Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Nashville Revolution: Bobby Braddock, Don Schlitz, and Don Henry

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Nashville Revolution: Bobby Braddock, Don Schlitz, and Don Henry · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
0:13
Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
0:16
Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
0:18
Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
0:22
Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right,
0:28
Speaker 1: enjoyed episode. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, there was
0:33
Speaker 1: a revolution in Nashville that was every bit as important
0:36
Speaker 1: to country music as the Beatles were to rock and roll.
0:40
Speaker 1: A new generation of songwriters came along who didn't just
0:43
Speaker 1: want to write about cowboys and pickup trucks. They wanted
0:47
Speaker 1: to write about emotion and conflict and to bear their souls.
0:52
Speaker 1: My name is Bobby Braddock and I'm bald, and I
0:55
Speaker 1: write songs and borderline mentally ill. I'm Don Henry and
1:01
Speaker 1: I've been very spoiled being able to enjoy what I
1:03
Speaker 1: love doing for the longest time, and I still continue
1:06
Speaker 1: to do it to this day. I'm Don Schlitz and
1:09
Speaker 1: I'm with no particular talent at all. I was twenty
1:13
Speaker 1: years old and eighty dollars and got off a bus
1:16
Speaker 1: and I was in Nashville. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
1:20
Speaker 1: You're listening to Broken Record. For this episode, I went
1:24
Speaker 1: to Nashville and sat down with three of the leaders
1:27
Speaker 1: of that revolution. Don Schlitz, who has written some of
1:30
Speaker 1: the greatest country music songs ever, Don Henry, the junior
1:35
Speaker 1: member of the Revolution, and the great Bobby Braddock, elder Statesman.
1:40
Speaker 1: Those of you who listened to my other podcast, Revisionist History,
1:44
Speaker 1: know that I can't set foot in Nashville without checking
1:47
Speaker 1: in with Bobby Braddock. It would be like going to
1:50
Speaker 1: Iceland and not saying Hi to New York. We all
1:54
Speaker 1: met at Sony Tree Studios on Music Row. We talked
1:58
Speaker 1: for hours and could have talked for a lot longer.
2:01
Speaker 1: In fact, we could devote an entire season of Broken
2:04
Speaker 1: Record just to those crucial Nashville years. So consider this
2:08
Speaker 1: a start chapter one in the oral history of the
2:12
Speaker 1: New Nashville. I made sure there was a piano for Bobby,
2:17
Speaker 1: and the two dons brought their guitars. I told them
2:20
Speaker 1: all they had to sing for their supper. Don Schlitz
2:24
Speaker 1: kick things off, and it only took two years to
2:29
Speaker 1: get cut. Why because it was it was too long,
2:35
Speaker 1: It's too linear melodically, there's no romantic situation. It took
2:43
Speaker 1: too long to go to the course. I don't know.
2:49
Speaker 1: I liked it. A lot of people liked it, and
2:52
Speaker 1: it finally nobody would cut it. And my publisher put
2:55
Speaker 1: out the demo and send it to radio, and they
2:57
Speaker 1: started playing a couple a friend of mine and and
3:02
Speaker 1: Hume Moffit cut it and put it out, and Conway
3:05
Speaker 1: Twitty's son put it out Charlie Tango, and suddenly there
3:07
Speaker 1: were three cuts of it on the on the charts,
3:11
Speaker 1: and then it was gone. I was still working as
3:15
Speaker 1: a computer operator. Oh you just you was still in
3:18
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, sure, oh yeah, you know, you know,
3:21
Speaker 1: writers got writers got to eat. But why I think
3:24
Speaker 1: is great about that song? It's full of life lessons
3:27
Speaker 1: like I don't play poker, but I don't think then
3:30
Speaker 1: I played a lot of poker, and I would always
3:34
Speaker 1: think about the lines in that song. Okay, no wonderful,
3:37
Speaker 1: you know, And I use that and and that's like
3:40
Speaker 1: a metaphor for the real life lessons that matter more
3:43
Speaker 1: than poker. And it's it's full of those. And you
3:45
Speaker 1: can just you could write that down and carry it
3:48
Speaker 1: when you and get it out and look at it
3:49
Speaker 1: when you're in an a tight situation. You know, does
3:51
Speaker 1: that does that song change? Does the success of that
3:55
Speaker 1: song change what people consider to be acceptable in a
3:58
Speaker 1: country song? I think it, I know, and with all humility,
4:04
Speaker 1: what it changed for me. For eventually Kenny Rogers cuts
4:08
Speaker 1: it and with that great voice, they make it up tempo,
4:11
Speaker 1: they move the chorus up. And that made it so
4:16
Speaker 1: I could write whatever I wanted to write the rest
4:18
Speaker 1: of my life. And I one thing I did not
4:21
Speaker 1: want to write was that song over and over again.
