The Process IV

Part 1 – Nashville Bound

In 1993, when we first began writing songs together, Jamey and I developed a routine. I had a regular day-shift job as a maintenance electrician that provided me with some time between breakdowns to write lyric ideas. Jamey was performing at local clubs in the evenings, so he had time during the day to work on creating melodies to match them.

We'd get together on our off days and weekends to collaborate and evaluate what we'd come up with. When we had a suitable number of tunes finished to the best of our ability in our studio, we'd make plans to go to Nashville to create professional demos that we could pitch to publishers and artists.

A big part of our planning revolved around economics. Our plans were often put on hold until we had adequate resources to cover all the expenses involved.

An enthusiastic recommendation from a friend and fellow singer/songwriter led us to Fireside Studio for our first foray into professional studio work. There we met a gentleman named Tom Pick, who was the studio manager and handled the day-to-day operations. He was a humble and unassuming man who proved to be a veritable encyclopedia of the Nashville music scene. We came to trust his judgment on many of our songs.

He assembled an extraordinary group of Nashville session musicians, many of whose names we recognized from Garth Brooks album credits. We soon learned that Nashville's top session musicians weren't simply performers; they were creative collaborators whose ideas often transformed a song.

Over time, we came to think of it as though we brought a Christmas tree to a party and it was decorated by all the guests.

In the next post, we'll go into how the magic happens.