Do you think there is a "right time" for a songwriter to move to Nashville?
You know, it's interesting. I don't know if there's ever a right time other than when you can say you're pretty good. I wouldn't make that move when you're not. I wouldn't make that move saying "well, I'm not very good yet but I'm going to Nashville."
There are other great reasons to go to Nashville, and one is Belmont University, where I went. If you're a college-age kid and you want to be in the music business, go there, because you will be. One way or another, when you graduate, you may not be a star, you may not have a record deal, but you'll probably be working somewhere like a record label. And they let you intern, which is what I did.
You interned at ASCAP.
Yeah. I got really lucky in that when I moved to Nashville, I was already a student of country music. I was one of the few people that even knew what ASCAP was. I figured, well, ASCAP is plugged-in everywhere, and I wanted to learn about everything. I figured it'd be a great place. I really couldn't have been more right. And it had everything to do with the people. From Connie Bradley on down, everybody in the Nashville office was so cool. They were young, vibrant, enthusiastic music-loving people that were plugged-in and part of everything.
Who did you work for?
I interned for John Briggs. John had been at Belmont himself, and when I got the internship, he was cool. He said, "Brad, you're going to go everywhere with me." And I did. We would go to showcases five nights a week. I had a ball. I met everybody.
Also around this time, you forged a creative and personal bond with two important people, Chris DuBois, who worked at ASCAP, as well as the producer Frank Rogers, with whom you would launch a publishing company - Sea Gayle Music. Why do you think this joint venture works so well?
It goes back to what I was saying earlier about how a song is not sort of done until certain important people feel like it's done. Chris has really taught me that, and Frank and I learned it together at the same time. Frank had all this producing talent and an ability to write a good song and an ability to hear great things in the studio. I had all these abilities to write and play and sing, and Chris had this ability to take a song and dissect why it either is or isn't working. He had this mathematical brain about it. It's invaluable. He still has that. That's what the writers utilize at our company.
How so?
They'll go into Chris, play him things they're writing. And if they want advice on something, Chris is ready. He'll suggest "why don't you go here?" And they're very lucky to have him. We're lucky to have him.
That's why this family works so well. Frank and I are out writing songs on our own and Chris is out writing songs on his own, and we're all doing three different sort of very specialized things, but we happen to pool our songs into the same company.
On your new album you also have a lot of cowrites with Kelley Lovelace. What does he bring into the mix?
Well, Kelley and I couldn't be closer friends. He actually bought and owns a piece of my farm, and he and his wife built their house there. Our friendship goes back to that first semester in college. And he's somebody that is really smart about writing a song that people will relate to. Even though Sea Gayle is Chris and Frank and I, it was really the four of us that were hanging out all those years and writing the songs, whether it was one of us, a duo, a trio or another. It was really a great time to be creative. All of us learned together, and we just found our little niches and discovered the things that we were good at.
Do you think that you are more creative and/or productive writing with close friends?
It really comes down to that for me. That comfortable thing. That's why there are so many of the same names on my albums. It's probably that way with everybody, really.
When you are comfortable, that's when you can be creative. There's nothing worse than when you sit down with a great writer that you're really excited about but you don't know them. You're not going to get anything good right away, at least not for a few sessions, not until you get past the sort of small talk, like "my name's Brad. I like this," you know?
Well, based on some of the songs on the new record, such as "Ticks" and "Online," humor is obviously one of your great strengths. You must have a great time writing this stuff with these guys, because these are really laugh-out-loud, fun songs, and people really relate to them.
The writing sessions are very similar to the reaction that the crowd gives you in the sense that you're bouncing lines off of one another and you say something like "don't worry, babe, I've got your back and I've also got your front." And the room goes nuts.
So where did the idea for "Ticks" come from? Was it a real incident?
