Jay Schneiderman's Lyrics Featured in Ballad Performed on 'The Bachelorette'

The furrowed brows of political observers wondering where Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman plans to go after his final term is up may rise in surprise upon learning that his path could lead to a music studio.

A song that Schneiderman wrote in collaboration with Grammy Award nominee Matt White recently debuted on an episode of “The Bachelorette” and was heard by some 25 million viewers of the ABC reality show.

“Having 25 million people hearing something you had a creative part in is definitely exciting,” Schneiderman said.

The pair crafted the romantic ballad “Lift Me Up” in the garage of Schneiderman’s Southampton Village home.

“It’s a little cluttered, but that’s my life,” the veteran lawmaker and lifelong lyricist said sheepishly when reporters arrived at the garage for photos and an interview, amid artwork, instruments, and a conglomeration of household items and books.

A Manhattan native, White bought a house in Sag Harbor in 2012. A singer, songwriter and recording artist, he’s been in the business some 20 years, having signed with the Interscope Records label soon after college. He’s written for the likes of Justin Bieber and opened for such luminaries as John Mayer, Sheryl Crow and Ed Sheeran.

White has performed in commercials, singing the McDonald’s McRib song, and won acclaim for the song “Best Days,” featured on the soundtrack for the movie “Shrek the Third.” Songs by White have tracked an array of movies and television shows, from “Wedding Crashers” to ABC’s “Pretty Little Liars.”

His full-length debut album in 2007, “Best Days,” was released by Geffen Records and reached No. 4 on Billboard’s Top HeatSeekers chart. Spotify notes over 400,000 monthly listeners to his work.

From songwriting for other artists, commercials and soundtracks to appearing on all the late night shows and touring with top artists, White’s donned multiple hats throughout his career in the industry.

“Anything that has to do with music, I’m in,” he said.

Moving to Sag Harbor, White discovered a rich music community. “There’s a Nashville quality in this area of the country, and people get together. There’s like a Laurel Canyon aspect, especially Sag Harbor and Southampton,” he marveled, speaking of the famed music enclave in California in the 1960s and 1970s.

As he began to meet local musicians, he recalled, “Someone had mentioned a drummer, Jay Schneiderman, and I knew there was also a politician, Jay Schneiderman — but I didn’t realize the two were the same person.”

“I’ve been writing songs my whole life,” Schneiderman said. His lyrics run the gamut from songs of love and loss, songs for children, for Christmas, for his daughter, and even a humorous song about a bar fight. That one’s “definitely” got a country and western vibe, he said with a giggle. Others span genres: He’s even written a liturgical song. When he envisions a song, he imagines the voice — not his — that will sing it, and the story, or stories, it will tell.

Whether ballads or blues, for kids or adults confronting karma, the one constant is Schneiderman’s love of rhymes.

“I use a lot of internal rhymes, there are often rhymes within rhymes,” the lyricist explained. “It becomes like a puzzle to me. Sometimes the first verse and chorus come quickly, sometimes the second verse, it takes a long time, or never.”

One of his songs, “Peace Starts Within,” has been a staple part of a local school’s music curriculum, and he’s working with a production studio in New York on a Christmas carol he hopes to release soon.

Summarizing his oeuvre, he said, “It’s all over the map.”

“I always wrote words and music together, since I was a kid. I never had a partner or wrote lyrics for someone else,” he said.

Until he met White.

Then, he said, “for some reason, the words would just fall out of space. I didn’t think it was something I could do.”

“It was constant creativity,” White agreed.

The pair would meet, during the COVID shutdown, in Schneiderman’s garage — masks on, fans going and the garage doors open.

“I’ve been playing in garages all my life. It’s nostalgic, it’s sort of fun,” White said, sitting in the garage on an 1840s sofa Schneiderman found at an estate sale.

Recalling that with the shutdown, White said, “the only people we were around were each other.” During that chaotic time, music was “the one cushion.”

When White traveled on tour, the pair worked remotely. The musician would sing the music to Schneiderman and, said the lawmaker, “he’d play a chord progression and sort of scat where the words should go.”

Sometimes White would send a voicemail, scatting to a melody.

“We wrote a bunch of songs like this, probably 20 songs,” Schneiderman said.

His first time writing lyrics for someone else “came really natural,” he continued. “I didn’t know until really recently that was something I could do,” the 60-year-old elected official confessed. “‘Lift Me Up’ was written right here in this garage.”

“Lyric writing, it’s not my forte,” White said, pointing out that myriad popular artists have writing partners, Elton John and Bernie Taupin being a notable example.

“It’s very difficult to write a great song individually, I think,” White observed. “The greatest songs have always been collaborations.”

White performed a song for “The Bachelorette” in 2013 and sent the show’s producers “Lift Me Up.” Schneiderman was thrilled to learn it had been chosen to serve as the soundtrack in a scene on the show.

White’s under contract for a new album, and some of the songs feature Schneiderman’s lyrics.

With expertise on the piano and guitar, White grew up around music. His sister taught violin and he attended the Manhattan School of Music as a child. But in college, he was a political science major.

Reflecting on the juxtaposition between politics and music, he pointed out that numerous famed politicians are also musicians and songwriters. Orrin Hatch, he noted, has written some 300 songs, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was a guitarist in a rock band and a music reviewer, and Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke played in a popular hardcore-emo band, Foss, just to name a few.

“Politics and music go together,” White believes.

Schneiderman embraced that credo, in a way. His first campaign for East Hampton Town supervisor featured ads offering the song “Jay-o!” a send-up of an old Harry Belafonte hit.

What didn’t air on radio and create a second campaign earworm was a takeoff of the “Spider-Man” theme, substituting the candidate’s name. Some of those who heard the lyrics — “Schneiderman, Schneiderman/Hope you vote for Schneiderman/Careful how money’s spent/he’ll protect the environment” — found them cringe-worthy back in 1999.

White’s take? “It’s brilliant.”