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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
I don't know about you, but we're a week out of election.
I'm tired.
And a lot going on.
Politics still is out there.
We got a lot going on.
We got runoffs in Georgia.
We got everything else going on.
But now it's just a time for a break.
I want to give you a break from the politics of the day.
We're hearing it 24-7.
You're going to hear it even more from me over the next few weeks on the podcast.
But today we're going to have an episode in which I want you just to take back.
We're going to go back in the archives, pick one up, just to make you smile, make you think.
And thank you for all that you have done here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
We're about a year into the podcast, and it's amazing the results that we've had.
Thank you for being a part of the Doug Collins Podcast.
And also, don't forget the Doug Collins Podcast forward slash DC for our trip next spring to Washington, DC. Me, Eric, the Travel Guy, Lisa, we're all going to be there.
Limited space is available.
Go to the DougCollinsPodcast.com forward slash DC. Get all of the information.
Sign up now.
You'll get a discount if you sign up now and be ready for us in the end of April.
Ready to have you there.
So now, here's one from the archives.
Hope you enjoy.
All right.
I am excited today.
We got Bart Herbison here from the Nashville Songwriters Association.
Bart and I got to know each other over what seemed like an eternity process, but it was really about seven years, of a bill called the Music Modernization Act.
And I had never in my life seen a group of people who wanted the same things but also wanted to kill each other all at the same point as well to get there when you started dealing with this.
Bart, number one, your dear friend, God bless you.
Welcome to the Doug Collins podcast.
So we can say anything?
Can we curse?
You can if you want to.
Well, you got that shit right on the Music Modernization Act is all I can say.
We are the craziest bunch of hillbillies I ever saw.
And I don't mean because we're from the South, but the music industry is, we'll just say it's a chaotic group.
So thank you for your leadership.
We did something amazing, which I'm assuming we'll talk about later.
Oh my God, chaotic is not the word of this.
If you're listening out here on this podcast, I get a lot of things from people.
They're working out, they're running.
For the next however long we get on this podcast, we're going to go for a while.
You're going to laugh.
You're going to be saying, oh my God, I can't believe this.
I mean, there's just a lot of things, but you know, and especially when it comes to dealing in Washington, but we'll get to that in a few minutes.
But Bart is a unique, and I've told several people that you were going to be on today, that we were just in conversation.
One, by the way, my folks, Lisa, and everybody says hello, but...
When I talk about the Nashville Songwriters Association, they ask, well, what is that?
So, Bart, let's start off here by just telling a little bit about how you got into this and also about the Nashville Songwriters as well.
Well, me first, a little hoity-toity.
My father was a painter in Paris.
A house painter in Paris, Tennessee.
And look, we grew up in a rural area, somewhat poor, and music was the thing.
Music, my grandma played piano in our little Methodist church, and everybody was musical in my family.
Three brothers played trumpet.
I blew mine.
The other two played theirs.
And I guess at 16 years old, I got a job as a disc jockey at the local radio station, which was an NBC affiliate.
And ended up doing some work on a national show they had.
But a guy that grew up with me became a very famous songwriter named Jimmy Stewart.
He wrote Brotherly Love, the last number one for Keith Whitley, Little Less Talk for Toby.
And I just was always drawn to that.
I was always drawn to, they just make this up out of thin air.
And I said, as a child, someday, somehow, I'll work with American songwriters.
And I did.
For us, the origin story, I don't sing, but remember, please release me, let me go.
To waste our lives would be a sin, release me and let me love again.
That was written by Eddie Miller.
Yeah, singing was not part of that too, right, Bart?
No, that's why it took so long to pass the bill.
But Eddie was a real southern gentleman, and he thought, we can organize the songwriters.
There were only 80 songwriters total.
80 in the entire town of Nashville in 1967. And he reached out to all of them, and a lot didn't want to risk their career because even our friends within the music industry didn't necessarily want to see the songwriters quote-unquote organized.
But Eddie got Mary John Wilkin, Chris Christofferson, Felice and Budlo Bryant, Liz and Casey Anderson, a bunch of really important songwriters, and 42 risked their careers to become an advocacy group for American songwriters.
The first issue was just to let the American public know the artist, especially back then, rarely wrote the songs, and so just to get the songwriters' names on the records.
It took us four years, but in 1971, working with all American publishers and labels, we did that.
All the labels agreed to put the songwriter's name underneath the artist.
Now, the font was microscopic, but it was still a big victory to us.
And what I think, Doug, that was really important, you know, this first time I've called you Doug, I'm still going to call you congressman, because you're one of the best members of Congress to ever hold a seat, and we miss you there.
But, yeah, we did that, and...
I think because Felice and Boodloo, they were writing all the Everly Brothers hit.
Liz and Casey Anderson were having some pop success.
It was more than just country music.
And so we are the songwriter organization that did something and stuck.
And today, 54, almost 55 years later, we're the largest advocacy group for songwriters in the world.
And it just continues.
And most people think, you know, the Nashville songwriters.
But y'all are not just based in Nashville, are you?
No, no.
We have 80 chapters around the world.
We had 100 before COVID, and we've slimmed up a little bit.
But, you know, we represent songwriters in every genre of music, and obviously that's a U.S. copyright law.
But as you know with the Music Modernization Act, Congressman, what we do really, it travels around the globe.
It has global repercussions.
Copyright changes in America tend to navigate the globe shortly afterwards.
Well, you just made a comment just a minute ago that I think a lot of people, if they're listening to this, you know, let's define a little bit of terms here, because I think you said something that was pretty interesting, but I think it's still true today, although you and I can, you know, sort of laugh and joke at the insider's part about how many artists actually write songs.
But, you know, I've always used this example, you know, George Strait being the king of country music, you know, the undisputed, everybody loves George Strait, but George Strait has 60 number one songs of which he wrote none.
Neither did Elvis, neither did Madonna, neither did Barbra Streisand.
I mean, some of the greatest artists ever, that just was not their gift.
And in the modern streaming era, songwriters get paid so little that we've lost, at one point, over 90% of the songwriters who weren't also the artists.
Look, artists make most of their money from merch sales and ticket sales.
Songwriters don't get any of that, so it's a tough and dying breed.
It's a very difficult prospect.
What you did It's already starting to show a difference, and over time it will be the salvation of the non-artist songwriter, and that was the Music Modernization Act, which nobody thought we'd ever get done.
And I don't know if you want to talk about that now, but I will brag on you because, look, As we both know, politics is so polarizing on both sides.
And you sat on the Judiciary Committee.
That's everything from email servers to...
But it's all the political stuff comes before the committee and the House and Senate, especially in the House.
And nobody thought we'd ever get it done.
But you passed it unanimously in the U.S. House of Representatives, and that's the day I became certain that we'd do it.
In some ways, I think that was a bigger accomplishment than passing the House and the Senate, because while you're trying to do all that, we've got senators, and I don't care which party you're from, I wish they'd change these rules where one senator can stop legislation.
And we had a couple who tried, but you and your office and others navigated through that, to do something amazing.
And if I may, let me try to boil down a very complicated piece of legislation where anybody can understand it.
There's two copyrights when you listen to a song.
There's the song the songwriter wrote, and there's the record somebody makes of that.
The record somebody makes of that, called the sound recording copyright, has been under very few government restrictions.
Labels, for the most part, negotiate their own royalties, their own things with whoever's selling the record or distributing it.
Not so with songwriters, and this goes back to 1909 when three terrible things happened to songwriters.
First, while record labels are in a free market negotiating, the government's going to set our rates.
How's that going to work?
It hasn't.
Not very well.
Number two, under a standard of evidence back then that said this, the original 1909 copyright law that you changed said you can only pay that songwriter so little that the purchaser of a player piano roll won't notice a price increase.
What does that mean?
That meant while When Thomas Edison was selling wax cylinders for six bucks, the songwriters got a penny.
The songwriters and publishers divided all...
all they made was one penny for each song.
And that's what was in effect until you passed the Music Modernization Act.
And finally, number three, those original 1909 rules put us under a compulsory license.
