Honest and Earnest Songwriting with H. Jack Williams

You’d be hard-pressed to find a life, a career or a body of work quite like that of singer/songwriter/composer H. Jack Williams. 

Jack himself credits equal parts luck, talent and tenacity. “My whole life, I’ve gone out and gotten stuff done,” he says. “I think I have unique emotional connections within me, and I’ve always found a way to make that connection musically.” But for one of Nashville’s hardest working songwriters and most in-demand co-writers – and now with flourishing work in film and television – it’s been a one-of-a-kind 40+ year ride with some of the biggest names in Folk, Rock and Country. And in many ways, he’s just getting started. 

We talked about:

• learning about the difference between a poem and a song from Peter Gabriel
• moving from writing through emotions to craft to a balanced approach
• songwriting as a job – does it stop being fun?
• is your song too long?
• make sure you’ve got a great opening line
• playing with line lengths
• “when you start clever-ing stuff up, you loose the emotion”

Download the lyrics to One More Day.