When we accepted the generous offer to play the MGM, we didn’t even have a name yet. We were still calling it The Chris Hillman Band, and I remember gazing up at the MGM billboard with “The Oak Ridge Boys” in large letters that glimmered in the lights. Underneath, in small letters, it read “Chris Hillman.” Their fans probably thought that was the comic who opened the show. It was during that run in Vegas that the band started to hone a unique sound. For me, those dates were the deciding factor. Let’s do this!
Back in Los Angeles, we caught the attention Dick Whitehouse, a notable music and entertainment lawyer. Dick was a huge music fan and was always out on the town, checking out new acts. At the time, he was the head of legal affairs for Curb Records, which was located in Burbank. Dick started coming in to see us on a regular basis and, on one visit, brought along Paul Worley, a Nashville producer. Paul was recording The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who were having a great run of success on the Billboard charts after crossing over to country music. Dick saw what Jim Halsey and William Golden had seen—a band with great potential. I was absolutely ready to give it a go, but I was still watching everything with a wary eye. I’d been down the band road many times, so I was determined to walk slowly and carefully.
Dick offered us a recording contract, and Paul Worley agreed to produce our first record. We would be signed to Curb Records, which, at the time, had distribution deals with other labels, such as MCA Curb or RCA Curb. It looked like we would be on MCA Curb. I certainly didn’t go out looking for another record deal, and technically, I was still signed to Sugar Hill. When I told Barry Poss about the offer, however, he was happy for me and wished me luck. It was like the old saying, “When you’re least seeking the gold, it will fall at your feet.” I doubted if there would ever be any gold falling at my feet, but we made the deal and prepared to record in Los Angeles with Paul and his assistant, Ed Seay. And we came up with a new name, The Desert Rose Band, after a song I had written with my friend Bill Wildes.
I had known Bill Wildes since 1968, when I lived in Topanga Canyon and had gotten back into owning and riding horses. I first met him at the Topanga Stables, where he boarded his horse Sonny. Bill, a cutting horse trainer and an incredible all-around horseman, became a very close friend of mine. We shared many adventures together, and on one of my trips to New Mexico to visit my property, I took him with me. We were up in the Red River Valley, near Questa. My friend George Wiseheart, who sold me my land in Amalia, got me, Bill, and a couple of locals into a poker game. It started to turn into a scene from an old Western movie. As the night wore on, one of the guys at the poker table, who had a little too much to drink, accused Bill of cheating. Bill Wildes was not a man to trifle with, and upon hearing those words, he jumped up, threw his chair back, and said, “Are you calling me a liar?” The other man quickly backed down. George managed to calm everyone down, and we finished the game before Bill and I called it a night. In those days, I had no clue that Bill wrote, but I later discovered he was a wonderful lyricist with a good musical sense about him. We would go on to write many successful songs together.
We started the Desert Rose Band record in October of 1986 with sessions at Amigo Studios and Sunset Sound in Hollywood. With Paul and Ed producing and engineering, we made a good record that included three songs I’d written with Bill Wildes, two with Steve Hill, and some interesting covers. When it came time to do the cover artwork I thought of using Jay Dusard to photograph us. Jay was a fantastic photographer. I met him through Ian Tyson, who had Jay photograph many of his album covers. He captured the true essence of The Desert Rose Band, from the cover portrait, to the back shot of us in front of the Palomino Club in North Hollywood.
Our first album for MCA Curb, The Desert Rose Band, was released in June of 1987. Jim Halsey became our manager and his son, Sherman Halsey—along with Bob Burwell—handled all our logistics. For the first single, the label released “Ashes of Love,” which had been written and recorded by Johnnie Wright and Jack Anglin back in the early 1950s. As usual, I didn’t pay much attention to what the record company selected, having gone through this before when A&M would release singles from The Flying Burrito Brothers to no great acclaim. At that point, the last chart single I was involved with was Roger McGuinn’s “Don’t You Write Her Off,” from the first MCH album in 1979, so I didn’t have big expectations for chart success. To my surprise, “Ashes of Love” actually made a good start, charting in the twenties on the Billboard country chart. I loved the band and was happy to get any radio play. The Desert Rose Band members were great musicians and singers. What a pleasure it was to work in a band that shared such a professional attitude.
