing experience ever. I love the song. I cried when my publisher called and said, "Guess what?" and played it down the phone to me. He was in England and I lost it because I love Tina Turner. Most songwriters, me included have these voices they hear in their head that when they write and you almost try to sing like them. She's one I did pretty often especially in my younger years. Just wanted something that I could imagine her singing. So when I heard her sing it, you just lose your mind. It's great.

Doug Burke:

What did each of you, Kye Fleming, Brenda Russell, and yourself, Mark, what did each of you contribute to the co-writing?

Mark Cawley:

At that time, I had been used to working with the drum loops a lot which were pretty different at the time. It kind of got me going and created a mood. Although I'm more comfortable on guitar, I was writing on keyboards for this. So I had a keyboard with a lot of drum loops in it and just kind of vibey things. We started there. I just thought what about this feel? We started there. Brenda and I just kind of comfortably fall into trying to sing over things and come up with chords. We did that, but I think to me, the most interesting part of this was Kye, because I'd written with Kye and I know how she writes. She needs to be inspired and she can also be very quiet until she's really got something. So the funny part of the story was, I was dear friends with both these two writers, had written with them separately and now we're all in a room. The first day we spent was really just Brenda and I trying to come up with things, seeing where we're going, getting excited about it. Kye as I remember anyway kind of sitting in the corner with a notepad and not a lot to say. So the next morning, I remember Brenda kind of cornered me before... As I remember, again, before Kye was there, and said, "Hey, do you think Kye likes what we're doing? Because she's not saying a lot." She said, "Do you think she likes it, or does she like me?" You're kind of like in junior high again in these situations. And I said, "No, trust me because I've seen her at work before." I mean, sure enough, the next day she came in with that lyric pretty much just done and said, "What about this?" And we all went, "Oh, geez." It was brilliant. I've had that experience with Kye a number of times.

Doug Burke:

So the chorus I find remarkable because not only is it catchy, but it has no rhymes.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. Kye is so good, I learned so much from her as a lyricist that she can make things feel like they rhyme. You can hear it and think, "Oh, that's so great." You probably just discovered. You go back look at it and go, "Wait, a minute. This isn't really following the rules I know rhyming lines one, and three, and two, and four." Just brilliant.

Doug Burke:

I particularly like in the song a few things, but the way it does a slow build to a primal crescendo and you mentioned Celtic drums. I kind of didn't realize that it was Celtic inspired on the record. It felt more sort of universal, primal inspired, aboriginal maybe. Then it goes to this real crescendo at the break. And then the strings come in a full orchestra, it's like the whole beautifully heavily produced sort of 1980s sound. But did you envision that when you wrote it?

Mark Cawley:

Well, I'm going to be honest with you, no. I love the demo. The demo suggested all that. A couple of really funny things about this as well. The drum loop that I used actually was the same drummer they ended up using for Tina's version, which I think was just a coincidence. I can't recall his name offhand, but I heard her record and as soon as it started I thought, "Have they used the same loop and the same everything?" Brenda sang the demo and Tina actually sounded like Brenda at the beginning of the song. Ours was much simpler. When I first heard I was kind of taken aback by everything Trevor Horn had done. He used to like a kid's choir probably part of the London Symphony. He put the kitchen sink in this thing and turned it into an epic.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, it's really epic when the orchestra comes in, in the last chorus. It's full-on production. Almost David Foster like.

Mark Cawley:

And Trevor Horn is famous for that especially then. I've grown to like it better. At first, I was a little... Have we lost the essence of the song? There's a lot in there. And it became so long. The pro songwriter and all of us went, "Uh-oh. This may not be a single ever because I don't know how long that version is but it's very long compared to ours."

Doug Burke:

There's a weird thing on Spotify. It's a 12-minute song, but it's got other songs attached to it that aren't the five-minute version of the song for some reason.

Mark Cawley:

It's definitely not 12 minutes, but it's long.

Doug Burke:

No, it's not 12 minutes, it's a five-minute song. It's like 5:40.

Mark Cawley:

But to answer your question the best I can, I think is I did grow to really like his version, but I also loved the initial demo we did, which really captured a very similar feel to it all. And the Celtic part, I probably should clarify, I always think of the drum loop as Celtic, but I had a keyboard part that's at... it's a very Celtic melody. I always think of those things together, I guess.

Doug Burke:

It's a synthesized keyboard that almost sounds like a flute on the record to me.

Mark Cawley:

Exactly.

Doug Burke:

You create or whoever did create sounds that don't sound like keys out of the synthesizer. They sound like other instruments, but not perfectly like other instruments. They're clearly played by a pianist.

Mark Cawley:

You're right. The original demo was a bit like that too and I was going after more like a penny whistle sound, more of a traditional Irish.

Doug Burke:

Oh, that's what it is, yeah.

Mark Cawley:

So I was trying to simulate that as best I could, not being a great keyboard player and having limited stuff with us at the time, but that's what I was going for. Those kinds of things Trevor Horn did pick up on I think and really nail.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, and part of it, it sounds like he's plucking strings on a keyboard, which is remarkably like that you can actually get that out of a synthesizer.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. He's a master of a big production. That's for sure.

Doug Burke:

So another song you wrote with Brenda Russell was recorded by Joe Cocker on his 1997 album Across From Midnight, the song Wayward Soul.

Mark Cawley:

Right.

Doug Burke:

Tell me about what inspired this song.

