Teachers
A Steve Seskin concert will have you wiping away a tear one minute and laughing out loud the next. He is an accomplished performer, producer and recording artist who has made 19 albums since 1975 - his latest being "Two Paper Town."
Steve has written seven number one songs that have been featured on albums selling over 40 million copies. The Grammy-nominated “Grown Men Don’t Cry” was recorded by Tim McGraw, and “Don’t Laugh at Me,” recorded by Mark Wills, was winner of both the NSAI and Music Row Magazine’s Song of the Year contest.
“Don’t Laugh at Me” inspired Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) to start a national awareness campaign designed to help schools teach compassion by focusing on the message of this song, and also by working with students to write their own songs (see Operation Respect for more details).
Other #1 hits by Steve that you may recognize are:
"No Doubt About It" - Recorded by Neal McCoy
"For a Change" - Recorded by Neal McCoy
"No Man’s Land" - Recorded by John Michael Montgomery
"If You’ve Got Love" - Recorded by John Michael Montgomery
"Daddy’s Money" - Recorded by Ricochet
"I Think About You" - Recorded by Colin Raye
"Life's A Dance" - Recorded by John Michael Montgomery
"All I Need To Know" - Recorded by Kenny Chesney
Steve is also an active teacher for the Nashville Songwriters Association International, ASCAP, the West Coast Songwriters Association, the Swannanoa Gathering, the Song School at Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, Paul Reisler Song Camps, REO Song Camps and the Founders Folk Festival Song School. He has been on the faculty of San Francisco State University's music department and has been a frequent guest lecturer at the prestigious Berklee College of Music.
Some of Steve’s songwriting collaborators include Jon Bon Jovi, Peter Frampton, Keith Urban, Pat Macdonald, Olivia Newton John, Allen Shamblin, Mike Reid, Don Shlitz, Craig Wiseman, Bob Dipiero, Tom Douglas, Jeffrey Steele, Rivers Rutherford, Marty Dodson and John Scott Sherill. For more information about Steve, go to
http://steveseskin.com.
Pat Pattison is a lyric writing and poetry Professor at Berklee College of Music, where he founded the songwriting department in 1980. The Berklee Songwriting program has since developed into the most sought after songwriting major in the world.
Pat has written three books: Writing Better Lyrics, The Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure, and The Essential Guide to Rhyming. Together they create the core lyric writing curriculum at Berklee. The 2nd Edition of Writing Better Lyrics was released in January 2010, and soon became No. 1 in Amazon.com’s “Songwriting Books” section (where it still hovers in the top 5).
Pat has developed three online lyric writing courses, available through Berklee's Online School. He presents songwriting clinics throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and has also written over 30 articles for Home and Studio Recording Magazine and Performing Songwriter Magazine.
Several of Pat’s students have gone on to achieve a variety of successes in different aspects of the music industry: John Mayer and Gillian Welch are both grammy winners; Click 5 was an overnight sensation pop band in 2004; Rob Giles is an LA based producer, performer, and member of indie pop band, The Rescues; Andrea Stolpe is an author, educator, performer and former Nashville staff-writer; and Derek Sivers, in 1998, started CD Baby - the first DIY music distributor for indie musicians. For more information about Pat, go to http://patpattison.com.
Andrea Stolpe is a Los Angeles-based songwriter, author, performing artist and educator. She has worked as a staff writer for EMI, Almo-Irving, and Universal Music Publishing. Several of her songs have been recorded by Faith Hill, Daniel Lee Martin, Julianne Hough, Jimmy Wayne, and others.
Andrea’s book, Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling, describes how to apply her unique process for developing song ideas quickly, and also for staying in touch with your own artistic voice while writing for the commercial market.
Andrea teaches the Berklee online songwriting course Commercial Songwriting Techniques, and a variety of classes at the University of California's Thornton School of Music.
Her most recent album, Breaking Even, was released in 2007 and features the song, “Kaleidescope”. For more information on Andrea, her music, courses or books, click here: http://andreastolpe.com.
Jimmy teaches Songwriting, Lyric Writing and World Music at The Berklee College of Music. He conducts clinics nationwide, and has helped thousands of songwriters develop and maximize their skills.
He has written three books in The Songwriter’s Workshop Series: Melody, Harmony and The Pocket Songwriter. Both his books and courses are among the most successful at Berklee Press and Berklee Media - enriching the skills of writers worldwide.
His students' works have earned Grammy awards and have been recorded by a vast range of artists on major and independent labels. Many of his former students are staff writers in Nashville or LA and others are well known recording artists.
As a professional educator, he creates on-campus courses, materials, articles, reviews, and scholarly publications in the areas of Songwriting and World Music for all levels of learners. For more about Jimmy, visit http://jimmykachulis.com.
Bonnie Hayes is a popular San Francisco-based songwriter, producer, musician, educator and recording artist. She has written several well known songs including, "Have A Heart" and "Love Letter," recorded by Bonnie Raitt on the multi-platinum and multi-Grammy winning CD, Nick of Time. She has also had songs covered by Bette Midler, Robert Cray, Adam Ant, David Crosby and Booker T and the MG's.
In the 80s and 90s, Bonnie toured with Belinda Carlisle and Billy Idol as a keyboardist and backup singer. In 1984, her pop/punk debut Good Clean Fun was released on seminal LA indie label Slash Records to critical raves and national college airplay. Since then, Bonnie has released three more of her own albums, including Bonnie Hayes on Chrysalis Records and Empty Sky on Beacon/Fuel in 1995. That same year, Bonnie produced the project Steppin' Out, by the Gospel Hummingbirds, which was nominated for a Grammy. She has gone on to produce many records, and currently runs a recording studio in San Rafael, CA.