And I just think that's one of the most evil things that we've ever seen in America.
What it says is whether we agree with the government set rates or not, we are compelled to license our song for those rates.
So the Music Modernization Act didn't change the rates.
It changed a couple of those things very importantly.
It set a new standard of evidence, not how little can the songwriter be paid, but if this were a marketplace deal, what would that deal look like?
And it's called willing buyer, willing seller, and that was huge.
And it also made a lot of other changes, and we're just now starting to test drive those, because we've got a couple of both.
Songwriters get two kinds of royalties also, so see how confusing this becomes.
But we're about to enter proceedings where we'll get to use what you did for the first time.
And songwriters will be paid more.
So thank you.
It's the most significant piece of copyright legislation for songwriters since 1909. Well, it was fun to look at as you're going through it and going back on it.
And I look back on that time with you and getting to know so many of the songwriters.
And also, frankly, artists as well.
And I had always said that this was going to have to come together.
But Bart, on a funny side here, for those out here saying, well, why does this matter to me?
And I want to address the why it matters.
Because I'm on the outside.
I've always joked about it.
The only thing I can play is the radio.
And that's about it.
But for me, it was always...
I came back to that understanding that music and songs and people who could express that...
Growing up as a State Troopers kid in North Georgia, I had books and I had music.
And those are the two things that took me out of the peninsula, frankly, that I still live on today, took me around the world.
And...
As I grew and I found out about this issue when I first went to Congress, nobody really wanted to take it up.
It was one of those situations in which, one, you had to actually get in and understand it to try and fix it.
And also you had the fact that the ones who you were trying to help were fighting each other all the time.
It was just, you know, after a while people said, we're not going to do it.
But it hit me about the first little bit of time, and I called you and said, we're going to do this, and that I have fed my family.
Out of what comes out of my heart, out of my mind, out of my heart, through my hands or through my mouth.
That is how I have fed my family that God has provided for me while I was a pastor, a lawyer, wherever it may be.
And that has value to it.
And in this internet age today...
There has been this discussion that what you get on the internet is free or music is free.
And so for you out there, if you're wondering, okay, what is this music modernization all about?
It's about actually getting people paid for what they've done in your life.
Everybody who's listening to this podcast right now can think of a song and it'll take it to that special place.
It could be a sad place.
I mean, there's music that I hear right now that I'll immediately start crying.
There's songs that I'll hear right now that I'll immediately start smiling.
Those are the kind of things that matter.
And we were losing a generation and going to lose the future for, quote, the freedom of music on a phone or on a laptop or anything else because the ones who were riding those heart strings, riding those joyful strings, were not being able to do it and get paid for what they were worth.
And I think this is for me.
I told somebody this the other day, Bart, and it brought back a smile to my face.
After hearing some of the good stuff going on, I said, I bet there's kids now who will grow up under the MMA, Music Modernization Act, who never knew the struggle, but are now being able to write those songs in their bedroom.
The Taylor Swift's who's never been discovered yet.
They're sitting in their bedroom with a guitar, writing what will become the soundtrack to people's lives 10 and 15 years from now.
I keep forgetting to tell you something, to compliment you about something.
You did something much bigger than the Music Modernization Act.
And I don't even know if you're aware of this, Congressman Collins.
Our founding fathers realized that the promise of this nation was its ideas.
And so When writing Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, they called on James Madison specifically to author that language.
I paraphrase, in order to protect progress in science and the useful arts, Congress may grant for a limited time.
Those were his words.
That's where we got the copyright.
That was the life of the author plus another now 70 years.
Because they knew that was the importance of this nation.
Its inspiration, its writing, its ideas.
And you look back on the words those founders put together and they still ring true today.
But we lost that.
America got away from that.
Especially starting with that copyright bill in 1909. Congress, I used to just get so frustrated I would go into the office of some of your colleagues who held copyrights or patents.
Yeah, great.
And they just didn't care.
It was an uphill, tough political struggle.
It pitted a lot of institutions against a lot of other institutions.
But somehow you, Doug Collins, In passing, the Music Modernization Act changed that.
And there is a different receptivity in Congress now.
They appreciate the value of American copyrights, which, by the way, in many years are the number one balance of trade export item in this country.
I want to say something else, and I'm not calling out the individuals whose names are on that bill, because typically the chairman of the committees, their names appear on the bill.
But yours should be on it, and so should Lamar Alexander's.
Doug Collins' name should be on the Music Modernization Act.
I've done this a long, long time, and I've worked for a member of Congress.
I've never seen anybody personally grab ahold of a bulldog and navigate it from one end of the room to the other, and that's exactly what you did, and thank you.
But not only did you improve the future a lot for American songwriters, you brought back To Congress, the sensitivity of what our founders meant in the first place.
And thank you.
Well, I appreciate it.
Well, it does, and it matters.
Whether you're podcasting like we are, you're writing a song, you're writing a book, you're doing whatever, these are the kind of things that, you have it right, Bart, that our founders believed the greatness of, and many people always go back to this, I don't care what kind of trouble we're having right now in our Congress and government, the founders always understood that the greatness of America was not found in anything else except the idea of America.
And a way to navigate different ideas.
You accomplished that.
I just don't think people get it.
We're talking about email servers.
Louie Gohmert's losing his mind on this committee.
And I say that with grace toward all of them.
And Louie was a big champion of this.
But to navigate it through this committee...
Honestly, I still sometimes look back and go, how the heck did we do it?
And you did it.
And for those that say there's no bipartisanship in Congress, give a big lift to Hakeem Jeffries.
You two were very different philosophically, but you were both right and you managed to wrangle the troops and get something done.
That's life-changing for Hakeem Jeffries.
The constituents I represent.
Well, it makes a difference.
And as I was joking when we first started, we're going to spend the rest of this time talking about the fun of getting this to happen.
Because they were, I mean, there are stories and people that go back, Bart, you, I mean, yeah, it just, as we, as we look at so many of those, but I still never forget one of the first times I ever got all of y'all to sort of speak, the main players, the songwriting community, the labels, you know, the Grammys are, you know, all of them.
I mean, and there's names out there, you know, David Isla, Mitch Glazer.
I mean, I can go on and on and on about people that were a part of this.
But I can remember sitting y'all all in a room, and I would throw out something I thought would be easy, and there was just this uneasy silence.
And it was like, okay, don't you want to get paid?
And I can remember, and I cannot remember who said this, Bart, but somebody said, well, that sounds good, but it'll never happen.
Well, what you were confronting was this.
A misperception, in my view, of the dollar.
Because when you said something that would increase songwriter royalty payments, my colleague Mitch Glazier, who represents the labels, traditionally those labels had thought, that's going to come out of our pocket.
But part of what the Music Modernization Act will do is redefine royalties to some degree.
And I think you did something else that we don't credit you enough with.
The labels today are truly our partners.
And they have given up a lot of their share Understanding that as we grow the overall music pie, we're all going to prosper, and that lands squarely on you.
I mean, there were a couple nights you called me like, are we done?
And I went, maybe.
But you somehow and your staff managed to get the parties back together and navigate us, and you took it home.
It was unbelievable, really.
Well, it made it, and I think that's the key.
And it just shows that Washington, you know, I'm still one of those simple guys that actually believe Washington still matters.
In the sense that it matters not just for a political discourse or a five minute on YouTube, but it actually touches real people's lives.
And you can't get any more real.
What we're going to discuss here, you know, as we go forward for the next, you know, however long we get going.
You and I get going, we get going.
And that is, one of the things that you did, and let's talk about, let's going to take it in stages here.
And then I'll also, you know, I want to understand this because if you're listening to this, you're going to get some stories.
Bart can tell some stories that we have.
One of the things that you were doing for years was bringing songwriters, some who had, you know, had success, others who were brand new.
I mean, I think about Lee Thomas.
I think about Jamie Floyd.
I think about, you know, Tom Damien.
I think so many of these have come.
But you were bringing them to Washington, D.C. to play songs for members just to get them to understand the realization.
What made you do that?
I was a creature of the hill.
