SOME DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE
BY JANUARY 1998, MIKE WHELAN AND I HAD AGREED IN principle on the deal points for my songwriting agreement with Opryland Music Group. I still wasn’t officially a professional songwriter, but the possibility of my dream coming true was one step closer. In the meantime, I went to work at the prison each day and slipped into the music room at every opportunity to practice my guitar playing. My commanding officer discovered me practicing when I should have been guarding prisoners, but he knew my time at the prison was winding down, and he graciously didn’t fire me.
On March 20, 1998, the time came for me to turn in my badge and uniforms. As I walked through the gate, carrying a plastic bag filled with my prison guard uniforms, a convict yelled, “Hey, Elvis, you gonna play us a song?”
“I can’t,” I replied.
“Hey, everybody, Barber Mandrell is going to play us a song,” the convict called out, using the parody of my name with which he often teased me. Convicts stood up from the weight benches; a couple of guys threw down their basketballs. Others laid down their cards or stopped doing what they were doing and walked toward me. A crowd gathered quickly, and I knew I had to play at least one song before I left, or there was going to be trouble.
So like the pied piper, I walked toward the music room with a large group of convicts following behind me. I could hear antsy prison officials calling out over the intercom system, “Attention on the midyard! All inmates must remain in the yard.” The guards must have thought something bad was about to happen since it looked as though a riot was about to break out. The army of convicts continued following me. We went inside the music room—the same music room where I sometimes met with Jody Hager and where Sergeant Newton caught me practicing guitar. Cons and killers surrounded me the same way they did on my first day during mail call. Some sat at my feet, others stood in the doorway stretching their necks to look in. Still others looked in the windows.
I took down from the cabinet the brown guitar, the same one Jody had used, with the prison number 4515 stamped on it. I was about to begin playing when the prison superintendent burst through the door. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“They want me to play them a song,” I said.
He looked at me then glanced around at all the prisoners. The convicts looked back at him expectantly.
“One song, and that’s it!” the superintendent said. “One song, Barber; do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
I began strumming the guitar and singing the song I’d written with Bea in mind, “My Only Friend,” describing the unconditional love of a mother. My guitar playing still wasn’t great, but I was at least able to accompany myself by now. As I played and sang, I noticed several men listening with tears trickling down their faces. That could be dangerous because in prison, tears are a sign of weakness. But the men didn’t seem to care.
Adult men began to groan as I sang. Others cursed. But they all missed their mamas. I understood. So did I.
After the song, the convicts applauded, not so much to thank me but to break the tension. As other men filed out of the room, some saying good-bye, others nodding in grudging respect, Ron, one of the toughest cons in the prison, approached me. Ron had been on death row and was now serving a life sentence. As he neared me, he reached in his back pocket, and I immediately was on alert. I thought, He’s reaching for a shank—a homemade prison weapon.
An unwritten but generally known rule among convicts requires that a convict keep a six-foot distance between himself and an officer when talking to the guard, so other convicts can hear what they are saying. Otherwise, the convict will be accused of snitching, and in prison, snitches get stitches.
Ron violated the six-foot rule and got right in my face. But instead of a weapon, he pulled his wallet out of his pocket. He opened it and removed a photo of a woman.
“Here, will you sign this?” Ron asked, as he handed me the photo.
“Your mother’s picture?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
I paused momentarily and looked into Ron’s eyes, and he looked into mine. In some incomprehensible yet very real way, we were brothers. I took the photo and carefully signed the back of it, then handed it back to him.
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 idea 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!