by Chely Wright
I found Brad to be different than I’d anticipated. He was not some redneck cowboy with a simple mind. He was funny and had a certain wit that I enjoyed. We hit it off immediately, and I was pleased to find a new collaborator whom I could enjoy. Most professional songwriters will tell you that the days spent with other writers whom you don’t really click with can be a form of torture.
During the next couple of months, Brad and I continued to share song ideas. There was one point at which I felt that he was getting the wrong idea about our friendship. His behavior and the things he’d say started to feel romantic in nature.
Julia and I were still trying to figure out how to make our individual lives and our relationship harmonious. Spending time with Brad was pleasant and would have been a much easier choice for me, but Julia was the one I loved.
I didn’t want to lead Brad on, so I did what I’ve always had to do in situations like that—I pushed him away. I failed to return a couple of his calls, and finally he got the message. Another innocent person fell victim to my hiding. It was a cruel practice that I felt forced to use time and again.
The Slow Climb
In the summer of 1999, I was as busy as ever. “Single White Female” was slowly but steadily climbing the charts, and according to my manager and label we had a hit on our hands. The progress of a record is a day-to-day experience. It’s like watching a long sporting event. Just as a football game takes strategy, luck, and a period of time to unfold, and there is no definite winner until the very end, a record climbing the charts is dramatic. I was on the road most of the time that summer, and the excitement was like nothing I’d ever known in my career. “Single White Female” was my tenth single to be released to radio, and the only hit I’d ever had was a Top 10 single called “Shut Up and Drive,” from a previous album. We knew we had something bigger happening with “SWF.”
The cover of my fourth album, Single White Female, released in 1999.
The band and crew especially deserved this. I’m not kidding when I say I was happier for my band, my crew, my managers, and my support people than I was for myself. My drummer, Preston, had been with me since my first record and is still with me today. Many of these guys had hung in there with me, enduring endless tours, not much sleep, not a lot of money, only to see most of my singles not make it past #20 on the charts. So when it started to happen, it belonged to all of us and it felt great.
I remember the day that “SWF” went to #1 on the first of three charts. (At that time our industry acknowledged three charts—Gavin, Billboard, and R&R.) The Gavin chart was the first to announce “SWF” at the #1 position.
I was on the road. We were playing a big outdoor festival show with multiple acts. On days like that, we didn’t really have much to do, as our sound checks typically took only thirty minutes. The band had done a morning sound check, and a few of us were on our way to a golf course to kill some time.
The golfing foursome that day was Preston, my keyboard player Jay (now in a band called Rascal Flatts), Joe Don (Rascal Flatts as well), and me. We had a great round of golf, a lot of laughs, and it was a gorgeous day. The runner van came to get us to take us back to the venue, and we were dropped off by the door of the tour bus behind the stage. As I stepped up onto the bus, I took a quick peek out at the crowd and saw a sea of people having fun and enjoying the band that was onstage at the time. After the guys loaded the golf clubs into the storage bays below, they made their way to the front lounge of the forty-five-foot Prevost tour bus that we called home.
With Rascal Flatts backstage in 2001. Jay (on my right) and Joe Don (on my left) met each other playing in my band. We share so many good memories.
One of my managers, Mark, called for everyone to listen up. I knew that it wasn’t going to be bad news, because he would’ve given that to me privately. Plus he was smiling. Then I thought he was going to tell us something about the show, perhaps that we’d be going on an hour late or something.
Mark said, “Lady and Gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. Today is a day to celebrate. I received a phone call from Clarence about two hours ago that our girl, Chely Wright, officially has the number one record in the nation today. ‘Single White Female’ is officially a number one record. We’re number ONE!” Although I had a non-drinking policy on my bus, Mark had sprung for a bottle of Dom Pérignon and a dozen plastic champagne glasses. We toasted, sipped, hugged, high-fived, and laughed. I will never forget my hug with Preston, though, because it was a long, solid hug and we both cried. We had a great show, and it was a thrill for me to get to announce to the crowd of thirty thousand people that “Single White Female” had just gone to #1.
I went back to my hotel room that night to shower before getting on the bus to go to sleep. As usual, I called Julia on the phone to talk to her for a couple of minutes before she got into bed. We talked for a little bit, and then I told her that “Single White Female” had made it to #1. I said it casually because I knew what her reaction would be, and I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment. I’d learned a long time before not to expect her to show any excitement over my successes. Her response was, as I anticipated, “Oh, I didn’t know it was still climbing.” It was as if I’d told her that it had rained that day. Why couldn’t she just be happy for me? I wanted her to have all that she wanted out of her career—why couldn’t she just want the same for me?
She knew I was an artist when she met me. It’s not like she thought she was getting involved with a schoolteacher who suddenly decided to try to become a famous country music singer. She knew who I was and what my ambitions were. Every mark of success that I enjoyed pulled us further and further apart. The hiding, the compartmentalizing, the non-acknowledgment of my partner were surely killing us.
Radio, magazines, and newspapers—they all wanted a few minutes of my time, and I was more than pleased to oblige. My cell phone rang off the hook the day we went #1 on the Billboard chart.