Mark Cawley:

That was typical of Brenda and me. I remember right then at her house with her and we had, again, no agenda. It was after the time we'd done the Tina song and I mentioned that was sort of a learning experience. I think we carried that over and said, "Okay, what do we do today. Let's just do whatever we want. Let's see what happens." Didn't have anything to start with. I remember playing it on guitar and I did a drop tuning of some sort. Probably a D or just drop the E maybe. Playing a sort of a real organic guitar part and Brenda just started singing which is another one of her gifts which she just starts singing and she's got such a great voice. That's inspiring. We started trading a lyric here and there. And it's a really simple song, chord-wise. It's just built off that figure, guitar figure to the point that there are a couple cute stories about this song. My publisher at the time was Windswept Pacific in London and Nick Battle was there. He was a buddy and worked there. Nick heard that Joe Cocker was recording not far away and that they were just looking for one more song. As a songwriter, we love those things when you hear them because it's the 11th hour. They're not tired of something. They're more likely in my experience anyway to love something brand new that comes in the door. So it's another song we thought, "Well, we didn't really hear it as a Joe Cocker song." So Nick from Winslow takes it over to the studio. They heard it, he loved it. Now, he had already recorded a song of Brenda's in the past and we found out interesting things that he likes to hear - you like to hear a female vocal, not someone impersonating him when he heard a song. So he loved Brenda's voice. That helped. The funny part of the story to me was they came back and said, "There's no bridge in this song." So Nick kind of dutifully called me up and went, "You know you guys, there's not a bridge in it. I don't care. But what do you think?" Brenda and I just went, "We didn't put a bridge in because we didn't think it needed it." We didn't try to accommodate anything. They didn't insist on it. We just went, "Yeah, there's no bridge. You're right. Hope you like it." They loved it and did it. It made it in some god-awful movie, I think Finding Graceland or something like that, which was not a good movie. But he's another one. Boy, I heard that voice and lost my mind because as a kid, I'm watching Ed Sullivan and there's Joe Cocker, and there's Tina Turner, and there's Diana Ross. When those people do your songs, they're idols and you just can't believe your melodies or your lyrics are coming out of their mouth.

Doug Burke:

Joe Cocker singing Wayward Soul, to me is remarkable because you can understand everything he says. Sometimes when he sings, you're like, "What the heck is he saying?" Because he just emotes feelings that may be wrapped around a word. But here it's really kind of a straightforward delivery.

Mark Cawley:

It is, yeah. It is. I was proud of it. Just again hearing him, I loved him. I loved singers, so Joe was a favorite. But later years I worked in Sheffield England a lot. I still do go there and do workshops.

Doug Burke:

Oh, that's where he's from?

Mark Cawley:

He's from there, yes. I found that connection. And after being there a lot over the years, I thought I get it. It's a really working-class town, no-nonsense. He was just a pub singer, a great pub singer, and idolized Ray Charles and just nailed it. He was great.

Doug Burke:

Why do you think he was attracted to this song?

Mark Cawley:

Wow, I wish I knew. I never met Joe. I think it could have been a couple of things again. I think it could have been that somebody doing an album like that, they get worn out with everything they've been doing and hearing and something comes in the door that sounds fresh and different. Again, I know he loved Brenda's voice so I think that spoke to him and probably the simplicity subject matter.

Doug Burke:

The song has these sort of Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon-like screams from female backing like whales. Those aren't Brenda, right? Those are-

Mark Cawley:

No, no. I don't know who it is actually. There was a lot of production on that that was very different from ours. Our demo was very organic sounding, pretty much a drum loop, guitar and Brenda. So it was a bit different production.

Doug Burke:

So you write the song, but you're not envisioning either Joe Cocker or this blues guitar, Hammond organ, backing vocal harmonies of females combination? You're just writing is inspired by what?

Mark Cawley:

Just inspired on the day. Again, people like Brenda and Kye, and I've got a couple of other go-to writers, Elliot Kennedy in England is one. They just inspire you and you hope you inspire them. You just kind of start from nowhere in a good co-writing situation. You really start from nowhere in those situations, so you don't envision... You absolutely don't go, "Let's write a song for Joe Cocker because we'd all done that kind of stuff." My personal history is littered with that stuff where once I got a deal, publishing deal, I thought I can write a Joe Cocker song. I can write a Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Chaka Khan. I know that stuff." Every time I did, it would get on hold. I mean, almost every time it would get on hold for the artist until someone else heard it, usually, the artist and they'd go, "No, I've already done this." So we kind of learned a lesson after the Tina song. Let's just write you know whatever comes up in the room that day and see what happens.

Doug Burke:

I like this line, "Some people got money, some people got fame. All I had was confusion calling out my name." That to me sounds like Joe Cocker at Woodstock.

Mark Cawley:

It does, it does, yeah.

Doug Burke:

I think that's what he was attracted to.

Mark Cawley:

I think one of the fun things about that too, I can... Now, that you mentioned, I'm going back in my head and I'm remembering being in the room with Brenda. We tended to write like that. One of us might go, "All I had was confusion," and the other person would yell out the other line. It's like a conversation that keeps going. I think that one kind of went that way if I remember it.

Doug Burke:

"I think we've all had times in life when confusion was calling out our name." I love this lyric. It's important to try to recognize that early and not follow the siren song of confusion.

Mark Cawley:

Brenda again is another one who... She co-wrote The Color Purple for Broadway, the music in that. She's written some amazing stuff. A pretty deep writer. Really, really good.

Doug Burke:

What's it like working with her?

Mark Cawley:

Fantastic. I mean, as I said I've got holy trinity for me. Brenda and I, again we met in that castle situation. I'll just give you a very brief version, but it kind of explains it. So at this Miles Copeland's castle in France, you're there to write with other writers usually for a project and they throw you in a room, they pick a trio of writers, you're in the room all day and hopefully you're going to come out with a song. Now Brenda and I, this was the fun part to me. I needed a break. I'd been in this place for two weeks. Most writers were there a week, but I was signed to Miles Copeland. So I'm there the whole time. And my buddy, Torquil Creevy was in charge of going to the airport to pick people up and drop them off from this retreat. One day I said, "Can I escape with you? Can I just get out for a little bit?" I said, "What are you doing today?" And he said, "I got to go pick up Brenda Russell." I said, "Oh, wow. I love her, but I've never met her." So Torquil and I go and pick her up at the airport and we stop in Bordeaux and had dinner and wine, and just had a great time, and just instantly hit it off like an old, old friend. Then back to the castle, the first time we did sit down to write together, we wrote with another artist named Vinx who was in Sting's band. It just was pure chemistry, just absolute chemistry and it was because I think we brought different things to the table. I didn't do exactly what she did so when she did something, it was a wow factor hopefully for me as well. Especially on guitar, for her, she didn't write with much guitar influence. He just brought something that the other didn't do and the sum of the parts was great and just exciting. But I've always loved writing with her. I wrote with her quite a bit over the years.

