Country Music

JOHN ANDERSON SURVIVED A MEDICAL CRISIS THAT NEARLY KILLED HIM THREE TIMES — THEN LOST ALMOST ALL OF HIS HEARING. WHEN HE RETURNED TO THE STUDIO, HE TOLD DAN AUERBACH, “LET’S GET EVERYTHING, BECAUSE I MIGHT NOT WAKE UP.” By 2017, John Anderson had spent more than forty years making country music. Then his health collapsed. Anderson has never publicly detailed every part of the illness, but one procedure became so dangerous that his wife later told him he had effectively died three times on the operating table. Surviving was only the first problem. Both ears were badly affected. Anderson later estimated that he lost 95 to 98 percent of his hearing and spent roughly six or seven months almost deaf. He could barely match a note on his guitar. For the first time, he wondered whether music was over. At home, Anderson kept picking up an acoustic guitar to test what remained. Medical treatment slowly restored some hearing, and individual notes began making sense again. Then SiriusXM’s Jeremy Tepper connected him with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. Anderson met Auerbach and producer David “Fergie” Ferguson at Easy Eye Sound in Nashville. In June 2018, they sat down to write. The first song was “Years.” The meeting quickly became an album project. Paul Overstreet, Pat McLaughlin, Larry Cordle, Dee White and others joined the writing and recording sessions. But Anderson still did not trust his health. Another procedure requiring anesthesia was approaching, so he pushed to finish every vocal first. “Let’s get everything,” he told Auerbach, “because I might not wake up.” The sessions became Years, released in 2020. Instead of trying to recreate “Swingin’” or “Straight Tequila Night,” Anderson sang about time, mortality, gratitude and the realization that a career assumed to be permanent could disappear almost overnight. He later said the work itself seemed to help him recover. “The more I did, the better I got.” For much of his early career, Anderson had looked backward toward Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and Merle Haggard. Years forced him to look somewhere else. Not toward the music that had formed him, but toward the songs he still had time to leave behind.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” JOHN ANDERSON NEARLY DIED THREE TIMES ON AN…

Country Music

BEFORE NASHVILLE SIGNED HIM, CHRIS LeDOUX HAD WON A WORLD RODEO TITLE AND SOLD 250,000 ALBUMS FROM THE BACK OF HIS TRUCK—THEN ONE GARTH BROOKS LYRIC CHANGED EVERYTHING. By the time Nashville discovered Chris LeDoux, hundreds of thousands of people already knew every word. Not because country radio had played his records. Because LeDoux had been selling them himself. Born in Mississippi and raised in Wyoming, LeDoux spent his early adult life chasing rodeo instead of record deals. He competed across the country as a bareback bronc rider, sleeping in trucks, driving from one rodeo to the next, and writing songs about the people living the same life. In 1976, he reached the top of that world. LeDoux won the PRCA World Championship in bareback riding, one of rodeo’s highest honors. But even after becoming a world champion, he never stopped writing. He began recording his own albums through a tiny independent label and loaded boxes of records into the back of his pickup. After rodeos, while other competitors packed their gear and headed down the highway, LeDoux stayed behind, shaking hands and selling albums directly to fans. Year after year. By the early 1990s, LeDoux had independently sold more than 250,000 albums—an extraordinary number for an artist completely outside the Nashville system. Then another cowboy changed everything. In 1989, a young Oklahoma singer named Garth Brooks released “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old).” One line mentioned “worn-out tape of Chris LeDoux.” Millions of listeners had never heard the name before. They started looking for him. Suddenly, Nashville realized the singer it had overlooked already had one of the most loyal audiences in country music. Capitol Records signed LeDoux in 1990. His first major-label album, Western Underground, reached gold status, and songs including “Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy,” a duet with Garth Brooks, carried his music far beyond the rodeo arena. The man who had spent years selling records from the back of a pickup was now sharing the charts with one of country music’s biggest stars. LeDoux never changed the stories he told. Even after reaching mainstream success, he kept singing about ranch hands, bronc riders, small-town families and the American West—the same people who had bought those homemade records long before Nashville arrived. His biggest audience had never been created by radio. It had been built one handshake at a time in dusty rodeo parking lots across America.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” CHRIS LeDOUX HAD ALREADY WON A WORLD RODEO…