4:24
Speaker 1: So I got to write different songs. I got to
4:26
Speaker 1: emulate my pals who were also my heroes, though you
4:31
Speaker 1: know you wouldn't tell them that. And you write what
4:35
Speaker 1: you want to write, and you learn that you can
4:39
Speaker 1: amazingly enough. You have good taste. There's an an interesting
4:45
Speaker 1: thing that happened with Braddock and Harlan and Manny Bob
4:52
Speaker 1: McDill in this town that you can see a difference
4:57
Speaker 1: between Nashville songs or the songs that were written on
5:01
Speaker 1: music Row that stopped being corny, stop being that you'd
5:08
Speaker 1: sit on a haybell and sing, or on a barstool
5:11
Speaker 1: and have to sing, But you could sit by yourself
5:16
Speaker 1: quietly in a room and go like that song is
5:19
Speaker 1: about me. That song is about real issues that I have.
5:22
Speaker 1: It is not uh and and we While we have
5:26
Speaker 1: heroes from that era like Randy Newman, Bob McDill, Bob McDill, sorry,
5:34
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan and as you know, Gordon Light for those
5:39
Speaker 1: and great writers Joni Mitchell, I know you were, Paul Simon, Yeah,
5:45
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney and John Lennon and the Keith Richards and
5:47
Speaker 1: Emma Chair who we're writing songs that we love. There's
5:52
Speaker 1: an awful lot of and Holland does your Holland do
5:56
Speaker 1: not leave out notice writing a motown and stack that
6:01
Speaker 1: were feeling feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, feeling, and we're
6:05
Speaker 1: writing a story. I think Christofferson had an awful lot
6:10
Speaker 1: to do in popularizing that. I think Braddick had a
6:12
Speaker 1: lot of doing popularized that there is a sequence of
6:16
Speaker 1: events that happens. And as opposed to telling you I
6:18
Speaker 1: feel this way, I feel this way, we're saying this
6:22
Speaker 1: is what happened, period. And I think feelings go beyond words.
6:26
Speaker 1: That's why some of my me it's hard to differentiate
6:29
Speaker 1: between maybe if I say my favorite song, it might
6:33
Speaker 1: be one of my favorite records like I put Gold
6:36
Speaker 1: Restou on that Mountain on my list because just what
6:40
Speaker 1: happened in that studio and Ricky Skaggs and Petty Lovelace
6:44
Speaker 1: was singing with Vins on that thing. I still get
6:46
Speaker 1: tears in my eyes and chilled much when I hear
6:48
Speaker 1: the thing, And you know, it's a great story, but
6:50
Speaker 1: they could be singing it in Greek, you know, and
6:54
Speaker 1: I still love it. Well. You know. We also had
6:57
Speaker 1: the advantage, at least Don and I did it of
7:01
Speaker 1: tuning in the country radio and having people like like
7:04
Speaker 1: Christofferson or Tom T. Hall who were writing stories and
7:08
Speaker 1: a lot of times you had to sit in that
7:11
Speaker 1: chair and listen all the way to the end to
7:12
Speaker 1: get the payoff. So you had people that is unlike
7:16
Speaker 1: today where you want to payoff in ten seconds. Uh.
7:19
Speaker 1: People were willing to listen a little longer for something.
