Download Instrumental    I was in what I’m pretty sure was an awful rock band in high school.  Then helping pay for college playing restaurants and Holiday Inns.  The Air Force found me playing dinner music on a white grand piano in the Officer’s Club.  Then it was a wedding band for eight years – next a jazz band for seven more.  South Florida next – cruise ships and fancy country clubs.  Finally the Gulf Coast in beach bars and honky-tonks for nearly ten years.  Not once during all that time did I ever play a Johnny Cash song – not once!  Why?  I honestly don’t know.  Just never occurred to me.

So what’s wrong with Johnny Cash?  Nothing really, other than he couldn’t sing.  Neither can I, so that’s no excuse for ignoring Johnny for 40 years.  I think it had something to do with every song sounding alike.  Except this one.  “Ring of Fire” has trumpets – I love trumpets.  So, in order to make things right, I’ve arranged this one to suit me and, hopefully, you other singers out there.  This one belongs in your set list.  And when you perform it, apologize to Johnny for me.

  Download Instrumental    “Trapped like a duck in a pen”.  That piece of lyric in the last verse pretty much sums up the premise of this song – country boy stuck in the city and hating it.  Been there – done that.   All the noise – the traffic – the crush of people – rush hour….. thanks but no thanks.  Although I’m by no means a country boy, I despised city life.  It’s been “Green Acres” for me for a very long time now.  Still looking for that mountaintop in Tennessee though.  Guess I’ll have to settle for a sand dune on the beach… and a Margarita.

This piece was written in a Gatlinburg hotel room by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant – the husband and wife song-writing team largely responsible for the success of The Everly Brothers.  They were working on a few slow tunes for the TV series Hee Haw and decided to take a break and work on something a little more up-tempo.   They wrote “Rocky Top” in ten minutes.  Guests at the Gatlinburg Inn can now stay in “The Rocky Top Suite” for the bargain price of $600 a night.  Think I’d rather go with the “Duck Pen Special” for 75.

This is a great semi-bluegrass tune you can suddenly spring on your audience in the middle of the third set.  It will surprise and delight, believe it.  A word to the wise, however.  We discovered that you don’t want to play this one if you have a room full of Alabama football fans.  Trust me…. the “Roll Tides” will overpower the music and you may not make it out of the club in one piece.

  Download   “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone/Let’s pretend that we’re together, all alone”.  Those are the clever and provocative lyrics that open this classic country tune. And then it’s “you can tell your friend there with you – he’ll have to go”.  Well, crap!!  Another man is right there with her and our hero is calling anyway!  “Should I hang up or will you tell him – he’ll have to go?”  Oh, wow!  This has all the makings of a terrific country soap opera… and possible double homicide.  And she thought she was getting away with something.  Surprise!

This was a huge hit, and I do mean HUGE, for Jim Reeves in 1960.  It didn’t hurt that Floyd Cramer was there for the piano track and the Anita Kerr Singers provided background vocals.  It was written by one Joe Allison, who was inspired to write the song by his wife, Audrey.  It seems that whenever Joe called Audrey, her voice was so soft he constantly had to remind her to put her mouth closer to the phone.  Joe, you gullible son of a gun, if you believe that… well, never mind.  My guess is she just didn’t want to wake up the other guy.

Here’s an interesting aside:  Elvis recorded his version of  “He’ll Have to Go” in October of 1976 at his last recording session.  It’s said that it was the final song he ever recorded in a studio setting.  Life is just full of ironies, isn’t it?

  Download   This song just makes me happy when I hear it, so I’m including it in “happy month”. So there!
I don’t even like bluegrass, but once played at a Bluegrass Festival. Don’t have a clue how we got roped into that, but we only had to do one number and I chose this one because, well…like I said, it makes me happy. Written way back in 1907, this Christian hymn has been recorded by a thousand different people – the most famous version being by The Carter Family in 1935.  For some reason they changed the title to “Can the Circle…” instead of “Will the Circle…” –  nobody seems to know why, but I guess it works either way.  They’re both questions that no one can answer.

