Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music: The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs

by Jack Canfield

  I liked the record, but I had no idea, truthfully, that the song would do what it’s done all these years later.

  Two things were unique to that particular recording with Patsy: For one, it was the first time I’d ever had a record that had this little echo/tremolo thing on the guitar. That sound that’s on her record, at that time, was very unusual; kind of a little delay. I’m sure that wasn’t the first session in the world where that sound was included, but it was the first time it was used on a song I’d written.

  Second, the musicians used a few tricks. There was a beat going around in country music at the time. It was kind of like the “Ray Price shuffle,” which was a “walking” bass. It was just kind of like a slow, country/rock and roll beat, but it makes the music very danceable. So these guys had snuck a shuffle in on this record, and Owen Bradley did not like shuffle. He used to have a pop band. One of the reasons he didn’t like, was it was being used so much — and not only by Ray Price, but by Buck Owens and everybody — all using the same tempo, slow or fast. Owen normally wouldn’t let any of the records he produced be a shuffle, but they snuck it in there, and he didn’t say nothing. Well, for one thing, it sounded good, and Owen was a smart man. If something sounded good, he was going to leave it alone. But to this day, they’re still delighted that they snuck a shuffle by him!

  When the record came out, it didn’t take too long before it was a #1 country hit. And then, doggone it, it just stayed there and it stayed there. It stayed in the Top Ten for I don’t know how long.

  I remember Pamper Music had a couple of promotion men, and I remember Hal Smith, the publisher, talking to Hank Cochran one time, and they had been trying to make Patsy’s recording go into the “pop” field and really hadn’t had too much success. Hal told Hank, “We’re spending a lot of money on this thing.” I remember we were standing outside of this little studio out in Goodlettsville, and I just happened to overhear the conversation. He said, “I’m about to take these boys off of Patsy’s record. We’re not making it.”

  Hank said, “Doggone, Hal. We’re almost there. All we need is one little break.” There was a promotion man who took Patsy to Ohio. They used to have these showcases for young kids, like a Dick Clark-type thing. She did several of these in Ohio.

  So, this record consumed about a year of promo time. I mean, it was a long time, but it was a hit for a long time. When it started to subside, Owen Bradley rounded up Hank and I and Willie Nelson, and a bunch of other writers, and got all the best songs from us. Patsy cut three or four more songs. At this particular time, Willie’s song, “Crazy,” won, you know. I believe that was a follow up to “I Fall to Pieces,” some months later, when she needed a follow-up.

  I think one of the interesting things about that, which has to do with success, is Patsy always was a real good singer throughout her career, from “Walking After Midnight” on, which is when I first heard of her. But I can detect a lot more confidence in the way she sings “Crazy” than the way she sings “I Fall to Pieces,” which is pretty much on the beat, not much room for playing around, just the way it’s written. And with “Crazy” she took a lot of bluesy liberties. Patsy just had her way with “Crazy” and, for about three hours, just sang it over and over. Owen kind of felt like she’d already sang it good enough on the regular session — good enough to be a hit. But she was just getting started, and she said, “Well, if you think that’s something, watch this.” That was her attitude. You could see her confidence had risen so much. She hadn’t had a hit for a long time. I don’t know how long it was from “Walking After Midnight” to “I Fall to Pieces,” but it was a lot of records.

  From then on, it’s just been an interesting thing for me here in Nashville to watch friends of mine as they get their careers going — writers, singers, whoever — watch their confidence factor rise. That’s when they really usually take the ball and run with it.

  I Fall to Pieces

  I fall to pieces,

  Each time I see you again.

  I fall to pieces.

  How can I be just your friend?

  You want me to act like we’ve never kissed.

  You want me to forget, pretend we’ve never met.

  And I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I haven’t yet.

  You walk by and I fall to pieces.

  I fall to pieces,

  Each time someone speaks your name.

  I fall to pieces.

  Time only adds to the flame.

  You tell me to find someone else to love,

  Someone who’ll love me too, the way you used to do.

  But each time I go out with someone new,

  You walk by and I fall to pieces.

  You walk by and I fall to pieces.

  To purchase the original demo of this song,

  go to www.countrysongdemos.com

  I Hope You Dance

  Story by Tia Sillers

  Song written by Tia Sillers and Mark D. Sanders

  Recorded by Lee Ann Womack

  I didn’t move to Nashville until I was in junior high school. When I was a teenager, I babysat for some musicians and recording artists, but growing up, I didn’t have any real inclination to work in the music business.

  As far as how I got interested in songwriting, it’s easier to romanticize about it now than to remember it accurately. I would go to The Bluebird Café a lot when I was in high school and college. You didn’t have to be 21. You could listen to live music seven nights a week and they had early and late shows, so it was a great place to feel grown up. Amy (Kurland) would let me enter from the back door and walk through the kitchen. She even let me sit at the rear corner of the bar sometimes.