7:23
Speaker 1: There's there's there's a collective ADHD now where people don't
7:28
Speaker 1: want to I mean A and R people that they'll
7:33
Speaker 1: if it takes too long, like I song he started
7:36
Speaker 1: levering her today, whichever curly putman, nobody would possibly cut
7:40
Speaker 1: that now because it takes too long to get to
7:42
Speaker 1: the payoff. They even they're even wanting now the second
7:45
Speaker 1: verse to be just a little tiny verse, you know,
7:48
Speaker 1: whereas the second verse for us was, you know, we
7:51
Speaker 1: were told if we had a great first verse, that
7:52
Speaker 1: might be your second verse. Yes, it has to be,
7:56
Speaker 1: because you want something to build up to mean, what's
7:59
Speaker 1: what's a what's a A great example, another great example
8:02
Speaker 1: of a a song with a delayed payoff. Well, that
8:08
Speaker 1: that was one for sure. Is long? Is long? Is longok? Vail? Well,
8:13
Speaker 1: you you find out pretty quick that it's his best friends.
8:16
Speaker 1: He was in the arms of his best friend's wife
8:19
Speaker 1: kind of by the second and yeah, so you know
8:23
Speaker 1: he can't he's got a decision to make. And well,
8:26
Speaker 1: and then you know that if she wants do you
8:28
Speaker 1: guys know that song well enough to play it? John
8:30
Speaker 1: probably can you. The most powerful part of that, I
8:34
Speaker 1: think is when you say she walks these hills in
8:36
Speaker 1: her long black veil. Danny Dill and Mary John welcome
8:41
Speaker 1: Danny deal. I think was primarily the lyricist on that
8:44
Speaker 1: I heard they now is this true or not? They
8:46
Speaker 1: wrote it on the way of the session. Is that true?
8:48
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true or not. But but uh.
8:53
Speaker 1: I had a song called Golden Ring. We were talking
8:57
Speaker 1: about where we should sue Conway when you had I
9:01
Speaker 1: Love to Lay You Down, and I said, and I
9:03
Speaker 1: told my publisher, I said, but they do that. Then
9:05
Speaker 1: Danny Dill and Mary John Welcome may sue me for
9:08
Speaker 1: stealing the melody from Long Black Veil. And I told
9:11
Speaker 1: that story to Mary John Wilcom. She said, we came
9:13
Speaker 1: pretty damn close to doing. Really, my goodness, that's strange. Well,
9:19
Speaker 1: I like this theme that we're on well, of these
9:22
Speaker 1: kind of story that are because a lot of you
9:25
Speaker 1: guys are seemed to be have worked in that well.
9:29
Speaker 1: I was a huge and still I am a huge
9:31
Speaker 1: Randy Newman fan. And the thing that struck me about
9:34
Speaker 1: Bobby before I even really got to know him, was
9:37
Speaker 1: that he was basically the country music version of that.
9:42
Speaker 1: And I think the thing that really woke me up
9:45
Speaker 1: to that was, Unfortunately, when I heard he Stopped Loving
9:47
Speaker 1: Her Today. I knew the title of it before I
9:50
Speaker 1: heard the song. I wish I'd heard it without knowing
9:53
Speaker 1: what the name of the song was, because the first
9:56
Speaker 1: line is he said I love you till I die,
9:59
Speaker 1: and I I just started laughing. So hard. I took
10:02
Speaker 1: the record off, I went because the title is he
10:05
Speaker 1: Stopped Loving Her Today, and the first line is he
10:09
Speaker 1: said I love you till I die. And I went, oh,
10:12
Speaker 1: he's dead. This guy's dead man instantly, and I just
10:18
Speaker 1: started and I think, what I loved about Bobby and
10:21
Speaker 1: what I loved about the Lubin Brothers and Tom T
10:23
Speaker 1: Holmes so much stuff. Is that a threat of irony
10:28
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't call it laugh out loud humor, but
10:31
Speaker 1: it's it's just so ironic, And to me, that's what
10:34
Speaker 1: Randy Newman taps into constantly. And so when I heard
10:37
Speaker 1: that song, and you know, every verse of he Stopped
10:39
Speaker 1: Loving Her Today ends with a joke. I mean, you know,
10:44
Speaker 1: you know we all went to see her, she we
10:47
Speaker 1: all wondered if she would It kept running through my
10:50
Speaker 1: mind those time he's over her for good. And then
10:53
Speaker 1: the thing about the smile, first time we'd seen him
10:56
Speaker 1: smile in years, Well, that's a joke. It is. Those
10:59
Speaker 1: are joke, and almost every one of them ends with that.
