by Wayne, Jimmy
Ron spoke very softly, “That way I know I won’t lose your autograph.”
Over the years since that day, I’ve signed thousands of autographs but never one more meaningful than that first one.
NOW THAT BEA WAS GONE, LEAVING NORTH CAROLINA AND moving to Nashville was not as difficult. Making matters even easier, my girlfriend, Tonia, hoped to relocate in Music City as well. I moved to Nashville and signed my first songwriting agreement, which required that I write eighteen songs per year, with cowrites, songs written in collaboration with other writers, counting as half a song. I thought, This is a piece of cake. And these guys want to pay me for doing this? What a way to make a living!
ON MARCH 23, 1998, I BEGAN MY FIRST DAY AS A SONGWRITER for one of the largest music publishing companies in the world, the Opryland Music Group Publishing Company, formerly known as Acuff-Rose Music, founded by country music legends Roy Acuff and Fred Rose. The catalog included such classics as “Tennessee Waltz,” “Oh, Lonesome Me,” “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” as well as hits by Hank Williams Sr., such as “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” not to mention some of contemporary country music’s greatest writers.
One of those writers walked down the hallway toward me on my first day of work. I recognized him immediately as the guy I had seen four years earlier on Crook & Chase playing some of my favorite songs: Skip Ewing, who had written “Love, Me,” the song I had hoped to sing for the Opryland Theme Park audition. He had also written the three songs that Mike Whelan had sent me to learn and record. In a way, it was because of Skip Ewing that I was even at OMG. I wanted to tell him so.
I watched Skip as he stopped to say a few words and hand a work tape to Sandra Morgan, the woman who logged the company’s songs in a computer, on his way out to the parking lot. I followed him all the way out to his vehicle. Skip was already in the car with the motor running and was ready to back up when I approached his window.
“Sir, can I have your autograph?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
I told Skip how I had landed in Nashville by singing his songs, as I handed him a pen to sign my journal. But the pen was out of ink, so I ran over to my car to dig out another pen. Skip started to sign the first page of my journal, and that pen was almost empty too. Skip patiently waited as I retrieved yet another pen; he signed my journal and handed it back to me. I was thrilled!
But when I got back upstairs, Mike Whelan pulled me aside. “Jimmy,” he said, quietly but firmly. “Stay out of Skip’s way.” He explained to me that Skip Ewing was a superstar among songwriters; he was the company’s bread and butter, and he was not to be bothered.
“I’m sorry,” I told Mike. “I just wanted to say thanks and to get his autograph.”
Mike nodded and smiled. “Okay, fine, but don’t bother him again. Come on. I’ll show you around.” Mike gave me a grand tour of the music complex. As we were walking across the alley to the writers’ rooms next door, Mike introduced me to a guy wearing a baseball cap and standing on the curb, ready to cross.
“Jimmy, meet Kenny Chesney,” Mike said. “Kenny, Jimmy is a new OMG writer.”
Kenny reached out his hand and shook mine, and said, “Welcome. Good to meet you, Jimmy.”
I was in awe. I thought, I’ve been singing this country singer’s songs at weddings and karaoke contests, and now I’m meeting him? I was totally starstruck. “You’re Kenny Chesney?” I asked.
“Yeah . . .”
“Man, I saw you at the Monroe County fairgrounds. I was on the front row, me and my girlfriend. I was that guy, yelling, ‘Kenny!’ Do you remember me?”
“Er . . . ah . . .”
Mike jumped in quickly, “Jimmy, let’s go inside and take a look at the writing rooms.”
Kenny smiled and kept going.
I spent that Monday and the rest of the week adjusting to the new job. It was the first time in four years I didn’t have to be on guard at work. The company treated me like the new kid at school, giving me all sorts of gifts bearing the company logo: shirts, jackets, hats, music from their catalog, postcards, and other items. I was so impressed by the swag, I wore one of those shirts to work every day, ironed and creased. I was honored and proud to be part of the Opryland Music Group. My dreams were coming true.