Doug Burke:

A song that's in a different direction for you from those two is My Angel is Here, which Wynonna... And I think we all know who Wynonna is recorded. At least in Nashville, there's a Wynonna. I guess there's a Winona Ryder in Hollywood.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. This is Wynonna Judd for sure.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, one of the Judd sisters. You co-wrote this with Lulu and Billy Lawrie and Wynonna recorded it on her Revelations album.

Mark Cawley:

She did.

Doug Burke:

Tell me what inspired this song?

Mark Cawley:

This is another in my mind great story. I've written two books now and the first book has a lot of these stories in its song journey. This one was great because I had lived in London. Back to LA, both my daughters were born. My wife and I just kind of had it with the music business for a minute. I'd lost a record deal. The publishing deal was kind of going nowhere. We went back to her home area of Indianapolis, Indiana, Carmel, Indiana, and I kind of stopped for a little bit. Then I got a call from Torquil Creevy who I'd known through Miles Copeland and signed a deal with that company called Bugle which is Miles Copeland who had Sting then and managed The Police. I was the first writer they signed who was not an artist on the label or an aspiring artist anymore. Anyway, Torquil said, "You're not far from Nashville. Why don't you start making trips to Nashville, which I'd never really done." Because of the connections with Miles Copeland, some of the people I met right off the bat had a connection to Miles's label. Kennedy Rose, they were called. Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy who were terrific signed the Sting's label. They lived in Nashville. So they set me up to write with Mary Ann Kennedy. So I come down from Indianapolis. I rented a house that belonged to Kye Fleming who I didn't know. They just threw these circles. They said, "We can find you a house to set up in, and play, and write." So Kye and Mary Ann were great friends and Kye just came with the idea of dropping Mary Ann off for the writing session. At the time, I'd set up again with keyboards and loops and guitars, and a bunch of stuff that was not typical of a national writing session at the time. Kye came along, and to this day I can remember. There's actually a picture of it we have somewhere. She's kind of sat in the corner and Mary Ann and I were... Kye came a little bit closer and a little bit closer, really. And kind of was having fun and started kicking in. The three of us just had a great time and wrote three or four songs. A couple got recorded eventually. We were writing stuff that's pretty different. But over time, it was Kye and I that really locked together, and we became just terrific friends. Anyway, so we're riding away. And this particular time, everybody was trying to get on Wynonna's next album because we knew it was going to be big. It was called Revelations. Wynonna was a country superstar and another great singer that all of us loved terrific voice. So Kye, and Mary Ann, and I wrote a song called Can't Stop My Heart. We loved it. I thought it was really unique, very cool, a little bit different. We get a call from Tony Brown's office who's like a super-producer in Nashville and label head at the time saying, "We love this song, so Wynonna's going to cut it." We're all on cloud nine, and with that, I thought, "I'm just going to move to Nashville." I'd consider going back to London and something else, but I thought, Nashville feels really good. So I'm thinking, and we're going to start with a really big cut on the biggest album coming. This is great timing. So I thought this is all meant to be, this is great. I get a house, which Kye helped me find, move my family down. Again, two young daughters at the time. We think we're all off and running. This is going to be great. One day we get a call from Tony Brown's office saying, "You know what, we can't manage to figure out the drums on this song. Any idea?" I called him back and said, "Yeah, I used to drum loop. I'll send you the loop." It was kind of a cool complicated loop. I forget who performed it. But I'm also thinking, we're not worried because the best players in the world are here these days in Nashville. I thought they'll nail this. What we heard at the end of the day was they couldn't really beat the demo, they didn't feel. That's what we heard is they could not read-

Doug Burke:

The computer was better than the live.

Mark Cawley:

Well, and also Mary Ann Kennedy is a terrific singer as is Wynonna, but I think Wynonna fell in love with the song, but couldn't really justify trying to beat it or do something. In other words, it just didn't work. We got that call like, "It's not going to make the album. Sorry. We're cutting it, but it's not really working." I'm devastated. We're all devastated because we love Wynonna, but me, in particular, because I'm going back to my wife and our new home and all. I said, "You know what this biggie just fell through." So you've learned that as a songwriter. You have these terrible downs and you got to get over them and get past them and get around them, and just keep writing.

Doug Burke:

Yeah. Or write a song about it.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. Or something, anything, get it.

Doug Burke:

Just to recover, right?

Mark Cawley:

So here's the wonderful part of the story. I have this friend John Cooper who's Bruce Springsteen's live sound engineer, house engineer. He's great. He came up with me through bands. He was the engineer for club bands I had years ago. He coincidentally is working for Wynonna at the time and he lives a couple of blocks from me way out in the country in Kingston Springs outside of Nashville. He called me and he's just chatting with me and he said, "Sorry about that song, bud. I heard your song didn't make it." I said, "Yeah, we're losing our mind, but we're going to pick ourselves up." He went, "Good about the other one though." And I said, "What other one?" He went, "Your other one on the album." I said, "Come on, you're messing with me." He said, "No, no. Hang on." He gets whatever info he had and he said My Angel is Here. He said, "Wy loves that and they cut that a while back. That's on the album, going to be a single." I'm losing my mind. I said, "Just stay at home. I'm coming over." I remember getting in the car and running over to this house saying, "Are you messing with me?" He said, "No, they cut this." I said, "No one ever called us. No one held the song." It's not a typical country song. Lulu as you know is like a legendary British artist all the way back To Sir With Love. She's a legend in England. But man, we were not writing a country song. I don't know how they got it to this day. I don't know who sent it. I didn't and I had the clearest route to her. Lulu certainly didn't. They didn't know how it got to them. Lulu and her brother, Billy Lawrie are the co-writers. Nobody had an idea how Wynonna got this. So we went all of a sudden from like complete depths of despair to like, "Wow, we're going to be on a huge album." It stayed at number two behind Shania Twain forever. It did really well. It was great.