11:02
Speaker 1: But by the time you get that joke, it doesn't
11:05
Speaker 1: make you laugh. It makes you just get this biggest
11:07
Speaker 1: lump in your throat and you realize what a comedy
11:11
Speaker 1: tragedy life is. See. I always love the juxtaposition between
11:15
Speaker 1: something that me too, and I have written songs that
11:19
Speaker 1: I thought were funny songs and people took them very
11:21
Speaker 1: seriously and vice versa. Absolutely, it's happened to me over
11:25
Speaker 1: and over for year. I love writing a song that
11:28
Speaker 1: it's it's really very serious, but it's kind of taboo
11:33
Speaker 1: subject matter, so people laugh nervously over that. And that's
11:37
Speaker 1: what happened to me when I heard he stopped Loving
11:38
Speaker 1: Her today, and I use it today to this day.
11:41
Speaker 1: I get to tour and teach on some of these
11:44
Speaker 1: shows that I do, and I put that song up
11:46
Speaker 1: right away because I show people what you can do
11:49
Speaker 1: in such a short amount of time, how you can
11:51
Speaker 1: tell a huge story. And it uses all the little
11:54
Speaker 1: technical things about about that little running joke, even theduction
12:00
Speaker 1: of it, which is brilliant. Billy Cheryl, I think to me,
12:04
Speaker 1: I hold it up there with a song like we
12:06
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, like sale Away, which you can almost
12:09
Speaker 1: use and show students or anybody who's interested how you
12:12
Speaker 1: can unfold a story. We'll be back with more of
12:17
Speaker 1: my conversation with Bobby Braddock Don Schlitz and Don Henry.
12:27
Speaker 1: We're back with Bobby and the Two Dons. Don Henry,
12:31
Speaker 1: a self described hippie from California, wrote a hit record
12:34
Speaker 1: from Miranda Lambert with songwriter Philip Coleman, who's from West Tennessee.
12:39
Speaker 1: The song All Kinds of Kinds is an ode to diversity.
12:43
Speaker 1: I asked Don to play it for us. You know,
12:46
Speaker 1: we knew when we wrote that we had to kind
12:49
Speaker 1: of as oddballs go. We were odder than the people
12:53
Speaker 1: we were picking out the front, so we had to
12:55
Speaker 1: put ourselves in there at the end to show you that.
12:58
Speaker 1: It's that you know that we were there too. Otherwise
13:01
Speaker 1: it's just a you're getting on a soapbox and you're
13:03
Speaker 1: pointing fingers, and you really got to pay attention at
13:06
Speaker 1: point and the finger at yourself to make that kind
13:09
Speaker 1: of stuff work, at least from my experience, and that
13:12
Speaker 1: that's how it finally came together at the end for us.
13:15
Speaker 1: I love what she did. She she twisted it around
13:18
Speaker 1: a little bit. One of the things she said on
13:20
Speaker 1: that tag was and sent to some point of fingers.
13:24
Speaker 1: She says at some point the finger. Yeah, that's why
13:26
Speaker 1: she says it, which I think is great because she
13:28
Speaker 1: kind of owns that song. It sounds like she wrote it,
13:31
Speaker 1: and I like that. She's she's impish, perfect song for her,
13:34
Speaker 1: She's perfect. It sounds and that's what she told frank Lydell,
13:37
Speaker 1: who produced that record. She said, it just sounds like
13:40
Speaker 1: something I would write. And that made me feel good
13:42
Speaker 1: because she's a really good writer. Yeah. Yeah, were you
13:44
Speaker 1: thinking about her when you well, you know, we were,
13:46
Speaker 1: in fact when we wrote that. It was it was
13:48
Speaker 1: probably probably ten years before she moved to town. She
13:52
Speaker 1: was probably fifteen years old. Do you guys, do you
13:54
Speaker 1: when you're when you're writing songs and if you're not
13:57
Speaker 1: writing with the artist, but you're writing a song, do
14:02
Speaker 1: you have in your head anybody singing it other than yourself? No?
