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Randy Sharp was a songwriter on Follow That Bird, specifically "I'm a Bluebird". I sent him an e-mail and got back a very lengthy and informative response; here it is.
"Hi Brian,
I'm a fan of the movie myself. I was on staff at Warner Bros. Music and happened to be in Nashville working at that publishing office ( I live in LA) when Warners Films invited a bunch of us "country" writers to submit songs for the film. The songs were divvied up and Karen Brooks and I were given the "Bluebird" number. We all got an early script which gave us the back story and even though there were plenty of rewrites the scene that Karen and I were working on stayed pretty much unchanged. The song needed to be as sad as possible and Karen and I thought it should also have more of an old "standard" sound, rather than a straight country approach....just for the melancholy of it.
Just before we turned it in, I remember getting cold feet about that decision and suggested that we try something more like what they'd asked for (country) but both of us soon realized that we liked what we had, so much, that even if nobody else did, this was our best effort at capturing how a caged, blue, Bigbird would feel.
(<brag alert>) We were told it was the only song in the movie that did not have to be rewritten.
The whole experience was very unusual. Steve Buckingham (another Warners writer) headed the project. All the writers worked together- playing on the demos of each other's songs, making production suggestions, giving feedback. The project had a workshop, school play, feel to it. For a songwriter that tends to go off alone or with a single co-writer to stare at a wall or a blank sheet of paper for hours on end, The "Follow That Bird" project was a treat.
I appreciate you asking about it,
Randy"
"Hi Brian,
I'm a fan of the movie myself. I was on staff at Warner Bros. Music and happened to be in Nashville working at that publishing office ( I live in LA) when Warners Films invited a bunch of us "country" writers to submit songs for the film. The songs were divvied up and Karen Brooks and I were given the "Bluebird" number. We all got an early script which gave us the back story and even though there were plenty of rewrites the scene that Karen and I were working on stayed pretty much unchanged. The song needed to be as sad as possible and Karen and I thought it should also have more of an old "standard" sound, rather than a straight country approach....just for the melancholy of it.
Just before we turned it in, I remember getting cold feet about that decision and suggested that we try something more like what they'd asked for (country) but both of us soon realized that we liked what we had, so much, that even if nobody else did, this was our best effort at capturing how a caged, blue, Bigbird would feel.
(<brag alert>) We were told it was the only song in the movie that did not have to be rewritten.
The whole experience was very unusual. Steve Buckingham (another Warners writer) headed the project. All the writers worked together- playing on the demos of each other's songs, making production suggestions, giving feedback. The project had a workshop, school play, feel to it. For a songwriter that tends to go off alone or with a single co-writer to stare at a wall or a blank sheet of paper for hours on end, The "Follow That Bird" project was a treat.
I appreciate you asking about it,
Randy"