  All the songwriters there would tell these fabulous stories and these “blue” jokes and puns. They were incredibly witty. That was almost as attractive to me as hearing them perform. I still didn’t think about writing songs. I just studied them as “creatures.” I was drawn to them as “personalities.” Songwriters, as an ilk of people, are just kind of odd. I liken them to pirates. Pirates are not at all like sailors. Even though they’re all out at sea, being a pirate is a far cry from joining the Navy.

  Later in college, I decided I wanted to be a novelist or a journalist or something of that sort, and that’s when I first began contemplating writing songs. One summer I went to see Don Schlitz and Rodney Crowell and they just devastated me. I thought, How do they do that? And I remember at that point getting CDs of theirs and beginning to study them.

  One of the first things I discovered is that poetry and lyrics are not the same thing. Poetry works perfectly well without music. You can read a poem and feel something without the help of melody or instrumentation. But lyrics really need music to cradle them. That’s something I was drawn to. With a song it isn’t just the music or just the lyrics; it’s the synergy between the two.

  I was about twenty when I got serious about writing and I signed my first publishing deal not long after. I was fortunate to have songs on the charts at a fairly young age, so for a long time I don’t think I appreciated how really hard it was to do this.

  A few years after I started writing professionally, I was going through a nasty break-up and I went down to the beach in Florida to figure out how to reinvent my life. My mom, who was this crazy, fabulous woman, kept calling me on the phone while I was there. She would say things that were reminiscent of future lines in “I Hope You Dance,” but they were all bad things about my ex, like “I hope he stays miserable,” and “I hope he knows he’s an idiot” — not exactly words of inspiration you would put in a song. But occasionally she would say something more positive like, “I hope you get that light in your eye back” or “I hope you get to travel around the world.”

  One night, I was sitting on the beach at St. George Island near Apalachicola and it was just so unbelievably beautiful. There I was, absorbing the deepness of the sea and the vastness of the sand and thinking how I was going to be ashes soon enough and how so little of our life rea
lly matters in the big picture. There were seagulls and pelicans flying above me, and a dolphin was coasting in the distance, and I remember feeling so small.

  Then all of a sudden, straight out of CSI: Miami, came this huge black Humvee racing across the empty beach — this is a nature preserve, mind you — all the windows were down and loud music was pouring out. The car screeched to a halt about 50 feet away from me and this man got out and he even looked like the guy on CSI, with dark sunglasses and a silk shirt. He got out and he was screaming into his cell phone, cussing up a storm. It was so strange. I remember thinking, “Wow, this guy definitely does not feel small when he stands beside the ocean, and it’s his loss.”

  On my way back to Nashville, I got a call from a music publisher who happens to be one of my best friends — Diana Maher. She was calling from Estes Park, Colorado. She said, “I’ve got some of my writers, including Mark Selby, and we’re all up here in the Rocky Mountains. Why don’t you come out and work with us?”

  I explained that I wasn’t in Nashville at the moment and she asked, “Where are you?”

  I said, “I’m about 50 miles south of Atlanta.”

  She said, “Great, park your car at the Atlanta airport and catch a flight to Denver.”

  I bought a ticket, arrived that night and spent a few days collaborating with writers, including Mark, who is now my husband, and we had a great writing retreat. We climbed an 11,000-foot mountain and I was scared to death. So the line, “I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,” came from that experience. The song was slowly coming together in bits and pieces during both of my trips.

  I got back to Nashville and had a writing appointment with Mark D. Sanders that next week. Mark D. is the most wonderful man; he’s like a shrink in that he wheedles things out of you that you have no intention of telling. And before I knew it, I was sitting there crying and mumbling and singing this thing I had in my head. I still remember Mark D. saying, “Oh, I think we should write that.”

  We went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant when he came up with the refrain at the end, “Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along.”

  I said, “This is another song, right?”

  He said, “No, it’s for this song. Trust me.”

  It probably took us another couple of sessions to finish it and then we did the demo. We hired Karen Rochelle to sing, as well as a group of background singers, men and women. The finished product had some flaws. The guitar part wasn’t really working and we had it arranged in a less than inspired fashion. But Mark Wright, the producer, did what a great producer should do — he took it to another level. He didn’t just expect the demo to be handed to him and then try to copy it. He came up with the whole lush arrangement, and it was his idea to add the Sons of the Desert on the background vocals. They are like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, like when Cicero is about to give a speech and all of a sudden the Greek chorus comes out and says, “Cicero must give a speech that is very important to convince the public that he is in his right mind.” That’s essentially what the Sons of the Desert were doing on this record. The texture of their voices was great. Anyway, Mark Wright came up with all of that.