14:05
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I just want to sing it
14:07
Speaker 1: at the Bluebird Er. If I'm trying to emulate one
14:10
Speaker 1: of my heroes, like a Jonie or something, I'll say, Okay,
14:12
Speaker 1: what would Jonie do? And I'll try to bring that out.
14:14
Speaker 1: But it's not like I'm writing to pitch that you
14:17
Speaker 1: have Mitchell in your head. I love Joni Mitchell. When
14:21
Speaker 1: I'm looking to write a song and I can't really
14:23
Speaker 1: get into the groove. I'll get up early in the
14:25
Speaker 1: morning and get things going and put on Joni Mitchell, wow,
14:29
Speaker 1: Ry Newman, Paul Simon, sometimes people like Van Morrison. I
14:34
Speaker 1: really liked that because I just like the way he
14:36
Speaker 1: writes words. The great music can pump you up and
14:39
Speaker 1: make it. If you could only listen to one Joni
14:43
Speaker 1: Mitchell song in the morning to get you going, what
14:44
Speaker 1: would it be well for writing and for working on
14:47
Speaker 1: that It's it's a tough one, but but for me
14:49
Speaker 1: it's it was on my list, and it's both sides.
14:51
Speaker 1: Now it's clouds because I remember distinctly as a youngster
14:55
Speaker 1: hearing that song and going, oh see what she did there?
14:58
Speaker 1: You know, that kind of a thing, And that's that
15:01
Speaker 1: same anchor of a chorus that has a little bit
15:04
Speaker 1: of a twist each time it comes back around, and
15:07
Speaker 1: I think, well, that keeps the lessener from being bored,
15:09
Speaker 1: doesn't it. And yet it's just filled with life lessons
15:13
Speaker 1: written by such a young person at the time, and
15:15
Speaker 1: I think by hearing something like that at an early age,
15:19
Speaker 1: it helped make me wiser quicker, you know, as much
15:22
Speaker 1: as I loved bubblegum pop, to hear Joni Mitchell sing that,
15:25
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, this is what you can do
15:27
Speaker 1: with It's pretty cool changes, it's pretty amazing. Yeah. But
15:30
Speaker 1: the one Man Man by the Quick Lunch Down, he's
15:34
Speaker 1: playing real good for free. I mean, what a great
15:38
Speaker 1: country song that is. Can you guys do a little
15:43
Speaker 1: bit of that altogether? Is that possible? I don't know
15:49
Speaker 1: enough of it. Clouds from both sides now, from up
15:54
Speaker 1: band down, and then give or take and win or lose.
15:59
Speaker 1: It's cloud clouds illusions. I recall, I really don't know
16:06
Speaker 1: clouds at all. It's funny because she originally did it
16:10
Speaker 1: in that day. Yeahbody knows. Well. What I like about
16:15
Speaker 1: that thing is is it's kind of it's it's very
16:18
Speaker 1: textbooking and it's very technical, but when it's when it's
16:22
Speaker 1: going down, it's seamless, and it doesn't feel that way
16:25
Speaker 1: When you were talking about how to hear that from
16:27
Speaker 1: someone so young, it's a totally better song written sung
16:32
Speaker 1: by someone who's obviously really young, right, because it's no
16:35
Speaker 1: longer that it's not the cliche of the older person
16:38
Speaker 1: looking back. It's this weird, fascinating thing of this super
16:42
Speaker 1: young person saying you're not going to believe this amazement.
16:45
Speaker 1: But I have looked at life from both sides now
16:47
Speaker 1: right by constantly, you know, looking at his I mean
16:52
Speaker 1: it was the first time I heard the Girl from
16:53
Speaker 1: the North Country. My dad used to sing that one
16:55
Speaker 1: all the time to me, and I didn't even know
16:57
Speaker 1: who Bob Dylan was when he my dad would sing it.
