Diary of a Player (18 page)

In the first few weeks, the phone calls between the girl back home and the songwriter chasing the dream became less and less frequent. I could tell something was wrong. I was very busy with the business of settling into a new school, but my gut was uneasy. It was one night about two weeks in that my phone rang. It was one of my best friends in West Virginia.

And scene.

As it turns out, my being gone was too much for her to take. She ended the relationship in the most final way possible. She started seeing one of my best friends almost immediately.

I was crushed. And I was only twenty. That first real heartbreak is a little tough to deal with. I hadn't really allowed for the fact that my new life in Nashville meant the death of our romance. I was thinking about career only. And in that sense, that's what happens when you do that. You are left with career only. Of course, there were much softer ways for her to have ended it. Phone call, letter, long explanation, etc. Betrayal? Well, that's certainly another way to go.

So I spent my first few months in Nashville writing heart-ache songs.

And the guitar would get me through once again. I remember one night when I was at my lowest. I felt alone and down. I was supposed to do a class project where I interviewed a music hero, and weeks prior I had reached out to John Jorgenson. He was living in L.A. at the time and said he'd call if he came to town to record or something but wasn't sure when that would be. So here I am wallowing in self-pity and heartache, at home alone at ten P.M. on a Wednesday, and my phone rings. “Hey, Brad, this is John Jorgenson. I just flew into town to record and wondered if you wanted to do that interview. I know it's late but I figure you're a college kid. Wanna come down to the studio and get that interview done?” So there I was minutes later watching my hero record, in a major
Nashville studio. I was over her for at least a few days after that.

But in retrospect, being a heartbroken guy who was trying to become a country songwriter worked out just fine. That's the thing about a broken heart—it can be prolific. So I wrote more than my share of songs that first little bit. I would set my ex-girlfriend's picture on a desk and literally pretend she was there in person listening. Some songs were sweet and kind, some were more like a Sam Kinison F-bomb screaming routine. Either way, closure was years away.

Two years, in fact. It's December of 1995 and I'm sitting there in my bachelor pad watching TV when a preview comes on for
Father of the Bride Part II
. I remember thinking,
You've got to be kidding me. How do you do a sequel to that? And why now?
This came right at one of those times when I was back-sliding emotionally. I'd get over my ex for a while, go out on dates, be fine, and then slowly start to miss her. I'd gone from
I hope she dies
to
I hope she calls
. By now my friends Frank Rogers and Kelley Lovelace had heard just about enough moaning from me. They put it very plainly, as your true buddies will do: I had to get closure with this girl—or I had to get back together with her. One or the other. Then shut the #*[email protected] up.

This is how I let my buddies talk me into perhaps the single
most romantic, pathetic, and foolish plan in the history of bad romance. We decided that I would go to the same theater back home on the same day and time as our very first date and go to see
Father of the Bride Part II
. December 28, just like before. I would be home for Christmas anyway. Our theory was that if this relationship were as big a deal for my ex-girlfriend as it was for me, then she would think of this too. Fate would intervene and we would immediately get back together and live happily ever after. It would be like
Sleepless in Seattle
. . . or rather, in St. Clairsville, Ohio. And if she didn't show up, then I would have closure once and for all, which I needed, and I could finally get on with the rest of my life.

But I am, at heart, a romantic. So I bought into this idea—hook, line, and sinker. On December 28, 1995—while home in West Virginia for the holidays—I got all dressed up and said good-bye to my mom and dad. As I walked out the door, I announced that I was going to the movies.

They asked, “By
yourself
?”

“Yes,” I said, and I drove off to the St. Clairsville mall. I even wondered if I should have a long-stem rose ready. But I finally decided that flowers might be a little much. And twice as embarrassing if I was stood up. Stood up? You can't be stood up unless you have a date to start with, dumbass. Anyway,
I walked into the theater and bought my ticket for the seven thirty showing of
Father of the Bride Part II
.

As you might imagine, I'm sitting there all by myself in the back and staring at every single person who walks into the theater. Because it was Christmastime and the movie was a big hit, the theater was absolutely packed with people—none of them my old girlfriend. When the previews ended and the movie was about to begin, it was starting to be clear—she was not showing up. Still, I'd already paid for a ticket, so I decided to stay and watch the movie. And even though I had my answer, I still found myself thinking,
Hey, this is a good movie
.

When the previews ended and the movie was about to begin, it was starting to be clear—she was not showing up.

Afterward, I took that long walk out to the car thinking,
That's it; I have closure. Fine. Now it's time to move forward.
But then I realized there was no way that we originally went to the seven thirty movie on our first date. That would have meant that we had our fancy Pizza Hut dinner at five thirty in the afternoon. So that
had
to mean that our first date had been the late show instead.

So I went back and bought another ticket. This time for the nine-thirty showing of
Father of the Bride Part II
.

Of course my ex didn't show up for that screening either. This time, when the movie started, I could see the writing scrolling up the wall and snuck out.

