Gary Powell, Composer/Producer

by Gary Powell

If you were born into the world, as I was, with Walt Disney Records as the dominant deliverer of family entertainment, then you will cerainly enjoy reading Mouse Tracks written by Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar.

Joining the enormous legacy of Walt Disney Records in 1989, I thought I had a solid knowledge of the record company. I did read stories, recognized names and saw faces in Mouse Tracks that were familiar, like Annette Funicello. However, there were also surprises to me, like, reading about the record mogul Mike Curb’s varied career. The book also recounted stories of old recordings, still fresh in my musical memory from childhood, like, “Davy Crockett – King of the Wild Frontier.” Obviously, the researchers and authors, Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar, spent many hours in the archives and on the phone with the principle contibutors to the record company since its inception in 1955.

I am not an employee of Walt Disney Records, but as a prolific contract producer for the company since 1989, the authors contacted me and asked for a memorable story from my studio, Powell Studio Productions here in Austin, Texas. I won’t give it away, but you can read about the unusually simple technique used to create the singing aliens for “Toy Story Sing Along Songs” on page 185.

Thank you, Tim Hollis and Greg Enrbar, for including my work and studio in your wonderful book.

FROM THE BACK COVER:

“Tim Hollis is the author of three books – histories of tourism and children’s television – all published by University Press of Mississippi.”

Greg Ehrbar, a twenty-year Disney company veteran and a two-time Grammy Award nominee, is a writer of advertising, books, television specials, radio shows, compact discs, and Walt Disney Records Read-Alongs.”

Filed by Gary Powell at 7:08 am under Music Business Insight
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by Gary Powell

Memorial Day is the day to reclaim one of our greatest American values,

“perception becomes reality.”

No, that’s not it! Professional communicators across all cultures and generations have known and utilized this manipulation – every politician, every manager, every promoter. Decades ago, I had several people in the field of public relations suggest that it was time for me to “build my myth.” I could never understand how they could miss the fact that my musical skills and professional life didn’t need a myth. I did, however, have the need to create my own authority. Although this is the truest of American values, no one suggested it to me. The lesson of claiming my own personal authority was finally taught to me at age forty-two! Although there were immediate benefits, it took another decade before it sank in and became integrated into my being. Utilizing our self-determined authority, if we have earned it, is how we; the talented, the educated, the bold and the caring, win.

I did have the need to create my own authority. This is the truest of American values.

Only a few will understand that we, ourselves, are responsible for creating and maintaining our own authority. If learned and applied, each of us can now create a professional life which is less encumbered by the weight of the institutional gatekeepers, and there are plenty of gatekeepers who are usurping, borrowing or hijacking our earned authority. You, the individual, with the freedom to hang out your own shingle, creating your own opportunities while prospering through the relationships of your choice, is the kind of pursuit to happiness which can be traced back to the “Magna Carta” in year 1215, to Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence” in 1776, to the “United States Constitution” in 1787, and to James Madison’s “Bill of Rights” in 1791.

Through this eight-hundred-year-old paper trail, self-reliance and self-determination has become embedded into the American consciousness. By awakening this reasoned argument, which we have inherited through the words of these authors, these liberators, we can define the direction of our own destinies even in failure. I have struggled with and yet still continue the great challenge of creating my own life and identity. Nobody owes this to me. The responsibility rests solely on me. If I fail, let it be a grand and picturesque failure for others to either follow or avoid. Today, I will do it yet again before the sun sets on this Memorial Day, in honor of those who have, for centuries before, fought the good fight. Either way it goes, at my final sunset, whatever I have built or have failed in, will be gloriously mine.

I wish you all a peaceful and healing Memorial Day!

(I took the sunset photo above in Alaska on a September afternoon in 2007.)

Filed by Gary Powell at 2:51 pm under Music Business Insight
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by Gary Powell

Yakov Smirnoff and I first met while sailing together as “Cruise Directors of the Caribbean” in 1978. We were twenty-five years ahead of Captain Jack Sparrow’s appearance. Did we both actually dress up like pirates on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Pirates’ Night? Of course we did, but, in 2008, Yakov is doing it again and in style! This time he and his cast from “The Yakov Smirnoff Show” are singing a parody of my tune, “Pirates of the Black Tide,” not on the high seas, but in Branson, Missouri. Did our earlier Caribbean swashbuckling-midnight-buffet adventures set up this new collaboration thirty years later? Oh, there are too many escapades to tell that we will both take with us down to Davy Jones locker!

Although not a singer’s singer, Yakov has performed several of my songs since 1978. He thinks he sucks. I don’t. I think that when you give him 2,000 adoring fans in his own theatre, tighten the spotlight, and let him sell it, the “almost” part of being a singer is washed away with his sheer and demanding presence. It’s something to be seen and serves as an excellent lesson for young singers to quickly absorb by watching this very real performer.

In 1978, Yakov was a new American. Now, he is a model American as foretold and defined by our founding fathers. In that and in his show, you will see the truest traits of this individual striving to build a life which reflects the strongest and most ambitious vision for himself and for us all. This is the ground on which our friendship is anchored. It’s a friendship of choice, reflection, and unwavering loyalty and honesty – one could say, the pirates’ code.

Sail on my friend. I’m at your rear quarter and you are at mine.

For ticket information and show times, please visit The Yakov Smirnoff Show. On my site you can read the lyrics and story behind “The Pirates of the Black Tide”, Words and Music by Gary Powell and published by Jesmax Music, BMI.

Filed by Gary Powell at 10:17 pm under GP Music & Video Publishing, Jesmax Music, BMI
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