Shows Blog: gone country

What an incredible predicament I found myself in on the finale of Gone Country. I gotta tell you, I was actually secretly hoping that the episode where I heard the original songs for the first time that I would be able to start crossing people off the list. I liked everybody's personality and everybody was bringing something great to the table, but I was hoping that a few of them would write songs that weren't very good, and I could just cross them off the list based on the lack of greatness of the song. But then everybody wrote a viable song, in my opinion. Literally everybody. And if you know me, you know I'm a real hardcore guy when it comes to integrity of songwriting. I mean, I've made my career on songwriting, but I wasn't able to cross anybody off the list at that point, which was a little concerning to me because then I knew it was all going to boil down to the performances.

So on the finale, as I'm watching everybody perform, once again it was not extremely clear who was in the lead up until I saw Julio [Iglesias Jr.] perform. You can actually see my reaction on TV where my eyes kinda got wide and I went, "Wow." There was a palpable magnetism between Julio and that audience, and not just the women -- men and women. The whole entire place moved about three feet closer to the stage when he hit that chorus. It was the X-factor that I talked about in the final episode. I kinda laid out the criteria of what it was going to take for somebody to get that final little edge and the final little edge to me was the X-factor -- the X-factor being that thing that you can't put your finger on, but you witnessed it, you felt it, and it was real. And gotta tell you, Julio had that.

Diana DeGarmo's vocals were so incredible. Had it just been based on vocal performance, Diana would have won it hands down. She had a strong response from the audience, but it was not, in my opinion, as strong as the one Julio had. So that was one real major factor in me picking Julio. And, to be quite honest with you, the other real major factor was, I think, that Julio Iglesias Jr. brings an element to country music that does not exist -- and that being the Spanish-English element. I remember growing up in Texas and hearing Johnny Rodriguez on my radio station, and about half my friends were Spanish kids -- Mexican kids -- and their first language was Spanish. They were all my buddies. I remember Johnny Rodriguez turning them on to country music. They liked it, but it wasn't something they completely related to until they saw Johnny Rodriguez.

Well, I think, it's been 30 years since that, and I think it's time we pay attention to that audience again. I see Spanish-speaking people coming to Big & Rich shows by the hundreds and thousands, depending on the part of the country that we're in, and right now, there's nobody in our format speaking to that audience. So that was another major factor for me that I didn't think anybody else on the cast brought to the table, obviously. He is a true international artist. Anybody that knows me knows I love country music so much, I want to see it become the most popular format of music in the world. I want it to be the biggest thing in the world, and one thing we have to do to do that is to embrace artists that can help us take it around the world and that can educate the world about how great our music is. Julio is such a class act and always carries himself with integrity. Those are the factors that weighed in to me to pick him as the winner of Gone Country.

I welcome criticism from other artists, as long as I ask for it, and I ask for it a lot. I'll go to other artists and say, "What do you think about that song I wrote? What do you think about an idea to do this, that or the other thing?" Some artists will come up and critique you without you asking them, and that can sometimes rub you the wrong way. But when the artists were working on Gone Country, it was a situation where these guys were fish out of water. They wrote a song and they had a work tape on it -- just them and a guitar or them and a piano. They really had no idea if they were close to hitting the mark or not. So for me to be able to critique those songs, I had to be able to tell them, "That part's good. That part's not. This works. That doesn't." They were wide open to it. I mean, they were soaking up everything I told them. It was a pretty big responsibility for me, though, to tell them the right thing. But it's no different then when I listen to songs that come in for records I'm going to produce or whatever. I'll listen to probably 100 songs a week from different people, and I'll know within the first 60 seconds if it's right or not.

To pair the cast members with some people who really know what they're doing, I called up a laundry list of the best songwriters in town, people I've been able to become friends with over the years. Most of them I've written with on one occasion or another, as well. And I put two writers per artist because I didn't know which artists would be good writers or not. Some of them might be great, and some of them might not be able to write at all. I teamed them up based on what I knew about their personalities and what would be the best combos. I think I matched them up pretty well because everybody wrote a great song. As far as the Nashville equation on how to write a hit song, I think I plugged them right in to that thing. It worked.

Maureen McCormick, of all people, exceeded my expectations. Now, Maureen is probably the weakest singer on the show. She's not really a vocalist or anything, but she wrote this song called "The Price I've Got to Pay for Being Me," that -- I swear to God -- is a hit song. It sounds like something Loretta Lynn would have written early on. It's just so direct -- three-chord country that just rips your heart out. When the cast heard her song, we all looked at her and went, "You've got to be kidding!" When I heard that, I said, "She went just way, way, way up on the totem pole as to who might win this show." I mean, that song is incredible.

The one place where I really kinda had an issue with the producers of Gone Country was when they were wanting to take these artists and slap cowboy hats on them and put the rhinestones on them and all this. And I'm going, "Well, if they want to do that, then they should be allowed to do that, but these people have their images already. Otherwise, they wouldn't be multi-platinum artists." So, to me, that's one way people who produce TV shows really screw up what's going on here in Nashville. I mean, I've seen some of the unbelievable stuff that really just infuriates me, honestly, because it makes us look like a bunch of hicks and ding-dongs. Now, maybe we are a bunch of hicks, but we're not stupid. We're country folks, but we know what's going on. We're just as cool as anybody else. We know how to do it. I think this stereotypical nonsense that sometimes gets thrown at you is detrimental to the progress of country music, and I didn't want to be a part of that at all.

So when it came time for the cast members to find some clothing to complement their personalities, we took them to Manuel, the tailor on Music Row who's made clothing for Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and many others. As it turned out, Manuel didn't really get to work with them because we just stormed his store, but was doing all he could to help. Of course, he spent more time with the ladies ... because he's Manuel. Manuel likes the ladies, so Diana DeGarmo ended up with a really, really cool piece that she ended up wearing. It looked great on her, and I think Maureen McCormick ended up with something really cool, too. I think all the ladies wound up with something to wear. As for the guys, I can't recall exactly who ended up with what, but Sisqo ended up with a cool piece. But its one of those things where you have to say, "If what's in Manuel's store is cool for you, wear it. And if it ain't, don't." I was really going out of my way to make sure they understood that I wasn't sitting there looking at them and saying, "Put on some country clothes or you're not going to win this show. I didn't want them feeling that way. Image is one thing, but it's about their music more then about what kind of clothes they're going to wear.

One thing that is so important to country artists is giving back to your community, and one of the biggest things that sets country music apart is our level of charity for children's hospitals. You've got St. Jude's in Memphis, you've got the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville. There are others all around the U.S., but those two in particular seem to be kind of pet projects of country music artists. Every year, major artists visit these hospitals. It's always an impactful thing to the kids, but it's always even more impactful for the artists because it really affects the way you think about your music. So I thought it would be a good idea to make the Gone Country cast wash cars for a day, raise some money and take that money down to the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and make a donation and sing for the kids. I really think it turned out to be the most meaningful day of this entire process of Gone Country.

The cast members had no idea that was going to happen. In a short period of time, my job in this show was to do the best I could in exposing these artists to everything that I feel is important to me as a country artist. And part of that is getting down and dirty. You've got to be able to hang out with your fans, and you've got to not be afraid of hard work. Of course, washing cars has nothing to do with making country music, but it has everything to do with being down to earth -- that you'll get down on your hands and knees and wash somebody's dirty car. You may be a multi-platinum artist, but you'll wash somebody's dirty car and take the money to a children's hospital. Now, that's important. If we could get Paris Hilton to do that, she might have a different attitude, you know. You get Lindsey Lohan to do that, she might go, "Oh, wow! I'm a normal person!" Hell, yes, I would give Lindsey Lohan a hundred dollar bill to wash my car.

I'm not exactly sure how many kids they met at the hospital, but I do know there was one little girl that Bobby Brown is never going to forget. After he walked out of the room where she was, he went back in so they could hang out for another hour or so. While they were there, the doctors came out to the mom and dad of the little girl and told them she probably wasn't going to make it through the rest of the day. And Bobby fell just completely apart. I mean, that news just crushed him. Everybody said he came back home a different guy. Actually, some great news happened, though. About four days later, the little girl actually pulled out of it and, the last I heard, she's now back at home -- doing fine. Maybe Bobby might actually feel maybe he had something to do with it. She was excited when he sang and did his thing. I could easily see that having a positive impact on her.

I don't think any of the artists on Gone Country had any experience on farms. Maureen McCormick grew up as Marcia Brady, so she grew up on TV. Diana DeGarmo is only 20, but she seems to be pretty grown up to me. But going out to Gretchen Wilson's farm and hanging with Gretchen for the day was an eye-opening experience for all of them. It was important for them to do that because their mission was to write and record music for a country audience. They needed to know who the country audience is, first of all, and what the country audience does. Gretchen Wilson is the country audience. That's why she's so successful. She's exactly who they are.