Doug Burke:

So the song is kind of religious, but also somewhat secular. I mean, you don't really talk about a biblical story, and you don't say, God. It has a Christian pop, country-pop feel to it, but it's not overt. Is that by design or was it motivated by a religious spiritual message that you were trying to communicate?

Mark Cawley:

You know what, I did not write that lyric as hard to speak to because Lulu is an unusual being. She's a Buddhist. So I know there wasn't an overtly Christian message there. Wynonna took it. I went to see her tape, her live special at the time which was it was such a great album and so much great stuff. She had a TV special behind the whole album. When I saw her do it, I thought okay, this is her interpretation because she just had a new baby, and the baby was her angel in the song and they actually brought the baby out on stage. He crawled around while she's singing it. I thought, okay, that's her interpretation. Certainly not spiritual. Just my angel is here. This little guy is my angel. I've heard from more people over the years that have used it as a wedding song and about their birth of a child and all that. But I can't really speak to where it came from for Lulu.

Doug Burke:

Well, I would say it's spiritual. The song to me is very, very spiritual, but it's not foundationally based on any individual religion, and that's what makes it so universal and appealing to me. It's a universal feeling that there's more than ourselves here on earth.

Mark Cawley:

That would sound like Lulu especially knowing her, yeah.

Doug Burke:

I really love the break where it really is the concept of faith and the question of faith. It's posed as a question, "When I'm lost and alone, who will find me? Who's there whenever I call?" And that's why people are spiritual, I think. There's something calling them beyond... Well, I don't have the answers. I'm just the host of the show.

Mark Cawley:

I don't either and I'm just - 

Doug Burke:

I'm trying to interpret your song, Mark.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah, but that was a funny one because I do both. I write lyrics and I write music and if there is a song that I did not participate in the lyric, like that was done a little bit long distance. I went to England all the time to write, but as I remember I think Lulu came up with that long-distance a bit. I don't really know, what her thinking was at the time.

Doug Burke:

But she was a Buddhist. That's interesting.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. She came and stayed with me which was hilarious. We lived in Kingston Springs as I mentioned, which is way out of Nashville. We had a home studio and everything. She came and stayed for like a week. And knowing how huge she is in the UK and having Lulu in Kingston Springs and going out to dinner and stuff was just kind of surreal. I don't even know what to compare it to. She was down in the basement of the house with lighting candles and incense and chanting. It was always fun for my girls as growing up in the house. We'd have guests like that and they'd go, "What are they doing down there?" I said, "It's just your belief system guys."

Doug Burke:

Your dad's an artist and I have artist friends.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

And they do artist things.

Mark Cawley:

And they do artists things and a lot of times my kids would go, "Wow."

Doug Burke:

Well, I hope they're better for it.

Mark Cawley:

I hope so. Neither one became a musician. I'll tell you that.

Doug Burke:

Is that good or bad? I don't know.

Mark Cawley:

it's funny because they both went to Belmont, which if I had to suggest a music school in the world right now, it would be Belmont.

Doug Burke:

Yeah. Berkeley or Belmont maybe.

Mark Cawley:

I went to Berkeley for a little bit myself, but Belmont right now is awesome because these kids learn and they go right down the road and intern and get deals. That's right on music rows. So anyway, but they both graduated from Belmont, but not a hint of music.

Doug Burke:

They weren't the inspiration for My Angel is Here, because every time you walk in the room, My Angel is Here. But do you ever sing it to them?

Mark Cawley:

I have. That's one that if I ever do songwriter things, I'll pull it out and sing it. I'm sure I sang it to them.

Doug Burke:

That must be nice having your dad sing that to you, I think.

Let's talk about Day and Night, which went to number one on the UK charts by Billie Piper. I don't know if it's as well known here in the US.

Mark Cawley:

No, not at all.

Doug Burke:

Not at all, but she was kind of like the Britney Spears of the day over there and this does have a Britney Spears feel to it, doesn't it?

Mark Cawley:

She was probably the biggest female pop artist at the time. And I'll give you the background. It's another funny story and very different. I write a lot of different kinds of music and I love England and I was introduced to Elliot Kennedy who's become a lifelong friend like Kye and Brenda. He's my third part of the writing trinity for me. He's an incredible producer. He does everything. I mean, he co-wrote Finding Neverland on Broadway produced the Spice Girls, worked with Brian Adams on a lot of Disney movies. He's a force of nature. He's about six foot seven, a big northern English guy. We started writing together and I actually signed with his company because it gave me the opportunity to go to his studio called Steelworks and write for a lot of British artists. It was almost like Motown was in the '60s. These artists would come to Sheffield, which is not like London. It's industrial, hours outside of London. They camp out there and they come in the studio and do writing, do pre-production then go in the main studio and do their record and then leave. For me, as a writer coming, I would come two weeks at a time and I might go in the kitchen and Elliot would go this is the band Five or Ronan Keating from Boyzone or all these huge acts at the time. And the Spice Girls even. And go write some songs with them and carry on. So it was really fun. But in this case, I was back home in Franklin, Tennessee and I got a call from Elliot saying we have Billie Piper in the studio and we need a single. We've cut everything else. It needs to be up-tempo, it needs to be sort of different in a typical songwriter fashion. I kind of white lied and said, "Well, I think I got something," which I had nothing. I went into a panic. I thought, "What am I going to come up with?" So I'm pulling out drum loops to stay up-tempo. What really worked was back to my experience with Miles Copeland, I used to pick his brain about Sting because he managed him and spent all that time building The Police and he said, "Sting will go to other countries and immerse himself in the music and let that seep into what he's doing. He doesn't copy it." I don't know if you remember a song like Desert Rose of Sting's. That came from his travels.

Doug Burke:

That was in Northern Africa.

Mark Cawley:

I think, yeah. That was common for him. So my version of that, I was traveling a lot, but not that kind of exotic traveling. So I would listen to music. I think I was playing some Arabic sort of things at home. I don't know how this came together, but I'll tell you how it did in a way. So I'm working it, working it, working and I'm starting to get into a panic because Billie Piper's actually in the studio with Elliott in Sheffield and they're kind of waiting to see if anything comes out of me. Nothing's happening. I got in the car and thought, "I'll go to the grocery. I got to get out and you know do something else." So as I'm driving just not very far, a melody came in my head, which was like kind of like... a really kind of foreign-ish something. I don't know what it was. Not foreigner but foreign-ish.