As people started to pay attention, I suggested to the band that we might want to investigate getting rhinestone suits. Everybody jumped on the idea, especially Jay Dee Maness, a true county music veteran who’d once played in Buck Owens’s legendary backup band The Buckaroos. Manuel Cuevas had set up his own shop after leaving Nudie’s, and new stars like Dwight Yoakam were wearing his designs and bringing the flash of country music’s golden era back into the mainstream. We all ordered our suits, but kept them within the confines of good taste. This wasn’t the “outlaw Flying Burrito Brothers”; this was The Desert Rose Band—a real country band.
After getting through the door of country radio with “Ashes of Love,” MCA Curb released the second single, “Love Reunited.” It was the song Steve Hill and I had written the first day we met, and it began slowly but steadily climbing up the charts. Dick Whitehouse, still our greatest fan, would call every week with the numbers. Eventually, “Love Reunited” reached the Top 10 on the Billboard country chart. I couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was so accustomed to commercial failure for years, and now a song I wrote and sang was a big hit? I had learned to become a good band leader, was playing with great musicians, was getting the attention of country fans, and was really believing in myself again. I would have been happy if it all stopped there, but it kept getting better. We ended up having two more hit singles off the first album: “One Step Forward,” another song I’d written with Bill Wildes, reached number one in Cashbox magazine and number two in Billboard, also becoming a big line dancing hit. Soon after, “He’s Back and I’m Blue,” written by a friend of mine from Colorado named Michael Woody, climbed to the top spot in on the Billboard country singles chart.
The Desert Rose Band was even invited to appear on the Grand Ole Opry. To be able to return after The Byrds’ infamous appearance on the show in 1968 was a moment of personal redemption for me. All the artists who were there that particular night were very gracious and encouraging. One of my heroes, Bill Anderson, was the host for the evening’s performance and asked me what we were considering playing. I thought “Love Reunited” would be appropriate since it had recently been a Top 10 single. Bill took me aside and kindly suggested we do “Ashes of Love” instead. “Chris,” he told me, “most of the folks in the audience know this song so well, and it might be a better one to open the crowd up to you.” I had huge respect for Bill, and I took his advice. I was so happy I did because the people went crazy when they heard us play. I think Bill got a kick out of our stage wear too. “I love your suits,” he told me. I’m going to get mine out of the closet and start wearing them again.” And he did!
With the chart success from the first album, the Halsey Agency was landing us some impressive bookings, including opening shows for Reba McEntire, The Judds, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Merle Haggard. We were also getting some good TV slots, including bookings on The Arsenio Hall Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Dolly Parton’s network program, and Pat Sajak’s short-lived nighttime show. We were even on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, a show I had done many times with The Byrds. The Desert Rose Band had the ability to play the mainstream shows and still appear on country programs like Hee Haw and Nashville Now.
With the success of The Desert Rose Band came recognition. The album was nominated for a Grammy award; I was honored as a s
ongwriter by BMI, my longtime performance rights organization, for the airplay success of “Love Reunited” and “One Step Forward”; we were nominated for the Academy of Country Music’s Top Vocal Group award; and we won the Band of the Year honor. In Nashville, the Country Music Association nominated us for the Horizon Award and as the Vocal Group of the Year. I didn’t get into the music business to win awards; it never crossed my mind. When I began my career in 1963, the Grammys were a new show, and it would be several years before they were aired live on television. The Byrds were nominated for Best New Artist in 1965, but we lost to Tom Jones. Though it was never about awards for me, I must admit I didn’t mind the recognition. It had been a long road to The Desert Rose Band, and I was riding high. I was about to get a crash course, however, in good old-fashioned music business politics.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PAGES OF LIFE
In early 1988, The Desert Rose Band was back at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood with Paul Worley and Ed Seay, who were producing our second album. Steve Hill and I were on fire, writing together every day at my house in Ventura. Seven of our songs made the final cut of the album, including the title track, “Running,” which was about my father’s suicide. It was something I had never previously tried to write about, but it became a powerful song that had a lot of integrity and treated my father with dignity. Steve and I had a bond that was so strong that he was the only person I could have ever written that song with.
