YOUNGSTOWN – The songwriter round is a Nashville staple.
On any night of the week one can find a group of artists on a honky tonk stage playing songs they wrote and sharing stories about them.
Youngstown audiences will get a taste of this tradition on May 9 when Kirsti Manna leads a songwriter round with Valley natives Leanne Binder and Taylor Borton. The show, dubbed Nashville Meets Youngstown, will start at 7 p.m. at the Smarts venue, 25 E. Boardman St., downtown. Tickets are $10 ($20 for VIP) and can be purchased HERE.
The following day, May 10, Manna will lead a songwriter workshop from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for women ages 13 and up at the same location. The fee is $50. To register, click HERE.
Manna has been writing hit songs for country artists for decades.
The Poland, Ohio, native and her husband, Boardman native Bill Warner, have lived in Nashville for decades, where they have their hands all over the music business.
She is a songwriter who has written dozens of songs that have been recorded by major artists.
Warner works in the production end of the recording process, and together the couple owns and operates LuckySky Records, an indie label.
Manna has been leading her Songwriter Girl workshops for over a decade, although the upcoming one at Smarts will be her first since the pandemic.
Smarts (Students Motivated by the Arts) is a free after-school arts school for Valley youth.
Manna led a prior songwriting workshop there five years ago.
“She was amazing,” said Becky Keck, president of Smarts. “We had 40 to 50 women ages 14 and up at the workshop.”
When Keck asked to repeat the workshop this year, Manna not only agreed but suggested doing a songwriter round too.
Manna enlisted two other female songwriters with Valley roots: Binder and Borton.
Binder is a veteran rock entertainer in the Valley and also operates a studio in Nashville.
Borton is a Hubbard native who has been pursuing a career as a country singer-songwriter in Nashville for about three years.
“I didn’t know [Borton], but my song plugger told me about her,” Manna said during a phone interview from her Nashville home, “and some of my songwriter friends said they have written with her. So I called her and she was excited to do it.”
Each of the three artists will perform four or five songs during the round.
Borton will also perform a solo show at 7 p.m. May 10 at Sundog Cider House and Winery in Columbiana, with Pete the V.
Manna’s Career
Manna is a 1981 graduate of Youngstown State University and met her future husband while attending classes there. The two started a jazz duo that performed in the region for a few years before they moved to Nashville.
It was in Music City that Manna really put her songwriting skills to use.
She wrote country superstar Blake Shelton’s first hit, “Austin,” which topped the chart for several weeks in 2001.
Manna also co-wrote Big & Rich’s hit “Loud,” which was the theme song for CMT’s show “Gone Country.”
Artists such as ’80s pop star Tiffany, Colt Prather and many others – including several Australian country singers – have also released songs Manna wrote.
As a performer, Manna has headlined at theaters and on cruise ships with her Carole King tribute show. She also hosts the KIRSTIcast podcast, and created and starred in the children’s television show “Kirsti’s Manor.”
Manna is also an actor. She and Warner played a music industry power couple in the 2009 mockumentary film “Paper Heart.”
Workshop
Manna tailors her workshops specifically to women, sharing her knowledge about writing, publishing and getting songs played.
But she says her main goal is to spark confidence in budding songwriters.
“The biggest thing is to create camaraderie and make participants feel confident about being creative,” she said. “The hardest thing to do after you write a song is to play it for someone else. I let them have an experience where they can get up and play for someone, even if they think it’s bad.”
That’s a big first step for young songwriters, she said, because “if you don’t have the confidence to play for at least one other person, you’re stuck.”
Manna will also share tips on writing.
It’s important that songs have universal themes, she said, so that they can be pitched to both male and female artists.
With that in mind, she shared an interesting observation.
“You’re better off getting a male to sing the demo,” Manna said, “because guys won’t want to cut a song that they hear a girl singing, but girls will cut a song that they hear a guy singing.”
The market for a good song is strong, she said.
“There are so many artists who need songs, and some of those artists are really not good at writing them,” Manna said.
Pictured at top: Kirsti Manna.