I worked there for 10 years for Bob Clement.
A very conservative Southern Democrat.
And I met with NSAI and I met with others.
And I always thought it was the same three or four writers.
They never performed.
And I went, y'all have the greatest calling card in the world.
So when they interviewed me for this job, I went, how are you going to do it?
I went, first, we're going to raise the money to pay for it.
And that took me a little while.
But when we do, I'm never going to Capitol Hill without a songwriter with me Who's going to play the song and tell their story?
And here was their story.
Their story went back to 1909, those three unfair things I told you.
But I typically started, we'd play some great song.
And I'm...
There was a method to my madness.
I would find out...
I remember with Congressman Sensenbrenner.
I remember that he was not always on our side, frankly.
We went into his office and he had lost a relative from Alzheimer's and they told me I was out of my mind but I had somebody play an uncut song about Alzheimer's and it changed him and we had a great dialogue and he was open to the songwriters and actually helped us.
So it was the power of the songs.
I'd typically start off so we'd play some great song that maybe the member of Congress got married to or their children was played at their baptism or whatever and I'd go Well, how do you think the writer feels when under the rules that Congress has set, did you know that's the only occupation in America under a maximum wage?
They go, what are you talking about?
I go, and I would explain, that one penny is now 9.1 cents, divided among all the writers and whatever.
Same thing with streaming.
It was set up to be a race to the bottom for songwriters.
And this is not an exaggeration.
By my estimate, In my 25 years of doing this, we've done over 5,000 of those appointments, and eventually it mattered.
I think over time Congress realized that we were right, and we also presented, you did in the Music Modernization Act, here's why it passed, we presented them options starting with changing the tax code for songwriters that had been weirdly taken away from them in the 50s, And some things where we didn't have the industry fighting amongst itself.
And then there came a moment with the Music Modernization Act where there were a lot of independent bills.
And it was one of the toughest moments, you know, where you had to decide what went into the overall bill.
But yeah, we did that.
We played thousands and thousands of songs from members of Congress.
And I can promise you one thing.
Whether they agreed with us or not, In the kind of days members of Congress have to have reading stuff that Einstein couldn't understand, we had the best calling card to play you a song that made you laugh or cry.
They remembered that.
You mentioned one with Sensenbrenner.
Sensenbrenner, for those who don't know, Jim is just a big, gruff teddy bear.
You have to get through about 16 layers of bacteria to realize the heart of this man.
Okay, you said 5,000 of these.
Tell me one of your funnier ones that you remember with a member.
It wasn't a song.
It was Senator Barbara Mikulski holding even Stephen's guitar like she was going to play the Bluebird.
She was obsessed with the Bluebird.
Now, y'all own the Bluebird, right?
We own the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, so I brought even Stevens and Chris Wall, and we even brought a little Bluebird thing and did a show in her office.
But, you know, there were so, so many of them through the years.
And, again, I was pretty calculated.
We tried when we could to play a song.
That had meaning to that member of Congress.
Was there ever one that just got you emotionally?
I think you mentioned her early.
Jamie Floyd wrote this great song.
The album was nominated for a Grammy called The Blade.
And the song got me.
But watching Jamie Floyd, is there a better singer you've ever heard in your life?
I haven't.
A beautiful woman that knows how to sing.
She emotes.
The song's supposed to make us feel something, and Jamie, gosh darn it, would make us laugh and cry.
And I think Jamie also entered our ecosystem.
I learned about Jamie in a movie called The Last Songwriter.
It's free out there if people want to go watch it.
It had gotten that bad, so every time Jamie played it, it was like a knife through the heart on a number of different levels.
And then there were a couple personal to me that go back to my family.
The good stuff, you know, you're going to miss this.
Just the ones about family always got me.
But I'm a big sappy fan, and sometimes I would have to clear my throat before, after those songs, we could make our pitch to a member of Congress.
What was yours, by the way?
Probably mine was when we talked about The House That Raised Me.
The House That Built Me, yeah.
Tom Douglas and Alan Shamblin.
Just an amazing song.
And of course, for me, and look, I've got so many good friends up there that just mean the absolute world to me and the songs that they've written.
I mean, there's so many.
But that one was one.
And there was...
Another one, and it was before, it was one of my early trips to, and it was not in D.C. actually, but it was in one of my early trips to Nashville.
And, oh, a guy, anyway, it was the song Letters From Home.
Yeah.
And he played it in the office just down the street from y'all, and it'll come to me here in a minute.
But it was very real to me because of being deployed to Iraq and doing that.
So it hits you at a different moment.
And I think that's what makes music so great.
And I think that's what makes these songs, to me, why I get so passionate about this, why I love it so much, why I still to this day, even out of office, this is one of my heartstrings to continue to do.
Who we are.
And, you know, whether it's a, you know, as you talked about growing up in church, you know, singing in the choir, or as my wife introduced me to something called the Hootenanny, where, you know, on Friday night, Saturday night, everybody would just bring whatever instrument they had, and they'd sit around in the garage and play.
You know, that's America.
That's, you know, that's that one collective voice song.
But there is so many of these characters that are songwriters that...
You know, it's like, where did you come up with this kind of stuff?
And they express it so well, and while you bring them to D.C. to talk about it, you now put a face to a song that every time you now hear it on the radio, or you listen to it on the internet, or wherever you listen to it, you can't help but think about the songwriter.
And I think that's so good.
You mentioned my colleague David Israelite, what a genius, and He deserves the lion's share of the credit on the trade association side.
David and you, I bow down.
In that whole process, I saw something with you.
I want to brag on you again, if you'll allow me, because you could have been a songwriter, Doug.
Songs are supposed to make us feel something, and I feel like I'm a really good public speaker, and I feel if I have a gift in this, it's to boil down complicated issues to where anybody can understand them quickly.
And I try to turn with those writers in the rooms to the emotion of the songs to get members to support us.
You're the best I ever saw at it ever.
And you can still find this if you Google Music Modernization Act House Judiciary Committee hearing Doug Collins.
That speech you gave that day, before that committee gave the final vote, I stole part of it.
I still use part of it because you made I think you really made those Founding Fathers, including James Madison, proud.
You boiled down to, as the son of a state trooper, what those songs meant to you.
Hearing that stuff on the radio was your window and inspiration to the world of imagination, and you used it as fuel to become who you became.
And what you said that day, and what you said a hundred times, You said like a songwriter would sing it, and so thank you for that.
Well, yeah, I appreciate that.
But it is all about turn of phrase, and we all have those in our life.
And let's talk for a few minutes about some of the, and I think this will be a fun thing here.
Some of the, you know, country music.
And really, rap, I mean, we're not talking specifically country, but country's going to be a predominance, of course, for the day.
But I got to know, you know, the pop writers.
I got to know the ones who are in urban music, rap, classical.
It all affected them because it was this new way, and it's not a bad thing.
You said something earlier.
One of my goals was that we were all thinking that the pie was only eight inches wide.
And the reality was, I believe that the pie, still to this day, believe that the pie could be 30 inches wide.
And that, you know, it expanded the pie.
Nobody was leaving behind.
You were getting more out of it.
So it was really amazing.
Paul Williams, Aloe Blacc.
You know, these are outside of that.
You mentioned Barbra Streisand.
One of her most famous songs, Paul Williams wrote.
Evergreen.
That's right.
Which you ever hear him talk about.
You know, of course, he likes to talk about the rainbow connection with Kermit.
But he makes it.
But these are the things that touch our lives.
But the twist of the song and the turn of a verse.
You know, the Tim McGraw song.
I'm riding in a truck that the bank lets me borrow from month to month.
I mean, think about that.
How many times do you think about your truck payment being, the bank lets me borrow from month to month?
That's real.
You know, or one of my, you know, dear friends, yours as well, used to be president of the National Songwriters Association, Lee Thomas Miller, who riding with Chris Stapleton, you know, I've got a problem, you know, in his song, Whiskey.
It's just, but it ain't about what you think.
You know, I drink because I'm lonely, and I'm lonely because I drink.
I mean...