I had just arrived back in Nashville that morning from a show in the Northeast. The bus rolled into town about 7 a.m., and I got out of my bunk about 7:30. I gathered my things, as we had a couple of days off and I needed to do my laundry. I piled my stuff into my car, which was sitting in the Kroger parking lot just outside of downtown Nashville. I was in my pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and slippers, standing in front of the dairy products in Kroger when my cell phone rang. It was my record label calling. The MCA radio promotion team was yelling and whistling, calling to tell me that we had just gone to #1 on the Billboard chart. This was a big deal. I squealed with delight and told them that I was in the grocery store and that I’d call them back the minute I got to my house.
I grabbed my creamer and headed to the check-out aisle. The store had virtually no customers in it. As I approached the front of the store, I cut through the potato chip aisle. There was a young man, maybe twenty-one years old, stocking the supply of chips. He had on a work shirt that said FRITO-LAY on it. He had tattoos up and down both forearms and piercings in his nose, ears, lip, and eyebrow. I stopped right next to him. He looked up and made eye contact with me, and I said, “I’m number one.” To which he replied, “Huh?” I said, “My record just went to number one on the Billboard chart!” He paused, then said, “Cool.” Before he knew it, I had thrown my arms around his shoulders, still clutching a cell phone in one hand and Coffee-mate Fat Free Hazelnut Creamer in the other, and hugged him.
My phone started to ring a couple of hours later and just didn’t stop. Voice mail after voice mail, conversation after conversation filled with words of congratulations. I heard from the heads of other record labels, other artists’ managers, publishers, producers with whom I’d previously worked, songwriters, publicists, musicians, and radio people. I will never forget those calls.
The best, however, were from other artists. They were the most important to me because I knew that they, and only they, knew exactly what it felt like to have something you’ve dreamed about your whole life come true. I heard from Reba
McEntire, Vince Gill, Brett Favre, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney, Martina McBride, Loretta Lynn, Trisha Yearwood, Kix Brooks, and Garth Brooks, and I even got a basket of flowers delivered to my house from Alan and Denise Jackson. It was truly one of the most memorable days of my life.
And to top it all off, my best friend, Chuck, was flying into Nashville that day for a visit that we’d planned several weeks earlier. We decided to do something crazy—well, crazy for me. We rented a limo and rode around Nashville dialing up my band and crew. We had an impromptu gathering at a Mexican restaurant just off Music Row. The Iguana had a big outdoor deck and was an ideal spot for twenty of us to eat and drink until our bellies and our hearts were ready to explode. It was the perfect night—except for the fact that Julia wasn’t there. I’d invited her, but she didn’t come.
About a month later, MCA Records and the publishers of “Single White Female” arranged an official #1 party. These parties to celebrate #1 records are commonly scheduled during office hours on Music Row to ensure that everyone involved in the record’s success is able to attend. The artist and writers get to invite anyone they want, and it’s not unusual for family members and close friends to fly in from out of state to be there for this special event.
I invited everyone. The night before the party, Chuck, Julia, another friend, and I were at my house in Kingston Springs, just outside of Nashville. Chuck asked Julia where she thought we should meet on Music Row the next day before the party so we could go over together. That’s when she told him that she wasn’t sure if she was going. It was the first I’d heard of it—I had just assumed that she’d be there.
I asked her why and she said, “Why do I need to be there? You’ve got all of those people who just love you so much and kiss your ass and tell you that you’re the greatest—what difference does it make if I’m there?”
Later that night, when she and I got into bed, I asked her to please reconsider because it would mean the world to me if she went. She said, “Let me see how my day goes.” I went to sleep feeling pretty good about her showing up after all. The next day I looked for her at the party. She did not attend—she went to a yoga class instead.
Some of the best friends I’ve had in my life. Left to right: Preston, Jeff, Jan, me, Anne Marie, Judy, and Chuck after my show for Fleet Week on the U.S.S. Intrepid, New York City. 2005.
Although I was hurt, I knew Julia was hurt as well. I began to feel that our fragile secret relationship could not survive my career, her loathing of it, and the speculation about my personal life that came with it.
Because I had so many people who supported and loved me, she’d often ask me why I needed that from her. For years, I tried to explain to her that I could have a million people screaming my name and cheering for me, but that didn’t fill the spot in my heart that one “Congratulations, I’m excited for you, and I’m proud of you” from her would fill. I was standing knee-deep in a river and dying of thirst.
All the Way to Memphis
As much as I fantasized about living in the same house with Julia and sharing a life like normal people did, the thought of actually doing that, as a gay couple, scared me to death. In many ways, I liked our situation and had learned how to make it fit into my life. When Julia and Phillip decided to divorce, I knew that everything was about to change and that the change between “them” would certainly affect “us.”
Phillip moved out of their home, and Julia did something that I never expected. She pulled away from me and started dating a man. He was a new artist on Music Row who was trying to secure a record contract. She didn’t tell me that she was dating him at first, but I heard through the small grapevine of Music Row. People would mention their relationship to me, unaware that they were actually informing me that my girlfriend had a new boyfriend.
