Country Music Broke My Brain (11 page)

“Why do you do that joke?” Henry would ask. And here was the lesson part.

“Because I like it. It makes me laugh. I look forward to it.”

“But,” he argued, “the crowd don't seem to laugh at it very much.”

The Minnie: “I don't care. When you do comedy or anything, you've got to do something for yourself. It's my little joke. It's inside, but the folks who get it
really
get it. If I ain't havin' no fun, the audience will know I ain't, and they won't have no fun, either.”

Good advice, eh? Do something just for yourself every now and then.

Minnie often told me about the “old days.” I mean the really history-making, rough-and-tumble
old
days. She swore that one of the reasons she was slightly bent over was from riding in the back of Hank's car with a bull fiddle in the window behind the backseat. Hank is Hank Williams. The original Hank. Picture this: a 1945 Buick. Long and sleek with a long slope toward the back. Cars in those days had a “hump” that ran all the way through the car's interior. If you sat in the backseat three across, somebody had to put their feet on the hump. Minnie was the shortest, so she drew that seat. Hank Williams drove. Hawkshaw Hawkins rode shotgun. Hawkshaw died in a plane crash years later with Patsy Cline. Ernest Tubb on one side in the back and a bass player on the other. Minnie in the middle with that giant stand-up bass behind her head, stuffed in the rear windshield. What a glamorous tour it was . . . sometimes driving for thirteen hours to make the next show. But it was all worth it so she could stride onstage with that smile and holler, “Howwwwdeee! I'm just so proud to be here.”

Hank Williams, considered the godfather of country songwriters, died when I was five years old. I have two “Kevin Bacon” connections to Hank Sr.

First, I did a play with George Hamilton, who had portrayed Hank in a biopic called
Your Cheatin' Heart.
George is a
movie
star and always will be. Tanned like an old wallet and dazzlingly handsome. I was in a play in Florida with him for six weeks, and every time he came through a door, I felt like I was in a scene out of
Gone with the Wind
or something.

Second, Hank's son, luckily enough called Hank Jr., recorded one of my songs. I bumped into Bocephus a lot over the years. His son, Hank III, we call Tricephus.

Hank Jr. did what he could with the hand dealt him. He continues to beat the “Hank” song drum and sing songs about himself and his pa. He was dressed up like his daddy and plunked onstage as a teenager. I don't know how some people handle what life gives them.

Even when he was in the spotlight, Hank Jr. was always in his father's shadow. But Hank Jr., of course, became a huge star on his own. The rough-and-rowdy friend shouted, “Are you ready for some football?” every Monday night. We all know Hank Jr. stories—except maybe this one.

Here's how showbiz works. Just like Bocephus, you go with what you got. I wrote a song called “Diamond Mine” with Devon O'Day and Michael Bornheim. I liked it, and so did Barry Beckett. The famed Muscle Shoals producer and groundbreaking studio piano player called me. “Hey, son, I like that song ‘Diamond Mine.' Who's playing that guitar lick on the opening of the demo?” I nearly fell over. Not only were they gonna cut this song on
the
Hank Jr., but they were gonna copy my friend Chris Leuzinger's guitar lick. In fact, they had Chris come in and play it.

Now, I was already buying new furniture and dreaming of a boat when I heard this was gonna happen. It's what songwriters do. You know you should know better than to plan on any success, but this sounded like the road to No. 1 to me.

We got a call from Hank's new record company that the album was “in the can,” and we should come over and hear the latest smash from Rockin' Randall Hank. Mr. Born to Boogie. Devon and I got off the air and made our way to the offices of the recently reformed Capricorn Records. Phil Walden was the owner, president, and one of the most amazing characters I ever met.

Phil Walden was a skinny white kid touring the segregationist South with a black singer named Otis Redding. That story alone is a movie. Phil Walden talked a million miles an hour in that south Georgia accent. Phil Walden always had plans. Phil Walden launched the careers of the Allman Brothers and Wet Willie and a ton of Southern rock stars. He managed Percy Sledge and Sam and Dave. I met Phil for lunch one day at the Sunset Grill in Nashville, and a skinny-bearded dude was at the table with him.

My daughter, Autumn, was tagging along. She was about twenty and home from college for a few days. She's as beautiful as her mother, which is somethin'. Phil started in the middle of a sentence, as he always did, about a screenplay of his life story, his tour with Otis “Dock of the Bay” Redding, and how exciting it was. The other guy at the table only seemed interested in Autumn. He flirted, laughed, and invited, all within about fifteen minutes. I wanted to kill him.

Phil was oblivious to the drama, and he spoke of how big the movie was gonna be and how probably Kevin Costner or somebody would play him in the movie. The Romeo at the table with us turned out to be the screenwriter. He glanced at me and Phil for about ten seconds and agreed it was quite a story, and then returned to asking Autumn about her plans for the evening. He didn't get very far with Autumn House. She's as cool as a cucumber. She was not gonna go out with
this
guy. Are you kidding?

Later, however, he did manage to marry Angelina Jolie. I just remember watching Billy Bob Thornton go down in flames that day. (I've said for years Billy Bob and Lyle Lovett, who was married to Julia Roberts, should write a “How I Married Her” instructional book.)

Phil also told me how he “saved” Jimmy Carter and got him elected president. Carter apparently was running out of money during his campaign. The guy worked for peanuts, remember. Phil got all his acts—The Allman Brothers, the Charlie Daniels Band, the Marshall Tucker Band, et al.—to host a series of concerts. The money went to Carter's campaign and kept him going 'til eventually he became leader of the free world. Phil said Carter was forever grateful and invited him and a lot of his pot-smoking buddies to the White House. Phil fired up a joint on the roof of the First Residence, and the Secret Service just pretended they didn't notice a guy with a doobie. Isn't that amazing?

