AS EARLY AS NOVEMBER 2003, I BEGAN HEARING RUMORS that my record label, DreamWorks Nashville, might disappear, merging into Mercury and MCA record companies, two labels owned by Universal Music Group. DreamWorks was originally the brainchild of Hollywood movie magnates Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg and music mogul David Geffen. While Geffen also enjoyed success in the film business, producing hits such as Little Shop of Horrors, Risky Business, and other envelope-pushing movies, he is best known for founding Asylum Records, where he recorded artists such as Jackson Browne, the Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt. He went on to form Geffen Records, which released John Lennon’s album Double Fantasy the same month he was shot and killed. Geffen later released albums by Elton John, Nirvana, Cher, Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel, and a host of other highly successful artists. If anyone could make DreamWorks work, the three communications wizards should have been able to do it. Yet for some reason, the label was floundering.
At the time of the merger, the label’s biggest artist was Toby Keith, whose career had been revived with the help of Scott Borchetta’s promotional abilities, resulting in albums such as How Do You Like Me Now? and three other hugely successful projects. Other artists on the label were Darryl Worley, Emerson Drive, and Jessica Andrews. I was busy writing songs and getting my career on a solid foundation, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the reshuffling going on all around me, and it hadn’t really affected me—yet.
I was excited because I was about to go out on the road as part of a major tour, opening for the popular band Lonestar. With the success of my first album, Scott Borchetta had suggested, “Jimmy, you really need to get a manager.” I interviewed a number of potential management companies and decided to sign on with Borman Entertainment in Nashville and, in particular, with Joni Foraker, who also managed Faith Hill, Trace Adkins, Keith Urban, James Taylor, and Lonestar. So when Lonestar was going out on their Front Porch Looking In Tour, Joni put me on it.
Touring as a musical artist was a whole new experience for me. Joni arranged a deal in which I could rent Faith Hill’s tour bus. I didn’t have a band, so it was just the bus driver and one other person on the bus—a former member of the pop-rock group Dakota, Rick Manwiller, who served as my road manager and sound engineer. The bus was gorgeous, replete with a shower, televisions, refrigerator, and living and sleeping areas. It had everything I could possibly need. Rick had most of the front of the bus, and I lived in the back for several months.
I had grown up in trailer parks and had spent several weeks in Uncle Austin’s freezing cold trailer with no electricity, heat, or water. Now, here I was in the ultimate rolling trailer home, a million-dollar motor coach with all the comforts of a luxury hotel. Except for going onstage, I could live in the bus and not come out!
I was nervous performing my first few concerts. I had sung at writers’ nights and small-town events, but now I was stepping onstage in auditoriums, where people were paying money to see and hear a good show. My song selection wasn’t the best at first. I performed songs that I liked rather than appealing to the crowd. It didn’t take me long, however, to discover that the audiences were interested in hearing about Bea and how she and Russell had saved my life. They liked my stories that set up my songs, and the songs that illustrated the stories. Naturally, some people in the business said, “Jimmy, don’t talk so much. You need to play more and talk less.” I tried it. I went out and simply played some songs. But for me, that didn’t work. Sharing my heart with the audience was a major part of what I wanted to do.
The guys in Lonestar treated me like a younger brother, and we got along great. They were young guys with good-old-boy attitudes and strong work ethics. They were kind to me and made me feel welcome. They also knew when to keep things lighthearted, and they were good pranksters. One night I took the stage to open the show only to discover that one of the Lonestar guys had coated my microphone in hot sauce. I started coughing and sputtering so badly I couldn’t even sing. For the first ten minutes of my thirty-minute set, I was choking and wiping tears out of my eyes. The audience could tell something was up. Meanwhile the guys were laughing hysterically offstage.
I got even, though, later that night, when Lonestar gathered at the front of the stage to sing one of their biggest hits, “Amazed.” Since it was the Front Porch Looking In Tour, they had a mock cabin and front porch as part of the stage set. So at one of the most serious parts of “Amazed,” the audience saw some crazy guy in the doorway of the set, dressed in nothing but his underwear and cowboy boots. The audience started laughing and pointing at the figure in the doorway. I heard that the guy in his underwear looked a lot like me. I can tell you this much: it sure is hard to run in cowboy boots!
