>> this original wsre presentation is made possible by viewers like you. thank you. >> mailman turned hit song writer. jim mcbride on this edition of conversations. >> jim mcbride is one of the big
guys on nashville's music row. his song writing resume boasts grammy nomination and country music association song of the year award. in the late 1970s and most of 1980, mcbride deliverd the mail in huntsville, alabama. the following 30 some odd years,
he would deliver hit songs with six number ones, ten top tens and 18 top 40 hits. mcbride's songs have been country gold for artists like alan jackson, johnny lee, conway twitty and waylon -- chattahoochee, rose in paradise and bet your heart on me.
glad to have jim mcbride on this edition of conversations. thank you for joining us. >> happy to be here. >> how did you go from carrying the mail in huntsville, alabama to nashville's music row? >> i didn't know i was cursed when i was younger but
apparently i was. i don't know. i carried mail for 14 1/2 years but to back up a little bit, i wrote my first song when i was 12 years old. i wrote the next one when i was 19. then i just kept getting these
songs in my head and i couldn't even play guitar or piano. i would go to the fire hall and sing to this guy who was a good guitar player and carry my tape recorder out there. so i would sing songs to him, he would play them, that's when i took to nashville and through
the years, i would stop for maybe six months then it would be -- i would start back again. and finally, just decided i had to find out if i could do it or not. then i got serious about it. >> take me back when you were a child.
how did you first discover i can do this? >> well, i grew up in church of christ. there was no music. they said the pentacostals got the jump on us. my mother's family was very -- they loved sing and couple
played instruments. i loved baseball and i thought i was going to be a baseball player. that didn't workout. but i liked poetry and i kind of kept that to myself t boys on the playground, they don't want to hear that.
so i kind of kept that writing thing and the only thank interested me in school, i liked american history but my senior year we had creative writing and for the first time in my educational career the teacher was holding my paper up in front of the class.
it's like -- it's just -- i think it's always there. >> something you were born with. >> i think song writers are born. i do. i mean, you obviously have to develop that talent just like a lot of other things but yes, i
think about every -- you know, 2,000 or so god goes okay, you. you know. >> when you went to nashville, or i guess prior to going to nashville, what did you do to set the stage? >> i made a lot of trips, loblolly i was only 100-miles a
way in huntsville, alabama so i could go up in the morning and come back. later when i was married with kids, i would get a hotel room, hotel room in franklin south of town and they would stay there and i would go into town. my last year at post office i
had 20 days annual leave, i spent 18 of it in nashville. and i guess it's okay to say this now, but after 14 years at the post office when i left, i had 3 days sick leave. it was a great job, i was very blessed to have it but i was miserable, it's not what i
wanted to do. first it started way too early. you know, 6:00 o'clock in the morning. >> what was the first song you had success with in nashville? >> i had a few things, the first success i had was h a healthcareger twins cut an
album, i had half the songs on the album, didn't make much money but for a year and a half almost every saturday night they were doing a song of mine on heehaw and my heart just nearly jump out of my chest, i just couldn't believe it. but while i was still carrying
mail i wrote a song with roger murrow called the bridge that just won't burn and conway twitty burned it, and i made up my mind if it did well, that i was going to quit the post office. so he singled and i did, i quit the day after christmas and
moved my family to nashville. >> and once you got there, what was it like? >> i just couldn't believe it. i mean they're paying me to write songs, are you kidding? my last year at the post office, by working six days a week ten hours a day i made pretty good
money. all went to nashville for a guarantee of $18,000. that was two-thirds of what i made the year before, this was 1981. so all i had was one year guaranteed. i had to make something happen
that first year, i didn't know what i was going to do but you know what, i didn't care. i knew finally at 33 almost 34, heyday chance to do what i had dreamed of doing so it didn't really -- i didn't even think twice. i knew -- i had always worked.
if that didn't work out i wouldn't go back to alabama but i would find a job and support my family. >> i read somewhere a quote of yours that said something to the effect that you were excited about being scared. >> oh, yeah.
when i used to take songs up there, i smoked back there, it was 100-mile up and back and i would smoke like four packs of cigarettes. i was so nervous it was like never never land to me to go there and knowing that all of the music that i loved, i mean i
loved rock and roll too but all the country music i love was made on those three or four streets right there. and it was never never land to me. i was so nervous to go talk to anybody. and i think about that now
sometimes when i'm driving in i remember driving thank you very much same road franklin road, and i remember how scared i was when i first started taking songs to nashville. >> you had a hit fairly early on with johnny lee. >> yeah.
