We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Skaie Knox a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Skaie, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Songwriting is often considered something one does by way of inspiration. That may be true to some degree, but this past year and a half, I’ve done a deep dive into the craft of intentional songwriting, discovering there are many angles and approaches one can take.

My toolbox now includes ways to stay current via studying hit songs and studying their arrangements, melodies, rhythms and lyrical content. Taking 10 minutes a day to, what I call, “mind dump,” helps me mine the subconscious creative in me which often results in unexpected and usable material. Lastly, my email has numerous “song idea” letters to myself filled with pulled quotes, title ideas and song angles from day-to-day interactions with friends and family, tv/film scenes, podcasts, the news, and just about anywhere I hear or discover something interesting I can use to turn into a song.

How did I JUST start approaching songwriting from this more cerebral point of view after writing for over four decades? This quote from Chuck Close, figuratively (and pun intended) hit too close to home: “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”

I wanted to really understand “the process”. I think I’m on my way now, and I love it.

Skaie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Skaie(sky) Knox. My songwriting career started from a spark. That spark was me, as a 7 year old girl, trapped in a camper van my dad forced my two brothers and I to travel in, driving from city to city to fulfill a dream he never accomplished himself: to be an olympic swimmer.

How does this relate to songwriting? On these day-long trips on the road, I’d quash my boredom by singing songs through the dusty window screens of the camper. The highway noise would drown out my voice, allowing me to project and emote through song to an audience of passing cactus and telephone poles.

One time, after returning home and back to school, I decided to join the elementary choir. My spark was seen and heard by my director, who encouraged me to keep singing.

Eventually, I turned to poetry, then received my first guitar at the age of 11. The spark continued to grow, until I landed my first singing and writing gig with a high school garage band in Orange County, California. Fast-forward a few years to the age of 19, when Geffen Records signed my band to a development deal where we were assigned a producer to create a 5 song demo. Like many, many bands, this resulted in a great experience, but no record deal.

Two years and two independent label deals later (both fell through before the ink was even dry), I realized I was being driven by “the industry” into a musical direction I wasn’t super happy about. On top of that, my writing partner was controlling, unhappy and emotionally abusive…I knew I had to get off “this bus” and find my own way.

I made sure to check inside my bag for courage and earned experience, hopped off at Los Angeles, and started a new musical life. Since then, I’ve written with and for amazing and talented people in LA including award-winning musicians, directors and composers. A couple in particular was guitarist, Aragorn Weiderhold and composer, John Paesano (BAFTA-winning, Emmy nominated composer, producer, conductor, and arranger for film, television, video games and records). Together, they helped me bring to life a 14-track children’s music CD that accompanied my first children’s book, Big Bug Lunch!, illustrated by Mike Gatti (Disney’s “Jo-Jo’s Circus, HBO Family, HBO Family 411)

In 2015, during the recording of a song I wrote for an independent film called “Any Other Friday”, directed by Peter Basler, I caught the ear of David Hilker and Jeff Freundlich, founders of Fervor Records. Their specialty in the industry is era-specific music, where they pitch and place in television and film projects. They ended up signing me as one of their artists, which has resulted in multiple placements in films and television shows including. Welcome to Chippendales (Hulu), Stumptown (ABC), Supergirl (CW), American Horror Story 1984 (FX), The Americans (FX), A Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce (Bravo), and several others – an accomplishment I’m very proud of.

This past fall, one of my songwriting dreams came true when I traveled to Nashville and co-write a song with Ave Topel and hit songwriter, Mark Irwin (co-wrote Tyler Farr number one single “Redneck Crazy”, Tim McGraw’s number one hit song “Highway Don’t Care”, featuring Taylor Swift on guest vocals and Keith Urban on guitar, as well as Blake Shelton’s number one hit single, “Neon Light”).

Sparks were fly’n and continue to do so to this day. I’m currently writing and co-writing with amazing talents and in pursuit of more and bigger placements in tv, film and writing for artists. I’m so happy to still be doing what I love and what I’ve dreamed about doing all my life. I have persistence to thank, along with my amazing friends and oh-so-supportive hubby, Matt.

I’d love it if y’all came to visit my website, www.skaieknox.com. Stop on by, have a listen, and say “hello!”.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

If I could teleport back to when I started writing, I would have absolutely studied the craft of songwriting from an academic perspective. Back in the mid to late 80s, I was taught that going to school for music/songwriting would have stolen my creative soul. Hogwash! The lesson I’ve learned since I’ve turned over that rock, is that I would have gained so many tools to help me craft the best material possible.

My advice for young songwriters is to study not only great books like “Song Building: Mastering Lyric Writing” (Marty Dodson and Bill O’Hanlon); Mastering Melody Writing (Clay Mills, Bill O’Hanlon), Pat Patterson’s “Songwriting Essentials Guide to Lyric Form and Structure”; and Andrea Stolpe’s “Popular Lyric Writing”, but current artists (inside and outside your preferred genres), read, read, read books (with words), and go out and see other musicians perform live. There’s gold in them hills!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

What I love most about being a creative is that I am pulling something out of thin air and hopefully turning that into something tangible, relatable, and beautiful. Something that will last forever. What an amazing thing to do in life, right?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.skaieknox.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skaieknox
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skaiemusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLu1HS-Bd3xloxw88-oSadw