by Wayne, Jimmy
Despite our disappointment, we went back into Starstruck and recorded three more songs—“Belongs to You,” Counting the Days,” and “All the Time in the World”—in an attempt to reestablish my reputation with radio and help Scott save his label.
In the midst of our promotion efforts, I received a call from Scott.
“Hey, Jimm . . . aay,” Scott greeted me. I knew something was up since Scott only pronounced my name like that when he was in a good mood. I could tell he was excited about something.
“I’ve just signed this new artist,” he said. “She’s only fourteen years old, but listen to these lyrics she wrote.” Scott proceeded to read some lyrics over the phone. I was standing at the kitchen sink in my apartment, listening to the excitement in his voice more than the lyrics. I was thrilled for Scott because he was my friend. He deserved success after all his hard work—especially after the manner in which James and Luke had dumped him.
Plus, I knew that if Scott won, I won. Even on our worst days, we still dreamed about making albums together for years to come. “Jimmy, we’ll make many records together,” Scott always reassured me. I believed him because we were friends. Scott knew that I would always support him, and I knew that Scott had my back, no matter what.
He was still prattling on about the lyrics, something about “When I think Tim McGraw.” Scott read the entire song to me over the phone. “She’s going to be a star,” he said.
I believed Scott, not because of the teenager’s lyrics but simply because Scott said so. I was genuinely happy for him. It was great to hear him gushing about a new artist after he’d been down for months. I congratulated him, hung up the phone, and went back to work.
SEVERAL DAYS WENT BY, AND I DIDN’T HEAR FROM SCOTT. That was unusual. Several weeks went by, and I still hadn’t heard from him, and he wasn’t returning my calls even though I knew he was in town. I decided to drop by the label offices and see what was going on.
As soon as I walked into the office foyer, I saw large, framed pictures of a young girl lining the hallway. She was stunning and looked like a superstar already. Those photos had not been there a few weeks earlier. I proceeded to Scott’s office and there sat a skinny young girl with golden curly hair. She looked something like the girl in the photos, and she was holding a guitar. “Hi, my name is Taylor,” she said in a sweet-sounding voice. “Taylor Swift.”
Scott properly introduced us then ventured, “Taylor, play a song for Jimmy.” She strummed a song and sang.
It was obvious that this girl was now Scott’s top priority. Fortunately for Scott, Taylor Swift was a quick study, a great songwriter, and a natural performer.
Thirty-seven
EXPOSURE
NEW YORK CITY IS AN INVIGORATING PLACE TO VISIT ANY time, but especially during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, which was when I first visited the Big Apple in 2006. I was doing an interview for a Sirius Radio show at 7:30 a.m. at the Sirius Tower, and, as I often did, along with my own hit singles, I sang “Sara Smile” live on the air. It is difficult to sing that early in the morning, so I really didn’t do my best performance of the song. More accurately, I was horrible.
Imagine my surprise when I walked out of the studio, and there, striding straight up the hallway in my direction, were the two guys who had made that song famous, Daryl Hall and John Oates. What are the odds of that happening? When I first saw them, I thought for sure that I was being punked, that someone had set me up for a practical joke. But this was no prank.
Daryl and John were talking among themselves with some other people, walking toward me. Instinctively I moved in their direction, like the starstruck fan that I was, with my record label representatives following behind me. I was staring at Hall and Oates so intensely I barely blinked. I almost had to pinch myself to make sure this was real. After all, a few minutes earlier, I was singing their song; they were the reason I was even there in New York. John saw me and said hello. “Hey, man, how’re you doing?” he asked.
“Hey, I have something to tell you,” I said. We talked briefly, and they told me they were in town to record a Christmas album. I told John and Daryl that I had gotten my recording deal by singing their song “Sara Smile.”
“Really?” John said. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a card, and said, “Here’s my phone number; call me. I’d like to write some songs with you.”
I called John Oates that same day—several times. “Hi, John, it’s me, Jimmy. We just met at the Sirius Radio building, and you said to give you a call. I want to write with you. Here’s my number. For the third time. Call me, man! I’ll text you to make sure you got the number.”
