Dreaming Out Loud

by Bruce Feiler

  His friend, still hidden, turned to face his new life.

  “Don’t make me come to Tulsa

  You know I hate to fly

  I ain’t been back to Oklahoma

  Since you said good-bye.”

  Two weeks shy of his twenty-sixth birthday and sixteen weeks after starting from scratch, Wade Hayes—guitarist, mama’s boy, sex object—suddenly awoke from the density of his dreams one night in the spring of 1995 and found himself in the unexpected role of Nashville’s startup superstar of the moment. Standing before his first sold-out crowd—on the wrong side of Interstate 95 north of Richmond—the soft-spoken Oklahoman was startlingly tall in his creased blue Wranglers, dark flowered shirt, and standard-hunk-issue black cowboy hat. He was startlingly awkward, almost foallike. He could pluck his Telecaster guitar with admirable esprit de stardom. He could flick back his shoulder-length brown hair with insouciant sex appeal. But in his stare—his dark callow stare—he looked deeply unprepared. “I just couldn’t believe,” he said later, “that what they all wanted was for me to turn around, so they could take a picture of my butt.”

  Following the path newly widened by Garth Brooks, whose poplike success paved the way for a new kind of superstar to emerge out of Nashville, a sudden influx of young men and women began flocking to Music City in recent years with nothing but range-fed expectations and a handful of half-written love songs. Out of this pack, few would ever see the inside of a record label, even fewer would see the inside of a recording studio, and fewer still would have any music released to the fickle public. Those who do survive this gauntlet and achieve even a modicum of success are then forced to confront one of the most exhausting, and wrenching, personal transformations awaiting any young artist in American life. One day Wade Hayes was nervously standing before a microphone on his first-ever visit to a recording studio; six months later, a song from that session was the most-played record on 2,600 radio stations, reaching 70 million sets of ears in North America alone.

  Stories such as these, with their timeless echoes of small-town heroes triumphing over big-city realities, are one of the principal reasons that millions of Americans have been transfixed by the stories coming out of Nashville recently. Wade Hayes was born in Bethel Acres, Oklahoma (population 2,505). His father moved his family to Nashville in the early 1980s after being promised a record deal himself. But when that deal proved fraudulent, the elder Hayes was forced to sell his home in Nashville and, with his family, slink back to Oklahoma. Ten years later when Wade dropped out of college and moved to Nashville, he was carrying not only his own ambitions, but those of his entire family. Like many young singers, Wade began his hunt for vindication by singing at Gilley’s nightclub in the evenings and working construction during the day—the kind of one-two punch-and-hope that nurses many a failed ambition. Wade, however, emerged from that jam of hopefuls through an impromptu meeting with Don Cook, one of Nashville’s premier producers, responsible for boot-scootin’ hotshots Brooks & Dunn and ultrahip crooners the Mavericks. At the five-minute audition, Wade took out his guitar and sang a self-written ballad, “I’m Still Dancin’ with You,” about a young man still in love with his ex-girlfriend. The following day he signed a letter of intent to be the first artist on Cook’s new label at Sony Music.

  “Any of you guys ever heard of Merle Haggard?” Wade asked after his second song. Blinking back shock in response to their cheers, he licked his lips and smiled at the front row. “Well, gosh, he’s always been my favorite, too. And if y’all don’t mind, I’d like to play you a song of his.”

  Far from easing his burdens, Wade’s overnight success only heightened the pressures. If anything, his speedy start—the fastest and most promising of any artist in the Nashville Class of 1994—raised the stakes considerably: Suddenly millions of dollars were on the line, lots of people were watching, and legions of rivals were hoping he would fail. Having first met Wade in early 1995 on the day his debut single reached number one, I spent countless hours with him over the next several years, going into the studio, out onto the road, and back home with his family, as he struggled first to define his ambition, then to achieve it. As a window into Nashville, not to mention the larger world of American celebrity, the view was unrivaled. Also, as a counterpoint to Garth’s ongoing battles with his success, Wade’s struggles to achieve success were, in many ways, even more revealing.