actually i wrote that song while i was still carrying mail. i did a demo session which is, that's where you take the songs and dress them up and you use the same players they use on the records, they just don't spend as much time with them. you do five or six songs in
three hours. the musicians are incredible. so i did this, my publisher was trying to -- the guy that was wanting to be my publisher was trying to get agree to pay my advance. so i did this six song did this six song demo, and they heard it
and gave me a year. i forgot the question. >> did johnny lee song -- [laughter] >> okay. >> you have to remember, song writers we sit at the stage and it's like okay, this happens to me and my friend, it's like okay
what was the question? we have to do the first verse, and then it gets to the -- i wrote that song. i used to -- i didn't start writing until about ten o'clock at night and wife and kids go to bed, i get in a dark living room, light a candle and get my
guitar and note pad and start writing and i wrote that song before i moved to nashville. right after i moved to nashville, i think charlie monk who was there many years, charlie pitched that song and johnny lee cut it like in april and it went number 1 in october
or november, which bought me two more years. >> can you do a little bit of it? ♪♪ you took a chance on him ♪♪ ♪♪ he broke your heart and he left you crying ♪♪ ♪♪ you lost your will to love again, you ain't even trying ♪♪
♪♪ all you need is someone to love you tenderly ♪♪ ♪♪ here i am, take my hand, bet your heart on me ♪♪ ♪♪ you can bet your heart on me ♪♪ honey you can be a win ♪♪ ♪♪ forget about the last time you were just a beinger ♪♪ ♪♪ don't be afraid, you have got
it made ♪♪ ♪ if you just let it be ♪♪ ♪♪ lay your love down one more time ♪♪ ♪♪ set your heart -- bet your heart on me ♪♪ >> when i'm playing that live i say, everybody remember the song looking for love and i'll go
yeah, yeah. i went gosh i wish i had -- and that was like -- >> you know, because most don't know, he wrote that song. they go, no, i wish i had. but i wrote the one after it. >> of course, that was during the urban cowboyer ra.
>> i moved there right at the end of the urban cowboy. it was kind of still going on and it was a blessing and a curse because the music crossed over. they weren't trying to cross over but because of popularity of the movie, you got guys on
wall street wearing western jackets and cowboy boots. so it was a fad. but they sold a few records and they thought oh, if we make these arrangements a little more pop, then we'll get the pop market and it went off into somewhere, a lot is like we
don't know what this is, it's not country. and then that kind of set the stage for the resurgence that came in 1989 that started really with randy travis in '87. that kind of set the stage for that. there were a few people who did
well, kenny rogers and alabama was doing okay then. >> you had -- talking about that, so in the late '80s and early '90s, you had as you mentionedded randy travis and clint black and garth brooks and p some fellow you know well named alan jackson.
>> yes. those -- the fact that all of those people came at the same time and hit at the same time was just absolutely astounding. every week there was a new artist with a great song. for a while clint black was the hottest thing then garth then
alan then vince. patty loveless then brooks and dunn, diamond rio. it's like when is it going to stop? and everybody was making money and it was -- >> it was good times. >> you know what, because they
didn't chase that pop market and it was just the artist and the songs. the young people gravitated to it. so this time it wasn't a fad, it was about the music. >> really good stuff. >> they would go in to buy garth
brooks album and pick up an alan jackson or patty loveless or somebody. >> and you and alan jackson got together, written a few songs, chattahoochee for example. >> i met him a year and a half before his record deal, he had been in town a while and called
me and wanted to know if i would write with him and i said sure. didn't have anything better to do. i was getting -- it wasn't real country on the radio so i wasn't doing that well. still had a writing deal. years later he said we were aten
award show and he said i called you and i said why would i call you, alan? i didn't know who you were. >> he had heard -- he knew i was country and the first time we sat down, i found out two things. i found out he could sing, and i
found out he could write. so we were coming from the same place. he's from georgia, i'm from alabama, not a lot of difference there. so we hit it off, we loved the same singers. we just started working together
and thank god for that. my career is -- my career was ten times stronger because of alan jackson. wrote together? >> pretty sure it was neon rainbow. >> and which is almost a story of the music business.
what it's like i had had that requested for two years. chasing that neon rainbow living the honky tong dream. i wrote this down and held it for two years. i knew what it was about but i didn't live it.
i wasn't in a band growing up and i wasn't in a touring band. so when i met alan and he starts the telling me about what he's going through, then i said i think i got a song title you need to hear. we wrote the song, thank god. >> great song.