Once I settled in at work and home, I sat down and wrote a postcard to every person in my contact book. “Dear Aunt Elaine, I’m in Nashville, trying to make it big. If you’d like to keep in touch, here’s my address and telephone number.” Of all the postcards I mailed to friends and relatives, other than notes from Patricia and Mama, I received back only two responses—one from DD White and the other from Randy Deal, two men I had guarded in prison.
FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS I WORKED DILIGENTLY, SEVEN days a week, on my writing, guitar playing, and singing. It was normal for me to spend thirteen hours every day honing my craft. I felt I needed to step up because everyone around me could play guitar and sing well at the same time. They all could write well too.
One of the best career moves I made was taking guitar lessons from Ellen Britton. The first day I arrived at Ellen’s house, I sat in the driveway and debated whether I really wanted to take lessons. I had heard that Ellen was a tough teacher, but she was the best. Did I really want to subject myself to certain humiliation when she heard the way I noodled at guitar playing?
I spent fifteen minutes of my first lesson sitting in her driveway. Ellen must have noticed me from inside because she came to the front door and waved at me. I got out of the car and walked into her music room and into a whole new dimension in my career.
After some small talk, Ellen asked, “Is there any specific song you would like to learn?”
“Yeah, I really love ‘Sara Smile,’ by Hall and Oates,” I replied. I told Ellen how I had found the Daryl Hall and John Oates CD, when I was rummaging through the bargain box at a store in the mall, and how I had fallen in love instantly with it. “Have you heard that song?”
Ellen smiled. “Have I heard it? I’ve known John Oates since we were kids.” She was originally from Philadelphia, and this was her kind of music. She and I hit it off immediately.
She wrote out the chord chart for “Sara Smile” and taught me how to read the chart. She taught me how to read the Nashville number system, the quick notation system used by studio professionals. “We’re going to learn the bass line, too, because it all starts from there,” Ellen said. I went home and started practicing everything Ellen taught me. Ellen encouraged me to attach a shoulder strap to my guitar and practice while standing up. True to her reputation, Ellen was tough, but she was a great teacher, extremely patient but demanding, satisfied with nothing less than excellence.
Ellen was, and still is, one of the most influential people in my music career. Any success I have achieved musically is directly attributable to Ellen Britton.
AFTER WORKING NIGHT AND DAY, WRITING SONGS FOR more than eighteen months without a hit, I ran into a classic case of writer’s block. Despite faithfully going to my writer’s room at OMG every day and working all day and half the night, I still wasn’t writing anything that artists wanted to record. I asked a fellow writer, Mike “Machine Gun” Kelley, what I could do to break the logjam. Mike wrote for another company, but he understood my dilemma. “You need to get out of this office,” he said. “Let’s go downtown.”
“Okay. I’m really not writing any great songs, and I’m miserable. So I might as well go have some fun.” For the first time in eighteen months, I took a break and decided to go to downtown Nashville for no real reason. Mike and I roamed around Broadway, checking out the various music venues, but my brain was still in songwriting mode. Standing on the busy corner of 4th Avenue and Broadway, I noticed tourists placing their hands inside the handprints of famous movie and music stars, indented in cement on the wall outside the Planet Hollywood restaurant, now Margaritaville.
When I went back to the office later that evening, images of those handprints stuck in my mind. That’s when an id
ea came to me: I thought of a dad in prison and his little boy tracing his own hand on a piece of paper and giving it to his dad. The son says to his dad, “When you think of me and want to be close, anytime you want to be near me, just put your hand in mine.”
I worked on the song idea late into the night and even shared it with a few writers the next day. Nobody got it; they all declined to help write it. “That’s stupid, man,” one writer said.
“It’s not stupid. I know some people who can relate to this kind of experience.”
I knew in my heart that it was a great idea, and all I needed was a hit songwriter—and the most successful writer in Nashville was right down the hall from me. Despite Mike Whelan’s cautions against bothering Skip Ewing, I felt strongly that I needed to share the idea with him. I held onto the idea for a few weeks and watched for my opportunity to approach Skip.