17:00
Speaker 1: And then he had that Free Willing album, and I
17:03
Speaker 1: remember thinking that this was completely different than anything I'd
17:07
Speaker 1: heard because this guy was really young writing about such
17:11
Speaker 1: wise stuff. It was really cool. We'll be back with
17:14
Speaker 1: more broken record after this. I'm back with Bobby Braddock,
17:23
Speaker 1: John Henry and Don Schlitz. Drawing back to you can
17:28
Speaker 1: you give us? Now? I'm interested in a song that
17:33
Speaker 1: really not one of your own, a song that really
17:37
Speaker 1: kind of changed the way, transformed the way you thought
17:40
Speaker 1: about songwriting, that opened a door for you. Fairly easy
17:44
Speaker 1: to explain. My first company I went to in Nashville
17:50
Speaker 1: when I was twenty was Pete Drake Music because Pete
17:53
Speaker 1: Drake had played on John Wesley Harding and there was
17:55
Speaker 1: a young man named Buzz Raven was listening to song zero,
18:03
Speaker 1: but I played, you know, I walked in that hair
18:05
Speaker 1: down halfway down my back, and I was twenty years
18:08
Speaker 1: old and didn't look like a person that would be
18:11
Speaker 1: in wanting to be a country singer. And so I
18:15
Speaker 1: went up and played a few songs for him at
18:17
Speaker 1: the publishing company and he said, well, I don't really
18:19
Speaker 1: know what we're doing here yet, what I'm doing here yet,
18:24
Speaker 1: but let me make a phone call for you. You You
18:26
Speaker 1: gave me a number person to go see. He says,
18:28
Speaker 1: you go see him in a couple of days, he'll
18:30
Speaker 1: be expecting you. So I go over this company, this
18:33
Speaker 1: building walking. I didn't have a car in this hot
18:39
Speaker 1: day in April, you know, heavy guitar case. And I
18:43
Speaker 1: walk in and back then you could walk in, and
18:46
Speaker 1: I said, I'm supted to see somebody. My name is
18:49
Speaker 1: and somebody yells back, oh, I know what this is about.
18:53
Speaker 1: He comes out, and this guy with curly hair and
18:56
Speaker 1: wireroom glasses comes out and says, coming back and play
18:59
Speaker 1: some songs. So I went back and I pulled my
19:01
Speaker 1: guitar out and I've played a couple of songs and
19:05
Speaker 1: he says, we'll play me another. And I'm pretty sure
19:06
Speaker 1: that I'm this guy's big break. You know that I
19:09
Speaker 1: am it for him? And I'm going through and I
19:12
Speaker 1: play about eight or nine songs, and I'm thinking I'm
19:14
Speaker 1: being discovered. This is absolutely amazing and wonderful. I'm twenty
19:18
Speaker 1: years old and this is how great for this guy.
19:21
Speaker 1: He's like ten years older than me. And he says,
19:25
Speaker 1: let me show you what I do. And he's coming
19:29
Speaker 1: in here. It takes me into the little record room
19:32
Speaker 1: and says, well, it's just a single, and I knew
19:34
Speaker 1: that didn't mean it was very much because it wasn't
19:35
Speaker 1: on an album and it's a small label. It's a
19:38
Speaker 1: friend of mine. It's the B side, And he puts
19:41
Speaker 1: on this song in the and it starts to play,
19:45
Speaker 1: and live held it all in me. Lord knows, I've tried.
19:51
Speaker 1: It's an awful awake now you boys. The song was Amanda.
