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“What do you mean songs aren’t born in a cabbage patch?”
Until November 11, 2002 that’s exactly what Paula Wheeler might’ve asked. That’s the night she literally stepped unawares into a songwriter’s show. From that moment on she was hooked (no pun intended). With nothing better to do, Paula had accepted an invitation from a friend to attend a guitar pull to raise money for a children’s hospital. At that guitar pull were some of the best songwriters Nashville has to offer. Ironically, that show was not in Nashville, but in North Charleston, South Carolina.
After meeting and talking to the songwriters, Paula initially joined NSAI in 2003 to support the songwriters, not only in their music, but in their legislative efforts as they worked to protect the rights of songwriters everywhere. When the Birmingham Regional Workshop was re-established in August 2005, Paula was a charter member and has attended almost every meeting since. In Sept 2008 she became co-coordinator of the workshop.
Paula has not been writing songs for a lifetime, but she has learned a lifetime of songwriting by studying the masters. Over the past six years she has logged more miles in some months going to see authentic Nashville songwriters perform than some long-haul truckers might log in the same time period. This recreational past-time has paid tremendous dividends in her writing; although she writes lyrics only, she has a keen awareness of how her lyrics have to work with melody and have to scan in a rhythmic fashion. Through this local NSAI workshop, and through other songwriting groups around the country, she has met and collaborated with several co-writers and is rapidly building her catalog of completed songs.
Though Paula loves many styles (and decades) of music, her preferred genre of writing is country because of the story-telling abilities and characteristics.
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