Shane McAnally and Threshholds of Pain

Early one morning and a coupla weeks back I get a text from Shane McAnally making sure that I was invited to his #1 party for his Kenny Chesney single “Somewhere With You” (with co-writer J.T. Harding). Not sure why seeing as he and I have never been real, real close but I’d really admired him for years as being a great talent and person. He and Erin Enderlin (brilliant writer that I worked with at UMPG and who I’d met him through) used to write some of my favorite songs together. I mean some REALLY great one’s including Lee Ann Womack’s single “Last Call”. I was SO honored that he went out of his way in reaching out, regardless. I say this knowing I'm nowhere NEAR this kind and thoughtful.

About this song and situation, his publisher Robin Palmer pitched the song directly to Kenny at a gathering held in this very same room of the #1 party at the Cabana Lounge (in Nashville,TN).  The song had been pitched multiple times to other people in hopes that they would get it to Kenny (Record label, management, etc..). None thought that it was right for Kenny. Go figure, it was different and that’s what drew Kenny to the song (it’s not an exact science as you can tell). Anyways, I’m embarrassed and it’s horrible to admit that to me many #1 parties have just run together over the past 23+ years.  THIS one will not. Kenny humbly did not talk much, he left it up to Shane and J.T.. You see Shane has been working at this for about 20 years and this is his first “big hit”. In the process, Shane has had his own record deal on Curb, lived in L.A., lost his house and after all of that he’d said that he was sitting at a stop light one day in L.A. and thinking to himself “if I could just get a song to Chesney this could all change”. Shane says “I swear I’m not bullshitting you, Kenny” (I’m horribly paraphrasing here but you get the gist). Well, he did and it did. He’s “been on a roll” as of late since I’d left for my blogging journey last Summer (Reba & Luke Bryan cuts and more). Fightin through the tears, Shane went on to thank his huge amount of friends that were there, his family and the woman who’d paid for Shane’s recording of the song. It cost her 60 something dollars for Shane to do a simple little demo and that ended up being what Kenny had heard and fell in love with. 

From the publishing seat that I was sitting in over 17 years at Universal, I’d determined that drive, focus and even true talent gets you only so far. It’s having a “high threshold of pain” that separates the successful artists and writers from the rest. In an interview with Marcus Hummon a coupla years back (‘Cowboy Take Me Away”-Dixie Chicks, “One of These Days”-McGraw, “Born To Fly”-Sara Evans) he told me that you (writers) should look at it as “taking a vow of poverty” in being a writer or an artist. Him coming from a seminary background and also in living with the amazing minister/social worker Becca Stevens, tells me that he “knows (a little) of what he speaks”. Congrats Shane and my sincere wishes that you have many, many more, S  

Work ethic, pornography and "the road"

Potter Stewart an associate justice for the Supreme court said this about pornography (though I don't quite agree with him on porn, I like the quote) in trying to define the undefinable "...I know it when I see it...". Contents (and a stretch) aside, that's my thoughts exactly on "work ethic". I can't quite define it but I know it when I see it. These past few weeks I've been going out on the road with a few bands and getting just a small taste of life as a road musician. These guys drive MANY hours sometimes to make a coupla hundred bucks (sometimes more or less). It's a grind, it's gotta be tough on the family life, not predictable or reliable and I'm not sure if people wanting to get into "show business" know what kind of life that it can really be. These are some DAMN talented musicians too! I sure the hell don't know the life myself  but last Thursday morning about 5 AM, I found myself pulling into a Nashville Kroger parking lot after taking only a 4 hour drive (NOthing to them) from a great Misty Loggins show (in Atlanta) thinking I've pulled off some kind of physical feat or something! All the while, I'm following a hard working manager, artist and another truck-load (NOT the nice fancy bus) of musicians.
Musicians, road managers and a LOT of artists know this story all too well. I didn't and my admiration for them has been growing every day in my "new road" I'm travelling down. This past weekend I traveled with 4 of them on a 7 hour trip to play a Friday and Saturday night show for people that didn't know WHO the hell they were. It was a GREAT eff-ing time! It was this little band playing with Chris Cavanaugh (the artist) opening for Thompson Square ("Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not"). It was kind of "them against the world" type of feeling where they go out there and have to convince a sellout crowd (for TS who traveled the same road a few years earlier) that they were worth their time.  Chris and the band played like rock stars and sold a helluvu lot of CD's and added a ton of new e-mails. It was my peek at life in the trenches for those guys playing every where they can. It just inspired the HELL out of me! Think I'm gonna LOVE working for the "underdogs" :)
God bless them every one : Billy Brimblecom,Gary Ishee, Brian Bixbie, Aaron Wolfcale, Misty Loggins,  Alex Gallagher,William Ellis, Bandon Taulbee and Chris Cavanaugh.