19:58
Speaker 1: I wish I could, but I can't do it justice
20:00
Speaker 1: because the singer was Don Williams, and it was on
20:04
Speaker 1: JMI Records. It was its twelve lines, uh, and it
20:11
Speaker 1: was a song called a Man. And that he didn't
20:13
Speaker 1: tell me that he'd written it by himself, or that
20:15
Speaker 1: he'd also written the A side, which was Come Early Morning,
20:18
Speaker 1: which was the number one song in America at the time. Uh,
20:21
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there listening, going like, oh, you know,
20:24
Speaker 1: I've got a long way to go. And I think
20:26
Speaker 1: that what had changed for me was realizing that I
20:31
Speaker 1: didn't know a whole lot and talk about Bob McDill
20:35
Speaker 1: was the man, and he became my mentor and basically
20:37
Speaker 1: the only person that would see me for a few
20:39
Speaker 1: years when I was first here, and the only person
20:41
Speaker 1: I would go in and take songs to. And Gorcy
20:44
Speaker 1: passed on the Gambler, which was, you know, so he
20:47
Speaker 1: everybody makes mistakes, but he went on to write a
20:52
Speaker 1: large portion of the Don Williams songs that that that
20:57
Speaker 1: helped change this town. And I wrote, good old Boys
21:02
Speaker 1: like good old Boys like Me. It is his masterpiece.
21:05
Speaker 1: Give us, give us a taste of it. Hey, we
21:08
Speaker 1: were we were lucky, at least I was. I had
21:12
Speaker 1: just come to town at seventy nine, so all this
21:14
Speaker 1: stuff was happening. The Gambler had just been a huge hit,
21:18
Speaker 1: and then a year later he stopped loving her. Today
21:21
Speaker 1: was of course good old Boys like Me and stuff
21:24
Speaker 1: like that. So that was the bar that I had
21:26
Speaker 1: to come in, and I thought, well, that's an impossible
21:28
Speaker 1: bar to reach. But It was glorious and it was
21:32
Speaker 1: fun to try, but it was a wonderful club to join.
21:34
Speaker 1: It was it was, And I think that that's frustrating now.
21:41
Speaker 1: Is that a song that would say something like Hank
21:43
Speaker 1: and Tennessee, or a song like he stopped loving her
21:46
Speaker 1: today or unfortunately the Gambler would not be recorded today.
21:52
Speaker 1: And that's frustrating feeling. And so that bar that I
21:55
Speaker 1: held so high, it's a different bar now. I'm not
21:57
Speaker 1: saying that I don't know because I don't participate in
22:00
Speaker 1: that world like I did back then. But what I
22:04
Speaker 1: wanted to say about Amanda being so simple is then
22:08
Speaker 1: we ended up going with when Paul over Street, and
22:12
Speaker 1: now we're writing songs and actually I would find oh
22:18
Speaker 1: goodness gracious in the in the middle, I would find
22:22
Speaker 1: an idea, real simple, that's your song? Yeah? Really, yeah,
22:29
Speaker 1: I had no idea. It hit twice. It's one of
22:32
Speaker 1: my favorite songs. I've only ever heard the I think
22:35
Speaker 1: it's an astounding song. I haven't even heard the version
22:38
Speaker 1: by Elson kraus Reed. Keith Whitley recorded it first and
22:43
Speaker 1: then he passed away. Sadly, he was one of our
22:46
Speaker 1: great singers and tragically and there was a tribute album
22:56
Speaker 1: made it, and Alison Krause sang it, and then there's
22:59
Speaker 1: this movie comes out, And my understanding is in the
23:05
Speaker 1: movie The People, Ronan Keating is the guy who's name
23:09
Speaker 1: from a group called Boyzone, calls Alison Krause's office and
23:14
Speaker 1: asks for permission to sing the song, at which point
23:18
Speaker 1: I think they said, you know, you really probably should
23:20
Speaker 1: talk to the publisher and the writer, and they put
23:23
Speaker 1: it in a movie called notting Hill, and it was
23:24
Speaker 1: a pop record all over the world. Actually, actually it
23:28
Speaker 1: occurs at forty five and a half minutes into notting Hill.
23:31
Speaker 1: So if you see it, as I often do on
23:34
Speaker 1: television because it runs all the time, and you can
23:37
Speaker 1: just time it, DOLLI yell Stacy, it's on, It's on.
