I WAS SITTING ON THE BEDROOM FLOOR AT BEA’S HOUSE IN 1994, when a man came on Crook & Chase, a popular country music television show hosted by Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase. The musical guest that day wasn’t a big name star, but he was one of the most successful songwriters in Nashville. Using only a guitar, he performed three hit songs that he had written—all of which I recognized were recorded by major country stars. I was so naive to the music business, I didn’t know that many of music’s greatest performers didn’t write their own songs. At first I wondered, What’s this guy doing singing other people’s hits? The more I watched and listened, though, I began to let my dreams run wild. I wonder what it would be like to write a song with that guy?
When the songwriter completed his set, the hosts and audience applauded enthusiastically for Skip Ewing, one of Nashville’s most prolific and most successful writers.
I had already been writing some songs and performing locally. Anytime I sang someplace, Bea always went along with me and sat in the front row. Funny, though, she hardly paid attention to my singing. She’d just sit in the front row and read her Bible throughout my performance.
THE FIRST TIME I PERFORMED WITHOUT SOUND TRACKS IN front of an audience was a disaster. My friend Lloyd Kelso married Debra Burns, an aspiring country singer. Debra enjoyed some success with a song called “Runaway Heart,” so Lloyd’s parents scheduled a concert in their backyard, and I asked him if I could sing a few songs to warm up the audience before Debra started. I usually sang using karaoke tapes for background music, but this was the first time I attempted to play my guitar and sing at the same time. I was horrible. I don’t mean that I wasn’t good. I mean I was absolutely awful! The audience was kind, but by the second song, Lloyd stood up and waved his arms and yelled to me, “Stop!”
“What?”
“That’s enough.” I felt as though someone had just reached out a long hook and pulled me off the stage.
I didn’t learn my lesson, and a short time after that, I tried to do another performance without my karaoke background tapes. This time I attempted to perform “My Only Friend,” the song I had written about my friend’s mom, with Bea in mind.
I sat on stage at Highland Junior High and started noodling through it, but I couldn’t do it. I tried several times but couldn’t get my fingers and mouth to work together at the same time.
“Close the curtain,” I said disgustedly.
“Come on, Jimmy!” people in the crowd called out. “Sing!” They had heard me sing at various functions around the area but always with backup music, never to my own accompaniment.
“I can’t,” I whined.
“Yes, you can. Come on, sing for us.”
I muddled through the song, but it was terribly embarrassing, especially with my friends in the crowd and with Bea sitting on the front row.
I was so discouraged about my guitar playing that I almost gave it up. I enjoyed singing to the background tapes. Who needs a guitar, anyhow?
I did. Nashville is a guitar town. I knew if I were ever going to make it as a singer, I needed to be able to play guitar. I kept practicing, working harder to learn the guitar; I wanted to play so badly. When I first started playing, I practiced in the bathroom, sitting on the bathtub, facing the wall. I turned out the lights so I couldn’t see my hands. Slowly but surely I got better and didn’t have to stare at the strings as I played. So I am living proof that singing in the shower might help.
ONE OF THE MORE ROWDY VENUES WHERE I SANG—WITHOUT my guitar—was at a karaoke contest sponsored by WSOC radio station at Coyote Joe’s, a popular bar and country dance club, with a large American flag hanging in the back of the room and a spacious dance floor. It had a small stage and a balcony, where people could sit and watch the performances. On weekends hot regional bands played at Coyote Joe’s, but during the week, the owners kept the place busy with crowds of people coming to hear their friends singing karaoke. I entered the contest every Thursday night I could. A cash prize of seventy-five dollars was awarded to the winner, which was determined by audience response—how much noise the friends and fellow drinkers could make on behalf of their favorites. One of the songs I sang frequently was Garth Brooks’s hit “The Thunder Rolls,” written by another premier Nashville songwriter, Pat Alger, and the crowd always responded enthusiastically. I frequently came home from Coyote Joe’s with an extra seventy-five dollars in my pocket.
My girlfriend, Tonia, went along with me and supported me. I had met Tonia at Ingles grocery store shortly after my heart had been broken by my former girlfriend. I was rather shy, so I didn’t immediately go out and try to get another girlfriend. But when I walked in the grocery store and saw a young woman with bright green eyes, long blonde hair, and a vibrant smile working behind the cash register, I really wanted to meet her.
I made frequent trips to the store because I didn’t have much money, and, especially while I was living with Bea, I didn’t have a lot of space to store food. I simply bought what I needed or wanted for that day. I pretty much bought the same things every day—an apple, some bread, and maybe some sandwich meat.
