Country Music Broke My Brain (12 page)

I want to stand up and announce, “Good evening, everybody. I'm over here having French fries with really big stars.” I don't. But I'd like to.

Keith Urban is whip-smart. He's up to speed on almost anything you want to talk about. I've known him for quite awhile. He struggled for years to break through, and when he did, it was an explosion. I also once told Keith how much I admired him for facing up to his “problems” and doing something about 'em. I can't imagine how difficult that must have been. He worked hard to get his priorities where they should be, and that takes an enormous amount of courage.

Keith's also got a wacky sense of humor. I'd be on the air and he would start calling around 6:05
A.M
.
on the hotline. I think he'd had way too much fun that night.

He once called me six times in a row to announce he couldn't talk because he was on voice rest. He'd hang up, call back, talk for five minutes, and then say he couldn't talk anymore. Then he'd call again.

Nic is so calm, balanced, and normal that it's almost shocking. We have a house in north Florida, and she once said, “Oh, I love a road trip. Let's go.” I'm trying to picture stopping at the Giddy-up Go in Andalusia, Alabama, with Nicole Kidman. Buying beef jerky and a Mountain Dew like your typical tourist. The looks from people would be priceless.

Don't ya love being with people in love? It's reassuring. That stuff actually works!

Once I played The Bluebird Café with Keith Urban in what's called an “in the round.” He wasn't a superstar yet, but everyone knew he was crazy talented.

He always says, “You stared at me like you were angry.” Actually, I was dumbstruck. Watching him play, I felt like I was playing guitar with boxing gloves on. I swear, I thought he had “tracks” hidden somewhere and was making all that music with electronics. Nope. It was just him and the git.

I quit performing after that. Turns out I actually
was
wearing boxing gloves, and it cramped my picking quite a bit.

If you ever want a Woodmont salad from Bread and Company in Green Hills, Tennessee, Nicole Kidman will bring you one. If you ask nicely.

Al says, “Being nice is the easiest thing to do.” I guess she's right if it comes to ya naturally, like being able to run fast or squirt tobacco juice through your front teeth. Some people are just better at some things than other things.

Nearly everyone I know in the music business is nice. A few, however, just have that “extra nice” gear. I don't know what it is, but they make people feel better and more comfortable being around them. It's not like they “try” any harder; they're just nice. Quite irritating, those people.

Steve Wariner is like that. Steve is an amazing guitar player, singer, and songwriter. I've called him the meanest man in country music for years. Everybody laughs because they know nothing could be more of a lie. I'm good at that. Steve had a lot of hits. He was a star for years, and I never heard anyone say one bad thing about him. That's why I'd like to drop the bomb now.

Prison straightened Steve out. After he embezzled all that money from the orphanage and ran that puppy mill in Texas and scammed those poor people at the Senior Citizens Center out of their life savings, Steve learned a better way to be. Eighteen years of hard labor does that. I'm glad he's nice now. I'm sure when he reads this I'll find out if he's still that way or has returned to his Sing Sing personality.

My favorite picture of Steve is him standing onstage at the Parade of Pennies gift party. Every year, our station bought Christmas gifts for kids who didn't have much. The American Legion boys handled most of the logistics. The party, if you wanna call it that, was at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in some godforsaken concrete slab of a building next to the hog pens and chicken coops. It smelled exactly like you think.

Now, these kids were from poor neighborhoods. Mostly African Americans, and they broke my heart. The little peezers were in sandals or an old T-shirt, and it was December and freezing out. They gathered in folding chairs by the hundreds, with hundreds of parents trying to control the screaming mob who were their children. The whole auditorium seemed like it was being overtaken by a giant, crawling, twitching, crying, yelling alien blob. The parents all looked at me with those eyes that said, “Thanks for doing this, but I gotta get outta here.”

Now picture my pal, Steve Wariner. The pale, handsome, gentle singer and songwriter had volunteered to show up with his band at nine in the morning and do a show. While we handed out gifts, one by one to kid after kid, Steve got up on a tiny wet concrete stage and started singing his songs. He might have just as well have been up there giving a lesson on optical astronomy in German. It was like performing during a riot.

Steve plowed on. I couldn't hear him, but I could tell from the bass part and his mouth moving that he was going to sing one of his gentle classics—a remake of Bill Anderson's “Tips of My Fingers.” By now, about 500 kids have toys and are shrieking like banshees.

The moment? Steve throws his head back with his eyes closed and sings this mournful country ballad as the kids decide the stage is the best place to try out their new plastic toy trucks. So the squirts climb onstage armed with Tonkas and start a small construction site as Steve is singing. At this point, the parents look like they're making a hostage tape. They've lost all control. I'm just immobilized by the noise and the smells and the cold.

Steve Wariner finished his song and calmly thanked the audience. He stepped over a couple of kids and started putting his guitar away. The band disappeared like deer into the forest. Steve maneuvered through the crowd, stuck out his hand, and said, “Thanks for letting me do this. It's been a really good time.”

