Austin - GRAMMY U: Song Search - Show Us Your Hits!
On Tuesday, November 29, 2011, The GRAMMY U Song Search – Show Us Your Hits! event powered by the IndabaMusic.com social community website took place at the electrifying Gibson Guitar Showroom. Out of 22 total song submissions, five talented student songwriters were selected by judges and Academy members Sara Hickman, David Messier, and Carl Thiel, to perform their songs that night.
The night began with the attendees, contest entrants, and judges mingling and eating pizza from the Austin-based restaurant, Southside Flying Pizza. The event opened up with GRAMMY U Student Representative Uwana Akpan explaining her vision in creating the event. She wanted to give student songwriters a chance to showcase their talent and receive honest feedback to help the student improve their craft. She also stressed how the event was also a way for student songwriters to hear other students’ songwriting styles with the hopes that GRAMMY U members would reach out to those students they could possibly co-write with. The judges discussed the difficulty they experienced in making a final decision on who would be among the top 5. The quality of submissions was impressive!
The night was one filled with potential hits by tomorrow’s future hitmakers! The top 5 song choices were announced one by one. Jeremy Burchard performed first, singing Neither Are You. Next was Ruben Teran with his song Por Ultima Vez performed by fellow University of Texas at Austin (UT) student Taylor Rae. After Ruben and Taylor mesmerized the crowd with their melody, Texas State University student, Renee “Chika” Ofoegbu, sang her song Go Back for the audience. Julius “Sevan” Gordon had the crowd rocking with his pop ballad, Forever in My Life, performed by fellow UT student Gladys. The last winning performance was UT student Tory Tompkins with her song Somewhere Good. After each student took to the stage, the three judges offered fantastic feedback on the songs based on the delivery, word choice, and other song elements.
The judges retreated to their green room to privately regroup and make the grand prize winner selection. While they were busy tallying, Project Manager, Christee Albino gave attendees a chance to win cool free stuff by asking them trivia questions about the GRAMMYs.
After the intermission, the judges came back to the Gibson Guitar room performance area and announced Jeremy Burchard as the GRAMMY U: Song Search winner. Burchard is one-half of the band, Moonlight Social. His winning song, Neither Are You, was originally a duet with his other band mate, Jennica Scott. Burchard was presented with a certificate and received the grand prize package which included being featured on the Texas Chapter blog, receiving an artist consultation with Texas Recording Academy Board member Heather Wagner-Reed’s Juice Consulting, LLC public relations company, and having his Moonlight Social logo and album cover art designed by Dick Reeves Design.
The music-filled night concluded with photo ops of each student performer posing with the judges and Recording Academy staff. Students also asked the judges about how they could advance in the songwriting industry. Each judge’s advice went back to the idea of establishing relationships with other music professionals. Students took heed to these words of wisdom, exchanging contact information with the hopes of working with each other on future songwriting projects.