The Garth Factor

by Patsi Bale Cox

  Two premier vocalists who had directly benefited from the Garth Brooks juggernaut had important albums in 1992. Clearly, country fans heard the same remarkable command in these two women as Garth had. Trisha Yearwood followed her self-titled 1991 debut with the monster Hearts in Armor. Critics called it a tour de force, the “most lauded Nashville album since Randy Travis’ Storms of Life.” Trisha’s crystalline vocals could turn from passionate on ballads like “Down On My Knees” to tough yet conversational on “Wrong Side Of Memphis.” Some in Nashville joked that “Walkaway Joe,” the duet with Don Henley, was clearly a case of the Eagles star “marrying up.”

  Martina McBride’s 1992 debut, The Time Has Come, established her as another formidable female talent with a vocal maturity seldom found in a new artist. But despite the album’s strengths, it yielded little chart action. Only the following year, when Martina blasted back with The Way That I Am, containing singles like “My Baby Loves Me,” “Life #9,” and “Independence Day,” did radio fully appreciate her. It didn’t hurt that down the line Martina cut her hair short to separate herself from a pack of longhaired brunette beauties vying for attention.

  Clint Black came back from a somewhat disappointing second album, 1990’s Put Yourself in My Shoes, with a powerhouse 1992 release, The Hard Way. Clint had taken some criticism for continuing to co-write only with guitarist Hayden Nicholas, and for supposedly selling out by marrying a movie star. Clint more than redeemed himself with The Hard Way’s knockout hits, including “We Tell Ourselves,” “When My Ship Comes In,” and “Burn One Down.”

  Clint was as happy as Garth was when the press laid off a dueling cowboys theme. Unfortunately, Nashville gossips found a new tabloid tale to peddle. When Clint met and married actress Lisa Hartman, rumors started floating that his management disagreements with manager and Texas moneyman Bill Hamm were due to meddling by Lisa and her mother, PR woman Jonie Hartman. Jonie was portrayed as some sort of Hollywood Medusa, quietly manipulating Clint while turning his good old country boy pals to stone. Of course, the truth was that Jonie was herself a good old Texas girl from Houston, and just happened to help Clint with media advice. But as one of Nashville’s favorite philosophers, big John Cash, used to say, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

  Vince Gill’s 1992 album I Still Believe inYou contained a string of chart-topping singles that included the title cut, “One More Last Chance” and “Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away,” which stayed at number 1 for three weeks. After only a year as a team, Brooks & Dunn were named the Country Music Association’s Duo of the Year in 1992. Their 1991 debut, “Brand New Man,” produced by Don Cook and Scott Hendricks for Arista Records, took the airwaves by storm, beginning a string of number 1 singles that simply wouldn’t relinquish the top spot. “My Next Broken Heart” stayed at number 1 for two weeks, “Neon Moon” for two more, then the big kicker, “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” refused to budge for a month. The duo was the brainchild of Arista’s Tim DuBois, in an attempt to fill the void left by the Judds. He asked the two to write something together, and they returned in a few days with “Brand New Man.” DuBois, not one to mince words, gave them this advice: “Keep your boots on, keep your jeans on, and keep it country.”

  Marty Stuart continued to carry country’s banner with his 1992 MCA album, This One’s Gonna Hurt You. Critic Karen Schumer called it “nothing less than a concept album about the meaning of country music.” MCA’s stone country stylist Mark Chesnutt brought out Longnecks and Short Stories. Critic and music historian Robert K. Oermann called the record “as close to perfect a country album as anything released during 1992.” Another traditionalist to make his name in 1991 was Tracy Lawrence with his Atlantic debut, Sticks and Stones. Atlantic had two more hot entries in 1992: John Michael Montgomery, with Life’s a Dance, and country rockers Confederate Railroad, with their self-titled debut.

  Given Garth’s numbers, Nashville labels were obsessed with signing artists they thought capable of moving records on massive levels. Warner Bros. saw that potential in Travis Tritt while RCA looked to Martina McBride. CBS signed Patty Loveless and Collin Raye to its Epic label. New to the playing field, Arista, under Tim DuBois, had made smart early choices: Alan Jackson and Brooks & Dunn. Mercury had Billy Ray Cyrus with Shania Twain and Toby Keith in the wings. Curb had hopes for a singer/songwriter named Tim McGraw. MCA backed Wynonna and Trisha Yearwood.