Doug Burke:

Arabic sound kind. Middle Eastern.

Mark Cawley:

Middle Eastern is the best. That's the best description. That's what I've been listening to and sure enough, it crept in. It spooked me. Most songwriters have this experience. You go, "Wow, this is really fully formed. I must have stolen it or I must have just heard it or something." And this is back before iPhone, so I called my phone and left a message and sang it. All the time, I'm in the grocery sing and I thought I think I just come up with this. I think I'm good. I'm good with it. I ran home and put it down, I think with a drum loop and with some chords. Just really basic. Emailed it to Elliott. Elliott emails back and goes, "We love it. We're on it." They completed it from there. Billie sang it, it debuted at number one.

Doug Burke:

Wow, how's that feel?

Mark Cawley:

It was just crazy stupid. England's my second home and to have a number one there happened like that just was awesome. It sold great. It debuted at one. I mean, it just couldn't have gotten any better.

Doug Burke:

Do they have number one parties in England too?

Mark Cawley:

Well, as I remember, we did. I wasn't with them at the time, but it was over the next trip that I...

Doug Burke:

They had it without you, huh? They didn't like the songwriter.

Mark Cawley:

They probably did. But we did have a mini one, I remember when I finally got over. It was fun. Because I went over with my kids for what turned out to be Elliot's wedding later and the song was high in the charts. It was a big deal there. That was a good dream.

Doug Burke:

Did Billie Piper sing the song there at the wedding?

Mark Cawley:

No, she didn't. But Brian Adams sang.

Doug Burke:

Did the Spice Girls or any of his other acts?

Mark Cawley:

No, Brian Adams sang at Elliot's wedding which is great. He had everybody standing up singing Heaven and those big Brian anthems. It was great. My girls danced with them. It was fun. That's a whole nother story. Day and Night was a fantastic experience. The only bummer was they were ready to break her in America and like you pointed out correctly, she's like Britney Spears and she was actually later on Doctor Who for years. That's how people here know her. But they were ready to break her here and she said, "I don't think I want to do it. I don't want to put the energy into America. I think I'm going to act." So we were all bummed because we thought she could be big in America.

Doug Burke:

Yeah. She made a career change choice. She didn't want to be a pop star anymore. She went out on top with your song at number one.

Mark Cawley:

I wish she'd broken America. It would have been fun.

Doug Burke:

So this song has the sort of classic night, right, light rhyme sequence which-

Mark Cawley:

Yes.

Doug Burke:

But you make it unique. Did you write the lyric or just-

Mark Cawley:

I did not write much of that lyric. I remember I wrote some of it, but I think they had quite a bit of it sort of formed looking for a home. Elliott can do anything. At the time they were a bit of a production factory like I mentioned Motown, but to this day there are millions of these where you bring the artist in, you get together with a couple of people and a programmer. That's how they operated.

Doug Burke:

It's a hit-making machine.

Mark Cawley:

They were hit-making machine. They still can be. They still do a lot of great work there. I think Elliott wrote most of that lyric as I remember. And Billie Piper may have kicked in a little bit.

Doug Burke:

Let's talk about a song that Taylor Dayne did called Dance With a Stranger.

Did you write this for her or was this...

Mark Cawley:

No, this is hopefully another good story. You and I were talking about the value of stories and this is a funny one. I write on my own a lot and I certainly did it that time because I didn't know that many co-writers. I wrote it on my own, demoed it at my house with a great singer from Indianapolis named Duran. Very great soul singer. So back to my mentioning just signing with Miles Copeland's company and my friend Torquil Creevy, I'd done the song Torquil loved it. He and I were out in LA to meet different people and do different stuff. He said, "You know what, Tina Turner is looking for a song for the greatest hits." Now, this is way before the one that eventually got recorded by Tina. This is Tina right at the height of everything, the greatest hits coming. He said we're looking for one song for a single from the greatest hits. Everybody in the world is trying for this song. Torquil, God love him, he goes, "Look, I'm just going to go over to Capitol Records and knock on the door. I think I know somebody and I'm just going to leave this..." It was probably a cassette. I think it was a cassette. So I'm going to leave the cassette with them and I thought, "Well, good luck to you. This will be, who knows." We went to lunch and I swear maybe an hour after he dropped this, we're eating lunch and he gets a call going, "We love this song for Tina." And said, "Thank you. This is amazing. This is meant to be. It's perfect for her. It's just what we need. Thank you. He and I celebrate big time. I go back home eventually. Everybody involved is thinking we need to be pricing new cars and new homes. This is how songwriters think especially the young ones. You're thinking, "I'm just going to make a fortune." I wrote it on my own. I thought, "This is just magic." And you think it's meant to be. It's just great. I did not write it with her in mind completely, but a little bit, because I knew she was looking. So probably in the back of my mind, there was some Tina there. So I thought this is all perfect. I get home and there's a call eventually, I want to say maybe two weeks later going, "We're not going to do it." Somehow we got to the bottom of it and found that everybody including the producer wanted to do it. Tina heard it and just said no.

Doug Burke:

Can't argue with Tina.

Mark Cawley:

Nobody did. That's for sure. They sure didn't convince her. But you know what I know what it was, Doug over the years is that what I learned is that she was an artist who didn't want to repeat herself. I gave her a song and she didn't want to do it. You're back to the like My Angel is Here story. You're back to the songwriting grieving episode. I'm like, "Oh, man. I went from thinking we're going to make a bundle and it'll be great and it's all perfect. So what am I doing now?" I remember being in my studio and get a call from somebody with a distinctive New York voice that said, "Taylor Dayne is going to call you in five minutes." I said, "Wow, okay. I don't know how you got my number. I don't know Taylor Dayne, but great."

Doug Burke:

You didn't know who she was?

Mark Cawley:

I knew who she was, but I didn't know her.