Two weeks went by, and I hadn’t heard from John Oates. I thought, Yeah, right, I knew it. He’s never going to call.
Then one day during a writing session in Nashville, I received a phone call. I looked at my phone and saw it was a Colorado number, but I didn’t recognize it. I thought, I don’t know anyone in Colorado. But for some reason I asked my writing partner, “I’m not sure who this is. Do you mind if I take this call?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I answered the phone, and a voice said, “Hey, man, this is Oates.”
I said, “Who?”
“Oates. John Oates.”
I thought I was being pranked again. I walked out in the hallway and asked again, “Who is this?”
“John Oates. We met in New York City. Do you want to come out to Aspen, where I live, so we can write some songs?”
“Sure!”
I FLEW TO ASPEN TO WRITE WITH JOHN, BUT I WAS SO NERVOUS and starstruck, my creativity level was less than zero. John was kind to me, though, welcoming me into his home, where he had his own recording studio. I gawked around the studio like a little kid, thinking, I’m sitting in the home of John Oates, one of my heroes.
John had a million-dollar check sealed in glass, sitting on his desk. “What’s the story on that check?” I asked.
“That’s a reminder,” John said, “that I will never sign a bad publishing deal ever again. I had to return that amount to our record company because we had signed over our publishing rights to some of our early songs, some big hits.”
I spent several days with John, and we had a good time, though we didn’t write any songs worth recording. But we became fast friends as a result of that visit. One night, after another lackluster day of trying to write love songs with John, I went back to my hotel room, and I began to write some lyrics about my experience as a nine-year-old child, when I had lashed myself to the cross.
The next day I showed John the first verse to a song I called, “How Jesus Felt.” “What do think about this, John?” I asked. John looked at the lyrics and listened to my ideas. He looked me right in the eyes and said, “I’m not interested in it.” He continued and said straightforwardly, “But that’s the kind of stuff you need to be writing. It’s obviously real to you. That’s what you need to be doing, Jimmy.”
AS TAYLOR SWIFT’S SUCCESS MULTIPLIED EXPONENTIALLY, the entire company rose with her. Everything around the label changed, from the paint on the walls, to the clothes people wore, to the cars people drove. The label was doing wonderfully well, but I was still struggling to get along, writing songs and waiting for Scott to come back and pick up where we had left off. I knew he would; Scott was a stand-up guy.
For almost a year, my career languished in limbo. Finally, in September 2007, Scott told me that he was creating a sister label to Big Machine, called Valory Records. He hoped to lure major artists such as Reba McEntire to Valory. “We’re almost up and running,” he said. A month later I met with Scott at Big Machine, and afterward we walked to a Mexican restaurant, where he told me he was signing Jewel and a few other artists to Valory. “But you,” he said, “will be the first artist I release on this label.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but his words were prophetic.
Valory Music officially opened for business with three artists—Jewel, Justin Moore, and me—on November
2, 2007. It was time to get busy recording again, so one of the first songs I tracked was “Where You’re Going,” the song based on the story of my college visit to the detention center. Two weeks later I visited Dustin Center and HomeBase, a receiving home for foster kids in Phoenix. I sat in the middle of a room with the kids all around me as I played songs and shared my story. They loved “Where You’re Going,” and I helped raise $160,000 for foster kids at that event. The kids at HomeBase presented me with a special piece of art painted by one of the homeless kids. A few years later I used the painting in a music video. It remains one of my most cherished possessions.
IN DECEMBER 2007, A MUSIC PUBLISHER CALLED ME AND asked, “Jimmy, will you write with one of my writers?” I quickly agreed.
Several weeks later I went to the old RCA building and entered the studio where songwriters Dave Pahanish and Joe West were waiting. Dave and Joe had recently moved to Nashville from Pittsburgh, and this was the first time we had met. We didn’t write a song that day, but as I was heading out of the studio, Joe said, “Hey, Jimmy, would you be interested in hearing a song we wrote?”
