You don’t need to be a household-name musician to be a hit-maker.
There are thousands of songwriters in big music cities worldwide who pen the hits for the big-time vocalists. Talk about an iffy business. You’re selling words and a melody, some of which could have been scrawled on a barroom napkin. It’s not like handing over money and receiving a car, house or a Ray Conniff record. You’re selling emotion through melody.
But some people have gotten quite good at making stars out of musicians with the chops to strum a guitar but little talent for writing the songs. Sinatra didn’t write a lick, and just about all modern country stars have a rogue writer in their back pocket scrawling out tunes they hope will cash in as the next “Take This Job and Shove It.”
Kent Blazy is one such songwriter. The Nashville songwriter has had 200 of his original songs recorded, 30 of which have made the Country Top 40, while another eight have hit No. 1. He wrote “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” which was the first No. 1 hit for Garth Brooks back in 1989. Blazy, an acquaintance of local country crooner Tim Sullivan, will perform Saturday night at the Henry Strater Theatre along with musicians Cory Batten and Karyn Rochelle.
The show will serve as a benefit for local music school The Stillwater Foundation through a newly formed arts foundation established by Sullivan.
“He’s one of the best songwriters of any generation, as soon as I told him where the money was going, he said ‘I’m in,’” Sullivan said of Blazy in an interview with McCarson Jones on KDUR’s Four Corners Arts Forum.
The Jim and Elizabeth Sullivan Foundation for the Arts will serve as the base to provide its beneficiaries money for music lessons. The lessons will be taught by someone else; Sullivan’s organization wants to raise the money to make art instruction a reality.
“I was able to be a musician because my mother is a singer, songwriter and teacher. She was my first piano teacher and my first vocal coach,” Sullivan said. “As I grew up, they were able to pay for my lessons because my parents were so involved in promoting music in my life.
“I look around and I see so many kids around Durango and everywhere that they’re not fortunate enough to have parents like mine. They have talent, they have the desire to be musicians, to be artists, to be dancers, and they don’t have the means,” he said. “My foundation is about providing a scholarship to a kid so they can study music, or they can study visual arts. My focus is on raising funds.”
While many of these students taking lessons now won’t go on to become professional musicians, the education they are gaining serves as an aid in regular schoolwork while providing the basis for arts education forever.
“If you learn about music, if you study music, and even if you don’t study it past high school, you have an appreciation for music,” Sullivan said. “And you will appreciate it for the rest of your life.”
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
Bryant’s Best
Today: Otto Mobile and the Moaners will play rock music, 9 p.m., no cover, Derailed Pour House, 725 Main Ave., 247-5440.
Saturday: Kent Blazy, Cory Batten and Karyn Rochelle will play a benefit for the Stillwater Foundation, silent auction 6:30 p.m., music 7:30 p.m. $30, Henry Strater Theatre, 699 Main Ave., 375-7160.