After I had been in the store several times, Tina, one of the pretty girl’s coworkers, approached me and gave me the new girl’s name and phone number. “Don’t say I told you so, but the cashier over there would like to get to know you.” I was thrilled to have her number, but I was still too shy to call her.
A few days later I was in Ingles, standing in Tonia’s line, waiting to check out. Her line had four guys in front of me. At another register a few aisles away, a less-attractive young woman had a totally empty lane.
“Aisle Four is open,” she called out in a squeaky voice. “Aisle Four’s open,” she repeated, looking directly at the five of us guys in Tonia’s line. Nobody moved. A rugged-looking guy in front of me turned around and nodded toward Aisle Four. “You can go over there.”
“Nah, I think I’ll wait right here.”
“Me, too,” he nodded. “She sure is pretty, isn’t she?”
“That’s my girl,” I said impulsively.
The tough guy glanced at me, looked at the pretty girl behind the cash register, then back at me. He stepped out of line and moved over to Aisle Four, which was still empty.
When I finally got to the register and worked up enough nerve to talk to the pretty girl, I introduced myself. I fumbled through asking her if she wanted to go get some pizza after work. Surprisingly, she agreed. But when she met me for pizza, she brought along her sister. The sister was ultra-protective of Tonia, so I spent most of the time answering big-sister questions, trying to convince her I was safe, and hardly got a word in with Tonia.
The following day a woman I had known from Osage Mill textile factory asked if I would sing a few songs at a cookout. I said, “Sure. Is it okay if I bring along a friend?” Tonia went along with me, and I happily sang for hours, using karaoke background tapes. I sang every song directly to Tonia, whether she was looking at me or not. Tonia and I were a couple from that day forward.
Along with Bea, Tonia believed that I could make my dream happen; she had so much confidence in me that she was willing to go with me week after week to Coyote Joe’s. Normally about twenty or thirty singers competed for the prize each week. Many of the singers were off-key drunks, but there were always several talented musicians as well. Nevertheless, I established a pretty good track record, winning the prize week after week. Since I was working and saving money, I took the bold step of moving out of Bea’s house and into my own place, a ratty trailer near work that I rented for forty dollars a week. I got so accustomed to winning at Coyote Joe’s that I counted on the extra seventy-five dollars every two weeks to help pay my rent.
One Thursday night I did my usual rendition of “The Thunder Rolls,” and the sound guy did his part, adding a few effects with the sound and lights. I fully expected to pick up my seventy-five dollars at the end of the evening. But that night Johnny Johnson, a guy wearing a big black cowboy hat, got up and started playing the fiddle, and he was hot! The purple lights on the stage made the violin look as though it were smoking. The guy with the fiddle stole the show. He was incredible, speed-playing licks on the fiddle. The crowd started cheering for him; he was so good, I cheered for him as well.
I lost that night, and Johnny Johnson won. I didn’t like losing, but I was very impressed with Johnny’s talent. Years later I was on a show with Rascal Flatts. I was doing a sound check when a fiddle player started to tune up. I looked up and saw Johnny Johnson, now one of the hottest fiddle players in country music.
I REALLY DIDN’T KNOW ANYBODY IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS, but my friends Lloyd and Debra Kelso encouraged me to visit them in Nashville. Lloyd had a law firm on the corner of Chet Atkins Place and 18th Avenue, part of Nashville’s famous Music Row.
In October 1996, I loaded my bicycle—I had not yet returned the borrowed bike that I had been riding the day I met Bea and Russell—in the bed of a 1984 brown Ford truck. I wanted to have the bike just in case the truck broke down on my way to Nashville.
I drove the longest trip I’d ever driven outside of Charlotte, nearly four hundred miles up Highway 74, across Interstate 40, westbound to exit 209B, Demonbreun Street, also known as Music Row. I spent three days observing and meeting with a few of Lloyd’s friends whom he had met in the music business or represented as an attorney. I met with music legend Don Light, whose publishing fame rested on Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” and I sang a few songs for him. I met Charlie Monk, another music publishing mogul, at the church Lloyd and Debra attended. I met with a few executives from music companies, and a few others. I was surprised at how nice these people were to me even though I was a nobody. I made several trips to Nashville over the next few months, just trying to get my foot in the door of the music business. But, although the doors opened with relative ease, nobody seemed interested in my songs or me as an artist, and nothing ever came of my visits.
I was still working full time at the prison. It was relatively easy to make trips to Nashville when Sergeant Newton was kind enough to arrange my schedule so I would have three days off in a row. I could make a hasty trip to Nashville and be back in time to work the third shift, from eleven at night to seven in the morning. But when I took the community work crew job, I had to plan my trips sparingly, using only my vacation days.
