"...Shameless Self Promotion, Volume 1..."

From time to time, listeners ask me about the Nashville songwriter days...

Here's a page from that chapter....

And a pretty fun song, too, if it's me doing the saying so myself.........

"...Another Way To Tell Is Any Time They Rhyme Roots With Boots..."

Let's get one thing out of the way at the outset.

Nashville is now, and has always been, a factory town.

They manufacture country music.

And that's not meant as a shot, slam or any other salaciousness.

It is what it is.

And they do what they do.

For a number of years, I did a little of it myself.

And while I can offer up plenty of demos of tunes that could rightly be described as "outside the box", I do hereby fess that I did my share of cranking out the kind of product that I hoped would find its way to the mastering sessions of any number of A, B, C, even D, list country music singers.

I hit a lick every now and then.

Nothing major, composition or chart activity wise, of course.

Or I'd be writing this piece from my home office/studio overlooking the Pacific Ocean instead of my home office/studio overlooking my Coastal Georgia duplex driveway.

Que sera and all that.

My own fair to middlin fortune aside, I do, to this day, possess what I think is a pretty good sense of what constitutes ordinary top forty fodder and what can deservedly be called extraordinary.

In the former category, we have any, and every, thing that finds its way on to your country radio station with a lyric including, or alluding to, trucks, back porches, fried chicken, Sundays after church, tractors, honky tonks (with or without accompanying badonkadonks) or what I've always referred to as "punny business".

As in, of late, Chris Cagle's latest single "Got My Country On".

Or, even more insidious, the "if at first you succeed, re-write the title as many times as humanly possible".

As in Danny Gokey's latest, "Second Hand Heart" and Sara Evans' latest, "My Heart Can't Tell You No."

For the love of Hank, even I wrote songs called Second Hand Heart and My Heart Can't Tell You No.

And the ideas sucked then.

In 1987.

My penchant for holier than ya'll notwithstanding, I do recognize refreshing arrivals in the latter category.

Lately, I discovered twelve, as a matter of fact.

On one CD.

"Own The Night" by Lady Antebellum.

Songs are, of course, purely subjective, third only to politics and religion when it comes to what's good, bad, right, wrong, lame, lovely, ad nauseum.

In other words, to each his, or her, own.

All I can offer you is after forty five years of listening to popular music and thirty plus years of writing it, good, bad, right, wrong, lame, lovely, etc, I have developed a pretty reliable method of determining the difference between songs that that are just alright and songs that get it right.

I call it the cringe test.

Cagle, Gokey, Evans, et al evoked a little cringe.

Charles, Dave and Hillary didn't give me a ripple.

Just a lot of quiet smiles and smug nodding.

Thanks, kids...

"...Song As Whisper..."

Tens of thousands of people yesterday.

Hundreds of thousands of words spoken.

If one picture is worth a thousand of those words....

...four minutes of music is worth a thousand pictures.

Especially four minutes of music that struck exactly the right notes.

"It's Kind of The Same Principle As Putting Lemon In Your Sweet Tea..."

Paul Simon once shared a theory about the relative value of music versus lyrics in successful pop songs.

His premise was, basically, that "downer" lyrics accompanied by "downer" music are usually too much of a downer to generate much mass popularity.

"Peppy upper" lyrics, on the other hand, accompanied by "peppy upper" music are usually too, wait for it....peppy and upper to generate much mass popularity.

Cross match, though, and you could very easily be on to something.

The latest testament to Simon's hypothesis comes from a trio of Los Angeles lads who found their way to the top three on the pop charts with their "peppy upper" sounding "downer" story of a boy and his plans for revenge on those who under-appreciated him.

Foster The People.

"Pumped Up Kicks".

It's one of those songs that everybody taps toes to and/or sings along to, very often without realizing they are singing along to the story of a kid and his weapon of mass destruction.

Moral perspective aside, you gotta give Foster The People credit for a hit song.

And you gotta give Paul Simon his due.

What a downer this song is.

And catchy as all giddyup.

"First, The Cry....Then, The Whisper..."

Sometimes, less is more.

It was once said of George Harrison that his real genius as a guitarist, both as a Beatle and as a solo artist, was not so much that he knew when to play.

As when not to.

I've always subscribed to that theory myself.

And it doesn't apply only to Beatles.

Sunday will be the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

And you're going to hear a lot about it.