Doug Burke:

Okay, okay. Oh, but you didn't know her. Okay.

Mark Cawley:

I did like her a lot. She was coming off big hits. So I'm thinking well maybe we're back in the game. Maybe this is really good. I get a call five minutes later and she goes, "Cawley?" which I hate somebody calling you by your last name. I remember that always, "Cawley?" I go, "Yeah." And she goes, "Taylor Dayne." "Nice, great to meet you." "I love your song." I said, "Terrific." She said, "I got one problem. I want you to change one line." And I said, "Then that would be."She said, "You got a line in there about a saxophone," which backing up just for a second was one of my favorite lines in the song. It's an example of like object writing. I used a line like lonely saxophone meaning you're in New Orleans, you throw the windows open, you hear blues coming from a saxophone. I thought it's a very descriptive line, probably one I took some pride in. She said, "You got to change that for me." And I thought, "Okay, I will." And I said, "Can I ask you why?" She said, "Yeah, I don't have an effing sax in my band."

Doug Burke:

The song has a saxophone crescendo at the end it.

Mark Cawley:

That's what I got though.

Doug Burke:

You took it out of the song, but then put it in the recording.

Mark Cawley:

So she goes, "Can you change the line?" I said, "Yeah," being a songwriter and starving. Not starving, but I could use it. I said, "You got it." She said, "Call you back in five minutes." Five minutes was the key to the whole conversation I guess. So calls me back, five minutes goes, you got anything?" I go, "Yep." And I rattled off a couple and maybe the third one she went, "Yes, good. Thanks." And hung up. And did the song. The album went gold. It's the first album I was part of that went gold. It was not a single but did get a lot of airplay, FM airplay. I love what she did with it. I met her years later finally, thanked her and stuff. It was all good. But the phone call was just hilarious to me, "I don't have an effing sax." I said, "Okay." I almost said, "What difference does that make?"

Doug Burke:

One of the things I love about the production is the guitar in the second verse kind of is an echo response of the lyric. And all the instruments that play in that section are sort of featured independently of each other. Give it a listen if you didn't. You need to re-listen to your own song.

Mark Cawley:

Well, you've had some really good insights that some are new to me. So yeah, I will listen to that. It's interesting.

Doug Burke:

The production is really clever in this regard and I think that this is a very lyrically interesting song, because it's about someone who is coming off a breakup, right? Or can't get over a love and wants to dance with a stranger. So it's a real disco-era feel. I don't know that, I think people would just go on Tinder or Match today to dance with a stranger rather than going to a disco. So it kind of has this time and place that's different. Although, I really think that today's people should get out there and dance with strangers in real life rather than online.

Mark Cawley:

It's going to be a while, isn't it? What I love about, Doug especially is my family and I had just come from New Orleans, just a little family vacation. And as I said, I wrote the song on my own and I probably was thinking of somebody like Tina. I know I've written about this episode of writing the song and I wanted to tell a woman's story who was a strong woman but coming off a bad break. And southern, which Tina was. So there's probably more Tina than I remember until I start talking again. I wanted to paint a picture and tell a story about a woman who's surviving a heartbreak by going to a different city in the south. The language is southern, "I ain't got none." There's a lot of language of a narrator in it. I could pick up a little bit on the vibe because I'd just been there. So I imagined her being in a hotel without air con, big French windows you throw open, music coming from the street, and just wanting human contact, not a relationship. Didn't want to be picked up, all that kind of stuff. I really did kind of map out a little short story and I was really pleased with it.

Doug Burke:

Mark, you wanted to talk about some songs that haven't been recorded on this episode and one of the songs you sent me, which I listened to and enjoyed was You Should Be With Me.

Mark Cawley:

Thank you, number one. One of my favorite things I've ever been a part of. So there's always a story. I know your love of stories is from what you wrote to me. So I thought I'm going to pick the ones with stories. So this one, I was living in LA just banging away. I'd been in this band, Faith Band that we talked about in the beginning of our conversation and when the band started not doing as well, I quit. I thought either now or never. I'm going to move to la and just be a songwriter. I'm going to forget bands. I'm just going to be a writer. But boy, I gave up like a pretty good income and everything else to go bang on doors. It was a tough go in LA at first. I finally got a bit of a breakthrough Virgin Publishing, Virgin Music, Virgin Publishing. And I signed a very small deal like about a four-song deal I believe. In these discussions, they said, "Well, we have Roy Orbison getting ready to do the Mystery Girl album," which turned out to be his last album. I thought I love Roy Orbison. I'm ready for this one. So I wrote that song, You Should Be With Me. And complete with a Roy Orbison vibe in my mind, the lyric, the melody, the guitar line, everything about it. Did a pretty rough demo. Eventually, I get a call from Virgin going Roy loves the song and said, "We've even heard he's carrying it around in his briefcase all the time." He carried a briefcase to and from. Now, here's another one of these I'm in heaven. I go, "Well, there's my man. It's meant to be. I thought it was a great Roy Orbison song. Jeff Lynne is doing the album. I love Jeff Lynne. I was like, "This is just perfect." Now, some of this is sketchy to me, but as I remember I'm waiting to hear whether they do it, where they are. They're doing the Mystery Girl album and time's moving on a bit. What I remember is waking up one morning and turning on the Today Show in my apartment in LA and seeing the dates underneath the picture of Roy, traditionally when somebody passes away and I went, "Oh, no." I lost my mind for a minute. I recovered my mind enough to call Virgin and go, "Did he record the song, guys? Do you know?" And they said, "We don't know, but we'll check." And they came back later and said, "The best of our knowledge is some track done, but no vocal. So no way.

Doug Burke:

Oh, love to get a hands-on that.

Mark Cawley:

That is my biggest one that ever got away story because I loved him. I know he loved the song. It just never turned up.

Doug Burke:

I'm going to find out if it exists.

Mark Cawley:

If you can, find it, yeah.

Doug Burke:

I think I have a way to do that, Mark. Let me file back with you on that one.

Mark Cawley:

I could be absolutely wrong. I did hear that they cut some version of a track or they're working on it or something, but definitely, he never sang it.