I mean, my God, if I don't get you, I don't know what does.
That's profound.
And look, you had asked me earlier about bringing writers up there, and this was in concert with you in your office.
The most effective moment I ever saw of that is there was a House Judiciary Committee hearing on these issues.
And before that, in the room next door, we held a media event.
We is NSAI, Nashville Songwriters, and the National Music Publishers Association.
Very little speaking.
We have Desmond Child, Cara Diaguardi, B.C. Jean, Lee Thomas Miller, and Linda Perry.
Your audience has never heard of any of those people, but they have heard of Living on a Prayer that Desmond wrote for Bon Jovi, Beautiful by Christine Aguilera that Linda wrote, and you're going to miss this that Lee Thomas Miller wrote, so The entire media event is this.
They each took the stage and played their one song.
When it was over, we showed two screens.
The first screen said that all these songs were co-written, they've all got a publisher, which means that songwriter owns 25% of the royalties of this song, which is common.
For 35 million streams, their 25% paid them $185.
For 35 million streams.
You personally invited House and Senate members to come to that event.
There is one of the trade associations for the digital companies.
They wrote the best story we could have ever written.
They went, that doesn't even sound fair to us.
That literally turned the tide, and a couple years later we passed that bill.
But we did it with the songwriters playing something great and then showing the inequity of how they were valued for it.
Exactly.
Well, and I think that's it.
Let's dig into some of our, you know, mine and your favorite people in the world, the artists, but also the songwriters.
The songwriters are the ones that are the closest, you know, that I have grown to love, you know, so much.
And I keep in touch with them, you know, from...
You know, texts and emails, and some of them, you know, I want to stay in contact with more, but I see them growing, and when I talk to them, you know, you sense, you know, even through COVID, they're ready to get back out and go.
Let's start back, though, a little bit in the wilder days of Nashville, when it was really growing.
You tell a great story, one, about your very building that you're in, the office building.
If people were to come to Nashville and to see if they were to drive by your building, Tell that story, because it's really a famous building that has nothing to do with Nashville Songwriters, but it's where you all have now.
There was a man named Harold Shedd.
And Harold was from Bremen, Alabama, a musical area.
Bremen, Georgia, I'm sorry.
And had worked in Muscle Shoals area, a musical area, and made his way to Nashville doing radio jingles.
And one day Harold went, I can record jingles, I can record songs, and took the ill-advised move of mortgaging his house to sign a band named Young Country.
When I say built, that would be a lie.
He begged, borrowed, and stole some really antiquated studio equipment, put it in a room, Near Music Row and recorded this band.
And the record labels, let me shout, hated this band.
Some of them were like, what the hell do you think?
This isn't country.
I don't know what this is.
They're off-tempo.
They're off-key.
Never call us again.
So Harold had invested everything he owned.
I think quickly learned, well, maybe this isn't that easy.
And the band was ready to walk because they were a bar band.
They played around the South, making a living.
They had kids.
They were older by this time.
And Harold goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We're not done.
We're going to make a second record.
And over months and months and months, when the band wasn't touring, they did.
And Harold sent it to all the same labels, and most of them Didn't even listen to it.
And they said, what did you not understand about we hate this?
We hate you because this isn't country.
It's like southern rock.
We don't know what it is.
And so that was that.
And there were three songs left.
And Harold said, look, let's just record them.
And by the way, he named that room the first music mill.
And so they recorded them all but one.
They had one song left.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as happens in the music industry, RCA was not happy with the Nashville people running it, so they come down and fire everybody at the record label.
Everybody.
And they bring in, I think he was 27, he was in his 20s, a kid from New York named Joe Galani.
He goes to his big...
Lovely office in what used to be the Sony building.
They're showing him around.
He sits down.
There's one cassette tape sitting on his tape player.
He puts it in and goes, oh my god.
Remember, he'd been working in pop.
This is exactly what I hear, the direction of country music.
Go find this band.
They found them.
He quickly signed them and changed their name, drum roll please, to Alabama.
The greatest selling band in the history of country music, one of the greatest ever, and their success built the music mill.
The first song ever recorded in there, and by the way, It is said, and Harold has turned it up.
I forget which cuts, but there's a couple of those famous Alabama cuts.
If you really turn them up as they fade out, you can hear a car honking outside the first music mill.
So Harold came over and dug a hole, Doug, that has got thousands of tons of white silica sand.
I've never seen this.
Underneath there are tongue and groove floor joists that are massive with a latticework of 9,000 2x4s that stick down into that sand.
They built the entire studio, then built the building over it.
So with all the construction in Nashville, people explode dynamite two or three times a day.
The whole earth moves.
That building doesn't move, nor does it make a sound.
The first song ever recorded in it What's Closer You Get by Alabama.
And soon after that, Harold just took off like a rocket ship, became a famous producer.
They revived Polygram Records and made Harold the label head.
So quickly, these were all iconic acts that changed what got played on the radio.
K.T. Oslin came next, then Shania, then Billy Ray Cyrus, then the Kentucky Headhunters and the Wilkinsons and the Kenleys.
I think at last count, we're up to 65 number one songs that were written or pitched out of the music mill, the most prolific of which written and recorded there was Achy Breaky Heart.
It is amazing.
Now, you've watched a lot of people come, and before we get to some of the newer folks, you also, your building sits on the music roof.
You've never been, and for those, you know, Nashville has become the destination place for bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, everything else in the world.
But to come, whether it be to the Bluebird, and we'll get to the Bluebird too, because it holds a special place as well.
But your building is not far from where, a great story you told me one time about Elvis.
Well, right across the street, and I don't know if you know this, you know what dedication is, and I get a lot of people that wrote for Elvis or knew him.
I'm the biggest fan until I show them my left shoulder, which has TCB with a lightning bolt tattooed down my back.
Taking care of business, baby.
You didn't even know of that, but I've got Elvis' logo, which wins in my skin, which wins a lot of arguments, but...
There's these great two books by Peter Goralnik that start with Elvis' birth a little before.
The first one is called Last Train to Memphis.
And it starts with his birth in Tupelo and the family's journey there until the time Elvis is drafted to go enter the military.
The second book is called Careless Love.
And it kind of shows the downslide, slow downslide, when Elvis got out of the army all the way to the You know, the drug use in the later days of his death.
These are my two favorite stories from there.
The first one is, people forget, and I was fortunate enough through a man that's no longer with us named Joe Talbot, to meet Chet Atkins and know Chet Atkins a little bit.
Chet and Joe went to Maud's, the cafeteria, I think it was every Thursday or Friday, and they had lunch.
It didn't matter, they had lunch.
And Chet, congressman, sat in the cafeteria picking his guitar.
And Joe asked him one day, he said, I think Joe already knew the answer.
Why don't you sit there and pick that thing?
And Chet goes, well, some people say I'm pretty good because I practice all the time.
And that's what he was doing.
So Chet was the house producer for RCA, and he produced the early Elvis songs.
Chet was one of the few big stars, the only one I've ever heard of, that wanted a closing act.
Chet wanted to open and have somebody else close because he went to bed at 8 o'clock.
He was up at 3 a.m.
I mean religiously.
He had a farm.
Chet was up with the chickens.
And so Elvis wanted to record at 11, 12, 1, may show up, may not show up.
They went on to sit up at 3 or 4 in the morning playing gospel songs, then record.
So, Elvis had a guy named Lamar Fike that was sort of his liaison with RCA, and Steve Scholes was the liaison for the record label, and Chet called both of them and said, And let's remember, they didn't like Elvis.
Nashville didn't like Elvis.
He wasn't country.
They didn't know what it was.
He's recording right there in the heartbed of Ferland Husky and Patsy Cline.
And so he said, it's 11 o'clock.
We got five songs.
None of this gospel crap.
I'm locking the door.
He shows up at 11. We're doing these five songs and we're out.
11. 11-10, 11-20, nobody's there.
So Chad gets up to leave, and there's a 19-year-old tape copy boy there named Felton Jarvis.
He goes, you know this board?
He said, yeah.