Phil went bankrupt but kept a lot of his art. I picked up an old tomato soup can once in his kitchen and asked why he didn't clean up his garbage. He said, “Be careful with that can. It's an original Warhol Campbell's Soup can. Look, it's signed by Andy. He gave it to me at a party.” That can was probably worth more than his house, and it was just sitting in the kitchen.

So Devon and I made our way to Capricorn Records. Phil had been on top of the world and had the pictures in his office to prove it. All the rock acts and a beaming Jimmy Carter posed with the guy who helped make their careers.

After so much success, Phil went under. Lost it all, but he was back this time, bigger and better. Phil Walden had plans. He'd just signed a new singer and was pretty hyped up about the young kid who had “a voice like liquid sex. Just like liquid sex, I tell ya. He's gonna fill stadiums, this kid. His name is Kenny Chesney.” That's the way Phil talked. We listened to a few cuts from the new singer and agreed he was pretty good. In fact, I agreed to have him on the radio and promote the guy to help him get launched. What little I could do, I would.

Phil then said, “OK, now let's listen to Hank's new smash. Boys and girls, this is gonna be the record of his career. It's amazing. Makes me wanna just jump straight up. This song is
it!
” He explained this to the writers of the song as if he didn't remember who we were or why we were there. Above all else, Phil was a salesman.

He cued up “Diamond Mine.” The Chris Leuzinger guitar lick came blaring out of the speakers. Hank started in his unmistakable voice. It was our song. It was a record. It was just plain awful. Out of meter and tuneless and just awful.

About halfway through, the pressure got to Devon, and she started to cry. Not heaving sobs, but she could hear her hopes and dreams going down the drain with every melody-free note Hank Jr. let loose. I don't know how it had happened, but somewhere along the line they'd missed it.

Now, in the country music business,
one
small doubt, one wrong word, one look of, “Gee, I'm not sure,” and the project is dead. Phil was reared back with his eyes closed. Devon was now in a full crying jag. Phil leaned forward and said, “Hey, honey. What's the matter with that girl?”

Here is perhaps one of my greatest moments as a song saver and a showbiz vet. I put my hands on her heaving shoulders and said with a straight face, “Phil, she's just overcome with joy at the absolute genius of you and Hank and this record. Thank you for what you've done for us.” Devon sort of let out a wail at this point, a hideous moan of loss and disappointment. Phil understood the excitement and patted us both on the back as we left with joy in our hearts and tears in our eyes.

We went to the video shoot. We watched the ad campaign come out. We talked to Hank Jr. about the excitement and Phil and the big plans.

“Diamond Mine” died in the mid-'80s on the charts after about three weeks. Years later, I think I got a check for twenty-seven cents.

Phil Walden became my manager.

My Wife Is Cheerful

MY
WIFE IS relentlessly cheerful. She's also the most beautiful woman in the world. Really, she is. She always laughs easily, smiles at just about everybody, and is carefully polite to every jackleg stranger we meet. It's really profoundly irritating. I tell her all the time she's makin' the rest of us look bad.

We have a phrase we use at our house. On the old
Bob Newhart Show
, Suzanne Pleshette would be sitting in the kitchen, sulking and sullen over her coffee. Bob would bounce into the kitchen, singing and as chipper as a new puppy. He'd chirp a few “Good morning, sweethearts” and “Ain't it a beautiful day?” until Suzanne had finally had enough. She'd then send out a warning shot, “Knock it off, Bob.”

Allyson thought that was hilarious, and I do, too. I'm not angry in the morning or even in a bad mood. I spent thirty years talking to people, so I had to be reasonably reasonable. But there is just no reason to be too damn happy. You understand my pain, don't you?

My wife is also hilarious, on purpose and not on purpose. I hate the word “ditzy” because it's not accurate. She knows when she's being ditzy. You can't qualify for ditzy if you recognize the symptoms of ditziness. She does, however, say or do things that sometimes give the impression of the ditz. She wears the ditz crown with ease and dignity.

One afternoon I thought she had a fly on her forehead. I looked closer and thought it was a seriously dark mole that had appeared. I asked her about it and she said, “Oh, that's Magic Marker.” Right. She had made a good-sized dot on her forehead on purpose. And why? (I truly wanted to hear this one.)

“Well, I had my hair styled this afternoon. I paid $175 for this haircut and I'm about to shampoo my hair. I'm not paying $175 and not have it look the same after I wash it. I put a mark there so I'll remember where the part was.” Always with the logic.

I am certain you have one of these in your family. Al, which is what I call her, has said things like that to me all of my life. She's been there practically all of my life. We went out when she was fifteen. I think I was twenty-seven at the time, but, hey, it was Kentucky. Seriously, I am a year and a half older. Same elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. She always says we've been together so long neither one of us can lie about the past because we were both there. She once ordered a cheeseburger but told the waiter to hold the cheese. She's also a worry-wart but that gets less and less as the years go by.

She's my best friend. I don't like to be away from her for very long. I don't take many golf trips because of that. Golf trips are, as my daughter calls 'em, “sausage fests”—all guys in some high-rise condo next to a couple of courses for five or six days with no wives. I don't like that . . . too long without my girlfriend.

Keith Urban says he and Nicole have a three-day limit. No matter where one of them happens to be, they find a way to be with each other after three days. I think that's a good rule. When I quit radio, I often said, “Who wouldn't want to spend more time with Allyson House?”

You haven't lived until you have dinner with Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman, by the way. We've done that a lot. We're friends. It's like walking into a restaurant with two aliens who glow like neon signs. Nashville is great for celebs because, for the most part, nobody attacks the stars. People are just so nice and let the aliens enjoy their salads. A lot of waves or “walk-bys” during dinner, but I understand how fans feel.