Every songwriter has an intrinsic urge to share his music. But it can get really dicey if stage fright prevents them from playing.
Rob Heath, a songwriter for Glen Campbell Music and Criterion/Atlantic has written several Top 40 songs.
One company even tried to shop him around as an artist, but Heath’s stage fright prevented him from playing live.
“It was fear of failure,” says Heath in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner.
Now in the process of recording his fifth album, the Edmonton-based songwriter has shelved his agitation and is the featured guest at LB’s Songwriters Acoustic Showcase tomorrow night.
A storyteller in the mould of John Prine, Steve Earle and Harry Chapin, he has tailored his one-hour set to form a vibrant mix of stripped down melodies supported by lyrics rich in imagery.
The intimate solo show will cover tunes from his previous four albums including the jaded Glory of God, the poignant, regretful Broken, and Play On, a touching tableaux of a young man who walks into a bar and is asked by an older widow to dance with him.
Born 59 years ago at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Heath is a dyed-in-the-wool prairie boy.
Music wasn’t a major focus in his life until he hit Grade 6 and was introduced to a recorder. But it was hearing the Beatles sing She Loves You on the Ed Sullivan Show that sealed his destiny.
“That was it for me. I bought a $25 guitar and it became the one love that never left.”
Strictly self-taught, “I’d play five seconds of a record and then pick away at the guitar, and then I’d play another five seconds and pick away again.
“Even then I was more interested in writing music than playing for others.”
Indulging a secondary passion, Heath also completed a political science degree at the University of Alberta.
But he had to pay the bills while shopping his work as a songwriter.
“I started a book publishing house for public service books and it’s paid most of my bills.”
Decomposing and Play On, two pop-rock albums, launched his career in the eighties. Up until that point, he’d been strictly a melody writer. But in writing Play On’s title track, he realized the power and emotional impact of good lyric.
While a gun-for-hire at Criterion Music writing for other artists, he travelled to Los Angeles and Nashville four or five times a year where he was put in a room with other songwriters cranking out songs.
“Ten years in Nashville taught me a lot. Those groups know what they’re doing.”
But in 2002, Heath decided to stop looking for publishing deals. Any delusions of grandeur had long ago departed and he wanted to focus on writing tunes that meant something to him.
“I didn’t break through the Nashville culture and I didn’t have much success in getting others to record my songs.”
Heath is modest. His accolades have included a Canadian Radio Music Award for songwriting and an award for New Folk at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, an honour that has him stepping into the shoes of Lyle Lovett, Shawn Colvin and Lucinda Williams.
Over the years his music has evolved from pop-rock to folk, country and roots. And now it’s shifting back to its original roots with a more soulful vibe.
“Now my songs are all over the map,” he says.
Superstition has an R & B vibe. Glory of God, a political tune with a heavy percussive element brings to mind the mid-East, and then there’s No Reason to Complain, an up-tempo number penned 20 years ago that has finally found its niche.
One number with political overtones, What If They’re Right, was inspired after Israeli soldiers accidentally shot a Palestinian boy, and is a cry to stop the circle of violence.
True to his composing passion, Heath also runs a songwriters’ circle that has infused Edmonton’s songwriting scene with a certain vibrancy.
Since the mid-90s, once a month, Heath opens up the doors to his home and provides a venue for songwriters of every stripe to connect. The circle meets the first Monday of every month. For more information check out www.robheath.com.
LB’s Songwriters Acoustic Showcase starts at 8:30 p.m. No cover.
