Desmond Child: Opts for Multiple Offices

When Desmond Child first started coming to Nashville, he often wrote at EMI Music Publishing’s offices on Music Row. It was the atmosphere that surrounded that company that inspired him to think about what he would do if he had his own publishing company.When Desmond Child first started coming to Nashville, he often wrote at EMI Music Publishing’s offices on Music Row. It was the atmosphere that surrounded that company that inspired him to think about what he would do if he had his own publishing company.

“One of the things that I loved so much when I was signed to EMI, was coming down to Music Row, to that little Victorian house, and being in a writing room and hearing another song coming through the walls…and also finishing a song and getting all excited and going to Celia (Froelig, then head of EMI) to hear the song, and tell us it was good.

“I’d never worked like that before and I just loved it. I told myself that one day I would build a publishing company based on that kind of family feeling.”

Deston Songs, which bills itself as The Songwriter’s Company, is the end result of those dreams. With offices in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York and Miami, Deston Songs is quickly becoming one of the hottest publishers.

Though he grew up in Miami, the son of a Cuban mother who was also a songwriter, Child followed his dream to be in the music industry by moving first to New York City, then Los Angeles. He went to Nashville in the early nineties after meeting songwriter Wendy Waldman, who encouraged him to check out the Nashville writing scene.

“At that time in music, the pop thing in music seemed to have gone away. It became the era of G and G – gangsta and grunge. And there was really no room for me in popular music. I started listening to country and realized that this is not really very far from what I do because it’s rock for the most part, it’s blues based. Lyrics that have a moral value. It dictates a story, it’s descriptive, and if you listen to the music of Bon Jovi or Aerosmith, a song like “Angel” isn’t that far away from country music. So I decided to take a trip here and my first writing session was with Victoria Shaw.”

The first day they got together they wrote “Where Your Road Leads,” a song that Shaw recorded that was later recorded as a duet by Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks. Shaw introduced him to Gary Burr and they wrote a song called “Heart Half Empty,” which was a duet for Ty Herndon and Stephanie Bentley. Then he wrote a few songs with members of BlackHawk.

Although he was still living in Los Angeles at the time, a few things in that city happened to make him think about moving to Music City…the riots and the OJ trial, the fires, and then came the earthquake. Child headed east.

“I’ve just been really lucky having been embraced by the Nashville community. I loved it so much, that my life partner and I moved to Nashville and built a house on a hilltop with a gorgeous view of downtown Nashville. We’ve just made so many good friends that at this point we have more really warm, true friends here than in any other city.”

Child opened Deston Songs just over a year ago in one of the old houses-turned offices on Music Row. He is building his publishing company with the songwriter in mind. One of the first writers he signed was Victoria Shaw. Shaw, Hunter Davis, Michael Post and of course Child are the company’s Nashville writers.

The songwriter has writers signed to Deston’s other offices including Sean Douglas in Toronto and Kevin Bow in Minneapolis, Minn. There are three writers in Miami, three writers in Nashville, two writers in Los Angeles and one in his New York City office.

“One of the things that we’ve done differently from the other publishers is that we kind of really aren’t into the real estate business, catalogs or the market share. Because, for a little company like ours, market share doesn’t mean anything because we want to keep it small. It’s about the hand-to-hand combat of song plugging, which is a lost art form. But not in Nashville; Nashville is like one of the few places that song plugging is alive and well.”

Another thing Child is doing for songwriters is sending out a report for every quarter that lists the catalogs of the writer, where the songs were pitched, the date, what the commentary was, and whether it’s on hold or pending. The company also provides a current list of who’s looking for new songs, not only in pop and rock and R & B, but also in country and Latin.

“I have to work just as hard as the creative director. It doesn’t matter that I have had success in the past. You’re only as good as the song you turned in that day. I mean, my name doesn’t help to sell a record – you’d be more apt to listen to it, but there is no guarantee. So I have to get on the phone, and I have to follow through for my own material. But when you are tag-teaming, and your creative director is calling the manager and you’re calling the artist, and my partners in New York City might be calling the head of the record companies, from all sides, we’re conspiring to get this artist. Suddenly it seems like it was meant to be.

“To go song by song, artist by artist, album by album and try to get our songs cut – that’s what it’s all about. We want to build the careers of our writers and our writer/producers. And we also have a publicity company that’s promoting not only the company but the writers. So I think, when people see how successful we’re going to be, the big companies will realize that they will have to compete with us in terms of quality and caring about songwriters.”

Child said that at Deston they don’t try to sign a specific kind of writer out of each city, rather, he encourages all writers to write together.

“You have to have respect for the genre and understand the genre you’re writing. But sometimes it helps to mix genres. If you listen to ‘Nobody Wants To Be Lonely,’ you feel that country heartache in the song. It is good to respect the form of the genre and to be able to write within it accurately. That’s what’s great about music to me. You can mold it so much; it’s in the air. You can’t touch it. You can’t smell it. You can’t see it, you can only feel it. Isn’t that great?”

When asked what advice he would pass on to newcomers to the business, Child was ready with an answer. “I think you should set up the business of songwriting as though it were a business. Get used to investing in your own career or get somebody to invest in it. Have a business line, where people can leave messages for you, a fax line, a fax machine so you can fax lyrics. Have a system to make professional demos and make sure that your demos are packaged correctly with all of your contact numbers. I get tapes from people who forget to put their phone number on them!

“I think it’s important to be in a music town. I think it’s important to network all of the time and be supportive of your fellow writers. Show up to every person’s showcase and they’ll show up to yours.”