I knew he was busy writing, but I figured he had to come out of his writing room to go to the bathroom or get a cup of coffee or something, so I positioned myself in the “Picking Parlor,” the office coffee area where writers could take a break. I paced back and forth and calculated my approach to Skip. I figured I’d have only a few seconds to catch him and hit him with my idea as he made the trek from the restroom back to his office.
Sure enough, when Skip walked out of his writing room, he went straight for the restroom. I waited outside like a stalker, and the moment he came out, I was in front of him. “Stop!” I said much too loudly.
“What?”
“Skip, I know I’m not supposed to do this, but I have a song idea you need to hear.”
Skip turned and looked at me. He seemed irritated, but he looked me right in the eyes and apparently saw my sincerity.
“Okay, come on in.” Skip nodded toward his private writing room.
I stepped into Skip’s writing room, and I was so nervous I could barely explain the idea. I didn’t have any written lyrics, so I simply had to pitch the concept. “There’s a kid who traces his hand,” I stammered.
“What?” Skip cocked his head and looked at me as though I had dropped in from outer space.
“He traces his hand on a piece of paper and his dad is in prison . . .”
Skip was looking at me with a look that said, How am I going to get this guy out of my room?
I quickly blurted the rest of the idea. “The kid gives his dad the tracing of his hand, and says, ‘Dad, put your hand in mine, and I’ll be there anytime.’ ”
Skip closed the door and turned back to look at me. “That’s as strong as a new piece of rope,” he said emphatically. “Let’s plan a writing appointment and write this idea.”
I was in shock. Not because I didn’t think he would like my idea but because I remembered sitting on the floor at Bea’s in 1994, wishing, wondering, What would it be like to write a song with this guy?
For the next several weeks all I could think about was the opportunity to write a song with Skip Ewing. Although Skip liked my idea, it was several months before we finally got together to work on the song. But once we got started, it didn’t take long before we came up with something good. Skip stood at the piano, and I sat on the couch, holding a notepad, my guitar nearby. We wrote the song in about two and a half hours that same day.
The company pitched the song to a bunch of producers, and on May 12, 1999, “Put Your Hand in Mine” was placed on hold for country star Tracy Byrd. Tracy was a “hat guy,” and he was cranking out some hits. I was thrilled, but lots of songs get put on hold as an artist, producer, and music company consider them. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will ever be recorded. But on June 2, 1999, Tracy Byrd recorded “Put Your Hand in Mine.” The song soon climbed the country radio charts.
I was backing into the parking lot of Armos gym when I heard a familiar piano intro on my car radio. I know that song! I thought. I was so excited. It was the first time I ever heard “Put Your Hand in Mine” on the radio. That night I called Patricia and told her about hearing my song.
“Really?”
“Yeah, it really was on the radio,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement.
“Are you sure it wasn’t in your tape player?” Patricia asked.
“No! It was on the radio.”
Sure enough, the song stayed on the radio. Every week for the next thirty weeks, I listened and recorded the Top 40 Country Countdown, waiting to see where “Put Your Hand in Mine” charted. It peaked at number nine on the charts; it was surreal to hear my name in there with all the country greats. Some dreams really do come true!
Thirty-four
YOU NEVER KNOW
THE SUCCESS OF “PUT YOUR HAND IN MINE” RESULTED IN new opportunities for me to work with other writers. By now I had written more than two hundred songs but had only one hit. I was still feeling cocky when OMG teamed me up with a visiting writer from New York. Sitting in a writing room behind the piano, he said, “Play me something you’ve written.”
“Okay, sure,” I said, and I played him “Put Your Hand in Mine.” With my chest pumped up a bit, I turned the tables on him. “Now you play me something you’ve written,” I said.
“Oh, okay,” he replied. He played a simple piano intro and went into “Where everybody knows your name . . . ,” the theme song from the hit television show Cheers. At the height of show’s popularity, the song was played every day of the year in forty countries. In addition to that Emmy-nominated song, Gary Portnoy, the New York writer, had written hits for Dolly Parton and Air Supply, as well as the theme for the NBC sitcom Punky Brewster. I swallowed my pride; after discovering how successful Gary was, I was totally intimidated. We never did write a song that day.
