4 Local St. Louis Songwriters Everyone Should Know

When you take the time to look around your community, you'll find some amazing musicians who'd never fit in with the top 40 hitmakers on Clear Channel-owned radio stations. Good songwriters are easy to overlook, I guess, or maybe when you're playing most of your gigs in bars, people just don't listen as hard to what you're doing.

Anyways, I've been playing music in St. Louis for years, and a few of the songwriters around here are just as good or better than the legendary songwriters of the 60s and 70s. And why not? St. Louis is a rough town, but it's a great place to get some inspiration.

Here are four songwriters living, playing and writing in St. Louis that everyone in the city should know about. Come to think of it, even if you don't live in St. Louis, these guys deserve a few minutes of your time. Click on their names for links to YouTube videos of their music.

Fred Friction - Fred's a songwriter who has kind of adopted a character, and at this point, I think his character's taken him over. He's a skinny guy who's spent a lot of time on both sides of bars; he owned and operated Frederick's Music Lounge in the early 2000s, then ran Fred's Six Feet Under at the Iron Barley restaurant before focusing on music booking through Fredbelly Music.

His songs are all very basic with old country progressions, but his lyrics are incredibly sharp-witted, funny and occasionally poignant. The linked video, "Cold Ice Water," is him playing the part of a South City poet, although he'll probably spit beer at you if you call him that. He's got one album out on iTunes called "Jesus Drank Wine" which is filled with talented St. Louis musicians. Fred loves making his music into a shambling mess, and combined with some killer production and great orchestration, "Jesus Drank Wine" is one of the most unique, attention-grabbing albums I've ever heard.

Dana Anderson - Dana sticks to the Illinois side of the river most of the time. He's from Granite City, where he did a lot of general contracting before the bottom fell out of that market. His songs are usually dark, but he's got a powerful enough voice to make them seem hopeful somehow. Whiskey-tinged stuff like "In The Key Of Blue" have lines in them that any songwriter would kill to have written.

He's got an acoustic album coming out in 2012 and you'd be nuts not to own it. He keeps a low profile on the web, but I'm sure you'll be able to get it on iTunes and all of that other stuff sometime around March or April.

Jesse Irwin - This guy's the funniest songwriter in St. Louis by far. He loves re-writing the lyrics to classic songs and filling them with the nastiest, raunchiest stuff you've ever heard. He's also got a serious side, though, and when he wants to, he'll write beautiful, gentle stuff or fire-filled rock and roll with his band, The Doc Ellis Band. I linked "My Eyes Rest Easy," which is just amazing, professional songwriting.

If you'd rather here the funny, dirty stuff, here's a link to his version of The Gambler. Don't listen to it around kids or people with heart conditions.

Dave Werner - They call him Blackheart Dave, cause he'll be incredibly honest with you, and sometimes that means being rude. He's cynical, dark and rough, but none of that comes out in his music. Sometimes I think the best musicians are people who are like Dave, who save all of their poetry for their music. It doesn't hurt that his voice has an incredible range and a vibrato that really cuts apart any tune he takes up.

These are just four, and trust me, there are dozens of other great ones. Go out and support local music and listen to these guys' songs. If you like them, buy them-they deserve your money more than Justin Bieber, Michael Buble and all of those other folks with money-stuffed mattresses.