  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wade studied the marketplace around him, constantly reexamining his appearance (Should he get plastic surgery on his broken nose?), his reputation (Should he try to get in the tabloids?), and his competition (What should he do about his clean-cut counterpart, Bryan White, coming up fast?). Above all, his experience raised a dilemma: How does a young man, full of so many dreams, fresh from one of the tiniest towns in Middle America, who had never even been on an airplane before he had a record on every country radio station in America, possibly navigate all the opportunities and hazards of being an artist in the age of conglomerates? In Nashville alone, the examples of early success gone bad are legendary. For every Garth Brooks or Dolly Parton who persevere through early trouble to achieve acclaim, there are legions of artists like George Jones, who nearly squandered his talent on drugs, or Keith Whitley, who drank himself to death.

  For Wade the questions were less apocalyptic, but no less pressing: Could he build on his early success to develop a long-lasting career? Could he withstand the corporate pressures that seem to overwhelm many young artists? And, most importantly of all, could he overcome his considerable personal insecurities to become a dynamic, full-fledged star?

  “I’d like to tell y’all a story,” Wade said after finishing another song or two. “Y’all might know this song. It’s our brand-new single. You might have heard it on the radio or seen the video on CMT.” His voice was canyon-deep and rich. His smile was wry, with an occasional chuckle. He was clearly warming to the hour. “I was sittin’ at home one night right before I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, from Oklahoma. And this girl and I had just broken up. I had dated her for three years.” Two girls in front stood up to cheer. A few older women behind them nodded knowingly. They would want Wade Hayes as a son-in-law.

  “I want to tell you I was heartbroken, I was in bad shape. I set down on the couch one night and this song started coming out. I moved to Nashville and this song got me my record deal. Later it got me my publishing deal. Got me here in Richmond, Virginia, pickin’ for you guys tonight.” He paused. “And guess what: I’m kinda over it by now, if you know what I mean.”

  The moment was solid gold. Wade Hayes was on a roll. And by the time he reached the end of his ninety-minute set, through stately, if predictable, tributes to Merle, George Jones, and Keith Whitley, as well as most of the songs on his first album, Wade handled the moment the crowd had come to see with precise and admirable grace.

  “Before we go, I’d like to the thank all of y’all out there in the audience for buying my record. I’d like to thank my record label for getting behind me. But above all, I’d like to thank my Heavenly Father for giving us our first…number one song!

  ‘Neon lights draw me like a moth to a flame

  Mama raised me right

  That just leaves me to blame

  When I get a little sideways on a honky-tonk tear

  I’m old enough to know better

  But I’m still too young to care.’”

  Even before he reached the end of the first verse, all three hundred people in Bronco’s—including the men, the chef, even the jaded owner—were standing on their feet and singing along. And when he came to the final verse, tossed his pick into the room, and slithered from the stage, the audience continued to stand and cheer. “Wade. Wade. Wade. Wade!” And wait for his return.

  But Wade did not return to the stage that night. The audience continued to stand and cheer, but the stage door never opened. After a moment, the owner put on the house tape, and the road manager—older, brash, knowing that Wade’s new number one wou
ld mean he wouldn’t play overcrowded honky-tonks like this much longer—insisted his charge not denigrate himself by returning to the stage after the house lights were on. Wade, frozen in indecision, capitulated. He took off his hat and returned to the bus. It was, under the circumstances, the wrong decision.

  “I hate to say it, but I got a bad feeling about him,” the owner said as the rented bus pulled out of Bronco’s and returned with Wade to the road. “He’s real nice. He can sure sing. But who’s in charge of his career? Who is making the decisions?”

  After a two-hour delay, they were glad to see her.

  “You’re bad, girl,” someone in the back shouted. “You’re bad.”

  After a two-year absence, she seemed scared to see them.

  “Oh, Lord,” she uttered. “Oh, Lord.”

  Back they came, in revival style.

  “We love you, Wy. We love you!”

  And then she replied, in her own kind of prayer.

  “Oh, my God, I forgot how hard this can be.”

