About

Hey – Scott here! You might remember me from my string of top-40 hits in the late '80s, and early '90s, my three Grammy nominations, and those four albums of mine that went double platinum. You may also remember those years of my world tours, and even that summer I opened for the Rolling Stones through Europe.

Or, you might be thinking, “Actually, I've never even heard of Scott Newton before.” That would not be surprising as there were no hits, no Grammys, no platinum albums, no world tours, and no opening for the Stones – although I saw them in Chicago once.

Nope, I am one of the tens of thousands of those Musician/Songwriter/Performer people whose musical journey took a more “off-the-grid” approach. Instead of a career of fame and fortune, I have spent my professional career working the day job. No big regrets there, actually. And if the truth be told, I guess I was never really motivated to seriously consider pursuing the path of music as my full-time profession and making the rugged sacrifices required in the pursuit of the fame and fortune. I guess that always sounded like too much work. Sure, I would appreciate the opportunity to have large numbers of people experience my music, but when everything is stripped away, writing, producing, and performing music is my passion. And making the muse of your passion your job – what better way to take that passion and club it to death with responsibilities, deadlines, and all the other business challenges.

Frankly, the experience of writing a song about something I’ve observed or a story from my life, recording that song, and then listening the final piece is what I truly enjoy. If you couple this with fame, you get more listeners and money, but that really adds nothing to the joy of doing the music in the first place. All it will add is a lot more complexity.

Of course, performing my music has always been something that I enjoyed, but for audiences, a little of that can go a long way. Years ago, I saw the band Collective Soul at a festival in Naperville, Illinois. They had a couple of big hits at the time, but most of their material was unknown to the audience, and these songs were met with a pretty lukewarm response. Then they launched into a song by The Who. The crowd went nuts. Yes, even a national touring act with songs on the radio is subject to this reality of performing music that people don’t know.

We learned this reality early on in my band experiences. You might slip a couple originals into the set, but be sure those originals are preceded and followed by some very great covers that everyone knows. That's just how the world of music performance goes.

So without the adoring fans, and the audiences of people who don't really want to hear original music, what do you do? Here's the answer that took me years to understand – you produce music that you enjoy and you produce it for an audience of one. Yourself!

The off-the-grid approach to music is particularly comfortable for me at this point in my life. And today, you don't need the resources of a record company to produce absolutely top quality music. With the technology, you can produce music in your bedroom and make it available globally. I only wish that the technology had come a bit earlier – it would have made my recording efforts much easier in the late seventies and eighties.

When you write songs and produce music, it’s like each song contains a part of your soul and you leave these behind as documents of your time in the world. For an artist, there is a deep need to have your creative work neatly placed in a secure location so that it is not lost. None of us knows exactly how long we have, and for me, not having my music safely in an openly accessible repository was very unsettling. For this reason, I developed this website. Here, I have included every recording that I've been involved with since I was in high school – in all around 16 hours.

I have placed this material online for anyone to listen to without charge. I have also included links so that anyone who wants to download a copy can do so.

So here is the collective work from my passionate pursuit of music over more than 40 years. Some of the older material is of questionable quality, but the stories and the content make their way through, I believe. You will find a lot of access to lyrics and what I call Liner Notes, wherein you will find many of the stories behind these songs. As time goes on, I will be adding more as time permits.

I do want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped me with this body of work.

Thank you for your interest in this material, and I hope you enjoy it just a bit as much as I had producing it on this musical journey.

SN