23:42
Speaker 1: If there was ever ever, if it was ever a
23:44
Speaker 1: perfect voice at Salison Kraus an amazing voice when you
23:48
Speaker 1: sing a song, I would love to sing when I
23:50
Speaker 1: sing a song rather than one of the my favorite
23:53
Speaker 1: thing I've done in two or three years, and show
23:55
Speaker 1: you how I just changed a line. I knew that
23:59
Speaker 1: I needed to change that line to make it fit
24:01
Speaker 1: today's market. I hope I can read these lyrics here,
24:06
Speaker 1: and I'll probably just make all kind of mistakes and
24:09
Speaker 1: blow the whole thing. But I don't try this anyway,
24:14
Speaker 1: thank you. I don't. I couldn't even hear all the words.
24:18
Speaker 1: What is what is the line you changed? Here's a
24:20
Speaker 1: line I changed. Okay, That's why I was wondering if
24:24
Speaker 1: I should take the top down off the pen. Uh.
24:27
Speaker 1: What I had originally said, I try to be a
24:29
Speaker 1: good man and everything. I try to put myself in
24:31
Speaker 1: the character of this guy who's kind of a typical
24:34
Speaker 1: Southerner and being a Southerner. Even though I really evolved,
24:39
Speaker 1: I mean, I still have a lot of these things
24:41
Speaker 1: in here that that I don't like about the South.
24:43
Speaker 1: I was that way myself. I mean, well was it.
24:46
Speaker 1: I was a teenager. I was a hardcore secret segregationist.
24:49
Speaker 1: I didn't think blacks and white people should go to
24:52
Speaker 1: school together. I really believe that shit. So the line
24:55
Speaker 1: I have here was I try to be a good
25:00
Speaker 1: man and everything I do. And the line I had was,
25:05
Speaker 1: you know, I love Jesus and I love my country too.
25:08
Speaker 1: And in the early two thousands, you could do that.
25:12
Speaker 1: You could do that when the country demographic was very
25:15
Speaker 1: conservative and there were all these patriotic songs and country radio. Now,
25:22
Speaker 1: if you had something like God and country right together,
25:25
Speaker 1: I think they wouldn't play it because it would sound
25:27
Speaker 1: like it was political, and they just don't want to
25:29
Speaker 1: go there because of the demographic country demographic. It's like
25:33
Speaker 1: it's like America itself. It's split right down the middle,
25:36
Speaker 1: and it's controversial. They don't want controversial. They don't want
25:40
Speaker 1: somebody to turn the dial. They don't want to lose
25:43
Speaker 1: half of their audience. So but you can still sing
25:46
Speaker 1: about Jesus occasionally, you know, you'll hear Jesus in the song,
25:50
Speaker 1: and you sure sing about whiskey. So I thought, what
25:53
Speaker 1: I'm going to do there? Then it said, yes, I
25:56
Speaker 1: love my whiskey, but I love Jesus too, And I
25:59
Speaker 1: think that made it probably exceptable. Can I can I
26:02
Speaker 1: point out the the hilariously absurd irony of that that
26:07
Speaker 1: it's moreible now for us to talk about whiskey than country. Huh.
26:12
Speaker 1: You can talk about whiskey's fine. Whiskey is not divisive,
26:16
Speaker 1: but country is. Like Bobby, I played Indeep, I played
26:24
Speaker 1: a little bit of Forever and Ever. Can you play that? Yeah? Alright?
26:32
Speaker 1: Second little backup vocals, Are you a union? Are all right? Adam?
26:40
Speaker 1: He's not union? No card. That was Don Schlitz, Don
26:48
Speaker 1: Henry and Bobby Braddock from Sony Tree Studios on Nashville's
26:52
Speaker 1: Music Row. Broken Record is produced by Justin Richmond and
26:56
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, with help from Bruce hadlam Me Label Jaquita Pascal,
27:02
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, Julia Barton, Jacob Weisberg, and of course el Hafe,
27:07
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin. Special thanks to Adam Engelhardt, who engineered the
27:11
Speaker 1: session in Nashville to hear the song speech you in
27:15
Speaker 1: today's episode, sung by the artists who made them famous.
27:19
Speaker 1: Check out Broken Record podcast dot com. This show was
27:23
Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.