  A question hung in the air: when it came to big-selling artists, was Capitol a one-trick pony?

  Determined to have a superseller other than Garth Brooks, Bowen had expanded his artist roster with amazing speed and diversity, signing some interesting new acts, developing others, and branching into instrumental and songwriter releases. He even decided to make a run at pop rock recording and hired an L.A. A&R vice president, Kim Buie.

  The problem was, none of the artists Bowen found had the same success as those his counterparts at other labels were signing. While he had success with Sawyer Brown, Suzy Bogguss, Billy Dean, John Berry, and the Pirates of the Mississippi, none of his acts, despite their talent, hit superstar levels and the rest simply couldn’t win over country radio. It was not for lack of trying on the label’s part.

  Bowen so believed in former PolyGram artist David Lynn Jones’s potential that he gave him a budget to remodel his Arkansas studio to record an album away from Nashville distractions. No singles charted from the resulting Mixed Emotions. A film crew was hired to follow Texas honky-tonk rocker Ricky Lynn Gregg around in anticipation of a making-of-a-star television documentary. When Gregg’s debut single only made it to number 36 on the charts, Capitol financed a radio showcase in Florida. Jocks and programmers were flown in from all over the country, but it was to no avail. He never charted again.

  The Pirates of the Mississippi’s 1990 self-titled debut album generated considerable press interest, and a Top 20 hit with 1991’s “Feed Jake.” Radio & Records named the Pirates its Top New Group, as did the Academy of Country Music. But the three succeeding Capitol albums made little noise on the charts. Another group, the Cactus Brothers, was about as close to hillbilly hippie music as could be found in Nashville in the early ’90s, and their self-titled debut album contained a wealth of tasty musical tracks but no hits. Mississippi band Pearl River had two albums and one charted single.

  Reba protégé Linda Davis, known to be one of the finest voices around Nashville, released two Capitol albums, but, as it turned out, divine vocals don’t always translate to chart singles. Linda’s legacy for Capitol may end up being her daughter Hillary Scott, who could often be found in the label’s offices, quietly coloring in a corner while her mother held an interview. Now grown and a top vocalist in her own right, Hillary sings with Capitol’s hot new trio, Lady Antebellum, winners of the ACM award for Top New Group in 2008.

  The legendary swing band Asleep at the Wheel recorded A Tribute to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, with guest artists including Garth Brooks, George Strait, and Vince Gill, among others. The ambitious collaboration was released to great acclaim and won two Grammy awards. But other established artists did not fare well. Gary Morris had turned his efforts to Broadway in the ’80s, starring in the 1988 production of Les Miserables and drawing raves from New York skeptics. He charted no singles on Capitol. Eddie Rabbitt and Eddie Raven made their final chart appearances. Ronnie Milsap, Crystal Gayle, and Barbara Mandrell’s releases quickly slipped from the radar. Lacy J. Dalton and former Highway 101 lead singer Paulette Carlson fell by the wayside. Capitol mainstay Anne Murray met with little success and left the label.

  Artists signed to Capitol during the Foglesong years fared best. Sawyer Brown’s 1991 single “The Walk,” from Buick, reestablished the band at radio and set up the 1992 hit album, The Dirt Road, although it took the band’s management borrowing a page from Doyle/Lewis’s playbook when they hired an independent team to rescue the record.

  Along with Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, Florida native Billy Dean was a regula
r on the Music Row demo-singing circuit. Dean’s first album, 1990’s Young Man, showed off his writing talent and yielded two Top 5 hits, “Only Here For A Little While” and “Somewhere In My Broken Heart.” His second album, BillyDean, had four more top-five releases, including his signature “Billy The Kid.”

  Tanya Tucker relished wearing her ’91 CMA Female Vocalist crown, awarded in absentia because she was in Nashville’s Baptist Hospital where she had just given birth to son Beau Grayson. Even though Tanya was not married and would not reveal the name of the child’s father, she remained a media darling. When presenter Roy Rogers announced the CMA win, journalists sitting in the press room at the Grand Ole Opry House leapt to their feet and applauded.

  Bowen decided to co-produce Suzy Bogguss’s recordings, and the records they made together speak for themselves, with dazzling vocal performances and commanding songs backed up by radio-friendly tracks. It was 1991’s Aces that broke her through at radio. She had hits with “Someday Soon,” “Letting Go,” “Outbound Plane,” and the album’s title song.

  Bowen also instituted a series of songwriter and musician releases. Four from both categories were chosen: singer/ songwriters Pat Alger, Jill Coluci, Kostas, and Kathy Mattea’s husband, Jon Vezner; and musicians Sojoro, Larry Nechtel, John Jarvis, and Billy Joe Walker Jr. He signed Jason Ringenberg of Jason & the Scorchers fame, but despite having a loyal following, his One Foot in the Honky Tonk charted no singles.

  One success that circumvented radio was Garth’s old friend Chris LeDoux, who had already proven he could sell records without airplay. Once Garth introduced Joe Mansfield to Chris’s music, the marketing VP became a big fan and made Jimmy Bowen aware of the $4 million in tapes sold from the back of LeDoux’s truck. The label was also interested in the cult following that could always be counted on to buy any new LeDoux.

  It was perfect timing for Chris, who was experiencing tough financial times. All those tapes had been sold over a period of many years, and they no longer covered expenses. “The music career was paying our day-to-day living expenses,” he said. “But costs were up and profits were down at the ranch, and my music couldn’t make the land payments. For a while I was afraid we were going to lose everything.”

  Chris resisted the label offer at first, because he was afraid that Bowen might try to change his music. “We won’t try to ‘Nashville you up,’ ” Bowen promised. So Chris literally saved the farm by signing with Capitol and licensing his entire catalog to the label. It was a win-win situation for everyone concerned.

  Bowen and Jerry Crutchfield produced Chris, with the first album, Western Underground, a tribute to cowboys, rodeos, and family. One of his favorite songs on the album reflected his concerns for some of his rodeo pals, the ones who too often lived love-’em-and-leave-’em lives. In “Riding For A Fall,” he spoke to freedom, and what it really means. “They [the aforementioned ride-off-into-the-sunset types] need to understand that sometimes you need to sacrifice some of that freedom to find true happiness.”

  Though Chris’s catalog and new releases sold steadily, he had only two chart hits, both from his 1992 gold-selling album, Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy. The title cut, performed by Chris and Garth Brooks, produced by Crutchfield and Allen Reynolds, was a Top 10 tune. In 1993, a second release, “Cadillac Ranch,” hit the Top 20. But chart outings were not what kept Chris LeDoux going or selling records. It was his road show. The rough-and-rowdy one that Garth always laughed about stealing from.

  They were heady days. Chris saw his entire catalog put out on professionally manufactured CDs, signed with manager TK Kimbrell of Sawyer Brown’s organization, had his road show come out of the chute like a wild horse, and finally felt a financial safety net. Everything was going so well that when Chris went in for an insurance company health check, he shrugged off a questionable blood test.

  “Might just be a touch of hepatitis,” he was told. Probably nothing to worry about.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Damn this rain and damn this wasted day

  Stephanie Davis sat on a grassy hill on Garth’s farm outside Nashville. She fidgeted a bit, unused to trying to write a song without her guitar in hand. But she understood why Garth had insisted on leaving the guitars at the house and what he was trying to do by writing in such an unconventional manner.

  “I think the lyrics to this song are so important that the music shouldn’t distract us,” he had said. “Let’s go out to the hillside and get to the heart of the song before we start thinking melody.”

  Garth already had the message: tolerance. And Stephanie already had the title: “We Shall Be Free.”

  GARTH WAS IN THE middle of a six-month break from the road; everybody needed a hiatus. “We’ve been touring for two and a half years, and I just said, ‘Let’s take care of family.’ My guitar player called his daughter on her first birthday and we figured out that he’d seen her only forty-nine days during the first year of her life. That’s when I said enough was enough. I just needed to get my people home and get their family back to being what it was.”

  By 1992 Garth’s sister Betsy Smittle had joined the band on bass and background vocals. A multi-instrumentalist (six-string bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and percussion), Betsy was a veteran of Gus Hardin’s Oklahoma-based band and a singer/ songwriter in her own right. Betsy had been the most serious about music in the Brooks brood. She was the only child who didn’t go to college, attending one day and deciding it wasn’t going to help her become a professional musician. And while she became most visible through her baby brother’s fame, she’d initially made it on her own.

  The other Stillwater players remained: James Garver, lead guitar, background vocals; Ty England, acoustic guitar, background vocals; Steve McClure, steel, electric guitar; Mike Palmer, percussion; and Dave Gant, keyboards, fiddle. Unusual for the industry, Stillwater was on salary, with health insurance and a retirement plan. That meant when Garth took time off the road, rather than scrambling for new gigs, they could spend the time with their families.

  Garth spent the time working on a fourth album and taking care of business on the home front. He and Sandy were remodeling a farmhouse they’d purchased near Nashville and living in a trailer on the property until the work was finished. Their first child was expected in July and Sandy was having some difficulties with the pregnancy. In April, when the two were in Los Angeles, where Garth won the Academy of Country Music Entertainer and Male Vocalist awards, the post–Rodney King riots broke out. Sandy’s health had taken a turn for the worse. As they left a city in flames, Garth was sick with worry over his wife and unborn child and shaken by the societal upheaval.

  Back home, with Sandy’s pregnancy out of danger, Garth continued to be troubled about what had transpired in Los Angeles. He called Stephanie Davis, with whom he was already writing “Your Time Will Come,” a song addressing racism. Garth suggested that the theme could be expanded. “We Shall Be Free” addressed topics including poverty, homelessness, racism, sexual preference, and class; a testament to inclusiveness, brotherhood, and tolerance.

  The song was added to an album that was already the most personal that Garth had recorded. The album had been tentatively titled Let It Ride. “I was in a state where it appeared that I’d met all the goals I’d had in life. Then one night in May, I sat up in bed and said, ‘You egotistical ass. What makes you think you’ve met all your goals? If that’s true, get up and get some new goals and get back in the chase and run as hard as you can.’ ”

  Despite the enormous effect the Los Angeles riots had on Garth, that experience paled by comparison to his life-defining feelings July 8 when his daughter Taylor Mayne arrived. Garth was with Sandy through the entire ten hours of labor, and when he finally saw his daughter born he says he felt like he’d witnessed such a miracle that he wanted to go down the hall and watch another new soul come into the world. Having a child changed Garth in ways he never expected. For one thing, the career that consumed him lessened its hold an
d he began to wonder how to balance his life better: “I looked at that little girl and thought, ‘From this day on, this is what you are about.’ ”

  From the beginning of his recording career Garth had seen making records as much more than just going into a studio and recording ten songs, hopefully some hits. There had long been something of a divide in Nashville about what albums should be. Throughout its history, the music industry has had artists who paid minimal attention to what songs they were recording. Some left the decisions primarily to the producer, others to their record labels. Results vary.

  But there is no question that some of the finest, longest-lasting recordings have been concept albums, built around a common theme. Emmylou Harris’s 1985 semi-autobiographical Ballad of Sally Rose is widely considered a classic. Waylon Jennings cut an album’s worth of Billy Joe Shaver songs and the result was one of his most successful and popular releases: 1973’s Honky Tonk Heroes. Willie Nelson brought Columbia Records a tape of Red Headed Stranger in 1975 and executives thought he was joking. Not only did the lyrics meander through an outlaw’s life of murder and regret, the tracks were acoustic to the point of seeming unfinished. And yet the album is considered by many to mark the beginning of modern country music. Historian/ critic Chet Flippo explained: “It is impossible now to underestimate the impact of Stranger—it legitimized country music and intellectualized it and immediately made it mainstream as no album ever had done.”

  Garth says his way of looking at albums was influenced by something that recording engineer Mark Miller told him early on, that each one should offer some new insight into the artist. Garth took that advice on many levels. It might mean songs that are painfully honest about personal concerns or it might mean being willing to look at human foibles and laugh. The songs Garth wrote and recorded on his fourth album, which was ultimately titled The Chase, ran that gamut.