You're not going to be a Hello and welcome to the working songwriter. The show where today's best songwriters come together and talk shop. I'm your host, Joe Pug.

Each episode here, we meet a distinguished guest and we ask them to go deep,

on their inspiration, on their process, on the general ups and

downs of making a life in music. So whether you're a grizzled veteran

collecting mailbox money or a frustrated genius

scratching out verses on the back of company letterhead or anywhere in between,

this is your show because ultimately it is what every writer seeks most

an ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.

Hey everybody,

everybody,

Hey everybody,

before we get started today,

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to write me after our

inaugural episode with comments, compliments, critiques, questions, all that. And I

want to address the most common critique I received, which is that the show did not

feature any of the guest's actual songs. And I agree with you. The show would be much better with them and in fact in the

original pilot I recorded I had several of Joe E. Lee's songs sprinkled throughout and it was on balance a much better episode.

Here's the catch. To my understanding, as of yet, there is no way to comprehensively license the use of copyrighted music in a

podcast.

I wish that I could just go to a BMI or ASCAP, one of the performing rights organizations, and purchase some sort of annual

blanket license for the songs of all the artists that I'll host here.

But to my knowledge, that does not exist yet for this medium at least.

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