About the Founder / Producer / Webpage-Builder / Lyricist / Poet

I'm in my 50s. That's how I want to start — raw and honest, in my own voice.

I'm a combat veteran. I've been engaged six times, married three, divorced twice. I'm a father of four wonderful children, and like a lot of fathers, I haven't always been the dad I wanted to be. Two of my kids barely speak to me, and I will probably never win Dad of the Year. I'm very human. I'm very flawed. I'm also gifted by God, and I've been a poet since I was young.

For most of my life I lacked the confidence to fully chase what was inside me. But the words never stopped. I have a deep connection to music — I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, the home of Motown. I came up on hip-hop. When I joined the Army I was taught rock and roll. I often dream of music — entire symphonies, entire songs that I realize, when I wake up, don't exist anywhere but inside me. They've been dying to get out for years. Decades, even.

I understand melody, structure, timing — I had choir instruction and piano lessons growing up, so the foundations are there. But I'm not a singer, and I'm not trained on any instrument. And here is the truth that took me half a lifetime to say out loud: musicians and people in the industry don't make time for people who can't perform, no matter what those people can do with words. I tried. Many times. Many years. I'd say I can write music and they'd ask can you sing? can you play? And the conversation would end there. The gap was huge.

Then one day, things changed. I saw the movie Rocketman — the story of Elton John and his lyricist, Bernie Taupin. And for the first time in my life I saw someone who only wrote the words take his place beside one of the greatest performers in music history. For the first time, I saw a role I could fill. I saw a way the light I'd been carrying could shine.

But hope without a way forward is just longing. I still couldn't sing. I still couldn't play. I didn't know any Elton Johns.

And then technology closed the gap so fast it is frightening the talent and the industry. AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Suno. I use them all, and more. They've made it possible for regular people to find rhythms for their thoughts without having to meet an Elton John. Suno is, in a way, a mechanical Elton John. So I took some poems I'd written decades ago and asked ChatGPT whether they were lyrical, and to teach me song structure. I learned. Suno gave the words music for the first time in their lives. I was amazed. I made more. I've been doing this for almost two years now.

I tried, again, to take these songs to people I knew in the industry — just to show them I could write. They still didn't want to listen. So I didn't stop. Once you start believing in yourself, there's no stopping you.

That's how Echoed Words LLC was born. I formed my own label so I could force my way through the door the industry had been holding closed.

I didn't want to lie and say the voices on the records were real. So I gave each one a mythical persona, with its own lore and its own world — but every one of them is singing my words.

I built the website. I registered the songs with BMI. I found distribution through DistroKid. I found marketing through Groover, and I built an audience on SoundCloud. I am being judged like an artist now. I have gotten some good reviews, and some painful but honest ones. I don't want to be judged on a curve. But now that I'm in — now that I'm in — I want you to know who actually made this.

Hi. I'm Justin Gwynn. I'm a lyricist, and I want to sell these songs to real artists.

I'm not trying to take down the music industry with AI-pop. I would love for real performers to take these songs and make them their own. But if the public connects with them as they are, so be it. Destiny brought me here, and I'll keep walking the path by faith.

That's me. That's Echoed Words LLC. These are my words — which I will probably touch up with AI, because that's how this label works, and I'd rather tell you that than hide it.

Thank you for your time, and for your interest. If reading this makes you see the work in a different light — a better light — good. That's the goal.