It was 1999. I was having hit records and touring like crazy, but finally I had a rare, much-needed night off at home. I wanted to see her, to talk to her. I needed to hear it from her that she was seeing this man. I had been with a friend earlier in the day and Julia’s name had come up. He mentioned that he knew she had plans that night to attend a Nashville Predators hockey game with Tommy Mason and that the two were an “item” now.
While driving home, I called her cell phone and left a message asking her to call me when she got a chance. She didn’t call back. Around ten o’clock that night, I put my little dog, Miss Minnie, in the car and drove to her house. Her car was in the driveway. I knocked on the door and as she opened it, I could see that she was still in her work clothes, that she’d just gotten home. I asked her if I could come in so we could talk, but she said that she was just so tired and wanted to go to bed.
I asked her point-blank if she was dating Tommy Mason and she said that she was. I started to cry and didn’t make any attempt to hide it from her. Between the tears and trying to look at her through a screen door, I couldn’t see her clearly. My head felt as fuzzy as my vision, but I was able to make a declaration without any hesitation. I told her that I was willing to do whatever it took to be with her. I told her that I didn’t care about anything but being happy and that she was the one thing I just didn’t want to go without. She didn’t even take five seconds to ponder what I had just said to her. She was so cold and dismissive when she said, “No, Chely. It’s just too hard. We can’t do this anymore. I can’t do it anymore. It’s never gonna work. You and I are never gonna work.”
She closed the door and turned off the porch light while I was standing there, on that same porch where I had been welcomed for so many years. Now it was dark and colder than it had ever been. I got on I-40 to drive to my house, one exit away, but I didn’t take the exit. Instead, I drove all the way to Memphis and back, with Minnie asleep the whole time in my lap.
Bites and Stings
As I made my way home from that impromptu trip to Memphis, I had a new understanding of being all alone. I had painted myself so masterfully into a corner, and I didn’t have a friend or a family member to turn to. When my friends would suffer a broken heart, their mothers would be the first to nurture them, saying, “Everything’s going to be okay, honey. I love you, and I’ll help you through this.” It was times like those that I felt cheated that I didn’t have a mother in my life. My mother hadn’t died. She was alive and relatively well back in Kansas.
My parents had been divorced for more than three years, and I’d barely seen or spoken to my mother in that time period. In fact, things got really weird upon my return from that tour I’d taken to Japan a few years before, the one that began with the bon voyage phone call from Aunt Char—“Have a great trip, your family’s falling apart.”
When I got back to the States from the shows in Japan, I didn’t go home to Nashville because I had domestic tour dates for the remainder of the year. I got a message on my answering machine from my dad giving me a different phone number to reach him. I called him at his new, run-down apartment, and he said that Jeny had visited him to help put some touches on the place that would make it feel a little more like a home. It hurt to hear my dad’s voice shake as he told me that my mom said their marriage was really over. He told me that he was going to get her back, but I didn’t have high hopes that he would succeed. I was excited for both of my parents to get a brand-new start. My biggest fear for my father was that he might start drinking again.
“Dad, whatever you do, don’t drink, okay? It won’t help.”
“I won’t, Chel. I promise.”
I was curious about how my mother was doing, so I called and left her a message. A message. Just one. Maybe I should’ve left a dozen so she’d know that I really cared, but I didn’t.
My mom and I had stayed in close contact during my first couple of years in Nashville, and I’d share with her the details about my job at Country Music USA and my plans on how I was going to try to get a recording contract. My dad would occasionally get on the phone, but he’d usually be in the background on her end of the line, interjecting and asking his own questions. Even though I cont
inued to have regular communication with her, it became increasingly difficult for me to deal with her.
My mom was never easy to get along with, but when I was a young child, then an adolescent, and later a teenager living under “her roof,” we all deferred to her, including my father. I thought the way we were was normal. It took me well into my adulthood and experiencing being around my friends and seeing them with their parents to understand that my family dynamic was a recipe for years of pain—for all involved.
One of the first times I recall standing up for myself was just after I’d turned twenty years old. I was living in Nashville and had wrapped up my second season at Opryland, so I bought myself a plane ticket home to spend a week with my mom and dad.
The three of us were driving home from having dinner in a nearby town. The radio was playing a song by a new country singer whom I liked a lot. I said, “Oooh, turn that up. I love her voice.” My dad cranked it a notch as we cruised down the two-lane road with our bellies full of chicken-fried steak and apple crisp. Within seconds, my mom reached over and snapped the radio dial to the off position.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, “I was listening to that.”
“She can’t sing,” my mother said.
I felt like a little kid in that backseat of my parents’ car and was inclined to let her, as usual, rule the moment. I stewed for a bit; then my mouth opened up, and twenty years of frustration came out. In the most empowered, placid delivery of my life—to that point—I said, “That’s your opinion, Mom. Maybe you don’t like her voice, or maybe you don’t think this is a good song, but she can sing. She’s a professional country music singer, and I’m sure she makes millions of dollars singing that song. I heard her sing live on the Grand Ole Opry a couple of weeks ago, and she was one of the best singers there. So although you may not think she can sing, a whole lot of other people do. Including me.”