There's going to be a lot of looking back and remembering and reminiscing and reliving.

On national TV, local TV, nationally syndicated radio and, yes, even local radio.

You'll hear it from us, too.

But not a lot.

Just a little.

And here's the reason why.

There will never come a time when the heartache of that day goes completely away, never come a time when we don't pay tribute, in our own ways, to the sacrifice of those who rushed to the aid of those in distress that day, never come a time when we forget the painful, and yet poignant, feelings that live in our hearts and minds and memories, feelings of loss and love and admiration and gratitude for lives both well lived and so courageously sacrificed.

We will mourn the death of our friends and families until the day of our own.

But, just as we eventually walk away from the grave site, lovingly hang the black suit or dress back in the closet, open the blinds to let a little sunlight back into the house and get back to loving each other and watching our families grow, while holding those we loved and lost gently and discreetly in our hearts, finally finding a way to remember...without reliving, so, too, do we eventually begin to remember the horror and heartache of that day...without reliving it.

Weeping gives way to quiet, private tears.

Wailing gives way to soft, private sharing.

Trauma gives way to tender thoughts of those we love and lost.

Life, as it is meant to, goes on.

Sunday will see the arrival of another September 11th.

And you will hear our respectful and gentle acknowledgement that we, like you, will never forget.

But there will be no weeping.

Or wailing.

Because we like to think that perhaps the most fitting way to honor the lives that others lost that horrific day is to say a kind word, a quick, silent prayer...and then get on about the business of living the lives they lovingly left behind.

Sometimes, less is more.

So much more.

"...Waylon and Willie and The Boys...Say Hello to Jeff..."

Truth, the old adage offers, is often stranger than fiction.

How about when the truth is fiction?

Or, more to the point, when fiction offers up more truth than truth offers?

Got that ice cream headache in the middle of your forehead yet?

Twisted fortune cookie wisdom notwithstanding, it occurs to me that there is, among other things, a delightful irony in the fact that the product being offered by a fictional country singer seems more real than the lion's share of the merchandise rolling off the 16th Avenue assembly line these days.

After all, when someone says "essential, seminal, no frills, roots edged country music artist", I'll bet my Rorschach against your Rorschach that the first name that pops to mind is not Jeff Bridges.

And what fun to find that it pert near oughta be one of the first names that pops.

My good old days in Nashville taught me a lot of things, among them that Hollywood, historically, doesn't have a clue about Nashville.

From the early 60's when George Hamilton lip synced to Hank Jr's vocals as he "portrayed" Hank Senior (yes, kids, that George Hamilton) to such modern day Tinseltown missteps as "The Thing Called Love" and even George Strait's close, but no cigar turn as "Dusty Rhodes" in "Pure Country" (Strait was young and impressionable in those days, but I bet he doesn't have the same agent now as then...if only for allowing his client to portray a country singer named "Dusty Rhodes"...why not just name him "Music Rowe"?...), Hollywood has a near perfect record of cranking out crap, labeling it country and conspiring to cash in on the popularity of the format at any time the masses are paying attention.

In fairness, they are consistent about one thing.

They almost unfailingly portray Nashville, and country music, in terms of the way they think Nashville and country music should look and sound, as opposed to the way it actually looks and sounds.

Even the most recent high gloss "Country Strong" could just as easily have been made as "very special movie of the week" on Lifetime.

Or CMT.

Or both.

For my movie spending money, the Hollywood hoedown wanna be's have only gotten it close to right twice.

"Tender Mercies".

"Crazy Heart".

Robert Duvall got an Oscar for the former.

Jeff Bridges for the latter.

And, in both cases, the lead actor was the lead singer, performing material that met the criteria too often missing from the garden variety sour mash melodramas.

Authenticity.

Meanwhile, back to the irony, go in search of both the soundtrack to "Crazy Heart" and Jeff Bridges most recent, eponymous CD.

I think you'll be, as I was, surprised and delighted to find that the most throwaway stuff in either case are the inevitable "slickies" on the movie soundtrack.

The coolest, meanwhile, is the remainder of the soundtrack and the whole of the solo album.

In other words, production by T Bone Burnett and vocals by Jeff Bridges.

Amazing work.

And an oasis in a desert of paint by the numbers "country music".

Five stars from this seat in the peanut gallery.

And my fail safe litmus test as to the pristine quality of the product?

Bet your life savings that American Idol will never do a "Jeff Bridges Night".