Country Music

MOE BANDY AND JOE STAMPLEY WERE ALREADY COUNTRY STARS. THEN SOMEONE PUT THE TWO TROUBLEMAKERS IN THE SAME STUDIO — AND “MOE & JOE” BECAME BIGGER THAN EITHER MAN EXPECTED. By the late 1970s, Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley did not need each other to have careers. Bandy had built his name on hard-country songs about cheating, drinking and marriages coming apart. Records like “I Just Started Hatin’ Cheatin’ Songs Today,” “Bandy the Rodeo Clown” and “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life” had made the former Texas sheet-metal worker one of Nashville’s strongest new honky-tonk singers. Stampley came from a different road. Raised in Louisiana, he had fronted the rock-and-soul band the Uniques before moving into country music, where “Soul Song” reached No. 1 and established him as a successful solo artist. The two men knew each other before they became a recording team. Their personalities clicked. Both came from working-class Southern backgrounds, both understood barrooms and road audiences, and neither carried himself like country stardom required much ceremony. Producer Ray Baker saw what happened when they were together and suggested putting it on record. The pairing became Moe & Joe. Their first major success came with “Just Good Ol’ Boys” in 1979. Instead of asking two established singers to behave like a polished vocal duo, the song exaggerated exactly what audiences already liked about them: two ordinary guys getting into trouble and laughing about it afterward. It reached No. 1 on the country chart. Suddenly, Bandy and Stampley were running two careers at once. Each continued recording solo material, but together they developed a completely different personality. Moe & Joe records could be rowdy, self-deprecating and deliberately funny in ways Bandy’s darker cheating songs rarely were. “Hey Joe (Hey Moe)” played directly with their partnership. “Holding the Bag” followed, and in 1984 they pushed the joke further with “Where’s the Dress?” The song parodied the flamboyant image surrounding Boy George and Culture Club. For its video and performances, Bandy and Stampley appeared in outrageous costumes, turning two traditional country singers into an unlikely comedy act. It became a Top 10 country hit. But the friendship was not created for the records. That became clearer after the chart run faded. The two men continued appearing together long after Nashville stopped treating Moe & Joe as a current commercial act. Their partnership survived label cycles, changing radio formats and the period when both men’s solo hits became less frequent. Decades later, they were still sharing stages and telling the same road stories. What began as a producer’s idea had lasted longer than the marketing campaign behind it. Bandy remained the Texas honky-tonk singer. Stampley remained the Louisiana musician who had traveled from rock and soul into country. Neither had to surrender his own identity for the duo to work. When they stood beside each other, however, something changed. Moe Bandy’s records often sounded like the morning after everything had gone wrong. With Joe Stampley beside him, he finally sounded like the man who had been there the night before.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” MOE BANDY AND JOE STAMPLEY WERE ALREADY COUNTRY…

Country Music

HE SPENT ALMOST TEN YEARS OPENING SHOWS FOR CHARLEY PRIDE. BY THE TIME COUNTRY RADIO FINALLY SAID YES, MOST PEOPLE HAD ALREADY STOPPED EXPECTING IT. Before Neal McCoy became a country star, he spent years driving from one town to another as the opening act for Charley Pride. Born Hubert Neal McGaughey Jr. in Jacksonville, Texas, McCoy worked clubs across Texas before Pride hired him for his road show. Night after night, he walked onto stages long before the headliner, learning how to win over audiences that had not come to see him. The experience made him a better entertainer. It did not make Nashville offer a hit. Atlantic Records signed McCoy in 1988, but his first three albums struggled. Single after single stalled outside the upper reaches of the charts. While younger artists arrived with instant success, McCoy kept touring, recording and waiting for the breakthrough that refused to come. Many careers ended there. His did not. In 1994, Atlantic released No Doubt About It. The title track became his first No. 1 country single. Months later, “Wink” followed it to the top of the chart. After nearly a decade of opening concerts and six years on a major label, McCoy suddenly had two No. 1 hits in the same year. The success changed his career, but not the people he remembered. Years later, McCoy recorded “You’re My Jamaica” as a duet with Charley Pride—the man who had given him one of his earliest opportunities when few others believed he belonged on a major stage. More hits followed, including “They’re Playin’ Our Song,” “The Shake,” and “Billy’s Got His Beer Goggles On.” McCoy also became known for entertaining American troops on dozens of overseas tours, carrying country music to military bases around the world. His career eventually stretched far beyond the charts. But the foundation had been built years earlier, standing in the wings while Charley Pride drew the crowds, then walking onto the stage to earn every audience one song at a time.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” NEAL McCOY SPENT ALMOST TEN YEARS OPENING SHOWS…

