The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)” was one of the three songs Garth brought with him when he moved to Nashville. Garth’s earlier decision, to change the song twist from musician to rodeo rider, not only made for a more interesting lyric, it established a practice that would continue throughout Garth’s recording career. Each album would contain at least one song that dealt with cowboy and rodeo culture, the world Garth had loved growing up in Oklahoma.

  Garth knew exactly how he wanted the music played on this song, and it went back to his idea that sometimes the studio band should go for a bar band sound. Mark Casstevens explained that when they recorded “Much Too Young” Garth sometimes borrowed his guitar and played the licks he heard in his mind: “I watched his hands to catch anything that struck me as essential to the song. Then I turn that motif, lick, or melody into a signature part of the song. As a rule you take the best of what is on the demo and you make it better.”

  Story songs were in abundance on this debut album. “Alabama Clay,” written by Larry Cordle and Ronnie Scaife, was one of the fifty or so songs Garth brought to the studio. Here, as in so many great country songs, a small-town boy learns how lonely the city can be and yearns for the feel of dirt between his toes.

  “Everytime That It Rains” was another three-minute movie, one Garth penned with his old college roommate, Ty England, and Charley Stefl. Ty reflects that the co-write was an important learning experience. What Garth insisted on, according to Ty, was that they not just tell a story, but they follow it up. Never leave the listener dangling. In this instance, a man reflects on a one-night stand between a traveler and a truck stop waitress. But while Ty believed that told the story, Garth insisted on bringing the song full circle, to another encounter years later, when the two realized that rekindling the flame was futile.

  One of the story songs on Garth’s debut that continued to resonate over the years was “Cowboy Bill.” It’s about an old man who tells young neighbors tales of being a Texas Ranger. The kids love him, and the adults snicker at the codger’s imagination. Only after he dies does the town learn that the stories were all true.

  “Larry Bastian and I were over at Major Bob when he played me that song,” Garth says. “He was sitting on a window ledge, with the setting sun shining in. He started singing that story, and I sat there in a trance. Then I literally begged him for the song, even though I didn’t have a record deal yet.”

  Although the song was never a single, it became something of a signature in Garth’s career. “Anybody who thinks they should be looking just for songs that might have that radio-hit thing going should take a listen to ‘Cowboy Bill,’ ” Garth said in 1998. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard fans at concerts shouting out, Play ‘Cowboy Bill.’ And I mean years after that album came out.”

  Bastian also contributed “Nobody Gets Off In This Town,” written with DeWayne Blackwell. It’s classic Bastian/Blackwell wry humor about looking for a drink in a dry county, a good time in a whistle-stop that’s lost its steam. Like “Cowboy Bill,” this song has remained a fan favorite through the years.

  “I worried a little about that song,” Garth later said, laughing. “I come from small town America, and I didn’t want it to sound like we were making any jokes about it. But as time went by I realized that people got it, that the song wasn’t meant to put the experience down. It was just having fun with it.”

  Since they still needed another song, Allen Reynolds suggested several that Garth had written. “I had a handful of tapes that I really liked,” Allen says. “But Garth wasn’t buying any of them. He worried that he was getting too much of his material on the album, and he also knew Bob Doyle didn’t want it to look like we were too heavy on Major Bob songs. So he asked me if I had any other ideas.” Reynolds turned to his old boss, Jack Clement, and played Garth a tape of a Clement-penned song titled “I Know One.” What Allen didn’t tell his artist was that the song had been a hit for Jim Reeves in 1960, two years before Garth was born. On the day that Garth was set to record “I Know One,” the BBC’s Bob Powell was at the studio, and dropped the news. Allen laughs now remembering how Garth felt the pressure, but in the end, everyone, including Cowboy Jack, loved the cut.

  “Garth was going up to the studio when Bob mentioned Jim Reeves’s hit,” Reynolds said. “He almost fell down the stairs.”

