Aaron Barker Interview

Doug Burke:

Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host Doug Burke, and today we're here with Aaron Barker. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Aaron Barker got his first guitar at six years old and taught himself to play it. He spent a decade leading a band, The American Peddlers, as its lead singer and bass player, playing hundreds of honky tonks and military bases. In 1988, he left the band to try to make it as a songwriter. Dead broke and working selling oranges by the side of the road, George Strait had chosen one of his songs, recorded it, and it became a hit. Today, he is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has written ten Top 10 Country songs, including four number ones.

We're here with Aaron Barker and we're here to talk about some of your songs: some of your hit songs or some of the not hit songs too are some things that are on the shelf. It's really up to you on what song you'd like to start with.

Aaron Barker:

I'll start at the beginning with a song called Baby Blue. That's where my whole career started. In order to get out of the truck stop job I was in. A band came through one night looking for a bass player and they were filling up their little van and said they were seeking a bass player. So, the next day I went and bought a bass guitar and started. I set up an audition and I guess they were bad enough to where I actually got the gig and I joined that band. That was in San Antonio, Texas, my hometown, which is full of military bases, a lot of Air Force and Army. Because of that, we started playing on these Air Force bases. At that time, the tail end of the Vietnam War, they were getting new troops in every six weeks. So we were getting thousands of new people in our audience on a regular basis. They would go out and ask for my band in Denver, in Wichita Falls, Texas, all over the country. We ended up just touring like that. We'd be out on the road, whether it was in vans or trucks or buses as it evolved. I always kept an acoustic guitar with me, even though I was a bass player in the band, and wrote songs that I thought were in the vein of James Taylor, Cat Stevens. I loved that era. The Crosby, Stills, Nash or their acoustic singer songwriter. Neil Diamond was my biggest influence ever. I've had the opportunity to meet him and write with him three times: write with him twice, meet him once. And I've declined all three times, based on the theory that you never meet your heroes. I have him in a place in my mind, speaking of Neil Diamond, that he can't possibly be. He can't be what I have him made up to be so it wouldn't be fair to him or me. Although now I'm an older guy, I would love to sit down and tell him thank you because he means so much to me. He triggered this. That's what I thought I was writing, more adult contemporary stuff. I had a country background from my youth, but I'd been playing this rock 'n' roll now for a couple of decades. In my spare time, I would sit there and write these things. This Baby Blue got into my mind. We were down in Mississippi, headed to Colorado, and it just kind of flowed out. I don't really know the inspiration for it. But it just kind of wrote itself from a melody, into these words that sounded good with that melody. And I never thought much of it. I had joined BMI as a youngster because I was writing songs for my band, but this was outside of that. I would go home and make little cassettes of these songs and give them to my mother and my brothers and friends around town. This particular song, Baby Blue, was on a cassette with three or four other songs. I was actually frustrated because my career was going nowhere as a writer, and I was just frustrated. I had this drawer full of lyrics and tablets and I was about to throw them all away. I think I literally had them in the air over my console and I was going to the trash can, and a buddy said, "No, just give me some of those cassettes. Let me just keep them." One of them that I gave him had these four or five songs on it, one being Baby Blue, and he took them to a fella in Hondo, Texas named Bill Butler who was by profession a pharmacist, owned a pharmacy in a grocery store, but he was a publisher as well. He had a great little eight track studio. For the time, that was pretty high-end stuff and he heard that cassette and didn't really care for any of it, but he set the cassette down. Bill Butler made an annual trip to Nashville to kind of throw stuff around of the writers that he had accumulated. That cassette got in there: in that stack that he brought to Nashville. And all it had on it was a piece of masking tape that said "Aaron". That's all it said. And that tape ended up getting inadvertently dropped off at Irv Woolsey's office, George Strait's manager. He heard it, he played it for George. George loved the song Baby Blue off of that cassette. So, Irv Woolsey took the time to track me down through Bill Butler. Bill Butler said, "Yeah, I'll get him for you." I ended up signing with Bill Butler and then he worked a deal with Irv Woolsey. I had no idea what this meant. I just played in a band, I've never made money writing. I thought whoever this George Strait guy is, because I didn't know who he was, I was in the rock 'n' roll world up to my ears, but he lived right up the road from where I lived. He lived in San Marcos, I was in San Antonio and I didn't know who he was. But I thought, well, if he records my song, maybe he'll send me like $500. So I was pretty happy over that. At the time, the band was breaking up. I was selling oranges off the back of my truck to make the house payment. Time went by and no $500 check showed up. I thought, "Well, I guess that George guy didn't make it." He already had like four gold albums or something at the time but I didn't know. Then another year went by and this envelope showed up in my mailbox. It was from BMI and I thought "Of all times for BMI to start charging a membership fee?" I opened that envelope and then there was a check with my name on it. The amount was for more than my house cost. I automatically went to, "Boy did BMI make a big mistake here." I had never even heard of money like that in reality, not even on a game show. I was pretty sure it was a mistake. That was a Friday evening and I thought, "Well, Monday I'll call up to BMI and figure out what's going on." In the meantime, I wanted my mother to see my name on a check like that. She had put up with this guy that practiced in her garage with his band 'til the cops showed up for years and then wore spandex and big hair, playing rock 'n' roll til he was 35. My mother deserved to see that check. So I drove over there, I showed her the check. She was really excited about it and I didn't tell her it was most likely an error, I just wanted her to have that moment of joy. But she looked at it, showed it to my stepdad, and he looked at that check. He said, "Aaron, I get these all the time. You never really win." He was looking for Ed McMahon's face on it or something. That was a funny, funny moment. That was the beginning of the whole thing. And that check, I called Monday to see if it was an error and a fella named Harry Warner, who worked at BMI, had to look it up. That's pretty computerized stuff and he came back and said, "No, that's yours Aaron. That's from that George Strait recording. Those will be showing up about every three months for a while." So that's life changing. What those checks did is just fixed a lot of broken stuff in my life. I was older when I got into this thing. The band was falling apart, I was 35. I showed up at the circus real late here in Nashville. I was so grateful for that. I got a car that started when I turned the key. I got four new tires instead of one at a time. Just things like that, that you think about everyday and you wish for and you pray for and all of a sudden it was here. I made a pact with God and said, "I just won't ask for anything anymore." Because I had prayed for a break. Just all I wanted in my life was a break: one year to rethink, regroup, and figure out where I was going. All of a sudden I had this incredible gift handed down to me so I told God, "I'm not going to ask for it again. This is enough." I've always lived like that was it and then a few years later, Love Without End became a number one song and there were more after that. That one is the only one I really wanted and I tried. I always wanted another hit but I try to never need one because then you get kind of desperate. I felt desperate at times, but Baby Blue was a life changer.