I was so green as an artist that I didn’t even know I was able to sell merchandise. Midway through the tour, Lonestar’s merchandise manager said to me, “Jimmy, if you want to put some CDs or other product out here on the tables, I can sell them for you, and you can just pay me a commission on whatever I sell.”
“Really? Hey, that’s a great idea.” I bought some CDs, and from then on the merch guy made money for me every night.
Nobody from DreamWorks seemed interested in participating in the tour support. What I didn’t know was the merger details had sent everyone scrambling. Although nobody verbalized it, the attitude was, The company is closing, so why worry about trying to sell product? We’re concerned about our jobs.
Meanwhile, I was becoming more and more caught up in the new world of big-time music. I truly believed that I could do anything I wanted, that I was Superman, and that I couldn’t fail. Everyone was telling me how great I was, so it quickly went to my head. I was street-smart, so maybe that’s why I didn’t drink or do drugs, but I wasn’t prepared for all the female attention I received. Every teenage male fantasy became available to me. I had grown up in small towns in North Carolina; I’d had only two serious relationships with girls, so I was relatively naive regarding the temptations of women throwing themselves at me, and I’m sorry to say that I made some serious mistakes in that regard.
Before I knew it, I had fallen headfirst into the pig trough. I learned the hard way that if a person is going to be involved in the entertainment business, he or she better be spiritually strong and take every precaution to avoid the evil and choose the good. It’s possible to do that, but it takes more than mere human willpower. It takes God’s power. And it requires some common sense to surround yourself with good people, to avoid compromising situations, to call your friends or family after the show, and to position yourself for success rather than failure. I’m ashamed to say that at the time, I didn’t do any of that.
At my weakest points, people always came up to me, pouring their hearts out, telling me how God was using my music and stories to touch their lives.
One night a muscular, tough-looking guy came up to the merchandise table after a show and slammed his fist on the table. “I just want to tell you something,” he said loudly.
“Yes, sir?” I said, as I noticed my road manager easing closer, just in case.
“That song you sing, ‘I Love You This Much’ . . . I have a daughter, and she’s never going to have to live without a dad.” Suddenly the enormous man started crying and spilling his guts to me. I understood that his daughter meant everything to him, and I realized that some of the girls I had been messing around with could easily be his daughter. I felt convicted and knew I needed to get right.
By the time I finished the Lonestar tour, the DreamWorks merger was complete, and my career was jammed into neutral. I thought that since I had already signed with the label and had several hit songs, I would be welcomed into a thriving relationship with the new label heads. That proved unrealistic on my part, and reality soon punctured the balloons of my idealism.
ON MAY 7, 2004, DREAMWORKS MERGED WITH UNIVERSAL, Mercury, and MCA Records. Universal’s chairman and CEO, Luke Lewis, and DreamWorks Nashville’s president, James Stroud, were to serve as cochairmen of the company, with artists such as Toby Keith, George Strait, Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, Lee Ann Womack, Trisha Yearwood, Gary Allan, Josh Turner, Shania Twain, and others now all under one roof.
I called James Stroud and asked him about my future. “What’s going on?” I asked. “Where am I going to be? What label do you think will be a good match for me?”
James was uncharacteristically vague. “We don’t know yet, Jimmy. We’ll just have to wait and see.” Worse yet, shortly after the new year, in the middle of working on the follow-up album to my initial effort with four hit songs on it, James Stroud fired Chris Lindsey as producer of my second album. That should have told me something, but I was still optimistic about my future with the new music consortium. I appealed to Stroud to have Chris reinstated as my producer, and James acquiesced, but I sensed trouble.
Scott Borchetta became head of promotions for both labels, so that made me feel a little better. I trusted Scott. He and I were more than business colleagues; we were friends. I knew that Scott believed in me. But Scott’s future with the label was soon in jeopardy as well.