>> it was good for him. it was really good for me. >> why don't you do some for us. chasing that neon rainbow. jim mcbride. >> found out i did not come to nashville to be a picker nor a singer. ♪♪ daddy won a radio, to a
country show ♪ muck ♪ i was rocking to the crying of a still guitar ♪♪ ♪ mama used to sing to me, taught me that sweet harmony ♪♪ ♪ muck now she worries because she never thought i would ever
really take it this far ♪♪ singing in the bars and chasing that neon rainbow ♪♪ ♪♪ living that honky tong dream ♪♪ ♪♪ all i ever wanted is to pick this guitar and sing ♪♪ ♪♪ trying to be somebody, just want to be heard and seen
♪♪ chasing this neon rainbow, living that honky tonk dream, chasing that neon rainbow, living that honky tonk dream ♪♪ >> very good. bet there was a lot of people in nashville could relate to that. >> oh. yeah.
you know, they come there by the hundreds every week. they literally, it's -- it's like broadway to dancers and actors, la, like hollywood. there are song writers, there's so much talent in that town, it's just ridiculous. >> what does it take to make it?
>> takes talent. if you don't really have any talent you're probably -- the chances of making it are not very good. you can try to buy your way in but that's not going to work. not for long anyway. you have to have talent, you
have to have persistence. i have ask fish irish ancestry, i have a really hard head. i'm very suburb. that's probably served me well. you can't get your feelings hurt and quit because you're going to get rejected over and over and over again.
then the last thing is something that you can't control, you -- they say you have to be present to win. you just have to keep -- you have to stay there and do everything you can and just keep doing that. if you have got talent and
you're persistent you will get your shot. it may or may not work for whatever reason but if you have talent and you're persistent you will eventually get a shot. >> when you take a look at the industry today, as compared to what it was when you were
starting out, what are the biggest change? obviously technology. but besides that. >> you know, the music changes from time to time. so that's a cyclical thing. that's going to happen. there's no doubt, the first
thing that hurt us to be quite honest is when radio stations became conglomerates. and so you don't have your local stations any more that get the records in. and they listen to them and they plea agreementplay them on the radio and people call in.
if they like them they keep playing them. so what you end up with there after a while is a guy in an office somewhere listening to the song and he's deciding what all of you people are going to listen to. maybe 40 or 50 stations.
whatever he says, that's horrible. people can only choose from what they hear. my friends write songs that i would love for my sister back in alabama and people to hear. they're wonderful songs. but great songs have a hard time
getting on the radio sometimes. >> because radio has become so corporate. and in a lot of ways, you correct me if i'm wrong, i know people in the radio industry agree with me on this, radio is hurting itself. you have seen the rise of
internet radio, you have seen the rise of satellite radio. >> right now as we sit here today, you still cannot break a country artist a mayor career without radio but that could change. it's probably going to. just because it's never happened
doesn't mean it won't. hen the thing that devastated the whole industry, the records labels first of all they weren't prepared for digital downloading. they weren't prepare ford the internet. an 18-year-old comes along an
totally cleans them out. and they're still playing catch up. >> from napster. if they had been aware, if they had gone to this kid or whoever when it first started and said look, we need the go into business together, way behind,
way behind the 8 ball. and now they're still playing catch up. we're still playing catch up. in the meantime it's been devastating. like walking into a store and just picking up whatever it is you want and walking out with
>> for free. so the money has really dwindled down. >> i guess probably particularly for the writers and -- >> we're the last on the food chain. the record labels collect the money, and then they pay the
publishers, the publishers pay the writers. so there are hundreds of people that working in the industry back in the '90s that aren't there any more, probably thousands. and song writers, the number of professional song writers has
dwindled greatly. even the old catalog songs that have always paid well, they're not paying as much any more. there's too much of it going out there and not being collected on. tell me about your business, your copyright recapture
business. what's that about? >> well, after i her in town 25 years making a living writing songs, i needed a break. i was burnt out. i had gone to an nasi, national song writer association town hall, talking about rep