Doug Burke:

So Mark, if Roy Orbison couldn't do this song, even though you wrote it with him as an inspiration, what voice would you want to record this song? I know there's no voice like Roy Orbison's.

Mark Cawley:

Well, my two picks were always Raul Malo of The Mavericks who really sings in that style and nails it. The other at the time was Dwight Joachim.

Doug Burke:

Oh, I like both those choices.

Mark Cawley:

Raul Malo to this day... I'm going to get him that song somehow. I don't know him, but I have friends that do. I would love to have him do that song. I think it suits The Mavericks as well, but certainly him, his solo stuff. Those would be my picks. I always thought it would get recorded and it has been pitched, but it's been toyed with but never used.

Doug Burke:

Jon Bon Jovi because he's trying to make a natural turn.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. I know he's done stuff here.

Doug Burke:

I don't know. Let me think about that. I'm the host. I'm not the inspiration, you are.

Mark Cawley:

No, you are now the publisher. Go and get that song cut.

Doug Burke:

But I do know who should sing this song, What Would Lennon Do? And that's Ringo Starr. and I actually, I got it sent to him. We'll see if he does it, but let's talk about this song because I love this song.

Mark Cawley:

Thank you. I heard you do. Thank you for your enthusiasm and pushing it as well, man.

Doug Burke:

So tell us about this song.

Mark Cawley:

Boy, this is a love story. I hope it ends up with a great happy ending. As writers do, and I'm sure you've heard, sometimes you have instruments and the old adage is you think there are no more songs in him. So you sell a guitar, you trade a guitar or something. And I thought I've never had an Epiphone and I'm a huge Beatles fan, and certainly a Lennon fan. I have lots of pictures of their instruments. I thought I should just get that blonde Epiphone Casino that Lennon played in the heyday of the Beatles and Harrison had one as well. They're not expensive or anything, they're Epiphones. So I got one. I did not sit down to do anything other than just playing with the guitar and Beatle chords came out. I mean this progression that I thought, "Oh, man. This just sounds like Lennon or something." I could get superstitious and think, I'm just channeling this from some weird place because wow. I came up with a chord progression, I absolutely loved and was different than anything I'd done. I'm a big Beatle fan, but I'd never written a song that evoked them so much like this thing.

Doug Burke:

So Mark, for our listeners what Beatles songs have that Epiphone sound that they'll immediately recognize when you name the song?

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. I mean everything through the Revolver album, Rubber Soul album, they used Epiphone so much. Especially in the beginning because before they could afford more expensive guitars, Epiphones were sort of moderately priced and available in England. So if you look at early Beatle pictures right up through Revolver in those albums, they're always using those guitars. Others too, but primarily that Epiphone Casino.

Doug Burke:

Is there a particular song that you think of that defines the Epiphone sound?

Mark Cawley:

Oh, man. That's a tough question.

Doug Burke:

Because when I heard this, I was like, "That's a Beatles guitar." I know what you're talking about.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. I don't know if there's a particular song that evokes it, but what I did was something I'd never done before exactly. When I write with Kye and I write lyrics, but when I write with Kye, she's the lyricist. I'll do the music in the middle.

Doug Burke:

This is Kye Fleming, the national songwriter hall of fame member.

Mark Cawley:

Yes. And bless her because we have a relationship now where she's not interested in writing really, but she goes, "If you've got something I'll listen and we'll do it, if I love it." So neither one of us is writing a lot at the moment. We're doing other things, but she has been that way with me including something brand new we've done. But back to this one. So I write it and I got the melody and I got the chords. I thought this feels like such a great Beatles song. It just feels like Lennon or something. I don't know what. I did two things that I had never quite done. I called Kye and told her it was coming and I said, "The only clue, I'm going to give you, I don't know what song this is." I didn't have the title. I didn't say this should be about John Lennon even. I just said, "Man, it feels a great Beatle melody-ish." I said, "The only thing I can tell you is think of those Lennon lyrics like the kind of the double talk, the I am you and you are me and we are we. Some of the lyrics he wrote had that sort of feel to them. Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can win that can't be won. That sort of Lennon vibe. I said, "That's all I'm hearing. I don't have anything else." But what I did do is one of my best buddies is Bob Britt who may come up again today in our talking songs. But Bob is now Bob Dylan's guitar player. He was the Dixie Chicks band leader. He's played with everybody. Delbert McClinton. He's just won a Grammy this last year for producing Delbert. He's my favorite guitar player in the world and a great friend. Rather than send my rough, which I still have, I went to bob and said, "Could you just do this up a little bit more, George Harrison like? You'd really nail this guitar line I have in that sound." Bob knew it inside out, did another bit of a rough demo, rough drums, and made the guitars more in that vein. And then I sent it to Kye and waited, which is what you have to do with Kye. And I thought, "I don't know if she loves it. I don't know what we got here." She started calling me. And when I absolutely love this, I'm on it. I'm working on it. As I remember, pretty soon after she just sent me the lyric and said, "What about this?" And I just lost it. This is just great. It epitomizes the era, what if all we need is love is true is in the lyric. I thought it was just a brilliant match. So that and Dancing in My Dreams has been my favorite Kye experiences. I've had many with her, but she just blew me away with that lyric and that's Kye. That's her view of the world.

Doug Burke:

For me, when I heard the song not only did it sound like a Beatles song or inspired by the Beatles. But the message of the Beatles as a group and John Lennon in particular and imagine the song that he wrote after they broke up, which is referenced in this and his message of peace, and all you need is love. Such a simple message has kind of been lost in today's world. We need to remember it. So it's really timely for me, emotionally, which I like about your songwriting is it touches emotional chords. And you do this in the melody a lot. I don't know where you find it, but you find emotional messages in the melodies that you write.

Mark Cawley:

Thank you. That sure is something to shoot for me. I'm still at school especially being older and haven't done it in a long time. If it doesn't move me, don't have a use for it, really. Same with Kye. I've actually sent Kye stuff before. She goes, "Yeah, I'm not quite getting it." So I go, "Okay."

Doug Burke:

So that's it?