  With a strobe of blue light and shock of red hair, Wynonna Judd walked onto the stage of Nashville’s Sunset Studio on a Saturday evening in early 1996, flashed an utterly horrified expression in front of three hundred and fifty special guests and eleven swooping television cameras, and abruptly terminated in spine-tingling fashion an eighteen-month isolation from her fans, her music, and the epic oddness of her life. At thirty-one, with an infant son, a newlywed husband, a famous mother, a starlet sister, a father who turned out not to be her own, and a child in her belly conceived out of wedlock and soon to be delivered—legitimately—in the midst of a two-year world tour, Wynonna Judd was arguably the most famous woman in America about whom it could be said that everything known about her comes from somebody else: her mother.

  Naomi Judd, née Diana, and her elder daughter, Wynonna, née Christina Ciminella, burst onto the mostly male country music scene in the flaccid-sounding early 1980s and rode a wave of dulcimer melodies, sweet-tongued interviews, and cloying Ladies’ Home Journal covers to seemingly overnight fairy-tale success. A high school dropout, occasional fashion model, and battered woman, Naomi Judd was the steely will behind the duo. She pounded the pavement, sweet-talked executives, and steered the stunning rise of her family from barefoot poverty to the glitzy heights of American celebrity. When at the height of their glory, Naomi suddenly came down with a mysterious liver disease—took time off, returned to the stage, got sick again, announced her retirement, then led her family on the Judds’ interminable Farewell Tour—focus shined even more brightly on Mama Judd. That was followed by a best-selling book, a multicity book tour, a magical recovery, an NBC miniseries, another PR tour, and, as always, a drumbeat of cover stories documenting her every emotional high and low. Naomi Judd became a poster child for the Oprah Era, a Chinese menu of talk-show topics, ready and willing to be plumbed.

  While Naomi was doing all the talking, meanwhile, Wynonna was doing all the singing. Though little noted at the time, the Judds’ meteoric rise—six Grammy Awards, at least a dozen Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, and over 5 million albums—was based on the spunky vocals of Wynonna, softened by the harmonies of her mother. When Naomi decided to retire, Wynonna (that’s “WHY-nona”)—mimicking Madonna—dropped her surname and went out on her own. Her self-titled debut album, released in 1992, became the bestselling studio album by a female country artist in history. It was also universally acclaimed by critics as the work of one of the country’s greatest singers—a startling combination of Dolly Parton and Aretha Franklin, a sort of hybrid country soul. Wynonna, pundits proclaimed, was finally realizing her potential as the “Female Elvis.” A second album, released in 1993, was equally heralded, but sold less well. By then the tabloids began to catch up with Wynonna. Her mother’s book portrayed Wynonna as a rotten brat. The man her mother claimed to be Wynonna’s father admitted he really wasn’t. And in a final, self-inflicted coup de shame—at least in country—Wynonna got pregnant out of wedlock and announced she was keeping the baby. Exhausted, she withdrew from public life in May 1994. This night, a year and a half later, was meant to be her carefully midwifed return to form.

  “I want to do that song again,” she said at the end of the first number, “just because I can.” The audience laughed. A handful were friends and industry insiders; the rest were members of her fan club who had waited in line over thirteen hours to participate in this taping. The fan club members, naturally, were fawning, while the industry people sat on their hands and watched with skeptical curiosity, itching to pounce.

  “Now, don’t you worry,” Wynonna said to the audience as she paraded off the stage. “I can do this. I know that I can do this.” She stopped and brought her hands together as if in mock worship. “I’m a professional. I’m a Judd. I can do anything.”

  At the moment that hardly seemed true. In addition to being over two hours late (the result, she told me later, of a crippling panic attack), Wynonna’s opening song had been out of key. Her body—dressed in satin trousers, a teal shirt, and a long golden Captain Hook coat—was rigid. Her face—porcelain smooth, geisha white—was visibly frightened. She looked like a ghost who had scared herself. The fans didn’t mind. They would have stayed there half the night (and eventually, in fact, did; though most of the industry brass went home). But this debut was revealing a different side of Wynonna. Far from the reckless young woman her mother portrayed, she came across as a more fragile person, a deeply unsure performer. “Settle down. Settle down,” she said to herself over the microphone. “I’m just so nervous I can’t stand still.”