ABOUT A YEAR LATER A PROBLEM CAME UP WHEN I WAS asked to concede a larger portion of my publishing royalties to a cowriter. I was a young writer in my midtwenties, and I had recently worked in prison. I wasn’t very diplomatic, and I didn’t realize that the music business is a small, close-knit group. I had not yet learned to play the music business game. So I refused.
I became persona non grata at that company from that day forward. A few months later, despite having a hit song and having earned enough royalties already to recoup the company’s investment in me, OMG did not exercise my next option—which is publishing lingo for saying, “You’re fired.” Although I was disappointed, the news didn’t come as a surprise.
I HIT THE STREETS LOOKING FOR A NEW SONGWRITING deal. Even with a hit song, those deals often take time, so for the next two weeks or so, I floundered, unemployed. I began to worry about how I was going to pay my rent.
Meanwhile, Jason Payne, an acquaintance of mine, called and asked me to participate in a “songwriters in the round” event at his hair salon. (Hey, it’s Nashville; you never know where the next great talent might be found!) With writers in the round, one writer tells the story of how he or she wrote a song and then performs it. Then the next writer does the same. Since many writers aren’t performing artists, the writers will often pitch in and help sing and play one another’s hit songs. Nashville songwriters share a strong sense of camaraderie unlike anything I have experienced in any other part of the world.
As much as I was always glad to help out, I had just lost my publishing deal, so I was in no mood to entertain an audience. “Man, I am so depressed, I don’t even feel like coming out of the apartment,” I tried to beg off.
But Jason talked me into participating in the round, and my plans were to leave as soon as I was done playing. It was an awkward writers’ night, with people crammed in the salon, and the sound system was horrible.
One of the writers in the round that evening was Steven Dale Jones. Steven had written hits for Reba McEntire, Diamond Rio, Josh Turner, and numerous other artists. His wife, Allison Jones, was the director of Artists & Repertoire at DreamWorks Records. Allison was in the audience that night, as was one of her coworkers, Jim Catino.
I performed a handful of songs and was just going through the motions, being a seat filler since I had only on
e hit at the time. Toward the end of the round, as I always did at such events, I said, “I didn’t write this song, but I like it,” and I performed “Sara Smile.”
Allison had already passed on me when I was at OMG, so she didn’t show any interest in me at all. Jim Catino, however, came up to me afterward, handed me his contact information, and said, “You sang ‘Sara Smile’ very well. Call me tomorrow.”
I called Jim the next day, and he invited me to stop by the publishing company to perform a few songs I’d written. I dropped in and performed some songs, but nothing impressed him. As I was getting ready to leave, songwriter Chris Lindsey walked in.
Chris had written big hits for artists such as Faith Hill and Tim McGraw; he also cowrote the song “Amazed” for the group Lonestar. Jim introduced us and asked me to perform “Sara Smile” for Chris.
When I finished, Chris and I talked briefly, and he was quite complimentary but gave no indication what he had in mind.
Late the following night, Chris called me and said, “Hey, Jimmy, this is Chris, the guy you met at Jim’s office yesterday. Will you sing a demo for me tomorrow morning at ten o’clock?”
“Ah, sure!” I said, but thinking at the same time, Oh, no; this is going to be a disaster since I’ve had no time to learn the song Chris wants me to record.
But the next morning, after several stout cups of coffee, I stood in the vocal booth at County Q recording studio, holding a lyric sheet, and I recorded a demo called “Are You Ever Going to Love Me?” I thought Chris needed a vocal demo to pitch the song to some artist.
For the next week I spent a lot of time in meetings at DreamWorks and listening to songs that Jim Catino thought were hits. I had no clue what he was doing, and I was wondering why he was playing me these songs when I needed a publishing deal. I enjoyed the music and Jim’s friendship, but I really didn’t care that he liked other writers’ songs. I wanted him to like my songs and offer me a publishing deal. But he didn’t.