Mark Cawley:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

I'm always searching for the answer to the question of when a song is done or how do you know that it's it? I guess you hit it. It's like that feeling of moving you.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah, if it's not there then you either keep working or you move on to something. For me anyway, for sure. Don't get me wrong. I've had a number of cuts too that weren't songs that sent chills up my spine, but they got cut by somebody and that's part of your journey. But the ones I love are the ones you just get a chill, totally. As you're doing it, you just know it's right.

Doug Burke:

Let's talk about that Bob Britt enhanced song, this Father's Prayer that you wrote.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah, thank you. It's a pretty simple story. My oldest daughter was getting ready to get married. This is one I for sure didn't think what artist is going to do this. It didn't enter into my thinking ever. It still really doesn't. I thought I need to just write how I feel about her and what I wish for her, really. And that's what that song is. Again, I went to my buddy, Bob. I play guitar but Bob plays guitar. So if I'm going to demo something, I'm going to take over what I'm doing and go, "Can you do what you do to this?" And he always just makes it crazy good. So just two of us basically and a friend named John Eden recorded it for us. I sang it. Bob played guitar and it was meant to be a gift to my daughter. And it was. I gave it to her on her wedding day. It actually has been used for some other people's weddings I've heard now especially in Europe. My German book publisher got a hold of it and started passing it around to someone who does weddings in Germany and Switzerland. So it's been used even in the English language. Weird.

Doug Burke:

So this one is perhaps with a double entendre a little more classically Christian, the Lord's prayer being our father.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

And you referenced that in the song.

Mark Cawley:

I grew up Catholic and I am a Christian, but I will say I'm not a big fan of current Christian music and I don't write it. I really don't write it because I don't think I know how to write it. I think I believe... How do I put it? I have a great friend, John Hartley who's a huge Christian producer and writer and he's always trying to get me to do these great Christian projects and he said, "Because you are a Christian." I said, "Yeah, but I don't resonate with the music. I resonate with old hymns." So yeah, it's in there, certainly in the message and in my thinking for her. And her grandmother was a devout Christian as is her mom, my wife. So the message is pretty clear in there.

Doug Burke:

Well, if you were raised Catholic, you probably had to say Our Fathers like a lot.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

This is you being a father talking to your daughter about the Father's Prayer. And the father in the lyrics you sent me is capitalized meaning it's a reference to God, our Father.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. As you said double entendre probably. It's me, and it's the father, Father.

Doug Burke:

Oh, you'd like to have your daughter think of you in all caps. Good luck with that, Mark. Most dads have given up on that one, by the time they're at their daughter's wedding until you have to pay for the band and the food.

Mark Cawley:

My really quick joke with that story is like over the years, I would go work with somebody while my girls are growing up. The best one was the Spice Girls. They were huge Spice Girls fans when the Spice Girls came out. I took them to see the band. I didn't know the band at the time. I go back to England, a year or two later and I work with the Spice Girls for a week. Came back, and went, "Girls, you're not going to believe this. I brought you their autographs. I worked with them for a week." And they were both like, "Ah, we're so over them. We're over them like two or three years."

Doug Burke:

Who were they on to?

Mark Cawley:

I don't know at the time.

Doug Burke:

You don't remember?

Mark Cawley:

Oh, yeah. John Mayer probably. John Mayer.

Doug Burke:

Okay. Because Spice Girls are yesterday, John Mayer is today.

Mark Cawley:

They shut me down that fast. They go, "What? Oh, no. No thanks."

Doug Burke:

So you wrote a song for your daughter about it called this Father's Prayer.

Mark Cawley:

Yes.

Doug Burke:

So who would you like to record this song, Mark?

Mark Cawley:

Wow, it always seemed to me like it would be a good country pitch and it would have to be obviously, for like a Tim McGraw, somebody old enough to have a kid.

Doug Burke:

Yeah. I was thinking of Brad Paisley.

Mark Cawley:

Brad Paisley would be good. Blake Shelton even. Somebody that age with kids.

Doug Burke:

Yeah. You have to be a father, right? Can't be Jason Aldean.

Mark Cawley:

That one I've played before life especially sitting around with other people and Kye always goes that's my favorite song you've ever been a part of.

Doug Burke:

Really?

Mark Cawley:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

Wow, that's interesting. She's got a good ear too.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah, she does. She's got a great ear.

Doug Burke:

All her number ones.

Mark Cawley:

Yep.

Doug Burke:

So Mark, thank you so much for being on the show. You've got two books out. You've got Mark Cawley Song Journey available on Amazon. A hit Songwriter's Guide Through the Process.

Mark Cawley:

Yeah. That first one is kind of my story plus the coaching I do. I coach writers all over the world. It's the coaching lessons, but it's my own anecdotal teaching. The new one is a journal literally with little bits in every day to direct you to something to do, to write, to read, to find a YouTube video. Something about your songwriting every day, but in journal daily form.

Doug Burke:

And what's that called?

Mark Cawley:

That's called the Daily Song Journal. The first one is Song Journey.

Doug Burke:

And both are available at an Amazon store near you?

Mark Cawley:

Yep.

Doug Burke:

Okay, cool.

Mark Cawley:

Thank you.

Doug Burke:

I want our listeners if you're interested to go buy that to help our songwriters out.

Mark Cawley:

Yes, thank you.

Doug Burke:

Is there anything else you'd like to promote, talk about?

Mark Cawley:

I'm applauding you for talking about... I know you're talking about with other writers as well of songs they love that didn't get cut, which is close to songwriters' hearts. It's great. Great to give them life again, talk about them.

Doug Burke:

Well, that's what we're here to do at Backstory Song. I have to thank DJ Wyatt Schmidt. You can listen to his recordings. Follow him on Twitch and you will see him live. I've listened to some of his recent shows, they're just killer. And our social media director, MC Owens, thank you for all the work and all the followers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and Pinterest of Backstory Song. And especially we need you to follow us on Spotify and Apple iTunes. Please subscribe to our episodes so that they can get played and our songwriters can get heard. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mark, for coming on our show.

Mark Cawley:

Thank you, Doug. Appreciate it.