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Travis Dow: Home

"The value of the artist is that he refuses to find a solution and instead revives the fundamental problems. The passionate infusion of his personality revitalizes the problems and renews our enthusiasm, our taste for struggle, therefore our interest in life."

January 13, 2010

“Today’s music sounds great technically: the drums sound wonderful, the guitar sounds so good, the voices are great. It’s sad, because it’s so good and so bad at the same time. It’s boring, and that’s the worst thing you can say about music.” – Bobby Bare

I don’t generally go in for generalizations like this, and of course this doesn’t cover everything you hear on the radio, but taken as a whole over the past several years, I think it’s accurate.
Now that’s just the Top 40 radio we’re talking about, not all of the great stuff happening on the sidelines. Still, why the sidelines? Why can’t the great songs be heard by everyone anymore? Would “He Stopped Loving Her Today” get any airplay in this kind of environment, or would it be “too slow”, “too sad”, or “too country” to appeal to the younger crowd?
I’m not a young songwriter rolling into Nashville wet behind the ears, but I’m also not an old timer. At 38, I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I can appreciate the way that Garth and others brought country together with singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Billy Joel. I can also appreciate writers like Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard or Curly Putnam, who wrote what is perhaps the greatest love song of all time, “My Elusive Dreams”. Listen to it if you get a chance.
I’m by no means a country purist, telling everyone within earshot that this ain’t country and that ain’t country…unless of course it isn’t, and it’s trying to be. “Country”, to me, doesn’t have to have a twang, or a fiddle, or a steel guitar – it just has to be real. Country fans can spot a fake in the first 3 seconds. I think.
It doesn’t have to be about the farm or the ranch or the honky tonk or the hoedown, but if it is, it better be a song about something that people actually go through, and be sung by someone who sounds like they know what they’re talking about.
As songwriters, we’ve all written from points of view that are not our own, and subjects we haven’t lived. That’s part of the creative process, and part of our job is to interpret as well as to speak from our own point of view. But if we’re true to ourselves as writers, those songs aren’t finished unless we’ve got something of ourselves in them. All emotion is universal, but play that song you wrote about the soldiers to a soldier, or a soldier’s family, and then you’ll know whether it’s finished or not.
I don’t think country music has gone into the tank, or that it can’t be revived. If I did, I’d keep writing, but I wouldn’t have any aspirations of bringing my songs to Nashville. However, I still think there are people in town in positions of influence who cringe a little when they listen to the radio, and who live for those moments when they’re able to successfully merge art and commerce into something truly inspiring that they’re actually proud to sell.
I don’t pretend to have the songs that can do that, but that’s the goal, every day. I don’t relate to songwriters who don’t claim to care about success. A writer writes for an audience, and success means more of one. The money just means you can write and play music all day. That’s not success, but its part of where we all want to be. When I say I want to be successful songwriter, it means I want to communicate. Thanks for being on the other end.

Show at Airplay Cafe In Portland Friday Night! - July 30, 2009

Songwriters in the round concert at the Airplay Cafe in Portland. The location is 701 E. Burnside St at 7pm and there is just a $10 cover.
I will be up there on stage with Tim Buppert from Nashville, along with Dan Lowe, Portland Songwriter Association President, and Carrie Cunningham! We'll swap songs back and forth.
Tim Buppert is best known for writing the #1 song "She's Sure Taking It Well" by Kevin Sharp, as well as cuts by Trisha Yearwood, Yankee Grey and Continental Divide.

Country Songwriting 101 - April 13, 2009

I've been getting a great education in the art of country songwriting by performing and writing for Portland's Concrete Cowboys. Even though I've been writing music that could easily be called country since I was 14 years old, lately I've had the ability to get instant feedback on the songs in packed clubs throughout Oregon and Washington. In addition, the feedback from the band members themselves in the first hurdle. If a song doesn't get past them, it doesn't necessarily mean the song doesn't work, but it probably means that it wouldn't work in a rowdy honkytonk. In that setting, the original songs have to stack up next to the covers we play every night. There can be no let-down in energy or quality. The idea is for the audience to not even know that what they're hearing isn't something new on the radio that they just haven't come across yet.
It's a lofty goal, and I have a lot to learn, but the classroom is a whole lot of fun.