Doug Burke:

That went to number one on the Country charts? 

Aaron Barker:

It did. It did.

Doug Burke:

And did you have a number one party?

Aaron Barker:

We did. I barely had money to go to it. I don't really remember. I was so poor. I'm not poor, just didn't have a lot of cash. The song is number one, and when it's number one, the artists, the management, and the record company all have a big party. Of course you're welcome to it but it was in Nashville and I was in San Antonio. We don't get our funds for about a year after it is on the chart. It's kind of out of sync there. Generally, I don't know that writers are too cash short to go to their number one party. I wasn't that, I had to borrow the money though from Bill Butler. He loaned me the money to fly up here and be part of that. It's so out of sync; They're all celebrating a number one then a year later, the writer gets their money and they want to celebrate too. Everybody goes, "Oh, that's an old song." All the celebrations are over. They've had five more number ones since then. The writers, we're kind of on our own, which is a bonding unit, I think. It's a bonding element for the writers here in Nashville. So I celebrated on that one.

Doug Burke:

So Baby Blue you talk about the Colorado blue skies, which is not where you're from?

Aaron Barker:

No, I'm from Texas. Being from San Antonio, that's a wide open, desert area. So we have a big beautiful sky. But in Colorado, it was a unique experience for me. They had mountains, they had rivers, but mostly they had these enormous trees. You have these evergreens growing up 60, 70 feet in the air, 100 feet, and that sky off of that green looked so exceptionally blue to me because it was framed in these trees. So to me, that was the bluest sky I had experienced at that point. I thought about Mississippi because Mississippi has big pine trees and the sky looks very blue, but it rains almost every day so you kind of get this gray tint to it sometimes. When we hit Colorado, out of Aurora, Colorado, I drove up to Estes Park and I just saw this incredibly blue sky off of the green trees. That's why I used Colorado skies beause they were just so definitively blue to me. I'm a little color deficient, with my vision, but I can tell certain colors. I could tell that blue so profoundly off of that green. So that's, I guess why I used it. It just really had an effect on me.

Doug Burke:

Do you remember where you were the first time you heard a song you wrote on the radio?