  We found out that Lee Ann was going to cut it and it was going to be released as a single, so we were thrilled, but we never dreamed it would win a CMA, let alone a Grammy, and then later be performed at the Nobel Prize Awards ceremonies.

  The night we won the Grammy for Best Country Song, the funniest thing happened. Mark and I went up on stage and accepted our award. After our speech, an escort came and ushered us backstage where we got in line for media questions. In front of us were Eminem and Madonna and a bunch of other big stars. One by one, they brought them in front of the reporters and announced their awards and the flash bulbs popped and people started firing questions. When our turn came, they said, “Here are Tia Sillers and Mark D. Sanders, writers of ‘I Hope You Dance,’ which won Best Country Song. Any questions?”

  Silence. Not a single question, no flash bulbs, nothing — we just walked off. It was hysterical. So any inflated ego that I might have had while I was on stage was immediately squashed backstage!

  I’m intrigued when people come up to me and say, “This song is really for children, right?” because that shows there is more than one way for the song to be interpreted. That’s something that Lee Ann chose to do. She put her children in the video, and that made it magical. But truthfully, while writing it, we were trying to create a list of hopes for all of humanity. It’s for everybody at every age.

  A lot of us, when we get to a certain point in our lives, we think that we don’t need to have hopes anymore. And the truth is, we need to have even more hope as adults than as children, because kids already live in a fantasy world. Most kids have the luxury of wishes and hopes. But so many times we adults sacrifice our own dreams and hopes for our children.

  The thing that I wanted to impart to someone else with the song is: Even I had to figure out how to have those hopes and dreams for myself again — because I was ending a terrible relationship. Many of the lyrics are very mature. The line, “When you come close to selling out, reconsider,” that’s an adult hope. “Don’t let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter” — that’s not a line you’re going to say to a child. “Loving might be a mistake but it’s worth making” — that’s a realization that only comes from experience. It’s great when younger people say how much they love the song, but I think it’s mostly adults who have really grabbed on to bigger concepts in “I Hope You Dance.”

  One of the loveliest things about “I Hope You Dance” was that it was written the way I always imagined writing a song should be. It’s the first lines that move me the most, “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder / you get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger.” So many people lose that hunger as they get older. They lose that curiosity, that drive, that desire, particularly because the vicissitudes of life are hard and can beat you down, but I think it’s imperative in our journey as humans to keep that sense of wonder and hunger at all costs.

  I Hope You Dance

  I hope you never lose your sense of wonder

  You get your fill to eat

  But always keep that hunger

  May you never take one single breath for granted

  God forbid love ever leave you empty handed

  I hope you still feel small

  When you stand beside the ocean

  Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens

  Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance

  And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

  I hope you dance

  I hope you dance

  I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance

  Never settle for the path of least resistance

  Living might mean taking chances

  But they’re worth taking

  Lovin’ might be a mistake

  But it’s worth making

  Don’t let some hell-bent heart

  Leave you bitter

  When you come close to selling out

  Reconsider

  Give the heavens above

  More than just a passing glance

  And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

  I hope you dance

  (Time is a wheel in constant motion always)

  I hope you dance

  (Rolling us along)

  I hope you dance

  (Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder

  where those years have gone)

  I hope you still feel small

  When you stand beside the ocean

  Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens

  Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance

  And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

  Dance. I hope you dance.

  I Love the Way You Love Me

  Story by Victoria Shaw

  Song written by Vi
ctoria Shaw and Chuck Cannon

  Recorded by John Michael Montgomery and Boyzone

  I started “I Love the Way You Love Me” while driving to a gig in Pennsylvania from New York City. The first six lines, with music, popped into my head, which was pretty unusual. Then I was down in Nashville and wrote with Chuck Cannon for the first time. But writing it with him was what made this whole song explode. I brought it out to him and he totally got it and we just clicked. We both were in love (with other people), so we could draw from our own lives. That song was one that took under four hours to finish.

  Gary Morris, who was my publisher at the time and also a successful artist, really liked it and was interested in recording it, but he wanted us to change something — I can’t remember now what it was. Even though I had no success as a writer, there was something inside me that knew it was right just the way it was. I told him I’d like to leave it as is, and he did.

  A little while later it was pitched to John Michael Montgomery and it was his first #1 and Chuck and I won the ACM award for Song of the Year for it.

  I always have people tell me that it was their wedding song and I say to them “It was mine too!” Somehow the song got pitched to Boyzone, who are huge in the UK, and it became an international pop hit, too.

  I Love the Way You Love Me

  I like the feel of your name on my lips