He threw him the key, said, you produce.
And he left.
About 10 minutes later, here rolls in the Presley Entourage, and for whatever reason, they hit it off.
And they got their five sides.
And except for Chip Smallman and a couple of other experimental things, Felton was his producer for the rest of his life.
What does that mean?
Four percent of every record of Elvis Presley.
My favorite story, though, is...
And I would have been fighting some of the Presley camp because...
Not so much anymore, occasionally, but back then it was not uncommon for a big artist like Elvis to want part of the publishing royalties for a song before they'd record it.
So once again, Lamar, Fyke, and Scholes and these people were supposed to be clearing all these songs.
It's 1965. They're all kind of getting fat and lazy.
And they're over at RCA Studio B. That's this famous building you ask about across the street from us.
And they got some sides they're supposed to record.
And Elvis walks in and some kid, 19, 20-year-old kid, is just screaming at Shoals and fighting.
He's going, I don't give a damn.
I'm in this for Elvis.
My whole generation.
I want to be an artist because of Elvis.
But I'm not giving him the publishing on my song.
Well, they see Presley walking up behind him.
The kid doesn't.
And Elvis puts his finger to his lips like, shh.
And they were scared to death because they knew they'd been caught.
And they wanted to try to worm their way out of it.
But Elvis wanted to hear what the kid had to say.
So he just kept going on.
He goes, don't be cruel.
I sing it in my sleep and this or that other Elvis, but I'm walking.
So Elvis reveals himself and goes, what's going on here?
The kid, who's named Jerry Reed, the great artist Jerry Reed tells him, because I'm not giving my publishing up.
And Elvis goes, the boy keeps his publishing.
They started to say something, and Elvis cut them off and said, did you hear me?
So Reed's sitting down there, and nervous, he picks up a guitar and starts playing part of the song, and Elvis said, hell, just play it on the record.
So it's 19, 20-year-old Jerry Reed playing his own licks on Guitar Man.
And that's another one of my favorite stories.
There's three little streets, as you know, Congressman, called Music Row.
They're all really old houses built in World War II and after.
And it all happens on those three streets.
So there's a lot of stories right around our building.
We're right in the heart of it.
Well, and if you've ever been there, if you like music at all, if you like, especially like country.
But, you know, it's interesting.
We've just named a lot of, you know, songwriters that are from just amazingly different backgrounds.
I mean, Desmond Childs is one of the most prolific songwriters in the rock world.
Pop genre.
Everything for Bon Jovi, La Vida Loca, for Ricky Martin.
I mean, yeah, Desmond is a freak of nature and just, you know, he's one of the best songwriters that ever wrote since David sang the Psalms to God.
I mean, he's just, and a lot of them are, but Desmond right at the top.
He makes it that way.
And I think one of the interesting things, another, you know, big, you know, of course, name from Nashville was, of course, Johnny Cash.
And you have an interesting story about a mutual, very good friend of mine and yours both, Rob Hatch.
And the story, how he got, there's a story out there right now that they found some of the old, songs that Johnny had began writing or had not finished.
That is sort of what, isn't that sort of like what a, this sort of encapsulate what we're talking about with this songwriting culture?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, Johnny wrote a lot of songs, but a lot of his biggest hits he didn't write.
A friend of mine was the only son of Johnny and Jaron.
They had children both from previous marriages, but John Carter Cash.
And John doesn't talk about this much, but I think I have the essence of it, right?
So we lost Jaron.
And Johnny was just...
Part of him died when June died.
But he told John Carter, they live in Hendersonville, Gallatin area, a little bit north, 20, 30 minutes north of Nashville.
They have a studio up there.
And he gave him a list of, I think, 200 or 300 songs.
He said, let's record these.
And John Carter was a young emerging producer, and they went into the house and recorded them, including that famous cover of Nine Inch Nails Hurt, which may be Johnny's greatest song of all time that's not named Folsom Prison Blues.
They did that, and it was just a day or two after they finished those songs, because Johnny wanted to record them, that he passed away.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, they found all these Original songs Johnny started but never finished and my friend Dottie Moore and Rob Hatch and others were brought in to do that very thing and it was quite an honor and just something that I don't know that I've ever heard of that before or since.
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
If you hear Rob tell the story, Rob, to think about it, the song being done and having his name next to Johnny Cash as writers.
Because we asked him, I think you actually asked him, said, what have you been working on?
He goes, I'm co-writing with Johnny Cash.
We both kind of laughed and he goes, for real?
And we're like, oh my God, when he told us that story.
Yeah.
Well, and you and I had the privilege of hearing some of the first songs of that.
It was at my daughter's Jordan's birthday.
We brought her to Nashville, and we're sitting out back at Lee's house, and Rob's sitting there with his garden.
He said, here, what do you think about this?
And we heard it.
It was great.
And that's when he sort of revealed to us what he was doing.
Well, the song breaks out pretty much anywhere in Nashville, especially if I'm around.
But I have to tell you, Jordan's birthday was my favorite sort of impromptu guitar pull we ever had over at Lee's house.
It was so fun.
I still predict she's going to end up writing for it's all said and done.
Yeah, she does that all.
Another fun story, and songwriters are characters in their own way.
I mean, you've got Dallas Davidson, who's become a dear friend, Georgia Boy.
You've got Ben Hayslip.
You've got, of course, Red Atkins, who's Thomas' daddy.
You've got Thomas, of course, himself.
But there's another one, Lee Thomas, we've talked about as well, who is just...
Again, I'm going to brag on you and Lee and so many others who carried this tort.
I mean, if it wasn't, I mean, y'all could have gave up.
Y'all could have said, we're just going to try and do the best we can, and you didn't.
And I'll never forget Lee sitting at the congressional hearing, and I said one time they were going around him, and I said, why don't y'all talk to the one that actually impacts?
And he was able to give that very first-person account of why this stuff matters.
But there's also another guy who tells, it's a funny story, Rivers Rutherford.
Rivers, and you talked about Jerry Reed getting with Elvis.
The song American Remains was the follow-up to, of course, and this goes back to your...
I try to bring this all the way back around to the starting of Nashville Songwriters, Chris Christopherson.
He was one of the four with Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and, of course, Willie Nelson and the Highwaymen.
And they had their big song and they wanted to write three guys.
You've heard him tell this story a bunch.
The story is pretty amazing.
And it just shows you that songwriters come from anywhere.
Rivers and I are both from West Tennessee, and I don't know, I think there's something in the water over there.
If there's a trait from over there, I think we're just raised because it's tough.
It was sharecropper land, and I think it really comes from that, that if you work hard and have a moral center, you can pretty much do anything.
Well, Rivers grew up next door to Graceland, Elvis.
That property over there, that subdivision, If you're looking back to the right, his daddy still owns.
Glenn Rivers owns part of that.
So Rivers was going to Ole Miss, and he's about to graduate, and he has been signed to a songwriting deal.
Now, he's a rock and roller.
He's not writing country.
By a producer named Chips Molman, who worked at American Studio there in Memphis.
And so he's a senior about to graduate.
And he's taking some final exams, and Chip calls him and says, you know the highwayman?
Rivers goes, no.
And he names him.
Oh, I've heard of Cash.
I think I've heard of that Christopherson guy.
And he goes, well, I've sent you a song.
So Rivers, and this is back when you bought the record or the tape.
So something arrives in the mail, and it's called the highwayman.
And that's Johnny, Chris, Willie, and...
Waylon.
And so Rivers calls me back and goes, that's country?
He goes, oh my god, I love that.
He goes, well good, that's your homework.
Write the follow-up.
Rivers goes, that ain't no problem.
He goes, Rivers, people have been trying to write the follow-up for four years, including those four guys.
They can't write it.
It's just an exercise.
Well, so I want everybody to go listen to the highwayman, then listen to the follow-up called American Remains.
So, Rivers just nails it.
I mean, I'm not so sure I don't like American Remains better than I do the Highwaymen.
So, he's got it.
