Music
Press
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Songwriter wins 1st place in international contest
BY MANDI IDLE
Local country songwriter Germain Brunet was recently presented with a “Song of the Year” award in an international songwriting contest.
BRUNET
The song Harbour of your Heart, which won 1st place in last September’s country category, oddly took him all of 10 minutes to write. “I felt like this one was a gift because most songs take days if not weeks to write”.
The idea for the song came from the movie Six Days, Seven Nights. There is a scene in this movie where Harrison Ford and Anne Heche are stranded on an island, but find a boat and sail off to sea.
“Right then I thought of the first line, ‘off a coast in the middle of nowhere,’” Brunet said, turned off the T.V. and wrote the song.
As part of the terms for winning the competition, all the winners got their song put onto a CD, and these CDs got sent out to record companies around the world.
You can listen to Brunet’s winning song at www.songoftheyear.com/winners/2004/092004.htm.
Brunet has also signed a three-year publishing contract with Cornelius Companies of Nashville, Tennessee for Harbour of the Heart.
In the past, the company has sold songs to recording artists like Faith Hill and Alabama.
An artist’s main goal in publishing is to get their song recorded by an artist.
If the song is not recorded, it is reverted back to the artist. This is called a reversion clause. The songwriter then can find a different publishing company.
Because the company markets songs for Brunet, they get a percentage of the earnings if the song is placed with an artist.
“They will only take the song if they believe in it,” Brunet said.
Brunet has also won five grants for his songwriting from FACTOR (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Records).
Grants handed out by FACTOR are meant to financially assist musical hopefuls in reaching their dreams.
Brunet received his first grant in 1992, and then got four others between 2002 and 2004.
Brunet has been writing songs for over 25 years, and says it all depends on the song for how long it takes to write it. Harbour of your Heart wrote itself quickly but other songs take a long time to finish.
You can hear his other songs at http://songramp.com/Germain_Brunet. The url is case sensitive.
- The Sudbury Star
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
-Won 5 professional songwriting grants through FACTOR (www.factor.ca). I received my first one in 1992. Received the next grant 10 years later in September of 2002, my third and fourth in March and October of 2003 and in July of 2004 I received my 5th grant.
-Won 1st place in the International "Song Of The Year" contest in the 2004 September round (country category), with my song "Harbout of your Heart".
-Signed a single-song publishing contract with Cornelius Companies of Nashville for my song "Harbour of your Heart".
-Honorable Mention award in the NSAI/CMT contest for my song "The 12th Rose.
In the late eightees I was playing drums and singing in a local Top/40 Rock band but my passion was writting songs. In 1990, one of my compositions called "I'M SORRY FOR ALL THE TEARS", was published by Saddlestone Records of Vancouver, B.C. CANADA. Back then, I thought it might be the break I was looking for but as it turned out, it was far from that.
After years of writing, re-writing, re-writing the re-writes, going to seminars, recording demos, shopping my songs in Canada and Nashville and seemingly getting nowhere, I decided to give it all up...but I guess it didn't want to give up on me. In late September of 2001, I woke up one morning with a melody in my head and just had to get up to write it down...by the end of that year I had completed 23 songs. I have never written that many songs in one year, let alone in 3 months.
Although I have achieved some of my goals, my paramount desire is to make a living as a professional country writer.
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