It wasn't a real incident I was aware of. It could have been. I'm sure it was. Honestly, when we sat down, we set out to write "country boy can survive" in a love song kind of thing. We were talking about the woods and rural living. We have a farm where in the summertime you just can't even walk some places because of the ticks. I don't know where they come from, but you're going to get one. I don't know whether that was on my mind or not, but I had the idea for the hook. I didn't think it was a hook, though. I thought it was actually just a line in the song: "When we head out in the sticks, we can have fun just checking for ticks."
I was just goofing around with it and said, "now you guys tell me if this is really stupid or not, and I sang that. The chorus, until the hook, sounds like you're hitting on a girl - kind of a typical country song. You know, "I'd like to see you out in the moonlight. I'd like to walk through a field of wildflowers." You don't see it coming.
It's like a classic joke. The punchline kind of hits you unexpectedly.
Yeah. And it was certainly risky. We felt that as we were turning it in. But risk can be good.
When you select songs to record, do you run them by your band first to get their input? They obviously are going to be the guys playing these songs live in front of an audience night after night.
Absolutely. In fact, the live audience reaction is very important to me on a new song. Especially stuff that is meant to garner a reaction. When we got done with "Ticks," I brought Kelley Lovelace and Tim Owens, who I wrote that song with, out on tour.
We were doing a gig in San Antonio, and I said let's play it. We only had a verse and a chorus but I got up in front of the band and the audience with an acoustic guitar. No one heard it, and I started the song, and when I got to the hook, I mean, the audience went out of their minds. And those cowriters got to see that first-time reaction. It's a great way to tell if you've got something special. It's almost like practicing stand-up or practicing playing guitar. You just have to do it. You've got to get up there in front of people.
The band is another great barometer. Musically those guys are always a very good judge of whether a song's great or just good.
Since you are such a popular live performer, do you think you gain insight from your audience that, in turn, inspires your songwriting?
Oh, yeah. I would say that this album is a product of that more than any of the other albums I've done. A lot of the songs on this record were written with those people in mind and tried out that exact way.
"Ticks" was one of the first or second songs we wrote for this record. And that was on purpose. I wanted something that would cause a great reaction live, and that would be a great song to play - the kind of song you'd practically end your show with. The same goes for a couple of other cuts on this record. A lot of the up-tempo stuff stems from the way it feels to do these songs in concert, whether that's "Mud on the Tires" or "I'm Gonna Miss Her." "Alcohol" is a great example of that. You're watching how they react to that and you think, man, I wish we could write about five more of those.
So after having achieved this level of success, what are the challenges to you?
Well, it's to go places we haven't gone in a format of music where there are certainly boundaries. So the challenge is to say something new. You know, I'm in a format not that different in terms of the way it's looked at as classic blues, in the sense that a classic blues song should have certain structures and should really only talk about one of three or four things (laughs).
So when you're looking at writing country music that is timeless, it's hard to sort of really find new things, you know, and get them taken seriously. Luckily, we've done that a little bit. You know, I think it was Harlan Howard who said something like, "all the great songs have already been written and we're just rewriting them now." That's kind of how it feels. But, you know, in my career I have 70 songs recorded. So we don't want to go there again, either. That's the challenge.
At the CMA Awards this year, you graciously thanked ASCAP in your acceptance speech. For those who didn't see the show, can you share your sentiments?
Absolutely. It all goes back to that first internship weeks after moving to Nashville and the great experience that I had with Connie Bradley and John Briggs and everyone else at ASCAP. They sort of found out in the course of that internship that I had talent. They weren't afraid of that, and they really helped me cultivate that. And when I stand on those stages and accept awards now, my mind goes back to those pivotal moments, and ASCAP was a huge one for me. ASCAP helped me out immensely. And I see them do that all the time with so many writers. So I wanted to make sure that they were thanked.
I, of course, forgot to thank my manager, who I'd just been sitting next to (laughs). I luckily remembered my wife - that's probably the most important one - but I'm glad I got ASCAP in there.
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