Well, Chip ain't answering, and somewhere along the way, Chip had told him, you know, that these guys were going to be recording soon, so Rivers makes his way to Chip's house in a, you know, nice gated area of Memphis with alarms and all that.
Nobody's home.
So Rivers thinks, well, this is West Tennessee.
Boy, I'll just jump the fence and go up there and leave it at his door.
So Rivers jumps the fence until he hears this...
And all the Dobermans come.
So Rivers didn't know they had Dobermans.
He climbs up in a tree and, you know...
The producer gets home in just a few minutes and lets him down and they go in and listen to it and he goes, oh my god.
Chips goes, this is unbelievable.
What are you doing?
I think it's the next day, Congressman.
It's within a day or two.
And he goes, they're recording it.
Can you meet us up there?
And Rivers goes, yeah.
And by the way, he didn't get to take the final exam and I'm not sure if he ever got the degree later.
They wouldn't give him his degree because Rivers chose to go to that studio.
So he goes to the studio and somehow, I'm not sure, he walks in and there they all sit.
He may have not known it.
Maybe Chip's just sent him up there.
Anyhow, he walks in and there's Chris and Waylon and Willie and Johnny.
And he's like, oh my God.
So Johnny sings his part first.
And he can't get it right.
He can't get the melody part right.
So they tell Rivers, go up, go in the booth and show Johnny how to sing it.
Rivers jumps up and he's like, you know, vim and vinegar.
And he goes in and shows Cash how to sing it.
Then he walks out, thumping his chest a little bit, mentally at least.
And he goes in the control room and Waylon's sitting there.
And Waylon, they take a break a minute later and he goes, was you scared?
Rivers goes, no.
Rivers said, I wasn't giving it up for any of them.
I scared to death because I wasn't going to tell them.
Rivers goes, I mean, Waylon goes, you ever been in the studio with an artist before?
And he goes, no.
And he goes, you know who that is?
He goes, yeah, it's Johnny Cash.
And he goes, you wasn't scared.
Rivers went, no.
Waylon sat there for a minute and finally goes, shit.
And that's the story of the song.
But I will tell you that most of what the writers we deal with, they don't write for assignments.
That's a different kind of songwriter for Broadway or film and television.
I don't think there's ever been a better follow-up song written, number one, and number two, certainly under those circumstances.
You're going to agree with me.
Go listen to The Highwayman, then American remains.
Yeah, it's just amazing.
And now, for those listening to this podcast, you'll never have the same idea about those songs again.
You know, it's just...
And check Rivers out on YouTube doing it, too.
Rivers, Rutherford, he should have been the next Elvis.
He's as good as any artist that ever...
He's the most entertaining songwriter, one of them that we've got.
Well, I think that leads us to a point I wanted to talk about.
And we mentioned it briefly, and I think this entertainer part, sometimes when we get the idea of a songwriter, and I know I did beforehand, you have this idea of somebody sitting in a room, just writing, sort of the shy backward.
But the reality is...
Except for just a few things, many of these songwriters could have been the artists, so to speak.
Their voices, their talent, but they chose to do what they do.
The Bluebird Cafe, over the past decade or so, has become the symbol of Nashville in many ways.
You talk about it with Barbara Mikulski, you've talked about it with others, but this idea of writing and this idea of the songwriter round, how did y'all come to Be a part of, you know, own the Bluebird.
And talk about that meaning, because whether it's the song, whether it's the TV shows, Nashville, or others, the Bluebird has become that sort of center point for country music.
Right.
Well, I love to talk about the Bluebird.
And the story begins in 1982 with a lady named Amy Curlin.
Amy and her buddies were part of a new generation.
You know, they were...
They were...
They wanted a better planet and they wanted to leave something behind.
They cared about the environment and things like that.
And so it started with, and you've been to Nashville, go try to find a salad back in 1982. Everything at lunch was fried or it had pork around it or something.
And Amy goes, we're going to have a healthier lunch place.
So that's how they started it.
And nobody came.
So Amy started having some entertainment, but her buddies were rock and rollers and I think they would describe themselves as cutting-edge hippies.
So they had a lot of bands over there.
Congressman, you can't even get a band in the Bluebird.
The Bluebird only seats 99 people.
Now, let me just interject here.
Everybody has this idea of the Bluebird, especially from Nashville, the TV shows and everything else.
If they've never been to Nashville in the Bluebird, explain to them where the Bluebird's at.
If you head out of town on Green Hills and you get to McDonald's, you've gone too far.
It's in a little bitty strip mall, and the light doesn't work, hasn't for 40 years.
The street sign, it's hard to see.
The reason you know that it's the Bluebird is there's a line of people a half mile up Hillsborough Road.
It's a strip mall.
It's a strip mall.
The Bluebird is tiny.
It seats 99 people.
And so it just still isn't working.
So one night, Amy had some buddies who were songwriters.
And they decided to put the seats in the middle of the room, and that's where Songwriter ended the round.
Look, did it happen somewhere else before?
Maybe.
I don't know.
But that's certainly where it was popularized.
So each writer would play a hit song.
The other three who weren't playing would accompany that writer.
And a lot of them were co-writers, so they knew the stuff.
But the stories about how they came up with the song or lives that it's touched, stories like we're telling now, became, it's almost a play with the songs as a character.
It was packed.
Couldn't get in.
And Amy went, okay.
And she tried it a couple more times.
Packed.
And it was quiet, and it was intimate, and it was like I'm talking now.
And Amy went, the room's telling us something.
So it became a songwriter room, and not too many months later, there were two shows a night, every night.
And Amy started this thing because so many people wanted to play the Bluebird that she started an audition open mic process that still is intact today.
So kids, people, aspiring writers and artists from all over the world They avail themselves of that process and we still have specific times for open mic and the early shows are for up and comers.
The last part of what cemented the Bluebird's legend is publishers who needed to sign songwriters and record labels who needed to sign artists just went to the Bluebird because the best songs in town and the most recent are being played at the Bluebird.
So Garth Brooks, Keith Urban, Vince Gill, Taylor Swift.
Through the years, there have been so many famous career moments.
And the Bluebird is just, there's no place like it in the world.
Many have tried.
There are lots of other songwriter venues that are different.
Some we love and respect.
But there's none like the Bluebird Cafe.
Yeah, the Bluebird is just something you've got to...
If you go to Nashville, if you have any, you know, music in you at all, you've got to go to the Bluebird.
But you've got to call early.
You've got to...
Yeah.
Tickets go on sale.
They will be sold out in two or three minutes.
Every show.
Yeah, I mean, anybody who wants to go up here.
And you mentioned that.
Some people don't realize that this is actually a touchstone.
I mean, Garth Brooks, McGraw, all these folks have actually sang there, who've actually been there.
It's not just a mythical place.
This is actually some place where they actually go.
Let me plug some movies.
The first is Bluebird, the movie.
Our general manager, Erica Wallum-Nichols, produced it.
It was the number one movie for a while last year on Amazon after it came out.
Check it out and you'll see what we're talking about.
And we do have some exclusive Taylor Swift content in that movie that you will see nowhere else on the planet.
We've got a movie About what you were doing.
It came out before the Music Modernization Act, the one starring Jamie Floyd, Jason Isbell's in it, a lot of people, called The Last Songwriter.
It's free on the internet.
Then we've got one that I'm associate producer on that I'm so proud of, and it touches on this a little bit, but it's called It All Begins With a Song.
And it's out and available on Amazon and all the streaming platforms now.
And do yourself a favor, and you will have a different appreciation.
And I'll make you a bet, if you're a music fan at all, you will get up early and stay online until you do get into the Bluebird Cafe after you see what happens over there.
It's personal.
You can't see music.
You know, Amy Curlin says something in the movie, the founder of the Bluebird.
Isn't it everybody's dream to have your favorite, coolest musicians come play in your living room?
That's what this is like.
It's just so transparent.
When you're there and you really see, especially the young ones, you can tell.
I've been there a few times.
There was one night, and I can't remember when I was there, but they had some of the guys that we knew that had made it.
For some reason, there was a younger songwriter that got thrown in with them, an up-and-comer.