I was still in work mode and didn’t want to stall, but I remembered Skip Ewing’s response when I had first asked him to hear my song idea. “Sure,” I said. “Let me hear it.” I set my bag and guitar down on the floor and walked over to the mixing board. Joe pressed play, and I heard Dave’s voice on the demo, singing, “Do you remember . . .”
I stood behind the mixing console, listened to the entire song, and liked what I heard. I complimented the guys regarding the song and asked Joe if I could have a recording of it. By this point in my career, I had learned a little more about the psychology of songwriting, and I knew enough not to hype a song too much—especially a great song—because that ensured it would get pitched, possibly to someone else.
I called Joe several days later and asked if I could record my vocal on their song. The key was too high for me, so Joe, Dave, and I rerecorded all the instruments in my key. I played the acoustic guitar. “Hey, why don’t we add a little acoustic intro,” I suggested. The guys loved it, so I played the opening before the vocals. Then I recorded my vocals on the track. When we were done, I asked Joe not to play the demo for anyone, and he agreed—a major concession for a songwriter who depends on pitching songs to pay his or her light bill. But Joe and Dave trusted me with their song.
I kept the song in my vehicle for six weeks and listened to it every day. On a cold day in January, I pulled into the record label parking lot and sat in my vehicle, listening to the song several times. Finally, I ejected the CD and went inside.
“Scott, do you have a few minutes to listen to a new song?” I asked. Scott was busier than ever, and he was especially busy on this day. Someone was just leaving his office, and someone else was in the waiting room, anticipating a meeting.
“I’m busy, Jimmy.” Scott was seated in his chair, facing away from me.
“Scott, please, listen to this song,” I said again.
“Hand it here,” he said impatiently, as he held his hand over his shoulder, not even looking at me. Scott inserted the disc into his computer and pressed play. I watched the back of his head begin to bob back and forth in sync with the groove of the music.
He twirled around in his chair and asked, “Where did you find this song?”
I told him that I had recorded it with Dave and Joe.
“I’m getting ready to go into a meeting,” he said, nodding toward the waiting room. “I’ll call you back in thirty minutes.” I knew Scott well enough to tell whether a song excited him or not. He was definitely excited about what he’d heard on that CD.
That afternoon, my phone rang as I was walking inside my townhouse. “Hello?”
I heard the label staff cheering on the other end of the phone. Then I heard Scott’s voice. “Congratulations, Jimmy! This song, ‘Do You Believe Me Now?’ will be your next single,” Scott said. The entire label staff cheered and applauded again over the conference call.
Suddenly, I felt wanted again.
ON MARCH 10, 2008, VALORY RELEASED “DO YOU BELIEVE Me Now?” to radio. By the end of the month, it was the third most added song in the country, slightly behind hits by Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood.
Scott called me while I was in a hotel room in Medford, Oregon, getting ready to perform at a charity event. He sounded excited by our overnight success and wanted to strike while the iron was hot. Scott said, “We need to take all the songs you’ve recorded but have not released and use them to complete this CD.”
“What? No way!”
I called Joe West and told him we needed to get back in the studio and record four more songs that would at least balance half of the album. “Otherwise, this CD will die after ‘Do you Believe Me Now?’ ”
I didn’t say anything to Scott about recording new songs. I simply withdrew some money from my savings account, paid for the recordings myself, and then showed up at the label and handed them to Scott. Two of those songs were “Kerosene Kid” and “Elephant Ears,” two of my most meaningful songs.
I filmed a video for “Do You Believe Me Now?” in April, and in June began working with Mike Kraski, my new manager, on booking concert dates. The full album containing “Do You Believe Me Now?” released on August 26, 2008. A few days later, while I was in Las Vegas getting ready to perform on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, I received a phone call informing me that “Do You Believe Me Now?” had gone to number one on the Billboard charts! The song stayed at the top of the charts for three consecutive weeks. It went on to earn BMI’s prestigious Million-Air Award for having aired more than a million times on radio. What a kick it was for a kerosene kid from North Carolina to see my name listed along with the music industry’s finest recording artists.
