Jackie DiPillo

Songwriter is trying her dangdest to get record deal

By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
4/19/2007

Trying to make it as a songwriter in a city full of the richest songwriters in the world -- Nashville -- can be arduous. No one knows that more than McAlester native Jackie DiPillo.

The mother of three and former Miss Oklahoma contestant has been living with her husband in Nashville since 1998, working full time at getting that one big break: either a publishing deal or landing a song with a recording artist.

"I think I was always a songwriter. I just never really knew it until I came to Nashville," DiPillo said.

Now she's a contestant in an online competition at cf,fgc www.cmt.comcf,ceno called the NSAI Song Contest.

Her song -- "Dang" -- is one of the final 15 songs chosen out of approximately 10,000 submissions, DiPillo said.

Fans can cast online votes to select which of the 15 will win the CMT Listener's Choice Award.

"Dang" was inspired by a Gretchen Wilson music video for the single "California Girls."

She and her co-writers, Chris Caminiti and Lisa Chamberlin, were writing one day last September when the video came on and they noted Wilson's muscular physique in the video.

"I just said, 'Look at that, dang,' " DiPillo said.

If DiPillo wins, her prizes will include a single-song publishing contract with a major publisher -- that elusive foot in the door.

Her husband works for a company owned by Johnson & Johnson, so she's able to spend her days grasping at melodies, attempting to wrap chords around words.

She takes her songs to a studio where, for a few hundred dollars, she can record a demo with some of the best studio musicians in the world.

But the quality of her demo recordings, the days spent in songwriting classes at Vanderbilt University and 40-hour weeks spent feeling out chords on her acoustic guitar mean nothing in Nashville unless you know somebody who knows somebody.

"I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it because, seriously, my tax man is telling me that I need to make some money," she said.

DiPillo, who grew up playing the clarinet, lived in McAlester until she was about 18. She was a top-10 finalist in the 1983 Miss Oklahoma pageant and some family members live in Tulsa and McAlester.

You can vote an unlimited number of times for DiPillo until Monday at www.cmt.com/asm/contests/nsai/cmt_choice/2007/.

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Matt Elliott 581-8366
matt.elliott@tulsaworld.com

By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer