Chart Country
Originally published in The Independent
Boo Hewerdine of the Bible went to Nashville to write songs. And lived.
Everyone in Nashville writes songs. Everyone. There are more songwriters in Nashville than in the rest of the world put together. Probably.
This is my second trip here. I came in July for two weeks and met loads of... well, songwriters. There were two bars in my hotel where there were open mike sessions until one or two in the morning every night. This is where invited singer-songwriters each sing a couple of songs and then hand over to someone else. This is happening all over Nashville every night.
The taxi driver I got talking to on my third day, 69-year-old Jack Toombs, was (of course) really a songwriter. His song 'Almost' got, appropriately, to No. 2 in 1951. There is a lot of money to be made. Someone I met on this trip has had songs in the chart every week for the past three years. This week a song he co-wrote "stiffed" at No. 17. He reckoned it could still make him $25,000. There is a book on sale at the local bookshop about writing songs. It's called Money Is the Bottom Line. The 25,000 songwriters in Nashville are all chasing "cuts" and "sides". They talk of "songs on hold", "cold intros" and "re-writes".
Six years ago Steve Earle produced the Bible's second album, Eureka. He is known in Nashville for nearly changing things. His album Guitar Town was one of the first "new country" records, a rawer and more heartfelt antidote to the formalised treadmill that some felt country had become.
Meeting Steve in the drum machine hell that was the Eighties had a huge effect on me and shaped the way I feel about music. He had us recording live, trying for first takes. When he did a guitar overdub, he'd put so much into it he'd be disappointed if he didn't break at least three strings. One night he heard me playing a half-finished idea and he said: "Finish that, we'll record it in the morning." I stayed up all night. He was - an overused word I'm afraid - inspiring.
Steve told me he had been a staff writer for years and had been through an unsuccessful record deal before Guitar Town got to No. 1. (In 1977 Elvis Presley was going to record his song "Black Limousine". Whoops.) He learnt his craft but was always running up against the rules of Nashville: You can't sing like that / wear that / play like that etc.
Having been there twice I now know the enormity of his achievement. With his subsequent albums, though, he moved away from country. As one country music encyclopaedia puts it: "[As with] any Nashville artist who toys with rock music, a black hole of obscurity beckons." A few weeks ago Steve Earle was moved from prison to a rehabilitation centre having served two months of a sentence for drug possession. In a local paper, the Nashville Scene, they talk about his decline. A story of drugs, divorce and friends losing contact. In the autumn of 1993 he seemed to be on the way back, remarried and writing new songs. Since then, though, a series of legal and health problems culminated in his arrest.
The new acts. As one cynical local said: "Hat after hat after hat." In a publisher's office I was told: "You have to keep it simple. Ma and Pa on the farm have to understand. That's who's buying the records." Aargh! let me outta here. The formula is once again King. I came here because I love great country music, I want to learn and hey, someone might cut one of my tunes, but I don't think they'll miss me here. After all, everyone in Nashville writes songs.
Get well soon Steve.
Boo Hewerdine - 2nd December 1994
