Charlie Vandiver figures he comes up with most of his lyrics when he's bumping along on some of New Mexico's most remote roads.

As something of a circuit-riding pharmacist, the 54-year-old Santa Fean spends 50 to 60 hours a week on those dusty roads carrying medicine to small clinics in places like the Navajo Reservation, the Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico or sprawling Catron County, which has no pharmacy at all.

But this is not about Charlie Vandiver the medicine man; this is about Charlie Vandiver the wannabe professional country western singer and songwriter, who has, as he might pen for a song, felt Father Time tapping on his shoulder.

"Now in my mid-50s, I feel the time is slipping by and it's now or never," Vandiver said.

He was reminded of that recently when, as he was strumming his guitar, a finger began to twitch uncontrollably in a neurological tremor, and he missed a few notes. "I figured I better get doing this while I still can," he said.

His goal is to create a commercial-quality CD of 10 of the 50 or so songs he has scrawled on now dogged-eared notepads and the proverbial restaurant napkins during the last 15 to 20 years.

Without an old dog, a beat-up pickup or a criminal record, Vandiver might seem at a disadvantage when it comes to subject matter for country western songs. Fortunately for his musical career, he does have at least one woman who done him wrong, has been a single dad and spends a lot of time with the pedal to the metal on dusty roads.

"I tend to write "picking-up-the-pieces, heading-down-the-road kinds of songs," Vandiver said. "You might say I'm an old divorced guy with a guitar."

But once he got serious about songwriting, Vandiver realized that a guitar and a bunch of scribbled lyrics weren't enough to produce a professional-sounding album. He said he dabbled with various songwriting software programs on his computer, but the sound wasn't the quality he was looking for.

Enter Eldorado singer-songwriter Lisa Carman, who offers workshops for would-be songwriters.

"Charlie's definitely got a thing going on," Carman said. "He's got a very real sense of originality and warmth."

Carman, 58, grew up near Rochester, N.Y., and began begging her parents for piano lessons when she was in third grade. She began singing for pay in upstate New York with small groups when she was 17.

She has produced numerous albums — mostly what she calls American roots music, a nuanced blend of country and blues — and has performed live concerts around the country, including opening for Pete Seeger in Hudson, N.Y.

Though still singing and producing, Carman also figures it's time to pass her talents along, and help to stir the muse in younger musicians and those, like Vandiver, who finally have begun to listen those internal sirens crying for a voice.

"The muse talks to everyone — every single one of us," Carman said. "But it is up to us to listen and follow it. Anyone can be creative."

She said students young and older often come to her with a feeling that somewhere inside them they have a song. They tell her, "I've got a song in me and how good that would feel if I could develop it."

Vandiver, who now calls on Carman for production as well as writing help, said she has brought structure and goals to his songwriting. "I've just been scribbling stuff down for years now. She's helped me realize the potential of my art form."

That includes ensuring he doesn't get self-indulgent, that his lyrics don't keep making the same point over and over, and that there is a defined story to his lyrics, enhanced and brought to life by his voice and his guitar.

Usually, Carman said, her students come with some innate musical skills — they can sing, they play an instrument, they've put some words together.

"I ask them to bring everything they have written down — prose, poetry, even if it's not music," she said. "They may have written about the same subject four or five different ways. I will see a clever line, or see a chorus inside a paragraph. Or tell them, 'Here you have a whole verse because you have started a story.' "

Carman said she "directs them through their work. I tell them they need a hook ... a chorus ... then they will start rhyming lines. I 'nip and tuck' what they have done. If they have a voice, they sing what they have."

Vandiver walked into Carman's studio with this verse:

It's been a long and twisty road

Raisin' these two boys

Soccer games and tennis,

Helping them along

What happened to our love?

What happened to our smiles?

Trying to find out why in this crazy world.

After a few sessions with Carman, Vandiver's verse still makes the same point and tells the same story, but the words, he said, pack more punch — the same story but with a more lyrical, musical beat and drive:

It's been a long and twisty road

Raisin' these two boys

Soccer games and tennis

Giving them roots to grow

Married with kids

Married no more

Feet on the ground

Heart on the floor

Carman talks of one of her younger students, Dimitri Cramer, 14, who comes to class with the entire lyrics of a song and musical chords noted above the words for his guitar.

"My job is to take his raw talent and match it with his personality. My job is never to say, 'This is how you have to do it.' I can't tell him how to do it. I can't tell him how to write from his perspective."

Dimitri says he writes about his hopes for the future, about his goal of becoming a pop/country music star — a goal he seems to sense is already his. All he has to do is go get it. As though to illustrate the point, one of his first songs is titled "Eyes on Me."

As for Vandiver, his musical goals are less ambitious. And he looks more to the past for his inspiration than to the future.

"I won't rocket out there in any way that I will be recognized," Vandiver said. "It's more about the journey than where the path will lead."

And that's suggested in the title song for his upcoming album: "As My Life Floats By."

ON THE WEB

For more information about singer-songwriter coach Lisa Carman, visit www.lisajcarman.com.

To see a slideshow of Carman working with Vandiver on one of his songs, visit http://tinyurl.com/nxyjxf

Contact Dennis Carroll at 505 986-3091 or dcarroll@sfnewmexican.com.