(Image Credit to BMI. Photo with co-writer Hunter Hayes at the "Wanted" #1 Song Party).
In our new exclusive songwriters series, we profile Troy Verges' career and talk about the journey that has made him one of the core writers in Nashville and in country music.
When did you first discover your passion for writing songs and walk us through how that road led you to where you are now?
I got my first guitar for my birthday when I was 10 years old. Pretty soon after that, I started writing songs. I didn't think too much about it. It just seemed like the natural thing to do with a guitar in your hands. By the time I was in high school, I was playing clubs and frat parties on weekends. I was always trying to work my songs into the set-lists in-between the cover songs. It was so much fun to watch a crowd get into something I'd written. I was kind of addicted from that point on.
I moved from Louisiana to Tennessee to go to college, [where I] kept playing in bands out of Nashville, and found myself with an internship at Pat Higdon's company Patrick Joseph Music while I was at Belmont. It was the first time I'd really considered the notion of being a songwriter without being an artist. Working in the catalog room, I got to see and hear all of these super talented writers writing songs and recording demos. Something in me clicked, and I figured out that writing and recording was what I wanted to do. I started co-writing a lot, and ended up signing my first publishing deal with Pat just before I graduated.
In our recent chat with Brett James, he credits you a lot as far as helping get his career off the ground ... talk about the bond you two have.
Brett and I found each other at the perfect time. We met when I was an intern at Patrick Joseph music, and he was a writer/artist signed there. By the time I had a publishing deal, Brett had moved on to another publisher, and his artist career wasn't really working out. Neither of us had much going on in the way of cuts. We started writing together, and we just clicked. We were writing songs that we both loved even though no one was paying any attention to them, but there was a hitch. Brett had come to Nashville after quitting medical school in Oklahoma to pursue his artist career. With not much going on in Nashville, he decided to go back to Oklahoma and finish med school. We'd become pretty good friends by then, and I knew I was writing my favorite stuff with him. So I started going out to Oklahoma City for a few days at a time, and we'd write in between his classes. After a few of those trips, the songs we were writing started getting some attention back in Nashville. Turns out that those songs were the first songs to get cut and become hits for both us. It kind of blew up pretty fast. Brett quit medical school a second time, moved back to Nashville and has become one of the biggest songwriters in the world. We're still great friends, we own a studio together on Music Row, and he's still one of my favorite people to make music with.
What is the most valuable piece of advice you've been given about songwriting over the years?
Be persistent. It's kind of cliche, but it's so true. There are loads of people more talented than me that I've seen pack it in and give up. It's hard to stick it out early on when things aren't going your way, but if this is your passion then that's what you do. I've seen it pay off for people -- writers and artists -- time and again. There's so so much talent in Nashville. It's really insane. You've got to be willing to work for it.
Do you find that you have a routine when it comes to your craft and how you come up with songs or is it always changing?
A little bit of both. There is definitely a Nashville co-writing routine that most of my friends and I roll with most of the time. You show up in the morning, catch up, throw some ideas around and just get to the meat of the song pretty fast. But then there are the exceptions ... the song out of nowhere when you're in the studio recording ... the trip out of town with co-writers ... the song that comes fast in the evening after you've spent all day working on a different song ... it happens so many different ways, and that's part of the allure. You never know where the next great song is gonna come from or how it's going to happen.
What is your favorite part about writing songs?
My favorite part about writing songs is that window of time you get every now and then when it's just happening and you're not thinking about it too much ... great lyrics and melodies are bouncing all around the room, and the song feels like it's writing itself. It feels magical. Like you're part of something bigger for a moment. There's nothing like it.
Who would be your dream cut and/or dream songwriting collaboration?
The truth is that my dream songwriting collaborations happen all the time. I get to write with some of the most talented people in the world, and a lot of them are my best friends, too ... Brett James, Hillary Lindsey, Gordie Sampson, Blair Daly and many others. It's crazy how lucky we all are to get to work together doing what we love to do at the highest level.
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