  It was conventional wisdom at the time that newcomers should simply name their first albums after themselves, and feature a good close-up cover shot—all the better to remember them by. So that decision was preordained at Capitol. And when asked why he opted for a self-titled album, Garth replied, “I’d have titled it Randy Travis if I could have gotten away with it.”

  Garth Brooks was well received when it hit the streets on April 12, 1989, but there was no universal ovation. It would take years before critics examined what had really happened with this newcomer’s album.

  In 1995, Billboard editor Edward Morris wrote, “History lesson: Six years ago this month, the most momentous event in modern country music occurred and nobody knew it. On April 12, 1989, Capitol released the self-titled debut album by Garth Brooks. It got good but not ecstatic reviews at the time. The label sensed it had a promising act on its hands, and to demonstrate that point it rented a rehearsal hall near Music Row and invited a few dozen industryites to watch the new kid perform. The audience liked what it saw and heard. Brooks was not flamboyant, but he worked the stage with exquisite confidence and ease. When it came time for introductions, producer Allen Reynolds expressed his pleasure with the album and cracked a joke about how strong-minded Brooks had been in the studio. Then everybody applauded and went home.

  “The thing that kept Brooks afloat until he caught fire beyond his own determination was the across-the-board strength of that first album. It simply had no throwaway songs or lackluster performances. The lyrics were vivid, the stories intriguing, the melodies memorable, the wit restrained and the emotions believably woven in. If Brooks is ever to be equaled or matched in artistic and commercial impact, it will take another such powerful collection, one free of vanity, filler and publishing politics.”

  “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)” made it to the Billboard Top 10, and would have gone higher if some radio stations had not refused to play a song containing the word “damn.” It almost didn’t make it out of the Top 40. Capitol Records was a minor Nashville player and lacked the clout to promote several singles at once when Garth Brooks was released in 1989. When the promotion team traded out “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)” to concentrate on a more established artist’s release, it was a watershed moment in Garth’s outlook. “I’m laying there in a fetal position saying, ‘This can’t be,’ ” he said later. “But you come out of it stronger. ‘Much Too Young’ was one of the three songs I’d brought to town in ’87,” he reflected. “And I think that the first song you get on radio is like a first-born child. You’re very protective of it.”

  Flying in the face of the label decision to drop the single mid-chart, Bob Doyle and Pam Lewis hired a team of independent radio promotion men who pushed it up to Top 10. One Wyoming radio listener was especially glad the song stuck around.

  “I was driving my truck from Kaycee to Casper,” recalled Chris LeDoux. “This song came on by a guy I’d never heard of before. Garth Brooks. Since the song was about rodeos, I was really paying attention to it, and thinking, ‘Now there’s a pretty good song.’ Then I heard a line that went ‘… a worn out tape of Chris LeDoux,’ and I nearly drove my truck off the road. All kinds of people started asking me about my music!”

  Chris LeDoux could have answered a simple “yes” to the Urban Cowboy question, “Are you a real cowboy?” Chris discovered rodeo at age twelve while his family was living in Austin, Texas, rode his first bareback bronc the following year, and won the Little Britches Rodeo Bareback World Championship in 1964, when he was fourteen.

  At the same time he was discovering a love for music, and by the time he s
tarted high school he was composing songs on harmonica and guitar. His first: “Participial Phrases—I Wonder What They Is.” Talk about a writer who loved words. He wrote and sang so much during his rodeo career that people started asking to purchase tapes, and he was soon selling his music from the back of his truck out on the rodeo circuit. Eventually he became not just an underground but a galactic hero, when NASA used Chris’s version of the Marty Robbins classic “Cowboy In A Continental Suit” to awaken Colonel James Anderson during a space shuttle Atlantic flight.