If you use these backups, you can pick and choose when you want to sing.  If you have a banjo player (you lucky dog), you can sing on the fiddle, guitar, or piano solos.  Your call.  I’ll bet you don’t know why a banjo player is a fiddle player’s best friend.  Because, without him, the fiddle would be the most hated instrument on earth.  Just sayin…

Oh, and what’s the difference between a banjo and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle?  Give up?  You can tune a Harley…

  Download    For years we played a small beach club called “The Happy Hooker” and one of the most popular songs we did was “Who’s Cheatin’ Who”  – there just might be a correlation there somewhere.  Draw your own conclusions.

This tune was first recorded by Charly McClain, a female country performer who had a string of hits in the 80’s.  Her very first single to hit the charts was “Lay Down” and one of her very last was “Don’t Touch Me There”, with “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” somewhere in the middle.  Hmmmm… do we see a pattern here?  Not really… I’m sure she’s a very nice girl.

Seventeen years went by before the song was recorded again – this time by Alan Jackson in 1997.  What I like about Jackson is it’s not all about him – he gives his band plenty of room to shine.  His version is full of guitar, fiddle, and piano solos – which is ideal for keeping your crowd on the dance floor.   At midnight, in a beach bar, they’re not listening to the lyrics, trust me.  It’s all about the beat and “where’s the waitress?”

[Country List]

  Download    Willie Nelson is not only a famous country singer and consummate “outlaw bad boy”, he is quite the actor as well.  In 1980, he played a country singer struggling to find national fame in the film Honeysuckle Rose.  Willie did a really decent job playing his character, Buck Bonham, which shocked the heck out of me.  I just recently saw the film and was pleasantly surprised at Willie’s expertise, even though the story line was so predictable I could have written it myself.  Very entertaining… check it out if you haven’t seen it.

The executive producer approached Nelson on a flight to Hollywood and asked him to write a theme song for the movie.  Well, no grass grows under Willie’s feet – he immediately jotted down the lyrics to “On the Road Again” on a barf bag.  That’s a rather inauspicious beginning to one of Willie’s best songs, but it is what it is.

Willie wanted a “train beat” to be the driving force behind the song and his drummer complied with rapid 16th notes on the high hat.  I guess that sorta mimics the sound of a train on the tracks, but I used a muted guitar to get the same effect.  Besides, why a train?  They’re “on the road again”.  Don’t understand Willie’s reasoning on that one – but when’s the last time I won a Grammy?  Uh… never.

[On the Country List]

  Download    One night, several years ago, my nightclub gigs came to an abrupt halt. After 30 years of making a decent living playing beach bars and clubs and Holiday Inns – with a couple breaks for ill-advised adventures – I finally decided that enough was enough. I wish I had been doing “Take This Job and Shove It” at that time but, unfortunately, I wasn’t. It would have been the perfect exit song that night.

It was a Thursday evening at a Gulf Shores beach bar.  Things were going nicely.  The first set was well-received and I was launching into my second set when three lawyers (regulars at the bar and quite drunk) approached the stage and demanded I do “Margaritaville”.   Well, I had done that song in my first set so I told ’em I would do it again “just for them” in the third set (I was being nice I really was).  That wasn’t good enough apparently and they became belligerent.  Since  I don’t react well to attitudes, an argument ensued and ended when one of the idiots poured a full drink into my keyboard.  They took off and it was then a little voice in my head said “No Mas!  No more of this kind of crap!  I’m done!”

So now I sit in my little studio and write backing tracks for other musicians and singers.  It’s so lonely in here – I don’t interact with sax players or drummers or guitarists – it’s so dark with the only light being a spot over the piano – no backup singers or stage managers – no crowd to entertain –  it’s just me now…..(sigh)…. I LOVE IT!!!!  So all you young players hitting those bars for the next twenty years, keep this sequence on file for that inevitable night when you finally get sick of it all.  What did I use for my last song on that final night?  “Good Bye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John.  The significance escapes me now, but it seemed right at the time.

Take this job and shove it – I ain’t playin’ here no more…

[Country List]