Country Music

VINCE GILL AND AMY GRANT DID NOT WALK INTO LOVE WITH EMPTY HANDS. THEY CAME CARRYING TWO BROKEN MARRIAGES, FIVE CHILDREN, AND A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE READY TO JUDGE THEM. Vince Gill met Amy Grant in 1993 at a Christmas event in Tulsa. By then, neither of them was looking like the beginning of a simple love story. Vince was already one of country music’s most trusted voices. Amy had become one of the biggest names in Christian and pop music. Both were married. Both had children. Both were living inside lives that looked settled from the outside, with albums, tours, family photographs, and public expectations already built around them. They became friends first. They sang together. Amy invited Vince to appear on her 1994 album House of Love. Their voices fit easily, but the timing did not. Vince was still married to Janis Oliver. Amy was still married to Gary Chapman. Whatever connection had begun between them had to stay inside the limits of two marriages that were already under strain for their own reasons. Then the marriages ended. Vince and Janis divorced in 1997. Amy and Gary’s divorce was finalized in 1999. Only after that did Vince and Amy begin dating. By then, the story had already become public property. There were children trying to understand new family lines. There were fans who felt they knew Amy through faith music and Vince through country songs. There were people ready to decide what the relationship meant before either of them had finished living through it. Vince later said the beginning was hard. Not because the love was uncertain. Because the lives around it were so full. On March 10, 2000, they married on a rainy hillside outside Nashville. Amy was barefoot. Their children stood inside the story with them. A year later, they welcomed their daughter, Corrina, and the two separate families began the slower work of becoming one home. The country singer and the Christian-pop star did not get a clean beginning. They got a second chance after two lives had already been broken open. And more than two decades later, the people who once watched the story from outside still see them walk onstage together — not as a scandal that survived, but as two voices that finally found the same song at the right time.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” VINCE GILL AND AMY GRANT DID NOT WALK…

Country Music

HE WAS STILL POURING CONCRETE ON OIL FIELDS WHEN NASHVILLE TOLD HIM HE WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH. YEARS LATER, THE SAME MAN WOULD BECOME ONE OF COUNTRY MUSIC’S BIGGEST VOICES. Before Toby Keith filled arenas, he spent his days on Oklahoma oil fields. After graduating from high school, he worked alongside his father in the petroleum industry, hauling pipe and pouring concrete. At night, he played bars with a local band called Easy Money, chasing a music career that seemed far less certain than his day job. Then the oil industry collapsed in the early 1980s. Keith lost his steady paycheck and found himself doing whatever work he could while continuing to play every club that would have him. He even joined the Oklahoma City Drillers as a semi-professional defensive end, earning extra money while refusing to give up on music. For years, Nashville wasn’t interested. Record labels passed. Industry executives heard the big Oklahoma voice but didn’t believe it fit what country radio wanted. Keith kept driving from one bar to another, building an audience one night at a time instead of waiting for someone in Music Row to change his life. He finally recorded a demo of a song he had written himself. It was called “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” Mercury Records signed him in 1993, and the song exploded almost immediately. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart and became the most-played country song of the 1990s on country radio. His debut album sold more than a million copies, turning an Oklahoma oil-field worker into one of Nashville’s biggest new stars. Success never changed the way Keith saw himself. He kept writing songs about working people, small towns, soldiers, oil workers and ordinary Americans because they were the people he had known long before anyone knew his name. That background became the foundation of his career. When patriotic songs later made headlines, when sold-out arenas sang every word back to him, and when he became one of country music’s defining stars, Toby Keith wasn’t inventing a character. He was still singing from the life he had lived before Nashville ever believed in him.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” TOBY KEITH WAS STILL POURING CONCRETE ON OKLAHOMA…