There’s a saying in the music business: you must be present to win. In other words, I needed to move to Nashville before I could expect anyone to take me seriously. I understood that, but I was also wary enough to know that I better have a reason to move to Music City before giving up a real job to pursue what may turn out to be a pipe dream. One morning, after I had worked a long third shift at the prison, I was awakened from a deep sleep by somebody pounding on the side of my rented trailer, banging away right where my bedroom was located. In my pre-coffee condition, I could barely function, but I recognized Tonia’s voice outside the trailer, calling to me, “Jimmy! Get up! I have something to tell you.”
I stumbled to the front door and invited Tonia inside. “Wha . . . What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s wrong, but you need to get cleaned up and put on some singin’ clothes. We’re going to Charlotte.”
“What’s in Charlotte? Tonia, what in the world are you talkin’ about? I just got to bed a few hours ago. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are,” Tonia insisted. “My friend Christy Williams gave me her ticket to the Opryland Theme Park auditions that are being held today at the Charlotte Convention Center.”
“What? Why isn’t Christy going? She really wants a shot as a female artist.” Christy and I were friendly rivals on the local singers’ circuit, which made me skeptical and quite reluctant to take the invitation seriously. It didn’t make sense. Similar to the “tickets” awarded to contestants on modern-day television shows, such as American Idol, The Voice, and The X Factor, of the thousands of tryouts for Opryland, only a limited number of contestants actually receive an invitation to audition before the decision makers. Christy had received one of those tickets. So why would Christy give away her ticket—and her chance to possibly break into the music business—to me?
“I am not going to any audition,” I said vehemently. I was convinced that the audition was probably a gimmick or maybe even a scam, trying to bilk money out of hopeful musicians, and I didn’t want to let Christy “get one on me.”
Tonia refused to take no for an answer. “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s go.”
“It’s a scam, Tonia. Watch and see.”
I must have said those words a hundred times as we drove the thirty minutes up I-85 toward Charlotte. Tonia didn’t say a word the entire trip. She just kept driving.
We finally arrived at the Charlotte Convention Center, parked, and went inside the enormous building. I was overwhelmed and felt so out of place. I was a small-town, country guy; I wasn’t used to the big city. Everything about it scared me.
Worse yet, we couldn’t find the audition room in the huge convention center.
“See, I told you it was a scam,” I complained to Tonia after we had walked into several empty rooms. “Let’s go.”
Tonia said, “Hold on. Let’s try this room.”
We had finally found room 213A, where a panel of old men—probably in their early forties or fifties, but they looked old to me—were sitting behind a long table. There were no other contestants, no piano, no microphone, nothing; just them. I knew we had the wrong room again, but from the doorway, Tonia ventured, “Is this the room where the Opryland Theme Park auditions are supposed—”
“Yeah,” one of the grumpy old men interrupted before Tonia could finish her sentence. “Come down here and put your tape in that cassette player, press play, and sing. You’re number 300 and the last one of the day,” he said. He apparently thought Tonia was the contestant and seemed disappointed when I walked in front of the long table and put in my background track. Tonia stood behind me and waited.
The music came on, and I began singing “Love, Me,” a huge hit song for Collin Raye, written by Max T. Barnes and Skip Ewing, the guy I had seen on Crook & Chase.
I barely had opened my mouth and hadn’t even finished the first line of the song when the old man pressed the stop button on the tape player and said, “Okay.” He told me to put the other tape in and press play. After listening to 299 other auditions, I guessed that he’d heard enough of “Love Me.”
I started singing my second song, “Papa Loved Mama,” and I was so flustered, I forgot the words to the song. The judge hit the stop button again, and said, “Okay, that’s it.”
“Huh?” I asked. That’s it?
“That’s it,” he repeated loudly.
“Now we need to see you dance,” one of the other men said.
“I can’t dance,” I said. “I don’t dance.”
“Well, try,” he said emphatically.
Another judge took me to a side room where there was a video camera. “As soon as the song comes on,” he instructed, “start dancing.”
I looked ridiculous gyrating around the room in my tight jeans, a dingy white T-shirt, a vest that looked like a Turkish rug, my bargain Jesus Store boots, and my string-tie bolo, with a saddle clip that stuck me in the neck every time I moved. But they wanted me to dance, so I danced. And the judges got a good laugh out of it.
On the way home I was fuming. “I told you it was a scam!” I kept saying to Tonia over and over. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, and now they have me on camera dancing, or whatever you want to call it.”
Tonia just smiled and kept driving, occasionally snickering when I mentioned the dancing. Back home I didn’t mention the botched audition to anyone, even if someone asked how it went. I changed the subject immediately. I tried my best to forget the whole ridiculous affair, and I almost did, until I got an unusual phone call.