Songwriting connection made in car parking lot

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Anthony McKenzie made his songwriting connections in an unlikely place, the parking area for the United States (US) Embassy when it was located on Oxford Road, New Kingston.

Although he had been in the business of writing songs since the 1980s, including an unfruitful stint hanging around Peter Tosh in Barbican, St Andrew, it was not until the 1990s when he approached producer Gussie Clarke as he got out of his car that McKenzie made some headway.

That encounter led to a number of recordings, starting with One Away Woman, sung by Cocoa Tea. The man from Clarendon also did the McKenzie-penned Black Magic Woman. Describing the creative process after it was decided that the song would be recorded, McKenzie said: "When him (Clarke) string up the band him call me. Him say sing the song like how me have it and them start play. From that him say cool and is it that."

After that start in the studio, the next time McKenzie heard the song he wrote was when he was walking through New Kingston, and "is a car me hear a tun it up". McKenzie said Clarke had told him the song was sent to radio stations, but he had not yet got his copy. McKenzie did in short order and, on the business side, he got more. "Me get some good royalty," McKenzie said.

Encouragement

Long before getting a royalties statement, McKenzie had received encouragement from his little sister Nancy, who appreciated the poems that he wrote. But it was the car- park connection which bore him musical fruit. He worked at the parking lot from 1983 to 2005 and met a number of performers, often filling out forms for them.

McKenzie names Everton Blender, Little Kirk and Wayne Wonder among the singers he was been around, and is about to release an all-star album on the Hill Side Label he runs with Sergeant Juggla. The artistes performing on the album all do songs with writing by McKenzie, among them Abijah, Luciano, Aarom Silk, Jimmy Riley, Gregory Isaacs and Sugar Minott. He said that he has been on extensive US treks with Abijah.

When he writes, McKenzie said, "me no have an artiste in mind. Me just write it to how the melody come to me". And he said, "Love song come to me easier than a culture tune." The parts of a song some to him in different ways, sometimes the verse first and then "me just fit in a punchline. Sometimes a punchline come to me and me work round that".

If he could focus solely on songwriting, McKenzie said, his output could be much higher. "Some come to me every day, but is not like me pen it every time. Every day me wake up words inna me, song inna me. If me no get up every day and have certain things to do me write a whole heap of song," he said.

"If a man did come and say 'this is your work to write song', is a whole heap a tune woulda pile up."