Country Music

“DADDY’S MONEY” TOOK RICOCHET TO NO. 1. YEARS LATER, A VOICE DISORDER FORCED LEAD SINGER HEATH WRIGHT TO LEAVE THE BAND—UNTIL TREATMENT GAVE HIM ENOUGH OF THAT VOICE BACK TO RETURN. Ricochet spent years playing fairs, rodeos and dance halls across the Midwest before Nashville noticed them. Formed in Oklahoma in the early 1990s, the six-piece band built its reputation the hard way, driving from one small show to another while polishing the tight harmonies and musicianship that set them apart from many new country acts. Lead singer Heath Wright became the voice audiences remembered first. (en.wikipedia.org) Columbia Records signed the band in 1995. Their debut single, “What Do I Know,” introduced Ricochet to country radio, but it was the next release that changed everything. “Daddy’s Money” reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart in August 1996, becoming the group’s signature hit. Their debut album also produced “Love Is Stronger Than Pride,” “He Left a Lot to Be Desired,” and “Ease My Troubled Mind,” giving Ricochet one of the strongest debut runs by a new country band during the decade. (en.wikipedia.org) The success did not last. Changing trends on country radio made it harder for vocal groups to compete, and follow-up records never matched the impact of their debut. Columbia eventually dropped the band. Then came the harder blow. Heath Wright developed spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological voice disorder that causes the muscles controlling the vocal cords to contract involuntarily. For the singer whose voice had carried Ricochet to No. 1, even ordinary performances became difficult. (en.wikipedia.org) In 2008, Wright stepped away from the band to focus on treatment. Ricochet continued with different singers, while Wright underwent years of therapy and medical care in an effort to regain control of his voice. The recovery was slow, but it worked. After several years away, Wright returned to Ricochet and resumed performing with the group he had helped build. The band never recreated the commercial success of 1996, yet the original voice behind “Daddy’s Money” was back where it belonged. (en.wikipedia.org) Country music has seen careers ended by changing radio formats, failed records and record-label decisions. Ricochet survived something more personal. Their biggest obstacle was not losing a hit. It was nearly losing the instrument that made the hit possible.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” “DADDY’S MONEY” MADE RICOCHET A NO. 1 COUNTRY…

Country Music

THEY WERE TOLD THEY SOUNDED TOO POP FOR COUNTRY. A FEW YEARS LATER, THE SAME SOUND PRODUCED SIX CONSECUTIVE NO. 1 HITS. Restless Heart was never supposed to be a touring band. In 1984, Nashville producer and songwriter Tim DuBois assembled a handful of musicians simply to record demonstration tapes for songs he had been writing. Dave Innis, Paul Gregg, Greg Jennings and John Dittrich came together in the studio, and when lead singer Verlon Thompson decided the material leaned too far toward pop, Innis recommended another demo singer he knew from Belmont College. His name was Larry Stewart. The five voices blended immediately. Their harmonies sounded closer to the Eagles than the hard-edged traditional country dominating radio. Some people inside Nashville questioned where the band belonged. They were polished enough for pop, yet still rooted in country instrumentation. Instead of changing direction, the musicians kept the sound they had created in the demo sessions. RCA Records agreed. Their 1985 debut album produced three Top 10 country singles, proving the experiment could work. But the bigger breakthrough came one year later with Wheels. Even then, the band doubted one of its own songs. Keyboard player Dave Innis believed “That Rock Won’t Roll” sounded too pop to become a country hit. RCA released it anyway. It became Restless Heart’s first No. 1. The momentum never stopped. “I’ll Still Be Loving You,” originally offered to Kenny Rogers, became another No. 1 after Rogers passed on it. It also crossed into the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, giving the band success well beyond country radio. “Why Does It Have to Be (Wrong or Right)”—a song the band had rejected twice because it reminded them too much of Exile—became another chart-topper after RCA insisted they record it. The title track, “Wheels,” followed with a fourth straight No. 1. The next album pushed the streak even further. “A Tender Lie” and “The Bluest Eyes in Texas” extended Restless Heart’s run to six consecutive No. 1 singles, making them one of the hottest vocal groups in country music. In 1990, the Academy of Country Music named them Vocal Group of the Year. Success eventually pulled the members in different directions. Larry Stewart left to pursue a solo career. Other members followed their own projects, and the band gradually came apart during the 1990s before reuniting years later. Their biggest victory, however, had already been settled years earlier. The songs Nashville once feared were too polished for country ended up defining one of the genre’s most successful vocal groups. And the harmonies first created in a demo studio became the sound countless younger country bands would spend the next decade trying to match.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” RESTLESS HEART WAS TOLD ITS HARMONIES SOUNDED TOO…