When the album was completed, I called Tom Wilkes, my old friend from A&M records, and asked him if he could find Barry Feinstein to photograph the cover. Barry had shot The Byrds’ first cover for Columbia in 1965 through a fisheye lens and then, in 1969, photographed the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, which Tom had designed. Many years later, we all returned to the high desert to shoot the Running cover. Feinstein, Wilkes, and the desert again. A tie-in with The Gilded Palace of Sin? Coincidence or conspiracy?
The first single released from Running was “Summer Wind,” one of the songs Steve and I wrote. Country music was a little late catching up to the success of MTV, but this time around we were entering the video age. Other than The Byrds’ self-sabotaged attempt at making a film for “Set You Free This Time” with Barry Feinstein, music videos were new territory for me. The one for “Summer Wind” was filmed on the beach in Ventura with my young daughter taking a prominent role in the production. Both the video and the single earned strong airplay, propelling the song to number two on the Billboard country chart. The follow-up single—“I Still Believe in You,” another of my songs with Steve Hill—went all the way to number one.
One of the best videos we ever made was “She Don’t Love Nobody,” which was filmed in Nashville. The song was written by John Hiatt and had been pitched to us a year before we recorded it. When I first heard it, I didn’t hear it. What I mean is, I didn’t hear it as a Desert Rose Band song. When we were working on the album the following year, Bill Bryson said, “Take another look at that John Hiatt song.” I rearranged the background vocals in an “answer back” pattern, and it all came together. Yet another big hit. John Hiatt was happy; we were happy; everyone was happy. And the happiness just kept right on when we followed it up with Herb taking the lead vocal on a Top 10 remake of “Hello Trouble,” an old Orville Couch song that Buck Owens had covered.
As The Desert Rose Band found more and more success on the country charts, I was hoping one of our records might cross over to the pop charts. We were doing quite well where we were in country music, but despite critical acclaim, acceptance among our peers, and fantastic airplay, we weren’t selling as many albums as I thought we should have. I hoped maybe a crossover single might help boost up our sales. At first, I was confused about why the huge airplay and generous award nominations weren’t translating into record sales. I soon figured out it was a problem of supply, not demand.
We had the usual complaints that most recording artists have regarding their record label affiliation: no product in the stores, no one working the radio stations, and the label generally becoming the scapegoat for every perceived wrong. We certainly had some real issues, however, particularly with getting product into the hands of the fans. We would have a number one single on the radio and be playing large venues opening for Reba McEntire or Merle Haggard in major cities, but there would be no records available anywhere in the area where we were appearing. This wasn’t just a hunch; it was a proven fact. Herb and I would go into the local record stores when we were on the road and walk out totally dejected. I couldn’t figure out if it was Curb’s deal with MCA or MCA’s main acts getting the distribution over their co-label deal with Curb. This was beyond frustrating because we ended up not selling that many records, even though we should have with all the radio play we were getting.
When it came to sales, I was getting a whole new education in how everything worked. In country music, the real trick was getting into the racks at the Walmart stores. The concept is that the shopper moves through the store, buys a new rake, some shoes for the kids, and throws a Desert Rose CD into the basket along with their other stuff. We could only hope. Who knows what kind of politics are involved in such things?