You could just see it in their eyes.
It was like...
I go back, and again, I'm a child of the South, okay?
I mean, I grew up in Northeast Georgia.
I mean, the Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry, you know, you get to go to the Opry.
I mean, it was like you could see this in their eyes.
I'm here at the Bluebird, and I'm actually playing at the Bluebird, you know, kind of thing.
You've also sent something as well.
You've been there in Nashville for a lot of folks' first time through, so to speak.
And you've sort of mentioned this before.
You've seen them before they were ever.
Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood.
What were they like when you first met?
Because everybody sees them now.
And by the way, Taylor has done...
You talk about somebody who understands to not be a lawyer, to understand copyright, and understand what she owns.
Taylor Swift's also changed this industry as well.
They all have a commonality.
They all start in some little town somewhere.
There's only two or three actually from Nashville, and I don't know why.
We've all got theories about that.
And music's what they have.
And it's commonly, they're not necessarily always rich families, but for whatever reason, rich or poor, music means something to you.
You start in high school, and they make fun of you.
Taylor was made fun of up in Pennsylvania.
It's common that you're...
Oh, there's that songwriter guy.
That's that weird songwriter girl.
And even if you do perform local and you have a little success, when you tell your parents you're moving to whatever town it is to become a professional songwriter, and these days it can only be Los Angeles or Nashville, because that's where the community...
If you want to take it to the top professional route, then they have an intervention.
You're going to do what?
Some schools have started offering college degree programs in songwriting and the music business, but you risk everything you've got, and congressmen, for true songwriters, it's not an option.
You have to do it.
Songwriting is almost like a drug addiction.
You get an idea at 2.30 in the morning, and I counsel spouses a lot.
They will send, some songwriter sends their spouse over, and I went, they do have to write that song right then.
Then I compare it, do you have a gift?
Do I work on cars?
Well, did you?
Yeah, they get it.
And then they come to Nashville, and they are scared to death because they realize they're not as good as they thought they were.
They go to the Bluebird and see Tony Arada or Hilary Lindsay and You know, then they got to dig back in, but the true songwriters, they starve to death, and then one day they hear something on the radio and it's their first single.
And that's the journey of every songwriter, including Taylor.
Taylor, I got lucky because her dad is Scott Swift, and the first time I met Taylor, we weren't in the music mill.
We were in a different building, and he brought her over, and It's not my job to meet with young 14-year-old songwriters, but my entire staff was sick or preoccupied that day, so I did it.
She played me three or four songs.
I couldn't tell you what any of them were.
What I do remember in telling the staff for months is, that kid's got something.
Everything was where it went.
They were about puppies and they were kid-like songs, but there was something about her.
And Taylor had something I've only ever seen with Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Presley.
She had the ability to make you feel what she was singing.
It was palpable.
So a year passes.
She's 15. Scott brings her back around.
They're moving to Nashville that summer.
She's already signed a deal with Sony Publishing.
And she plays me Picture to Burn, Tim McGraw, and Our Song.
Okay.
And that was how I met Taylor.
Yeah.
It's just amazing to have that family.
In some ways, it's almost like the families that have a good kid who's a baseball player, a football player.
They're always pushing, and the family's there in the background.
But it's such a high-pressure kind of thing because songwriting and performing, almost like being in politics, is you get instant feedback.
And it's not based on missing a shot or hitting a home run.
It's based on very personal.
I put out something, and if somebody doesn't like it, it hurts in your heart.
Because it's you.
We tell you, you've got to have a thick skin.
Taylor, I've heard her say this, and I use her own words.
They were all no's.
All no's.
Until somebody said yes, and you only get one or two yeses in your whole career.
It's a career fraught with rejection.
We're going to get to somebody here in a minute.
We're going to probably wrap with this person.
But before we ever get there, I want to deal a little bit now.
We hear this all the time, and you've been there for long enough.
You've seen the iterations.
You talked about Alabama coming along and Alabama changing the genre.
You had Billy Ray Cyrus.
You had Shania.
And then you had, of course, the...
Elephant in the room, if you would, Garth Brooks, who just came along and just changed everything.
But then you have those in Nashville who say, but I still like the old Hank Williams, and I like the old Ferland Huskies, and the old country.
And where is the old country again?
Chris Stapleton coming along.
Where do you see country right now?
Well...
It's a melting pot, and Nashville's always about five to ten years behind social trends and anything else.
You know, bro country.
Remember when everybody looked exactly alike?
All the songs were about alcohol, the truck, some relationship that we won't get too deep into on the podcast.
That's what they were about.
Sugar shaker.
I sat down with...
One of the three major label heads in Nashville one day, and I ask him why, and he goes, you know, we get all this criticism for it, but it's not that we don't want to sign females.
It's not that we do this, that, or the other.
Bart, 100% of our money is on live music.
We lose money on records, and they do.
You make records today so these artists can have concerts.
And so it used to be that when record labels made money, it was only on sales.
But there is no sales money anymore for most artists.
And so it's a 360 deal.
It's part of the entire circle of an artist's income, which is their songs, their publishing, most importantly, their concert revenue and their merch sales.
Overwhelmingly, the audience that goes to see country music live shows are 19 to 27-year-old females that don't want to see other females perform.
I disagree with that.
I think the labels weren't making the right choices.
So we went through that phase and we went through a couple of other phases.
I am pleased to tell you Because I've been asking this same question during COVID, and I think we've had to get back to your roots.
I think you're going to see our genre be true country music again, with a lot of the new artists they're signing, and great songs.
And that's what I'm looking forward to.
And I think we're already seeing some senses of that.
Because all the writers and artists had two years to sit home and think about what?
The song they were singing and write some great material.
Right.
Well, I think that's one of the things that's going to come through.
You always have, you know, out of the dark ages came the Renaissance.
I mean, you see those kind of times.
And this brings us to one that I've been holding back a little bit but wanting to talk about because he was a dear friend to me, someone who I enjoyed getting to know.
He was, I know, to you.
But he encapsulated to me, I mean, I grew up in the 60s, 70s, so the Jerry Reeds, the Conway Twitties, the, you know, those, I mean, that was for me, that country music, you know, Chris Kosofsky and all that.
But then there was one who just sort of transcended not only being an artist, but being a writer, but being a movie star, a TV personality, and that was Mac Davis.
And Mac, for those who, if you were to introduce this audience a little bit maybe to Mac, I think he encapsulates the modern day songwriter who is sort of the jack of all trades.
There was a time in the early and mid 80s that Mac was probably, not probably, they actually ranked this, the most recognizable star on earth.
Mac had written a bunch of famous songs for Elvis and Bobby Goldsboro and others, songs like Watching Scotty Grow, Little Us Conversation, In the Ghetto, which led to Mac's own record career with massive songs like I Believe in Music, Texas in My Rearview Mirror, etc., etc., etc.
But he got a TV show, a summer replacement show in the late 70s, The Mac Davis Show, Which turned into movies, North Dallas 40, The Sting 2, a whole list of movies, which also led him after he got sober in the early 80s to star in the Will Rogers Follies.
So TV, radio, music, film, and Broadway.
I've learned through the years, and you probably have too, Congressman, it's sometimes, more often than not, I'm disappointed when I meet my heroes.
Because it's not what you think of them.
100% opposite with Mac Davis.
He was the most humble.
Another one of his songs.
Hard to be humble when you're perfect.
Mac and I grew close.
So this would have been the summer of 2019. Outed his house, helped convince him to move to Nashville, which he did, back to Nashville, back to his roots, get off the bellow or golf course, come back home and write some songs, which he did.
And his home in Nashville is beautiful, by the way.
It's unbelievable.
And they loved you and supported you, the Davises, and Mack did.
And so they...
We're talking one day, and Mac tells me this unbelievable story, not when he was famous from his childhood, and you know me, I'm persistent, if nothing else, to the point of being annoying sometimes.
I'm like, Mac, you've got to write a book, and it hit him wrong.
And he stopped me and he goes, Bart, my real friends are friends.
They don't think of me as the famous Mac Davis.