By this time, my friend Kelley was sitting by the phone waiting for the big news. Once and for all, I was ready to move on with my life. When I got back to Nashville and Kelley and I talked about this humiliating romantic misadventure, I blacked his eye. Kidding. And then we decided that we could at least get a good song out of it. And so we wrote “Part Two,” the title track to my second album. I had absolute closure. But that's the thing about closure: it is usually more of a beginning than an ending.

Strangely, I did see the woman I belonged with that evening. Little did I know I was looking right at her.

F
ailures are funny—you never know when one of them is going to turn into your greatest success.

That's what happened to me when I decided to do a demo of “I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song)”—that funny, crowd-pleasing tune that I wrote with Frank Rogers—at the end of a session, thinking it would be good for a laugh. That
same afternoon I got a call that Pat Finch from my publishing company went out with my demo and played it for the famed producer Tony Brown, who wanted our song for George Strait to record. A few hours later, I was informed that there was a little problem—the sort of little problem that you really want to have. Without Pat knowing it, someone else at the company had gone over and pitched the same song to Capitol, and that now Garth Brooks wanted to put a hold on the song. As if that weren't enough good news, we then heard from one of the big A & R men at Arista, Steve Williams, that Alan Jackson wanted to record “I'm Gonna Miss Her” too.

Take a moment to let those three names soak in. I'm just this obscure young songwriter in town with one cut, and suddenly George Strait, Garth Brooks, and Alan Jackson—the three biggest stars in country music at the time, and all of them heroes to me—are interested in my song
in the same day
. That night, putting my recent Belmont education to some proper use, I began to calculate the potential windfall royalty checks that would soon be wending their way toward my mailbox. I had already purchased a newer bass boat, a Corvette, and a much bigger house. In my mind.

Then some reality hit. First, Garth let the song go. Next, George didn't cut it either. Still, Alan had the song on hold for
almost two months, and that was exciting because it was starting to look like he must be serious about it. Finally they let us know when Alan was going into the studio. With eleven songs ready, he ended up recording only ten. And the one song that Alan didn't cut was—you guessed it—“I'm Gonna Miss Her.” When the folks at EMI called me to tell me the bad news, I probably surprised them. “Then
I'm
going to keep the song for myself,” I said.

That's the moment when Steve Williams at Alan Jackson's label—the label I most dreamed of recording for—decided to call up my publisher and ask an excellent question: “So what
other
songs does Brad have?” Steve and Mike Dungan (the vice president and the general manager of Arista) soon got a tape of some of my songs and in a flash the label became interested in me as more than a songwriter. I remember that Steve took me to lunch and said, “You know, Brad, I think you're an artist.”

And I said, “You know what? I like the way you think.”

Steve said, “Let's explore this.” And so we did.

Before long, Arista Nashville was officially interested in signing me to their roster, and at the same time, RCA was interested too. In the music business as in love, it can be
very
useful to have at least two suitors because it makes you look
that much more desirable. And who doesn't enjoy a good cat-fight?

We chose Arista, and I believe we made the right choice. Arista proved that when I let them know that I wanted my Belmont collaborator Frank Rogers to produce my first album. They didn't even flinch. Even though neither of us had a lot of what you might call
professional
recording experience (as in absolutely none). But by now I had waited for my moment, and I knew the kind of album I wanted to make, and I believed in Frank and the guys I'd gathered around me. I knew that Frank believed in me, too, and that he would understand that—for instance—I was capable of playing all the guitar on my own album, and that he would not try to make me sound like anyone else.

The team at Arista didn't balk. Instead, they said, “Why don't you guys go cut four songs and let's see how that goes?” So we cut four songs, three of them being “Who Needs Pictures,” “Me Neither,” and “We Danced.” All eventual hit singles, exactly as you hear them on the record to this day. At the same time, I gave the record company a CD with twenty-five songs on it because I'd been stockpiling, waiting for this moment. In that first group of songs were a bunch that would later go on to be hits, like “Wrapped Around,” “I'm Gonna Miss Her,” and “Part Two”—basically the core of my first two
albums. The day he received all of this material, Steve Williams called me up, laughed, and said, “Okay, Brad, why don't we just go ahead and do the box set now?”

What I loved the most about recording that first album was the guitar parts. I had the songs ready, I knew what my voice would sound like, but I got the sense that every guitar part I put on tape was going to define me. I remember those early Desert Rose Band records, where the sound of John's guitar was like an epiphany. I imagined some other kid out there who was going to feel the same way about me. I couldn't let him down, whoever he might be.

I got the sense that every guitar part I put on tape was going to define me.

P
romoting my first single was grueling. I would fly to Portland, Oregon, wake up at 6 A.M., do morning radio shows, and then get on another plane and fly to Seattle. After interviews on drive-time radio shows there, it was back to the airport for the flight to San Francisco. And so on. I did that for almost six months. I have never been so tired. On top of all the exhausting traveling, my first single, “Who Needs Pictures,” was struggling on
the chart. I remember it being stuck in the forties for almost a month while I was stuck in airports and hotels trying desperately to promote it. I felt like I was spinning my wheels. I seriously wondered if this was the life for me.