The politics certainly didn’t end there. By the time The Desert Rose Band was nominated for Vocal Group of the Year for the second time at the CMA awards, we’d built up a strong track record of a half dozen Top 5 singles. I actually thought we had a good chance of winning. So, there we were in Nashville the evening of the broadcast where, having already performed on the show, we were quietly waiting in our seats for the final outcome. Mary Chapin Carpenter read the voting results for the category, and I swear she paused and shook her head as she finished reading, “The Kentucky Headhunters.” It came out like a question rather than a statement. The Headhunters were a fine group, but they had only had one hit, no track record of any merit, and were so obviously a one-hit wonder. Angry, envious, and ready to howl at the moon? Absolutely! “No justice,” I quietly screamed inside. Later I found out the real reason we didn’t win that night. The Kentucky Headhunters were on a major label, and I discovered that record companies traded votes for certain artists. Why? Because one good nationally-televised trophy win equals another hundred thousand units sold. Totally cutthroat. I didn’t know how it worked back then, which is why I was naïve enough to think we might win. With time and a little wisdom, I rose above it. It didn’t really matter. As an old country music legend once said, awards shows were created to make everyone feel bad!
Of course, playing music was where the real fun was. We had a great couple of years, but I was still looking for ways to unlock our sagging record sales. It was a true mystery when we had such huge radio airplay acceptance. The first step is always a textbook play—change management. And that’s what we did. Was that the best option? Did anything drastically improve? We were still getting Top 10 hits, as well as Grammy, CMA, and ACM award nominations, and were already at work on our third album, but still not making very much headway with sales. Fortunately, we were savvy enough not to move to Nashville, keeping our West Coast identity intact. We did win the Band of the Year (Touring) award three years in a row from the Academy of Country Music, which was based in Southern California.
Whatever frustrations there might have been, it was during The Desert Rose Band heyday that I was reminded, once again, what actually matters in this world. Not long after my birthday, in 1988, our son Nicholas was born. There is nothing comparable in this world to holding a newborn baby in your arms for the first time. He looked just like the early pictures of me, and he would bring even more happiness and love to our growing family. I vowed that my family would, now and forever, take priority over any career aspirations or frustrations.
I loved my family so much that it was always difficult to leave home. The Desert Rose Band tours were long, usually a month to two months, but they were good. We’d come a long way since our very first outing, traveling across Canada opening for The Oak Ridge Boys in 1985. Somebody at
the Halsey office had found a bus for us to lease that was owned by a nice Canadian guy named Scott Cadillac. Scott was great and always ready to please, but his bus was beyond funky in both appearance and temperament. We broke down every two weeks on average, whereupon Scott would put on his overalls, grab a wrench and a role of duct tape, and patch up the old-timer once again so we could be on our way. Having a little success brought us up a couple of notches in the tour bus leasing arena.
The Desert Rose Band must have gone through five or six road managers during our time together, and every one of them was a character if not a criminal. One noteworthy road manager was Alan Hopper, a sweet and kind man who was an employee of our new management firm. Unfortunately, Alan had the terrible habit of stretching the truth about the distance between shows. What was really 550 miles to the next show would become 300 miles in his mind, and some of those night-into-day bus rides could be grueling. Still, he was a great guy and was always upbeat. One morning we woke up on the bus to discover that Alan was gone. He’d just vanished! We later found out that when the driver made a late-night stop to refuel, Alan had gotten off to buy something in the truck stop. We were all asleep, and the driver, upon finishing refueling, simply assumed everyone was onboard and drove off. Alan walked outside the store and watched the bus disappear in the distance. There he was, somewhere in rural Louisiana, with three dollars, no wallet, and wearing only shorts and a t-shirt. Somehow, through the kindness of strangers, he managed to hitch a ride to the next town and called our manager, Chuck Morris, who got him on a plane to meet us at our next show. Chuck swore up and down that I left Alan behind on purpose, all in fun, but I was completely innocent. I was sound asleep in the back bunk when poor Alan was left to the wolves.
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