Jake Brown - Nashville Songwriter: The Inside Stories Behind Country Musics Greatest Hits

BenBella Books, Inc.
Dallas, TX

Copyright 2014 by Jake Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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First e-book edition: September 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Brown, Jake.

Nashville songwriter : the inside stories behind country musics greatest hits / by Jake Brown.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-940363-17-2 (trade paper)ISBN 978-1-940363-50-9 (electronic) 1. Country musicTennesseeNashvilleHistory and criticism. 2. Music tradeTennesseeNashville. 3. LyrisicsTennesseeNashville. 4. ComposersTennesseeNashville. I. Title.

ML3524.B77 2014

781.6420976855dc23

2014010905

Editing by Shannon Kelly

Copy editing by Shannon Kelly

Proofreading by Jenny Bridges and Amy Zarkos

Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing, Inc., Melrose Park, IL

Cover design by Pete Garceau

Text design by Silver Feather Design

Text composition by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

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This book is dedicated to Freddy and Catherine Powers and to my younger brother, retired Sergeant Joshua T. Brown, the first country music fan to really turn me on to the genre.

Contents

It really is a journeymans occupation, says Rivers Rutherford, hit writer for country stars including Brad Paisley and Brooks & Dunn, about becoming a professional country songwriter. The biggest piece of advice I give to new writers when they move to town, Rutherford continues, [is] go play your songs for anybody thatll listenanybody who will listen. Listen to as many people as you can, and write with as many people as will sit down with you.

John Rich of Big & Rich adds some sage advice for writers as they begin to be invited to participate in writers nights and get a first song put on hold or cut: to be successful in songwriting, you have to write because you love it, not because youre driven to get rich doing it. Longtime George Strait hit-writer Dean Dillon echoes this with his memory that, when I hitchhiked down here when I was eighteen years old, it wasnt because I thought Id get rich off of it, it was because I loved it.

In a business whose profit margins continue to shrink, courtesy of online music piracy, Nashville has remained one of the best-kept secrets in the record business: an affordable town for an aspiring songwriter or country performing artist to pull into, without much more than the clothes on his back and a guitar strapped around her shoulder, and try to make it as a singer or songwriterwithout starving in the process. The great Sonny Curtis, writer of I Fought the Law (and the Law Won), highlighted songwriting as the vehicle that allowed him to survive, doing what I love to do [while] making a living and raising my family.

While most aspiring singer-songwriters never become famous performers like Curtis, their songs can still hit it big. A little-known norm of Music Row is that the majority of country stars historically do not write their own material, but rather record hits from songs created by an elite club of Nashville songwriters.

Even now, with a new generation of country artists who are more hands-on in cowriting their hits (like superstars Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, and Luke Bryan), this town is filled with successful writers whose careers have lasted long after those of the singers who made their songs famous.

That isnt to say that the road to becoming a hit songwriter is an easy one. Along the way, almost every success story in these pages is based on working even harder to top the last chart-topper. As one of Music Rows most prolific hitmakers, Craig Wisemanco-writer of the 2004 Grammy for Best Country Song of The Year for the Tim McGraw hit Live Like You Were Dyingattested, When you [write] a lot, you do get better at ityou learn about yourself, you push yourself, you grow, and if you do it a lot, too a lot of it is to just do it.

Nashville Songwriter features first-time-ever-in-a-book interviews with many of todays biggest hit writers who have penned, collectively, the majority of the No. 1 country hits over the past decade. Country music fans are treated to a rare collection of inspiring stories behind the writing of generations of beloved and timeless country classics, as well as huge modern-day smash hits, such as Willie Nelsons Always on My Mind; Tim McGraws Live Like You Were Dying, Southern Voice, and Real Good Man; George Joness Tennessee Whiskey; Carrie Underwoods Jesus Take the Wheel and Cowboy Casanova; Brooks & Dunns Aint Nothing Bout You; Lady Antebellums We Owned the Night and Just a Kiss; Brad Paisleys Mud on the Tires, We Danced, and Im Still a Guy; Luke Bryans Play It Again, Crash My Party, and Thats My Kind of Night; the Oak Ridge Boys American Made; George Straits Ocean Front Property and The Best Day; Rascal Flattss Fast Cars and Freedom and Take Me There; Kenny Chesneys Living in Fast Forward and When the Sun Goes Down; Ricochets Daddys Money; Montgomery Gentrys If You Ever Stop Loving Me; the Crickets I Fought the Law; Tom T. Halls A Week in a County Jail and That Song Is Driving Me Crazy; Trace Adkins Youre Gonna Miss This; David Lee Murphys Dust on the Bottle; and Jason Aldeans Big Green Tractor and Fly Over States, among countless others.

For aspiring writers, the enlightening stories told by these hit songwriters include many jewels of wisdom about the process and craft itself. Pearls like the one Dallas Davidson, cowriter of Crash My Party and Rain Is a Good Thing, offers up regarding his recipe to songwriting success: a good title and a good melody, and some honestytheres your formula for a hit right there. Or a gem from Kelley Lovelacecowriter of such monster Brad Paisley hits as He Didnt Have to Be, Start a Band, and Remind Mewho shares his formula for creating memorable chart-toppers, hammering home the importance of staying as hungry for the next No. 1 one as you were for the first: Being in the game, thats whats really fun, if you can have something in the game, something in the hunt. Still, seeing your song on somebodys record that you can purchase is a lot of fun. I like seeing those titles on the records. All the same things that you think you would be excited about when you get your first cut are still the same things I get excited about now. That high never really changesyou just want more of it.

When a guy like me gets to hang out with a guy like Freddy, its always rarified air. Not many people can say they know a guy like Freddy, and really know him, and really have written with him. He is a jeweltheres nothing like him anywhere out there.

JOHN RICH, 2013

Featuring exclusive commentary from Willie Nelson and John Rich of Big & Rich