Country Music

MCA BUILT McBRIDE & THE RIDE TO COMPETE WITH ALABAMA. FIVE YEARS LATER, THE LABEL REMOVED TWO OF THE THREE MEN WHO HAD MADE THE BAND WORK AND WATCHED THE SUCCESS DISAPPEAR. McBride & the Ride did not begin in a garage or honky-tonk. It began as a Nashville record-company plan. In 1989, MCA executive Tony Brown assembled three experienced musicians: Texas singer and bassist Terry McBride, guitarist Ray Herndon and drummer Billy Thomas. Herndon had worked with Lyle Lovett, Thomas with Emmylou Harris and Mac Davis, while McBride had toured with his father before playing with Delbert McClinton and Rosie Flores. The three were introduced during Fan Fair in Nashville. They had no shared history, but the combination worked. McBride became the lead voice and songwriting center, Herndon supplied guitar and harmony, and Thomas anchored the rhythm. Their 1990 debut established the sound, but Sacred Ground brought the breakthrough in 1992. “Just One Night,” “Going Out of My Mind” and “Sacred Ground” all reached the Top 5, while the album went gold. A third album, Hurry Sundown, followed in 1993 and produced another Top 5 hit, “Love on the Loose, Heart on the Run.” McBride & the Ride had become what MCA wanted: a polished country band with recognizable harmonies and growing radio success. Then the label changed the formula. In 1994, MCA shifted the focus toward Terry McBride, removed Herndon and Thomas, and renamed the act Terry McBride & the Ride. The expanded replacement lineup released an album, but none of its singles reached the Top 40. By 1995, the band was finished. McBride, however, did not leave country radio. He moved deeper into songwriting and began a long association with Brooks & Dunn, co-writing “I Am That Man,” “He’s Got You,” “I Can’t Get Over You” and the Reba McEntire duet “If You See Him/If You See Her.” He later joined Brooks & Dunn’s touring band as bassist and helped write “Play Something Country,” “Proud of the House We Built” and “Cowgirls Don’t Cry.” The other members also remained in Nashville. Billy Thomas worked with Vince Gill and the Time Jumpers. Ray Herndon co-wrote Kenny Chesney’s “Me and You.” In 2000, the original trio performed together at the Handlebar-J in Scottsdale, Arizona, and began discussing a reunion. They returned with Amarillo Sky in 2002. Its title track did not become a major hit for them, but Jason Aldean later took the song into the Top 5. The reunion was brief, yet the three original members came together again in 2021 and played their first Nashville concert in twenty years the following year. McBride & the Ride had been assembled by executives, altered by executives and dismantled by an executive decision. But the music kept escaping that decision. McBride’s songs reached No. 1 through Brooks & Dunn and Reba. Herndon helped write a Kenny Chesney standard. A song from the reunion album found a second life through Jason Aldean. The company had tried to turn a three-man band into a vehicle for one singer. The three musicians spent the next three decades proving that the original chemistry had never belonged to the label.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” MCA BUILT McBRIDE & THE RIDE TO COMPETE…

Country Music

HE LEFT GEORGIA, WORKED AT OPRYLAND, AND BECAME A COUNTRY STAR WITH “I LET HER LIE.” THEN NASHVILLE MOVED AWAY FROM HIS KIND OF MUSIC—BUT DARYLE SINGLETARY NEVER CHANGED HIS VOICE TO FOLLOW IT. By the mid-1990s, country music was changing. Polished productions, crossover sounds, and arena-sized acts were becoming the industry’s new center. At the same time, a young singer from Cairo, Georgia, arrived in Nashville carrying little more than a deep baritone and an unwavering love for George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Conway Twitty. Daryle Singletary was not interested in updating traditional country. He worked at Opryland USA after moving to Nashville, sang wherever he could, and was eventually noticed by Randy Travis. Travis believed enough in Singletary’s voice to help him secure a recording contract with Giant Records. The gamble paid off quickly. His debut album produced hits including “I Let Her Lie,” “Too Much Fun,” and “Amen Kind of Love.” Radio embraced the records, but what set Singletary apart was not the chart positions. He sounded like he belonged to an earlier generation without trying to imitate it. As country radio continued changing, that became harder to sell. Record sales slowed. Giant Records dropped him, and later label deals brought only limited commercial success. Many artists adapted their sound to fit the new market. Singletary refused. He kept recording the kind of honky-tonk songs he believed in, even if they reached fewer stations and sold fewer records. The decision cost him chart success, but it earned him something far rarer. The respect of the people who had built country music before him. George Jones became one of his strongest supporters, repeatedly praising Singletary as one of the finest traditional country singers of his generation. The two eventually recorded together, and whenever Jones spoke about artists who still understood real country music, Singletary’s name was never far away. That admiration did not restore his place on mainstream radio. It did, however, keep him busy on the road. While Nashville chased newer trends, Singletary continued playing fairs, theaters, dance halls, and festivals for audiences who wanted the sound they felt radio had left behind. On February 12, 2018, Daryle Singletary died unexpectedly at his home in Lebanon, Tennessee. He was 46. The tributes that followed came not only from fans but from many of the artists he had admired for years. They remembered him less for awards or record sales than for something increasingly difficult to find—a singer who never changed his voice simply because the market had changed around him.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” DARYLE SINGLETARY BROUGHT AN OLD-SCHOOL COUNTRY VOICE TO…

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