  But the part of Chris LeDoux’s story that Garth Brooks most loved involved his 1976 world championship bronc ride. Chris was in sorry shape in 1975, having injured his collarbone and torn ligaments already damaged by high school football. Chris, who had often joked about the idea of people riding mechanical bulls, decided to rig up a backyard bucking bronc machine. “I figured out a new way to tape my leg and shoulder, modified a garbage can, then got people to pull the ropes and help me ride out the pain. By the time I got to Oklahoma City for the 1976 finals, I was feeling pretty good, but way down in the rankings.

  “There’s a ‘bidding’ that goes on at big rodeos. People put up money as bets, and they win or lose as does the contestant. They bought me for peanuts,” Chris laughed.

  For his final ride Chris drew Stormy Weather, considered by far the toughest bronc in the competition. Taped together and gritting his teeth against the pain, Chris climbed on and hung on. When the bell rang out Chris LeDoux was the world champion bareback bronc rider.

  In part, Garth’s insistence on using a rodeo song reflected a western attitude that is different from simply a “country” outlook. Chris LeDoux once put it best:

  “It’s a lot like the West itself. It’s wide-open spaces and big skies. It’s a love of freedom and a dislike of boundaries. It’s a willingness to take a chance on a game or a piece of land or eight-second ride: having the grit and the guts to go for it.”

  Chris once spoke privately about his belief that Garth’s music embodied his definition of a western attitude.

  “From the first time I heard ‘Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)’ I paid attention to Garth’s music—the songs and the performances. If you listen to his albums over the years, he’s that poet and dreamer I believe lives within a cowboy’s heart. But he’s also got the grit to go for broke. He takes chances on his records and in his shows. Nothing is safe with this guy. I’ve seen him take some hard body blows, take the knocks with no regret, then tape himself together and make the ride.”

  Just a year after Chris heard himself lauded in song on country radio, in April 1990, Garth and Chris played their first show together at the Cocky Bull in Victorville, California. Chris spoke to the Dallas Morning News’ Michael Corcoran: “The first time I met Garth, I wanted to thank him for the recognition, for everything he’s done for me. But before I could say anything, Garth thanked me. He told me that his career has really taken off since my name was on one of his songs!”

  What Garth really got from Chris was tacit approval for the way his live show was evolving. There was no doubt that Chris LeDoux was singing cowboy songs backed up with a rock ’n’ roll performance. The energy level transcending most country shows was conspicuous. Garth’s own show was full-tilt boogie, but after exposure to Chris, he kicked it up a notch. Garth called it “country with muscle” and laughed that he stole all his moves from Chris LeDoux. He paid tribute to the rodeo star by saying at each show, “God bless Chris LeDoux.”

  When one examines the reasons that ’90s country music broke so many album and ticket records that it ruled rock, Garth’s record sales are one part, but the road show he says he stole from Chris LeDoux is of equal if not greater importance.

  Garth’s road band, Stillwater, was a solid group, but unlike the musicians he used in the studio, there were few Nashville insiders. A couple of Oklahoma boys were included. Dave Gant, from Ada, played keyboards, fiddle, and added harmonies. He was classically trained in the viola, and had played for Reba McEntire when she was still an unknown Oklahoma girl dreaming of coming to Nashville.

  Garth kept the promise to call his old Oklahoma State roommate Ty England when he had something to offer. In fact, on the very day he signed with Capitol, he phoned Ty.

  “I called him up and asked him if he wanted to come out,” Garth said.

  Ty was hesitant at first, because he finally had a good job with benefits, a car, and a secure future. “I had cold feet. I had faith in Garth, but I never had faith in myself. I asked him if I could think about it.” The next day Ty called to tell Garth he was on his way to Nashville. He gave his notice at work and was on the road in his 1954 Chevy two weeks later.

  “Ty quit a thirty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year job with a company car and came out and worked for a hundred dollars a week,” Garth said. It was a leap of faith of Music City proportions. And it worked out.

