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  

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 :)