Drinks with Bobby and Nanci Griffith

Me and Bobby Rymer ran into Nanci at my current favorite Nashville "happy hour" place, Sportsman's Grill a few nights ago. It's kind of a pub crowd where regulars stop in on their way from work to home. Me and Bobby were just catching up and talking about the Almo Irving days and our days since when Nanci walks up to the bar to get a "dinner to go" and a glass of white wine which turned into two. We'd all met while she wrote and we'd worked for Almo Irving years back. I really never knew Nanci that well but was a BIG fan of some of her records over the years. "One Fair Summer Evening" being my favorite! Great, GREAT "live" record. Also, "Late Night Grande" (apologies for the ad on the intro of this vid) from her '91 record being a song that still kills me every time that I listen to it. Also, a few years back she had also invited me to famous Abbey Roads Studio (while I was in London for work) to watch her record sides with the London Symphony Orchestra which ended up being the "Dust Bowl Symphony" album (INCREDIBLE record!). That being one of those lifetime memories. Anyways sitting there we talked about Texas (her home state) quite a bit, seeing as I spent a coupla months there this past Summer on my bloggin journey.  She loved, admired and looked up to the Texas writers like Townes, Guy and the writers from that era. She was a predecessor and/or contemporaries to the Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen group of artists. It was interesting in her take on the whole music scene now and she seemed to be honestly pretty positive about it all. She talked about how talented Taylor Swift is and how there are really talented new people out there making new music. This coming from a woman who's achieved a lot of hard earned success over the years (including a Grammy or two along the way) but had started out in a car working her way from Austin to Boston finding and making enough money in the clubs like "The Down Home" in Johnson City,TN (which is where she first met my favorite singer of all time, Keith Whitley pre-Nashville) to make her way on to the next town headed north. I asked her how she knew where to play (being in the new towns) and she said that the artists that came through Austin would tell her of the cool places (kind of an early "internet"). Her contemporaries read like a like a wall of Hall of Famers: Guy Clark, Harlan Howard, Emmylou Harris, The Crickets, Jimmy Webb and on and on. We all talked for a coupla hours maybe and though she says that she's trying to take a year off to write she says that she's finding herself booking shows for this year (she'd just returned from Belfast, Ireland). Sounded like she was sincerely excited about being in the "writing mode" though. We ended up talking about things like poverty in the south (specifically in Mississippi) and how real and over looked it all is nowadays. She talked and was really excited and was honored for a song that she'd written about Mildred and Richard Loving. They were plaintiffs in the landmark "Loving vs. Virginia" in the U.S. Supreme court which protected mixed raced marriages (in the end). Nanci has been really serious about social issues over the years. Of course we did talk about fluffy stuff like her love for "the soaps", dislike of beer and her love for wine, as well.

   Another afternoon in a Nashville bar with a brilliant singer/songwriter sitting down and having a drink or two and giving her wisdom and stories to people like Bobby and me. I'm lucky to have gotten to work with both. Thanks Bobby for the beers :)

Randomness from "Working the Door" in downtown Nashville

My little office for a coupla nights

I spent a coupla nights this week "working the door" in a downtown Nashville bar "The Wheel". It's a really cool old bar that a good friend of mine Robert Lee co-owns and he's been SO damn nice enough to ask me to do it. The hours are pretty much stripper hours (7PM-3AM) AND it's CRS week (where a ton of Radio guys come into town and meet and hear a bunch of the Nashville "stars", as well).
Thoughts
-FIRSTLY-Good GOD, I've not been sober past 12AM since church camp.
-One night I talked with a really sweet 76 year old man Billy Hazelwood who told me that he'd retired from 37 years of working at the Ford plant and now farms "cuz you GOTTA do something (with your time)!". He had open heart surgery back in '06. Says with the diesel prices going up he's not sure if he can afford to keep farming. Lives out in Springfield and was sitting there by himself just listening to the band play.
 -Sidewalk watching:  Roland & Ashton Shepherd stopped by (gooood "people"!), Two Foot Fred kept rollin' by "at a fast clip", Jessie Jo Dillon (great young writer) stopped and said hey, Pete Robinson (who said some really kind things about my old blog :)), young girls in REALLY short skirts (walkin like Foster Brooks) continuously walked by but rarely "bent over" (as IF they could), Joe BIDDLE (what the hell's a local sports reporter doing with a CRS badge?), Jim Butler, Luke Bryan (ain't changed a damn bit/God bless 'em), Red Marlow and Phillip White. Phillip get's the survivor arward. He was nursin a hangover from the night before (and still out late!).
 -Friends and industry people walking by asking "WHAT the hell are you doing working down here, now"? Some of them looked at me like I was now homeless. I thought about panhandling to play the part but I suck at begging (which I kinda resulted to to get songs recorded and STILL had no luck).
-Watched an artist (post-show) screaming at her boyfriend or husband (in the middle of the street) next to his truck "I QUITE, I QUIT...I'm TIRED OF THIS FUCKING TOWN!!! I love you and I'll see you at home".
Two (mostly) female bands playing in side by side bars! THAT was surprising! More in these two bars than in all of Texas! Maybe their from Texas.
-Some drunk older guy who kept trying to sing his songs to everybody that would listen He said that he's best at writing "Rap" but his son had told him not to sing that stuff down here in Nashville. He kept telling me he wasn't drunk. I kept telling him he was. Being sober is really sobering.
-The GREAT Texas blogger Rita Ballou keeping me company with some funny texts (though she couldn't make it here this year :()