It's important for all country artists to understand who the fans are. There's a lot of artists in country music that could use to have their ass kicked, as far as I'm concerned. (And I'm probably one of them.) Seriously, there's a lot of artists that are maybe a little out of touch with the audience. When I go out on the road with Big Kenny, we always try to meet the fans and hang out. I remember a gig we did in Pocatello, Idaho. There were several thousand people at this show, and I said, "Where do you guys like to go party at after the show?" They all started screaming some names, and I finally said, "OK, we're going to Green T's after the show." So we went down there and had a mechanical bull-riding contest that I judged. Just a spur of the moment thing, but I went down there for two reasons. One is because you want to hang out with your fans and be normal for a minute and get out and drink a beer and get in a bar. But second of all, when it comes to your music, you've got to know who these people are. And when it's fresh in your head, when I go sit down to write another song, I know exactly who I'm singing to. I remember, "Oh, yeah. I'm that guy, too."

After the cast visited Gretchen on her farm, some of them probably had a better understanding of things -- and some of them didn't. All the way through the show -- and even until the end of it -- some of them still had no clue what they were doing. But you can't expect that they all would. You can't just snap your fingers and be a country singer. Just like I couldn't snap my fingers and be a rapper.

I wanted to make sure everyone in the cast understood what Southern culture and hospitality are all about. Everybody that knows me knows that my Granny Rich is a pretty important person to me. She makes my stage clothes, and I go out to her house every Sunday and watch football and the whole deal, and she's also the best cook I personally know. I've grown up eating her food, so I thought it would be cool to host a dinner with the MuzikMafia with all my buddies and let the Gone Country cast kind of mingle with them, first of all, because the musical conversations that could happen would be really cool. But then I gave the cast of Gone Country my Granny Rich's recipes and sent them to the kitchen to go cook her food and then had her show up to taste test all the food and see if it was up to her standards. She had to write down all of the recipes first. She's the kind that holds out her hand and puts the salt in her hand and shakes it out. She doesn't know how much it is in anything. But I was kinda glad she wrote everything down, because someday when she's not around, maybe I'll know how to recreate those recipes.

The food the cast prepared was actually pretty good. Carnie Wilson screwed up the potatoes, but other than that. They were lumpy, first of all, and then second of all, she put garlic in them. She told us, "I make these garlic mashed potatoes," and my granny goes, "You put what in there? You don't put garlic in my mashed potatoes." That was pretty funny. But other than that, it was right on the money. Diana DeGarmo did the pecan pie, and it was frightenly good.

Later on, the cast members were challenged to perform some of their hits onstage at a local bar. Watching Dee Snider of Twisted Sister singing "We're Not Gonna Take It" -- and the whole bar in Nashville just screaming it at the top of their lungs -- it makes you understand the close connection between classic rock and country music. Bobby Brown and Sisqo, you know, doing "My Prerogative" and "The Thong Song" ... incredible. Those guys are just straight up pros. I mean, it would be like taking me and throwing me into an urban scene somewhere in Atlanta or L.A. and me getting up and doing "Save A Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" and they actually all pumped their fist to it. It was kinda like that, watching it all go down.

People from outside the world of country music perceive Nashville in one of two ways that I have found. One is they think it's the coolest place in the United States and want to move here. The second one is that they think it's all straw hats and hay bales ... still calling it "country & western music." What they don't realize is that Nashville draws musicians from New York and L.A. and Atlanta and New Orleans and Chicago and Memphis. It really is Music City. It's a melting pot of music more now than ever, and I think that's why you're seeing all these big artists from other genres come here to make their records and to do what they love to do. One day in the studio, I was recording with Big Kenny, and in the same little cluster of studios was Jack White from the White Stripes. Bon Jovi was in another room, Rascal Flatts were in one room and Alison Krauss was in one room. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers was adding the bass part on the new Chili Peppers song. When we walked out into the parking lot and started talking, we all were going, "OK, welcome to Nashville." So that's really what Nashville's about, and I think people are starting to understand that.

When the artists of Gone Country all arrived, it was exciting. They were all pumped because they had no idea what to expect. You're talking about guys like Bobby Brown, who lives in L.A., coming to Nashville. You're talking about Dee Snider from Twisted Sister who lives on Long Island coming to Nashville. I mean, Julio Iglesias Jr. lives in Spain. They had no idea what to expect. They were very, very excited. The mood was ecstatic, I would say.

To help us all get to know each other, we got together for dinner. We had the Loveless Café cater it, so they brought in the most ridiculous, heart-stopping Southern food you could possibly put in your mouth. A lot of these artists eat real, real clean all the time because, you know, they're from that neighborhood. But we threw it down, man. We put some grease down them, and I think they enjoyed it.