MyBlahg:
I have been a singer and songwriter since 1991, during the Gulf War. I wrote a tribute song to the men and women of Desert Storm, which I understand got some airplay on AFN (Armed Forces Network).
Until then, I was just a guy who loved to wail on my Flying V electric guitar into the wee hours of the night or play my 12-string acoustic guitar as the sun came up in the morning.
At that age of 26, I had a tremendous backlog of music-without-lyrics and as many lyrics-without-music. As I began the process of "marrying" pieces together, I ended up with 100 songs to send in for copyright to the Library of Congress. Of course, many of these early songs were personal- much like a diary. However most of them had to do with real life issues and as I began to share these with family members and friends, I realized that there was quite a consensus on my inner feelings and I now believe that I had done a fair job of portraying visualization in my music and lyrics back then. However, my recording media at the time was a jambox, a Radio Shack mixer and a Sony cassette deck. I got tired of spending hours pouring my heart and soul into a recording with mediocre results. I finally splurged and bought a 4-track cassette deck, drum machine and hi-fi VCR for archiving my final dubs. Though not totally satisfied, the final works were tolerable for an amateur like me.
Some of those earlier songs covered such topics as Vietnam Veteran homelessness in "Heroes", child abuse in "Prisoner of War", abortion in "Tomb of the Unborn Children", Middle East peace and Israel in "Sticks n' Stones", gun violence in "The Smoking Gun" and civil rights abuse in "Cross of Fire".
I began submitting songs to various contests, such as local radio station XL102's Song for Richmond Contest and won airplay for "South of the James". I even got ambitious enough to enter the Billboard Music Contest in 1994 and won an Honorable Mention Certificate for "Whisper to a Scream", which was and still is one of my finest works.
Inspired by a novel by James Michener entitled, The Source, I recorded soundtrack music of 20 or so instrumental songs. That's when I realized that I either had something of special ability or was completely WHACKED.
"Hmmm, let's see I'm writing a soundtrack to a book I am reading? Yep, I've lost it!"
By the time I was 33, my love as a songwriter was to emphasize "hard reality" with heavy electric guitars and "melody of the soul" with acoustic folk guitars in my recordings. Around that time, my father was dying of cancer . . . that was my hard reality. However what I was looking for was melody of the soul. I was invited to sing and play my 12-string guitar at Joe Difazio's outdoor patio in Richmond, during the Innsbrook After Hours concert series.
Technically, I am allowed to state in my bio that I have been the warm up act for Kansas, Little River Band and Marshall Tucker Band.
That was then, this is now . . .
I continue to write music although now I am married to a beautiful woman named Meredith and have an adorable baby girl named Ellise (and a dog named Zeus). I have dedicated the last two years to getting all of my analog recordings onto digital media (computer). Though I no longer have music pouring out of me, at least in quantity, I do still find much inspiration in the hard realities of life and in the melody of soul.
I guess you could say I am writing the soundtrack of my life. It is truly a labor of love.
Sincerely,
Seth Talmadge
