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 one 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.
Jim asked me several times that week if I’d consider working with Chris Lindsey, maybe have Chris produce a few of these songs on me, which meant that Chris would record me performing the songs.
I declined because I had made an informal agreement to record with another producer in town. But I hadn’t heard from him since I parted ways with OMG, so I wasn’t sure if he still wanted to do it. I had called him repeatedly, but my calls always went to voice mail.
That same week I was stopped at the traffic light on 17th Avenue and Wedgewood, and I saw that producer sitting in his GMC Yukon at the light, facing me in oncoming traffic. I called him and watched him pick up his cell phone to see who was calling. He looked at the phone as it was ringing and laid his phone back down beside him. From the opposite side of the intersection, I watched him purposely not take my call.
That’s when I knew he was avoiding me. I called Jim and told him I was interested in working with Chris.
A FEW DAYS LATER I WAS IN JIM’S OFFICE WHEN CHRIS Lindsey walked in. We talked briefly, and Chris asked if I would walk upstairs and meet someone. I followed him up the steps to Scott Borchetta’s office.
I didn’t know who this guy was. I’d never even heard of him. He looked like a mad scientist, with his frizzy hair. He was standing behind his desk, wearing a headset and talking on the phone; it sounded as though he was talking with someone who worked in radio. Scott flipped the mouthpiece back away from his face and introduced himself.
“I really liked the demo you sang for Chris,” he said, between breaks in his phone conversation.
“Thank you,” I replied, trying not to speak too loudly, so as not to be heard on his headset mic.
I didn’t know why I was in his office. I assumed I was there to discuss a publishing deal since that’s what I told Jim Catino I needed. I figured the “Chris thing” was a long-term project and might never happen. My paramount thought was, I need a publishing deal so I can pay my rent.
When Scott got off the phone, he said, “Play me something.”
Instinctively, I played “Sara Smile,” despite the fact that I didn’t write it, which probably seemed odd. After all, why would a writer showcase someone else’s song if he were trying to get a songwriter’s publishing deal?
But when I finished, Scott said, “You can’t leave here until you sign with us.”
Hey, great! I thought, although I didn’t really understand what he meant because it didn’t sound as though he was offering me a standard publishing deal. I was too naive to realize that I had just been offered a recording deal with a major Nashville music company. It never even crossed my mind since that wasn’t why I was there. Nevertheless, Scott and I shook hands, and I left.
Later that afternoon Chris Lindsey called me and congratulated me. “Aren’t you excited, Jimmy?” he asked.
“About what? Why, what happened?
“You got a record deal! Aren’t you excited?”
“What?”
In that very moment, sitting in my four-door, beat-up, blue Honda Civic, I felt as though I had just won the lottery.
“What?” I asked again. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not joking. You just got a recording deal on DreamWorks,” Chris said.
I was all by myself; Tonia was working, and I had planned to eat at LongHorn Steakhouse, so that’s where I celebrated my first recording deal, with a large glass of sweet tea and a sweet potato.
I glanced up at a television screen in the restaurant and noticed the Atlanta Braves were playing baseball. The man on the pitcher’s mound looked vaguely familiar. When he turned to hurl his next pitch, I saw the name on the back of his uniform: Millwood. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was Kevin Millwood, pitching for the Atlanta Braves.
I thought back to when I was about twenty-one years old, and Kevin and I had once sat on the tailgate of an old pickup truck, talking about some of our dreams. “What do you want to do?” Kevin asked me.
“Man, I’d love to be a country music singer.” We both laughed. “What about you? What are your dreams? What do you want to do when you graduate from college?”
“Well, I’d like to be a Major League Baseball player,” Kevin said.
Now I was watching a ballgame on television, and Kevin Millwood was pitching for the Braves—and the other guy on the back of that pickup truck, a kid named Jimmy Wayne Barber, had just stepped into the world of country music, alongside some of the biggest names in the business.
CHRIS LINDSEY CALLED ME THE FOLLOWING DAY AND SAID that James Stroud, the president of DreamWorks Records, wanted to meet me. So on April 17, 2001, I met with James Stroud at DreamWorks. I sat on the couch in his office. James pulled a chair right up in front of me. He sat facing me, with his knees almost touching mine. And then it was as though he forgot I was there, ignoring me completely while talking shop to Chris. When I reached for my guitar, James laughed and said, “Oh, are you gonna play me something?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I immediately started picking “Sara Smile.”
As soon as I finished performing, James clapped his hands together once, stood up, and said, “Let’s get to work.” That was the end of our meeting. I packed up my guitar as fast as I could and exited the building.
A few days after the worst day in American history, September 11, 2001, I received both a recording contract and a publishing deal from DreamWorks. Thus began one of the most tumultuous rides of my life.