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“When I first heard Frank Trainor play live I was totally blown away by his presence, power and communication. He is one of the most powerful writer/singer/guitarists I have ever heard. It was amazing…” – Elliot Mazer, Legendary Record Producer – (Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, The Band)

Revealed: The secret about my two special “archives” compilations – Frank Wisdom & The Truth and Maverick Solo Tunesmith – All songs featured in both compilations are recorded live-to-tape, acoustic guitar/vocal performances which was my solo presentation mode when I performed at Nashville songwriter venues like The Bluebird Café and Douglas Corner, which I did frequently during those Music Row years.

In fact, I wrote most of the songs in Nashville during a period when I was a contract staff-writer at a major music publisher. That gig required me to focus primarily on writing country songs for the publisher’s purposes of pitching appropriate song material to country music producers and country music acts for album cuts and hit singles airplay at country music radio. None of the songs on my two archives compilations fits that bill in any way and yet I couldn’t help writing these songs and more during this highly productive period of my writing. I was in my early 30’s and truthfully never a true-bred country music guy, but it was also the fact the Nashville’s Third Coast music scene was more diverse than country. I was signed because I know how to write songs. Country radio songs and non-country songs. Add to this revelation the story of my deviating briefly away from music row when a major L.A. record producer heard me “live” and immediately arranged “live” auditions for me in Hollywood with Geffen Records and Warner/Sire Records. I killed at Warner/Sire especially so the auditions were wildly successful. I actually felt more at home in L.A. where they really got me and my unique songs and performance style. That L.A. story I’ll share in a later post, but the problem for me at the time was how to keep my non-country songs separate and apart from my country songs for the Nashville publishers.

The solution was a method known in Nashville as “rat-holing”. A writer can fulfill his obligation to submit his annual quota of copyright submissions to the publisher for the weekly draw of advance payments to the writer, but still keep a personal songs catalog separate by discretely burying those songs, thus the term “rat-holing”. I created these special “archives” compilations in a previous period as a means to an end as I viewed it at the time. I wanted these songs to be obscure, “rat-holed” and thereby protected from the song copyright “pirates”.

But now the time has come for some of the richest and best songs I’ve ever written as a younger songwriter/artist to be finally freed from their rat-holes. I was on fire in those years, blowing rooms away at the Bluebird and beyond on a regular basis and loving every minute of it.

But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain” (i.e. even while living) “in the congregation of the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. – Herman Melville – Moby Dick; or, The Whale (chapter 96/The Try-Works)

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Frank Trainor – Nashville Songwriter Music Row 1987
Photo by Leanne White…jacket thanks to Tony Joe White