Scott Womer (Song City, Ink26) – An Xperience Interview

By Rob Smittix.

RRX: So tell us about all of these big things you’ve got going on.

SW: Focusing on all the big things, right?

RRX: Song City has been around for quite some time …

SW: Yeah, we are going into our fifth season. So … five years.

RRX: And how long have you been doing Ink?

SW: This is the third year for the Ink Songwriting retreat. We did one in ’23 and ’24, we took ’25 off, and we’re back in ’26 with it. So, this is Ink26. It’s a 4-day, 3-night songwriting retreat. We use Silver bay, the big YMCA camp in northwestern Lake George.

RRX: Okay.

SW: It’s this huge camp; they’ve got huge hotels all the way down to little 4-person family summer cottages they can rent. You know? We have a place called Oak Cottage, which is not at all a cottage; it’s more of a lodge that sleeps 14 or 15. Multiple floors, decks all over the place … really beautiful, just perfect. So, we rent that for the four days. There’s plenty of room for everybody to sleep. Huge living room, big fireplace … that’s our home base when we’re there. That’s where we’re sleeping, eating, and co-writing, that kind of stuff. But the great thing about going up in October, beyond the colors and being right on the lake, is there’s nobody up there. Spring and summer are their big season.

RRX: Of course.

SW: They’ve got so many buildings there, and it’s wonderful for songwriters. One day they can go to this beautiful, huge auditorium and set up on the stage with a baby grand and write. And then the next day they might be in a little stone chapel with pews or one of the old rustic cabins or just go down to the lake docks. There’s so much variety. I really embrace the idea of what it looks like for a room or a scene to be a co-writer. The way we write in a cathedral is different from the way we write in a cabin. You actually begin to take on in your writing the atmosphere of the physical places that you are. 

RRX: I’m a songwriter; I write lyrics and play a lot of instruments poorly.

SW: (Laughs) Me too.

RRX: But … I write a song almost every day, lyric-wise.

SW: Wow, that’s great.

RRX: It’s not like I always complete it that day; maybe I’ll just do a verse or something like that. I only bring this up because a retreat like this for someone like me would be awesome. It would be great to get away from the city that surrounds us, get out to the wilderness, and put your feet on the ground. I think with someone like me, the lyrics would be so much different, and the song would come out exactly like the surroundings.

SW: It’s interesting – Rick Rubin, the famous producer, has kind of become music’s guru right now. He sits and pontificates on different parts of art, and he wrote this great book called “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.” If you haven’t read it, I would read it; it’s brilliant. For the first couple years, we actually gave that book as part of the package for the retreat. This year we’re giving the writer Jeff Tweedy from Wilco’s book “How To Write One Song,” and it’s a really practical book. Where Rick Rubin’s book is very philosophical about art and music, Jeff Tweedy’s is about exercises that you can use to help you in your writing. It’s a very practical handbook. We used to use Rick’s, and he’s very much about taking time to get out and to walk and to discuss things. He talks about picking seeds: you’re just out there not really thinking about it; you’re just grabbing thoughts, ideas, pictures, and melodies. Then go back, sit down, and begin to arrange things. So we do morning walks that are mandatory. After we have breakfast, we take morning walks either by yourself or with others, maybe by the lake. We breathe and pick up the seeds of ideas. Maybe talking to a co-writer about different things to plan to write about or whatever. Then everybody spreads out for the rest of the morning to any of these locations, either by themselves or with somebody else, and works on writing. Then we come back, and there’s lunch. Melanie O’Malley, who runs O’Malley’s Oven in Troy, is up there for the entire four days and does all of the cooking; it’s all homemade and just amazing. She grew up in a musician family; her father’s a luthier, makes guitars … so she knows that whole scene. She loves being up there. We all meet and have a big dinner together at the table and talk. And then some nights, maybe in the evening, we’ll have discussion time about things that they are thinking about or want to talk about as a group. Sometimes they’re playing stuff they’ve written before, and on the final night they play stuff that has come out of the week so far. We even do bonfires, you know? 

RRX: It’s all very inspirational. Just staring at a fire in general will get you thinking. The sky and the stars up there; just stare out, and thoughts can just come. So at the end of the journey, do you showcase what you’ve done for the week? 

SW: Yeah, in a sense. That happens in two different ways. On the final night of the retreat, we sit down, glass of wine or whatever, fire in the fireplace, and we go around, and everyone plays for each other … and it’s usually not necessarily 100% finished work at that point. They maybe got the majority of the song done, and they’ve moved on to another song they’re working on. Maybe they’ve collaborated with somebody else … so you never know, but they’ll go through and play what they’ve had so far. Then two months later, on December 10th, we will do a showcase at The Waiting Room in Troy, where Song City is. At that point, they will have had a chance to go home and finish it all up. Then we’ll do a full production of all 10 writers in completed form of versions of the songs that came out. It’s kind of the final recital. 

RRX: How does one apply to be a songwriter for the next one? 

SW: I think it’s between June and July that the applications are out there. Just go online to songcitytroy.com/ink; there’s a fairly simple one-page application. It talks about your past experience, what you’d like to get out of it, gives a couple links for songs that you’ve written, a place for lyrics, and a description of yourself. It’s a fairly straightforward application. All of the applications come in over a month, and I’ve got a selection team of six people (it changes each year). I send them all of the applications, and they send me back their recommendations, their top 10. Once we compile them, we look at “do we have variety?” Then it’s a matter of not just looking at the individual, but here are 10 people with genre diversity. 

Congratulations to Naava Wilson, Lily Lothrop, Emily Pinkerton, Elizabeth Conant, Arbor Mae, Josh Robin, Dave Womer, Matthew Klane, Mark Shipley, and Lucio Barbarino for being picked for Ink26.

Join us at the next Song City: Thursday, September 10th at The Waiting Room in Troy with performers Madison VanDenburg, Lucio Barbarino, JB!! aka Dirty Moses, and Mama Jean.