  On second try (“Now, everybody, you have to give the same kind of standing ovation or it won’t match up on tape…”), Wynonna made it through the first song and into the next. Between each take, a team of hair curlers, blush applicators, and lipstick daubers would scurry onto the sprawling stage and prepare her for the next song.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight,” she announced three bars into her third song. “When I do that at home, I’m just moving all over.”

  “Don’t worry, we’re just like family,” a woman called from the audience.

  “But you always want to do good for your family,” Wy pleaded. To which a guy replied excitedly from the back, “In that case, when’s the barbecue?”

  The whole event was beginning to sound a lot like a twelve-step support group: Artists who Lost Their Mothers and the Fans who Support Them. This was country music at its mawkish best and the kind of story that Nashville has long told best. Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette have, at one time or another, all been the cover girl for troubled women in America. In the nineties, Wynonna inherited the legacy of those women, and how she chose to handle her afflictions—from a dysfunctional family to a stubborn weight problem—would determine her future as a viable artist. Moreover, as a very public woman, Wynonna faced a challenge over the coming two years that Garth and Wade could only imagine: trying to develop her own identity while battling her dress size, her hair color, her parentage, and her pregnancies on the pages of the National Enquirer.

  These pressures were written all over this night. If the key to Garth’s psyche was his eyes, the key to Wynonna’s was her body. It was a big body, but one that was surprisingly malleable, even expressive. Particularly when she sang, Wynonna would sway back and forth as if part of a huge church choir. You could see the tension escape from her arms as the music consumed her being. It was in these moments that Wynonna seemed to reach out and embrace everyone around her: I see you, I hear you, I love you. Her comments between songs only echoed this theme. “This one’s for all of you out there who are totally in love…” “Now, listen to me, if it doesn’t work out, this is what you do…” “Don’t worry, you can survive. Just let me be your inspiration. I want to be your healer…” Wynonna was a modern version of the traveling preacher. Not a singing cowboy, but a singing talk-show host.

  But as soon as the music stopped, Wynonna lost her composur
e. She became tense and unsure. Her body seemed to lose its shape. It was particularly noticeable when her mother entered the studio that night, dressed to perfection in a plum red suit and black pillbox hat. Wynonna bristled. Many in the audience, sensing the transformation, gasped. “Good God, who could compete with that?” Naomi was clearly the main ghost haunting Wynonna and the one demon she had yet to surmount. And for those around Wynonna, indeed for anyone with even a modicum of sympathy for the difficulty of contending with a perfect mother, it was in these moments that they felt the need to reach up onstage and embrace her: We see you, we hear you, we love you. And, most of all, we need you to keep singing.

  “You don’t know how much this means to me that you’re here,” Wynonna, sensing the embrace, said after several more songs. “This is a big fat hairy deal to me. Things are starting to feel better now.”

  But no sooner did she reach the comfort of that moment than the unsteadiness of her situation returned. After finishing several songs from her new album, revelations, Wynonna sashayed to the center of the stage and introduced her special guest. This was meant to be the climactic moment of the evening. “Now I want to introduce you to a personal friend of mine,” she said with her familiar sass. “I met her last spring. I had the opportunity to work with her. I flew out to Hollyweird and together we sang. Since then I have been really blessed to know her as a friend. But you all know her as the wacky, the wonderful Bette Midler!”

  The entire audience quickly rose to its feet in the most spontaneous applause of the evening. The I LUV JUDD license plates and WY’S MY GIRL signs started shaking deliriously. Even the industry snobs who knew it was coming looked around in admiration that Wynonna could rake in such pure star appeal. “Man, she looks fabulous tonight,” one normally cynical writer cooed. Nashville didn’t need to go Hollywood; Hollywood was coming to middle Tennessee. Bette Midler strode up the three stairs and paused at the lip of the stage long enough to let the full impact of her shimmering lemon pantsuit and picture-perfect blonde curls linger in the air. Then she launched into the opening verse of her signature song, “The Rose.” Arriving at the chorus, she began to sashay herself in an elegant Broadway strut right toward the center of the stage, where Sister Wy was supposed to join her in a show-stopping duet.