“DO YOU BELIEVE ME NOW?” WAS NOT ONLY A GREAT single for me; it was a door-opening song for Joe West and Dave Pahanish and their cowriter, Tim Johnson. Joe and Dave parlayed their success with me into number one hits, such as “Without You” for Keith Urban and “American Ride” for Toby Keith.
With a number one song, I immediately set out on a grueling, three-city-per-day radio tour, waking up in one part of the country and going to bed hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away that same night. It was a crazy schedule, but I loved meeting the radio personnel, some of whom I knew from past tours but many of whom I was meeting for the first time. Not surprisingly, the press picked up on the “revival of Jimmy Wayne’s career.” I had been out of circulation and prior to “Do You Believe Me Now?” off the charts for several years. That made every radio station visit or television interview all that much more special to me.
I had been going constantly for eighteen days when I woke up in Oakland, California, and had to catch a flight. I was really tired from being up late the previous night, but I was still on the radio tour, which meant a record label rep was dragging me to every radio station possible in the shortest amount of time, squeezing in every public relations opportunity down to the very last second.
Semiconscious, with not nearly enough coffee in my system, I was going through airport security at approximately 7:30 a.m. As I stepped through the metal detector, the alarms went off. A TSA agent spoke to me in broken English. “What’s in your pocket?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing,” I responded.
“Go through again,” he nodded toward the magnetometer. I dutifully walked through the machine again. I followed his directions but to no avail. The red lights continued to flash, and the buzzers kept sounding. I took off one item of clothing after another, but nothing solved the problem. I noticed a number of people in line watching me with amused expressions; others looked on impatiently, wanting to get through the line but unable to do so because I was blocking their forward progress.
“Something is in your pocket setting off the alarm,” the TSA guy said. “Go through again.” This was getting embarrassing, not to mention irritating since I knew I was not carrying anything dangerous. After the th
ird time going back through the security check, the TSA officer said something to me, but I pretended I couldn’t understand him. I figured I would solve the problem once and for all. I removed my shorts and laid them on the conveyor belt. The people in line behind me quickly scattered.
When it was my turn to go through the magnetometer again, the TSA agent realized I was standing there in my boxers and T-shirt. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “Security!” From out of nowhere, a team of approximately ten men the size of Oakland Raiders football players, including some civilian undercover agents, surrounded me.
“Put your hands behind your back, now!” one of the agents gruffly barked at me. I felt my arms pulled back and handcuffs slapped onto my wrists. The agents interrogated me in rapid-fire fashion while I stood there in my underwear. They searched my wallet and threw all my cards and photos on the floor.
Seeing my family’s photos lying in disarray on the airport floor made me angry. Not at the security agents but at myself. I realized that my insolent actions were a throwback to my rebellious youth. Instead of doing what was right, I bucked authority, and it got me in trouble. I blamed it on the TSA officer’s dialect, but even if I hadn’t understood every word he said, I knew exactly what he meant. One thing for sure: he hadn’t told me to take off my shorts. I was just being a jerk.
After about twenty-five minutes of humiliation, the interrogators released me and told me not to speak about this incident to anyone for the rest of the day. Those instructions made no sense to me, but I wasn’t going to argue. I was already dangerously close to missing my flight. I guess the agents simply didn’t want me flaunting my actions, so they said to keep my mouth shut. Sure enough, though, as soon as I made it through security, a redneck ambled over to me and said, “That was awesome, man!”
Not about to miss an opportunity for publicity, the record label publicist welcomed questions from the media. I could only answer, “From my experience, the last place you want to take off your shorts in an airport is in Oakland, California. They do not play around, especially with some southern boy who’s being a smarty pants!” People magazine picked up the story that week and cited my comments as one of their 10 Best Celeb Quotes, explaining why I thought it was okay to take off my shorts: “I mean, they show guys in boxers in Sunday paper ads, right?”