Bonnie is a sought-after songwriting teacher whose students have won prizes in various major songwriting contests including: the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, WCSA, Soulmaking and others.
For more information about Bonnie or her latest CD, Love In the Ruins, go to http://bonniehayes.com.
Randall Williams is a Midcoast Maine-based guitarist, “cut-capo” virtuoso, songwriter, educator, author, world traveler and musical entrepreneur.
In 2002, Randall graduated at the top of his class from the Royal Conservatory of Mons, Belgium with a degree in classical voice. But that culture of performance required a clear division between artist and audience, which ultimately Randall traded for the world of traveling, writing songs in train stations, couch surfing, then singing and playing on street corners, cafés, and pubs.
For a time he lived aboard a 20′ sailboat that he bought for $800, learning how to sail by navigating his way through the Baltic and North Seas, with only his guitar to keep him company. He wrote a book about the trip, which begins with the story of almost getting squashed by a tanker before dawn one morning in the North Sea. These events and many more inspired his 2008 CD, Praying For Land.
Randall's newest musical adventure is a song cycle based on international bestseller Einstein’s Dreams. He has also written two instructional books for Hal Leonard, and is sponsored by Kyser Musical Products to market their “partial capo” products.
For more information about Randall, visit: http://whereisrandall.com.
Steve Leslie is a Nashville-based songwriter, performer, music publisher and a popular songwriting clinician. He has a jazz/guitar degree from Morehead State University and taught jazz history and private guitar lessons before heading to Nashville in 1992. For nine years he was a staff writer at EMI where he had songs recorded by Kenny Rogers, Mark Chesnutt, George Strait, Darryl Worley, Rhonda Vincent and Neal McCoy, to name a few.
In 2004, Ricky Skaggs' album, Brand New Strings, whose title track was written by Steve, won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album of the Year.
Since 2007 his company, New Modern Songs, has been publishing works by Darryl Worley, Darius Rucker and Rhonda Vincent - all written by Steve. Most recently, he wrote and produced the CD/DVD, Beautiful Love, featuring the new, adult-contemporary artist, Britt Lane. Steve also has two albums of his own - In The Middle and Greater Gravity - and he is venturing into new territory by composing his first musical - the romantic comedy, Umbrella.
Steve has held workshops at Morehead State University (Morehead, KY), Middle Tennessee State University (Murfreesboro, TN), Belmont University (Nashville, TN), Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA), Nashville Songwriters Association International (Nashville, TN), as well as at chapters in Toronto, Canada and Madison, Wisconsin. To learn more about Steve, go to
http://steveleslie.com.
Steven Memel is a Los Angeles-based, internationally acclaimed voice and performance coach, as well as an award-winning actor and director. He is also the creator of The Science Of Switching On, a unique system that enables him to achieve dramatic results with all performers.
Steven has worked with some of the most talented and successful people in the world of entertainment, including Maroon 5, Sara Bareilles, Jesse McCartney, actors Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Isabella Rossellini and many more.
He has also taught classes at Musicians Institute, UCLA, USC and is a regular speaker at seminars, conferences and universities around the world. To learn more about Steven, visit http://stevenmemel.com.
Stephen Webber has played almost every kind of Western music, from classical piano to rock guitar, from bluegrass banjo to hip-hop turntables. For the last 25 years, he has also been a performer, record producer, recording engineer, an Emmy award-winning composer, a recording studio designer, DJ, author and professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
After finishing his jazz guitar major at North Texas State in the 80s, he played and recorded with artists like Mark O'Connor and Tony Trishka. Then he headed to Nashville where he completed his master's degree in classical guitar performance, studied with John Johns at Vanderbilt University and wound up making records for artists from every conceivable genre.
Eventually, Stephen accepted a post as guitar professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. He developed their first courses on music technology and led the team that designed the music technology labs and recording facilities. From there, he ended up at the Berklee College of Music as the assistant chair of the Music Production and Engineering Department (MP and E). He held that position for a few years before demoting himself to become what he really loved - a full-time teaching professor in the MP and E recording studios. Since then, he has been teaching classes in record-production, post-production, 5.1 surround mixing, remixing and in 1997 - spinning records!
Steve’s fascination with the turntable evolved into a best-selling book, Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ. He also convinced Berklee to let him build and install a turntable lab in 2003. Since then, he has been teaching Berklee’s (and possibly the world’s) first turntable course offered by an accredited music college. In 2009 he was commissioned to compose the Stylus Symphony, which combined DJing with a 90 piece symphony orchestra.
In 2010, Stephen’s Music Production Analysis course won the University Continuing Education Association's Best Online College Course Award for 2010, competing against courses in every discipline.
And if his formerly mentioned accomplishments aren’t enough for you, Stephen has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered, CNN Live, and The Mitch Albom Show. He has been a writer for Mix Magazine, Remix Magazine, Electronic Musician Magazine, Audio Media Magazine, and Pro Sound News. He has made recordings with Brad Delp, Eugene Friesen, Maeve Gilchrist, Jamie Haddad, Lindsay Mac, Manhattan Guitar Duo, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ivan Neville, Mark O’Conner, Emily Elbert, Tony Trischka, and the Turtle Island String Quartet. Oh, and he has also performed with Bela Fleck, Emmylou Harris, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Kathy Mattea, John Blackwell, Casey Driessen, Rashad Eggelston, Grandmixer DXT, Mark O’Conner and Mike Phillips.
Click here for more information about Steve Webber