Bill Anderson, who wrote many great songs, such as “Tips of My Fingers,” “Still,” and “Whiskey Lullaby,” lived across the street from me for several years. He was a true performing singing wonder. “Whisperin' Bill,” they called him. His vocals were more like somebody making an obscene phone call. He had many, many hits in the '50s and '60s, on through the '80s. His “whispering” voice has been much imitated in
Opry
circles. I used to watch him walk out in his front yard and yell for his dog. He'd yell in that soft, little sound he made, “Here, boy! Here, boy!” The dog would be twenty feet away by the garage and not move a muscle.

He couldn't hear his master's voice.

Billy Dean is as good as they get. He's always upbeat and concerned. He is relentlessly nice. “Knock it off, Bob.” We wrote songs and spent a lot of time together. My favorite Billy moment was when he called me on the radio. We were discussing the topic “what's the best song for people getting a divorce?” We had a bunch of folks call with the usual and the funny and the disturbing titles. “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” is obvious. Several suggested “Take This Job and Shove It,” which didn't work at all. Billy said he was driving in his car and called to laugh about the topic and how funny other people were. Billy said he'd been racking his brain trying to come up with a song.

I then reminded him of the classic “We Just Disagree”—the perfect divorce song if there ever was one. Two people who love each other but can't get along might be the ultimate great song about splitting up.

The best part about the whole conversation?
That's a Billy Dean song!
He laughed his butt off. He couldn't think of his own recording. Dave Mason had a hit with it in '77, and Billy made it a hit again in '93. Butterbean Dean is a nice, nice guy.

Allyson's sense of logic is beyond compare. It works for her, and when she says something it usually takes a second to think about it. (No, I did
not
use the word “ditzy” here.) When we were young and broke—I'm talkin' “countin' pennies you find in the glove compartment” broke—we lived in a trailer in Kentucky. This was before trailers moved up and became mobile homes. Don't you hate it when your house gets a flat?

We had dinner carefully planned out to the last scoop of macaroni and cheese. We also had a young couple of friends who just showed up at dinnertime. They were broke, too. I liked them a lot, but I didn't want to share my pork chop with Bob and his fiancée. But what are you gonna do when they are sitting there like basset hounds watching you eat, their little tummies growling? So, we split up the food. It drove Al and me crazy.

When I finally got a job in upstate New York, we packed up everything we owned in a tiny U-Haul trailer (there's that word again) and pulled out on our adventure early one morning. We were now free of the freeloading couple. It was here when Allyson said, with her logic working on all cylinders, “I can't wait to see their faces when we don't see them anymore.”

See what I mean? It happens every day. But she's my girl and she's nice.

Linda Davis is a saint. You probably don't know Linda. She sang “Does He Love You?” with Reba. It was a
huge
hit and a great moment in concert. I met Linda years ago when I was doing a TV show with Jim Ed Brown. Her husband was a production coordinator, and she'd tag along. She's also beautiful.

Jump ahead years later, and we'd all go to Reba's house for holidays and dinners. I tell this because Linda's little girl was always running around and jumping in the pool and doing what kids do. That little girl is now Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum. It makes me feel like I need to be carbon-dated to find out my age when I see little Hillary up accepting
CMA Awards
or
five
Grammys!

That TV show that I worked with her dad on was also one of the worst TV shows in history. A precursor to
American Idol,
the show was called
You Can Be a Star
and ran on The Nashville Network. I'd already lost out on an earlier job on that network, as I was to be the voice of a talking jukebox on a Bill Anderson–hosted game show. I didn't get the gig.

Unfortunately, I
did
get the job on
You Can Be a Star.
I was the “filler” of time between the acts. Jim Ed Brown, a kind and foggy man, hosted. We taped five shows a day, thirteen days in a row. Jim Ed had his clothes all laid out by his wife, with matching numbers so he'd know what went with what. Yes, just like Garanimals. One terrible singer after another performed, and three semi-celebrity judges passed along their opinions. Then they cut to me in the audience to fill time before the next act was let out of the chute.

You might think that it gets easier over time, chatting with folks and generally passing the time of day. It was brutal. When people are nervous or concerned for their singing brother-in-law, they don't want to talk about space travel or clothing styles or whatever I asked about. I actually had several older, sweaty women say, “Leave me alone, I have to pee,” during the taping sessions. Hey, it was a paycheck.

We bought a farm a few years back. It's got lakes and three little chalets, and it's a chunk of heaven. It is way out in the sticks. As the Rascal Flatts song says, “You drive 'til you hear banjo music.” We love it there on weekends. It's also Command Central for the world population of ticks and chiggers. Poison ivy can be found if you walk near the woods. Nature is a cruel mistress, and something is trying to jump on you all the time. Allyson went hiking and came back stung, bitten, and poison-ivied. I've seen coon dogs scratch less.

We've all been there, and you feel sorry for anybody covered in calamine lotion. One afternoon, she went off to her “Woman Cave” for several hours to watch television. When she emerged, she had a look on her face I hadn't seen since our honeymoon. She smiled and said, “There's nothing like being alone with an itch.”

I've had the itch for her since I was sixteen. And she's right. There's nothing like being alone with an itch.

Who actually said this to me: “You can't sue me. My business manager says I can't afford it”?

A)
  
Darius Rucker

B)
  
Luke Bryan

C)
  
Warren Buffett