In March 2005, I met with Scott and played him a new song, “Whatever Makes You Happy.” He loved it. “I’m going to get Luke Lewis,” he said excitedly. “I want him to hear this.” Scott came back without Luke. The look on his face was telling. Something wasn’t right.
Two days later I called Scott at home, and he sounded as though his world had collapsed. “I got fired this morning,” he told me. Scott didn’t say so, but I couldn’t imagine the new label keeping me around either, now that Scott was gone.
Despite all the turmoil in the music company, I continued writing songs for my new album and performing at every opportunity throughout the spring and summer.
Spurred on, and with Chris Lindsey back on the project, I rerecorded “Sara Smile” at Ocean Way Studios in June. In August, I was still waiting on answers from Stroud as to whether we were moving forward or not. I was set to record tracks on several new songs within two weeks. But with DreamWorks now officially dissolved, I was an artist without a home.
In early September I finally called Stroud again. “Am I in or out?” I asked.
“You’re in,” he answered brusquely.
“Where? What label?”
“Maybe MCA. We’re not sure yet.”
In early October I was sitting in a restaurant when Mike Robertson, from my new management company, walked in and sat down across from me. “I have some bad news, Jimmy,” he said. “I just received a call from the label saying they’ve dropped you.”
“What?” I could hardly believe my ears. Just a few days earlier, Universal had indicated we were moving forward. Now they were dumping me? I called Scott Borchetta and told him the news. His response was simple. “Come home, Jimmy. Come home.”
Following his dismissal from DreamWorks, Scott had been working throughout the summer to obtain funding for a new record company, a little label he called Big Machine Records. Toby Keith partnered with Scott for a while and then moved on to another label. Unfortunately for Scott, when Toby pulled out, so did potential investors.
While I was still wondering where I was going to land, Scott occasionally called me with an odd request. “Jimmy, I need you to come over and do a few songs for some friends. I just want you to come in and sing, and then leave. Don’t talk, just sing.” I was glad to help Scott any way that I could. After all, he was one of the first guys to help me. So I dutifully responded any time he called. I’d go in, meet his friends from Albany or New York or Pittsburgh, sing a few songs, and leave. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Scott was scrambling for investors, and his time was running out. It takes a lot of money to build a new record label from scratch, and even a guy as talented as Scott couldn’t do it without somebody putting up some major money.
In May 2006, I signed a recording contract with Big Machine Records, Scott’s new label. Although I had reunited with the best promotions guy in Nashville, reviving my career was not a sure thing. I met with Scott and Mark Bright, my new producer, and we decided that once we had the songs we wanted, we’d go into the studio and record them.
During this time, Scott was extremely stressed. I could tell something was really bothering him. He’d come to my apartment on Music Row, and we’d sit in his Porsche, listening to songs he was pitching me to record. We finally settled on four songs, so in June 2006, I began tracking sessions at Starstruck Studios, the recording complex on Music Row originally built for Reba McEntire.
In mid-July I wrote a new song called “That’s All I’ll Ever Need,” did a rough demo of the song, and took it in to Scott’s office so he could hear it. The demo was recorded one step too high for my voice, so it was hard to sing in that key, but I figured if Scott liked the demo, Mark and I could recut it in the correct key, and it would sound even better. Scott liked the song. “That should be your next single, Jimmy,” he said.
I tried to convince Scott to let me recut the song since the demo was too high for me to sing onstage every night, but Scott seemed convinced the song was a hit, just as we had recorded it. “That song is like lightning in a bottle,” Scott said, “and we may not be able to capture it twice.”
I trusted Scott. We were inseparable buddies, working together all over Nashville; we talked by phone or communicated by text messages nearly every day. But for the first time in our friendship and business relationship, I sensed trouble, something about Scott I hadn’t seen before. It was as if he was operating in survival mode.
I’d been there, and I knew that feeling very well. I recognized that look.
Over the next few days Scott informed the label about my first single and arranged for me to meet fashion designer Sandi Spika Borchetta and the label’s website guy for a photo shoot. Things were moving rapidly. Within a week the CD was out the door. The label moved forward with its efforts to promote the song, but it flopped as soon as it shipped.
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.