It’s Just Three Or Four Chords

Lynn Crossett started playing music while he was also beginning his professional journey as a college student in Austin, Texas. The highway that he hopped on leading him to success in the legal profession always had a parallel service road toward singer-songwriterdom. He now lives in San Marcos, Texas and teaches there full time as a law professor at Texas State University.

While Lynn had no unusual, direct musical influence as a child, by the time he hit his late teens, he had developed a strong desire to play guitar. For a while, however, he felt intimidated by the prospect. Then he had an epiphany: “…I finally demystified it and realized ‘Wow, most of the stuff I really like so much is just three or four chords.’ I realized I could actually play these songs, and almost immediately started writing songs…” Song writing has been his main endeavor ever since.

Getting better as a musician and singer has also been an ongoing pursuit for Lynn, but songwriting has remained his primary focus. “The artists I admire the most are really good songwriters,” says Lynn. “They may not be what we would consider talented singers, or have a naturally pleasant sounding tone of voice, but they deliver wonderful songs. I’m more drawn to those artists because I probably identify with that more myself.”

In the Company of a Song is Lynn’s first professionally recorded album, released in April 2022. It was produced by Grammy Award winning alt-country legend Lloyd Maines and features not only the producer’s signature steel guitar work but also fiddle and mandolin by Dennis Ludiker (Asleep at the Wheel, Milkdrive) and harmony vocals by HalleyAnna Finlay Welch on two songs (“Warren and Whitney” and “Child Support Trips”). The album contains a wide range of lyrical and musical themes, based on Lynn’s keen observations of life. Because he divides his time between his home base in Texas and Southern California, it also features a number of coastal-inspired tunes, like the tale of a busker on the Santa Monica Pier in the first song (“Stay Awhile”), and images of Los Angeles in “Boulevard.”

By Dan Walsh

To find out more, visit www.lynncrossett.com. Click here for the full interview.