Every time I tell you something I don't want to hear, you've got to write a book.
Well, that hit me the wrong way.
And I said, alright, I'm going to make a deal with you.
You give me one minute, one minute to tell you why, and I'll never bring it up again.
And Matt goes, 59, 58, 57. I said, alright.
I said, but what I've actually said, and you've got to listen without pre-deciding.
You need to really listen to the reason why you should do this.
And he goes, 59, 58. And this is what I said.
I said, you owe it to people like me.
You've led one of the most extraordinary lives, famous and non-famous, and you owe it to the fans like me who care about that.
And I thought, wow, you've really overdone it, because he turned around and walked away from me.
Not far, but he walked away from me.
And you know, in these instances, 10 seconds is an attorney.
Mac didn't say anything for the better part of a minute.
I'm like, well, he'd be getting ready to go on to the house.
And he turned around and he goes, Alright, let's start Sunday.
And that Sunday, September of 2019, we...
No, I'm sorry.
It would have been September of 2020. Let me make sure I got the year right.
We started an interview every Sunday for a year, and I interviewed him about his life.
We had one to go, but I needed to talk to his wife, Lise, because Mac didn't remember some dates, and I did.
We needed to get some context to ask the right questions.
We set up that interview, and she couldn't do it.
Max said, well, we'll finish in a week or two.
I said, no, let's go on and finish it today.
And he said, alright.
And we finished it.
And he died the next Sunday.
So for a year, from September of 2020 to 2021, I worked on his biography called That's Where Songs Come From.
We're finished.
Lisa's editing it.
And it's been...
I don't know.
I feel like Mack chose me somehow.
Wait till you read this book.
I just put it together.
It's all in Mack's words.
It's one of the most powerful, moving life stories I've ever heard, and I'm privileged to be a part of it, Congressman.
So that's where songs come from.
We'll be out sometime, hopefully, within the next year.
That'd be so cool.
For somebody like myself who watched it from afar, a forward for me would be, here's somebody that you dream...
As you said, when you meet people in your life that you think about, and it turns out better than you can ever imagine, because I've met a lot of folks in life that I had an expectation of, and that expectation didn't come true.
And I don't blame them.
I blame me.
You know, it was my expectation.
Mac was one who, and if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know who Mac Davis is, then this will be your gift of this podcast, is to go Google, look up Mac Davis.
And then when this book's coming out, you'll definitely want to be a part of that.
As we sort of wrap up here, Bart, you and I, I mean, that and an old South and a glass of sweet tea, we could go along forever.
When you look at it today, I hope the one thing that when I was in Congress, I hope that whenever I left and I'm out right now, is that you make a difference.
And songwriters to me made that difference in my life.
I can point to the times when, you know, I think about my time when I was in Iraq, and there are three songs that just come back to me.
The minute I hear them, I go back there.
Troubadour was one of them.
George Strait.
For different reasons.
I can go back to hear, if I hear How Great Thou Art, or...
Amazing Grace.
I mean, it hits me because of my mom.
This is where the rubber hits the road, and music and songwriting mean so much.
My hope is that we take what we've talked about today, and for those out there who may not have any idea of any of this, but you have that person you know that occasionally shrums on a guitar, plays a piano, comes up with lyrics, comes up with something, is to foster that.
That's what makes us great.
That is who we are, is how we express ourselves to each other.
I believe that you, Bart, and the Nashville songwriters, and the folks that we've talked about in brief, and like I said, we could go for 10 hours, and I could name each and every one what they mean to me.
But that's the hope for tomorrow.
If I look back on a lot of things we did in Congress, this one is at one of the very top.
Because I know that long after you and I are done, years from now, this will be something that will keep...
Another kid, maybe from North Georgia, who's sitting in the room because his dad works all the time in public safety, and the way he got to travel was through a song and through the lyrics that come through or a book and words on a page.
We've got to remember that.
Bart, are you excited about the future?
I don't think we could have.
If we had tried this a couple years earlier, the industry would not have embraced it.
Had we tried it a couple years later, a lot of things just weren't right for it.
People say, I had Senator Alexander ask me the other day, how's this working?
I said, it's great, but you and Doug Collins and others won't really know this legacy for many years to come.
Here's what you did, Congressman.
You redivided what we get out of a dollar.
And so we've already gotten more.
We're going to get more.
But we don't know what this means until we see the growth of streaming over the next ten, twenty, thirty years.
Smartphones are eleven years old.
Seventy, eighty percent of every American has more than one device.
It drops off into the teens in most of the next developed countries.
But as we see even developed countries like France and Great Britain enjoy more digital access and certainly the countries like India and China That $185 that the writer earned, I believe, can be in the tens of thousands down the road.
And you did that.
And I will tell you, the day we signed it, DOJ, some other things that had happened to songwriters while we were trying to work this, it was almost like we were at a wake.
We felt like we were presiding over the death of something beautiful.
The day we passed that Music Modernization Act, when President Trump signed, I think it was October 18th of 2018, it all changed.
We've been optimistic, and you also see what you did for the value of music.
Bruce Springsteen just sold his catalog for $500 million.
Yeah, and I'm waiting for my cut of that, but Bruce hadn't called.
But these are all connected because people know that music's going to grow and grow.
We will not see music royalties diminish in my lifetime, and so thank you.
Well, I think that's important because, and like I said, it'll be funny about it, but it is started, and it's all across the globe that those values of the song, again, are actually finding the value that they deserve.
And the old masters, the old recordings, the old sheet music, the stuff is coming back to life as we go forward.
Well, I want to ask you one question before we leave, and I don't think I ever ask you this.
And I'll answer it.
Mine is The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin.
It's about the seasons of emotion.
What's your favorite song?
One song, Desert Island, Doug Collins.
Oh, Lord.
It's a tough question.
It is a tough question.
It is a tough question.
And just like a typical songwriter, you know why?
Because my emotions and my time changes as it goes.
But as I look back on it, there would be...
There's one that I love, and it may sound strange to some people, but the song by Simon and Garfunkel, America.
And I have made, much of my kids who listen to this podcast will know, I have forced them and their girlfriends and their friends to listen to that song.
And here's what I tell them, Bart.
I say, listen to this song.
You're going to love it.
I say, listen to the words.
Listen to the words.
And, you know, in the part of the song where he says, and I get emotional, to this moment, I mean, there's still some, but anyway, he says, Kathy, I'm lost, but I knew she was sleeping.
And the visualization of somebody who's lived a life, who's been happily married, but has been through business and life, when I think about that, how many times have we, that line so encompasses the passionate scream that I don't know what I'm doing, I'm lost, and you say it knowing nobody's going to hear it because he says in the very line, but she's asleep.
I mean, that just to me captures life.
Well, history first records songs with names like Solomon and a guy named David sitting on the hill singing those psalms to God.
And I really do want to thank you one last time for getting Congress to recognize what the founders recognized, that that's important and it's got value.
Well, it's got to continue.
Folks, this has been one of those podcasts that I love, and we're going to have more on this as we go through, because hopefully I'm going to have on some of those various songwriters that we talked about today.
I'm going to have them on for in-depth.
We'll actually play some of their stuff and tell those stories in a mini-way as we go forward.
But if you don't know anything about national songwriters, please look them up.
Be a part.
If you're out there and you're a songwriter, I can't tell how many people I've sent to BART over the years who I meet at events and say, hey, call BART. I'm a songwriter.
I'm 40 years old.
I can't do this.
Yeah, you can.
You've got something inside you, and I'll keep saying it.
But look them up.
Talk about them.
You can always find a great way.
Because Bart is amazing.
He's done great work, along with all the folks we've talked about today.
But let me just say this for all the podcast listeners before we sign off.
If you've got a dream inside of you, do not let anybody take that dream away from you.
Nobody's going to come force you.
Nobody's going to come make you famous.
But don't let anybody...
Take the dream away.
What is written in your heart can come out of your mind and out of your mouth and out of your hands and you can change the world if you simply let it happen.
Bart, thank you so much for being a part today.
Thank you and amen.
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