  Garth had met electric guitar and fiddle player James Garver, a Kansas transplant, at Cowtown Boots, and after asking him to come on board, James brought up fellow Kansan Steve McClure’s name. “He’s the greatest steel player I ever worked with,” James said. Then, through Steve, Garth found his drummer. “I told Steve I was looking for a high-energy drummer who can cut a new path,” Garth said. Steve replied, “I’ve got your guy, a Plant City, Florida, boy named Mike Palmer.” Tim Bowers rounded out the band on bass guitar and background vocals. A singer/ songwriter from High Point, North Carolina, he’d played with Billy “Crash” Craddock for eleven years.

  From the beginning, Garth and the band held quick post-show meetings to talk about what went right and what went wrong. “We do that within the first five minutes when we come off,” Garth told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time. “It’s almost like a confessional with us saying we’re sorry we did this or that—or that something ain’t working. We are a band—not just an artist. It’s important to have people around you who don’t fear you. You need people who’ll walk up to you and tell you when you’re wrong and not worry about getting fired.”

  In 1990 Garth talked about Stillwater to the Gavin Report: “They’re not just a bunch of guys that are looking for a job that pays more money than the next one. They work for the dream. They still remember the basement. They still remember what we all joined out here to do, and that was to take music to the people.”

  That same year he joked to Music City News, “The band’s contract is that if they leave, I have to kill them.”

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Garth to tell Joe Harris that he wanted Stillwater to accompany him to shows. Even though he had a single on the charts, he was virtually unknown.

  “The guys need to work, they need to eat,” Garth said.

  This presented a problem. Record labels generally agreed to pay a certain amount of tour support for artists but not for their bands. Joe Harris had already broken with company policy by agreeing to represent an artist without a record label; now he was faced with another dilemma: either get enough money from promoters or risk offending Capitol Records by asking for tour support.

  But Harris also knew that Garth would be a much more valuable act with Stillwater. “The normal procedure was for a club owner or promoter to provide an artist with a local band,” Joe explained. “Sometimes this caused the artist to look bad, if the band’s timing was off or if the musicians weren’t familiar with the material. I even saw George Strait backed by a rock and roll band one night. It was really hard on the artist not knowing what they had to work with at each new gig. Garth and his management had a plan, a strategy, and it worked. When he and Stillwater went out on the road they were tight. Garth and his band were well rehearsed, and their performance proved that.”

  Harris approached fair producer Variety Attractions and convinced the company to work with his newcomer. But Garth’s insistence on taking Stillwater with him on early road trips set a precedent. As Harris noted: “Some people blamed Garth for this. It was the beginning of people claiming he ‘changed the bu
siness.’ If so, that was a change for the better.”

  Garth’s live show started to draw crowds simply by word of mouth, a “hard ticket” act. “My job became a lot easier every time a promoter saw Garth perform,” Joe Harris said. “That guy would talk to the next guy and so it would go. I started hearing back from people that the fans were also passing along the word. That’s a booker’s dream.” Not content to stand and sing, Garth moved all over the stage, horsed around with band members, interacted with the audience, and in general, turned the performance into a party where fans felt like welcome guests and joined in the revelry.

  On August 10, 1989, Garth headlined a show at Tulsa City Limits. John Wooley, music critic at the Tulsa World, wrote, “After seeing what he can do in concert, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Brooks, showman and talent that he is, is going to be country music’s next big thing.” As it turned out, the limb was pretty solid.

  The following month Garth would start to transform into the next big thing with his second single release, his deal-maker, “If Tomorrow Never Comes.” For this one, Capitol decided to spring for a video. Recording the song had come naturally for Garth, but making a video was another story. “When I see myself on TV I throw things at the television,” he laughed. “When you see yourself on TV you realize that it’s not how you see yourself. I swear to you that I do not have double chins! And I know I’ve got more hair than shows up on television!”

  Garth also instinctively understood some of the pitfalls of the video medium. “Onstage every singer is a three-minute actor,” he said. “You live it every time you sing it. But the flip side of this is that you make certain faces while you are singing, that are heartfelt but still don’t look good on camera.”