Lookin in through the glass and glare

Lookin' down the street

-Sweet little bartender on Tues. night said a coupla weeks back that it was her and two guys last in the bar late one night and they were wanting to fight. Her being under 5 foot tall said "guys... REALLY!!?? It's us three and I'M gonna have to try and break you up!!?" She said they took it outside (thankfully).
 I may see if ol' Robert will let me do this again. Fun in a weird sorta way....

My good (and damn funny) bud Ali working behind the bar.

Route 33 Rhythm and Brews W/Trent Summar & The New Row Mob

So this weekend I jumped in a fully stuffed big white van with 6 road musicians and headed north for an overnight gig in the still frozen north to sell t-shirts for "Trent Summar and the New Row Mob". Trent Summar is a one of Nashville's great artists who never got his due but is still one of the best entertainers around. He now has a day gig writing for Universal Publishing. He allowed me (thanks Trent) to go along with them in helping me learn how to "road manage and sell merchandise".  The place was in a cornfield, 20 miles from BFE. We got to the gig, unloaded the gear (and my lil merch table), did a sound check, ate and headed to the hotel for a coupla hours of rest. Route 33 Rhythm & Brews is an honest to god road-house owned by Ron Lininger who with his whole dang family run the place and who's owned the place now for 14 years and runnin.

 Ron's a big, long blond haired, passionate REAL music guy who told me "as crazy as it sounds, I only book bands and the music that I love". He promotes the bands through the very few avenues possible being in the middle of now where and DAMN if people don't show up (it was a full house)! Local newspapers and radio Ron says are pretty useless for him and most people come from the bigger cities 45 min. to and hour half away via his e-mails, phone calls, word of mouth and website postings. To give you an idea about Ron, the really big fella stood behind me (at the merch table) "man-ing" the door and giving his own standing ovations, hollers and claps the whole show and ended the night (abandoning the "door") and moving to the front row. He IS a true fan of music! Trent Summar is one of the few artists who don't take himself too seriously, doing everything from walking like a rooster to flopping around on the floor like in a last gasp death seizure (DAMN FUN-NY!). He plays some of his big Nashville cuts (i.e., Jack Ingram's "Love You"), hits along with his great older stuff. A LOT of young artists could learn SO much from him (they call it entertainment, people)! It is just some hilarious (and damn entertaining) shit that the crowd goes crazy over. It was like I was back out in Texas again just enjoying the shit outta the music with a loud and crazy crowd. The band was entertaining as hell too.  There's Soup (from the original "Ozark Mountain Daredevils") playing bass and occasionally singing into a mic stand, Dave who sang and played (kinda) a bad-assed version of "Wild Thang" (and playing drums when he was not singing), Ken-who oddly enough I'd went to school with 20+ years ago but never met (and has a wickedly SICK sense of humor) playing guitar and singing and Jim, the subdued nice guy (every band needs one) who played steel & guitar. I don't know if these guys make a bunch of money doing this but you can tell that it's like a vacation for them and kind of away of getting away from the music bizz (even though they do get paid to play). The bar itself was a true "road house" with some pretty damn good food to boot. The locals/crowd are all small town people who are truly passionate about the music. They drink like fish and are loud as hell (there must've been a sale on Yeager or something but I abstained seeing as it tastes like a mix of motor oil and cough syrup to me). On this night the crowd demanded 2 encores and Trent and the guys closed with their eff-ing GREAT cover of "He Stopped Loving Her Today". Btw, my "merchandising" skills were excellent (O.K., I just stood there and took their money). All I know was in the end it was a GREAT night for me cuz all I had to do was to watch a great show, sell some t-shirts and drink free beer! Thanks guys for letting me free-load. :)

"Wild Thang" being an accurate title.

This is shortly before Soup threw up from "Head-banging"

 Btw, I'm doing this stuff to experience things that I've not experienced before and find things that I like doing. Some people may look at it as a step back, I'm looking at it as just taking a step (gonna have to look back on it to see which way I "stepped"). This week I'm going to "work the door" at a downtown bar "The Wheel" for a coupla nights (7PM-3AM). Oughta be interesting and ya oughta come on down! Over and out, S

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