capturing copyrights. which i have never given thought tom i was just happy to be where do you want me to sign? you're going to give me money to write song? okay. then i would write these songs and as i turned the songs in, i
would do an individual assignmen assigning the publishing which was invested in me but am now signing to publisher because they're give meg money to live on. so in looking into it, my sons were looking for something to get into, they had had a country
rock band that had been playing for about ten years and had a record deal for a few minutes an lost it. so they were looking for something to do. o we started investigating this and decided to start a company. we couldn't look around and see
-- you want to start a quick mark to see how they do things, whatever. there's nowhere to look. there were lawyers that were doing copyright terminations as part of a state -- estate planning or whatever. so we found before 1978,
january 1st, if you wrote a song and assigned it to a publisher in 56 years you or your heirs could file paperwork and get the publishing back on that song. january 1st, 1978, 35 years. so hit songs that were written in 1978 if the paperwork was
done at least two years ago, next year they get those songs back. which means if you get the song back, yenly if it's a straight deal the writer makes 50%, publisher makes 50%. so if you get the publishing back the next time that song
gets cut or repackaged you get all the money. and the reason the copyright law was changed after, gosh, 70 years, you don't know what a song is worth when you first write it. we certainly didn't know chattahoochee was going to be
what it was on there. so it gave writers a second chance. like this all turned out turned out to be a standard. and you have practically -- you didn't get any publishing on it. and you created that. so it's a chance for the writer
or the heirs to go back and recapture that publishing. and once they do that, they can leave it there, there are multiple options they have when they do that but we have clients that are grammy oscar, emmy, we have rock and role hall of fame clients, country music hall of
fame clients. >> you mentioned chattahoochee a minute ago, we're getting short on time, 3 minutes left. how did you and alan jackson come up with chattahoochee then i want you to do it for us. >> i had been writing with alan. once he hit he's opt road so now
he doesn't have time to write when he's in town. i have to get on the bus and i will say my first bus trip with him the first stop was tallahassee, second was pensacola, we stayed at that time motel right before you go across the long bridge, gulf
breeze, that was our second stop, then we when from there to louisiana. before that trip i had two notebooks, one for regular ideas, one where i kept ideas for alan. and i was familiar the chattahoochee river and the
sidney will near poem and all i was sitting at the house one morning and started playing this melody, i got the first two lines and thought i think alan would like this. i looked at that time map to make sure newnan, georgia was close to chattahoochee.
it was. so i put it aside. when i went on the bus i showed it to him and i played in the first couple of lines and we wrote the song, he recorded it when he got back off the road trip next week. it changed -- it's the biggest
song he'll have. it will be -- it's the biggest song i'll have. >> country music association song of the year, correct in >> song of the year. didn't get the grammy, they gave to it somebody else but i'm over >> let me close out here just a
second and i will get you just to play chattahoochee and take us out to break. jim mcbride, he's written some of the big escambia songs in the country -- biggest songs in country music. we appreciate him spending time with us, he'll close with ha hue
committee. you can see more conversations online at wsre.org/conversations. i'm jeff weeks, thank you for watching the broadcast. i hope you enjoyed it. take great care of yourself, see you soon, let's turn it to jim
mcbride with chattahoochee. >> thank you. ♪♪ it gets harder than a hoo committee ♪♪ ♪♪ down by river on a friday night ♪♪ ♪♪ talking about cars and dreaming about women ♪♪ ♪♪ never had a plan, living for
the minute ♪♪ ♪♪ way down yonder on the chattahoochee never knew how much the muddy water meant to me ♪♪ i learned to swim, i lot of living ♪♪ ♪♪ we fogged up the windows in my old shed, i was willing but she wasn't ready so settled for
a burger, a great snow cone, dropped her off early but i didn't go home ♪♪ my muck down by the river on friday night ♪♪ never had a plan, just living for the minute ♪♪ ♪ way down yonder on the i learned how to swim, a lot
about living and little about love. a lot about living and a little about love ♪ >> jim mcbride cma song of the year, ha hue committee on this thank you, my friend. >> thank you so much.
>> best of luck to you. >> support for this program is provided in part by these corporate sponsors. >> and by viewers like you.
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