Aaron Barker:

I don't know if anybody would ever forget something like that. I still had the band. It was the last days of the band. It really wasn't a formal band anymore but we have several commitments that I put guys together to fill and we had this show in Corpus Christi, Texas. We drove down there in a Cadillac with a trailer on the back because we didn't have our bus anymore or anything. We just wanted to make sure we filled our contract. Coming back, it was probably three in the morning and I'm driving up I-37, or highway 281, whatever it is, that ties the two together at that time. I'm driving along and I heard that steel guitar come in on Baby Blue and I knew what it was. I pulled over. I couldn't believe it. I'm a broadcast nut, I love broadcasting. When I was a little kid, laying in my bunk bed, I could look out the window and see these three radio towers from KBER radio. The lights blinked in sequence on the top, the little red lights. I would go to sleep watching those lights and listening to a guy named Jerry King, the DJ, who I later met. We're really good friends now. I would listen to his voice and watch those lights and go to sleep. It actually was a little mobile home with this broadcast, like we're sitting here with these mics in front of us. I knew that his voice, I didn't know how at the time, but his voice was coming off of those towers and coming to my radio. It reaching me in the middle of the night while I'm going to sleep was a comforting thing. So I've been a fan of broadcasting forever. All of a sudden these words and this melody that I put together on a band bus in the middle of the night coming out of Colorado are coming off of the radio. I'd heard George's recording of it. MCA is always gracious enough to call us and say "You gotta hear this." But hearing it on the radio, and knowing that it wasn't me that called and said, "Hey, could you play that song?" It just happened and it's a moment. I was somewhere between San Antonio and Corpus Christi, sitting on the side of the road with a choir of coyotes around me listening to Baby Blue and it was an overwhelmingly great moment. I couldn't believe it. I do.

Doug Burke:

Tell me about that. But you didn't think that a check was gonna come a few months before that?

Aaron Barker:

I did not. I really thought it was gonna be $500. For some reason $500 was stuck in my head. I must have really needed $500. I had no idea.

Doug Burke:

And you didn't know that it was rising in the charts? You didn't follow that?

Aaron Barker:

I didn't follow any of that. Bill Butler, the publisher down in Hondo, kept me kind of informed. I was struggling desperately at the time and I had no idea. I'd signed a publishing deal with Bill, I'd been a member of BMI so none of that ever occurred to me. I knew nothing about the business of music. I knew music a little bit and even now I am in no way qualified to deal with the business end of music. I know very little about it. I've made a lot of mistakes, dealing with business people because I step on toes thinking that it's my job and my responsibility. I get people mad at me because I don't know the business. I don't want to know the business.

Doug Burke:

You have Baby Blue. It goes to number one. George Strait says to you, "What else you got?"

Aaron Barker:

He did, yeah. His manager did. They signed me immediately after Baby Blue and thought they would get me a record deal as an artist. George seemed to like the way I sing although I've never been fond of it myself. And so for a long time, they actually shocked me for a record deal and I landed on Atlantic Records, proceeded to make probably the worst record ever made in Nashville. I haven't heard them all, but I've got to be in there in the top worst five. It was a terrible record. I was very uncomfortable with it. I thought I could do it. I thought I could go ahead and go out and play the shows and stuff. I'd been on the road for 20 years anyway. They started highlighting my hair, dyeing my beard, and took me over to Banana Republic to buy clothes. I started feeling kind of phony. And then the money thing got in there where they said, "Well, we want this much of the deal." I've never, ever, been musically motivated by money, ever. Money became such an important element of it. I was really uncomfortable in that. I was kind of relieved that the record was so bad because it wasn't going to go anywhere. The video was a little ahead of its time and it got played a lot on TNN or whatever those shows were at the time.

Doug Burke:

What was the song?

Aaron Barker:

It's called A Taste of Freedom. The video guys seemed to love it. It was a Vietnam era song. It was based in the Vietnam era about a guy who went over there and paid for freedom, came back and found out he didn't have his girlfriend anymore. It was a different kind of freedom than he expected. It's kind of a sad story. Bob Orman's critique on it was, "Get a life," because it's that kind of song: A guy that just lost everything. We had soldiers in the video. I didn't make the video. I just wrote the song and stood on a platform and sang and then they put in all the stuff around me. In that process, they staged scenes of soldiers in the jungle. In there were African American soldiers, which is very Vietnam, those guys, man, they stepped up. So it was real but I guess certain people in country music weren't quite ready for that. I took a serious beating for that. I'm not going to repeat what I was told but I knew that day. I was commuting from San Antonio and I went back to the Ramada Inn and almost cried. I was so shocked and disappointed that these people, who are making literally hundreds of millions of dollars, were still in that frame of mind. It stunned me and I knew that day this is done. I'm done with this because I have no idea what I'm up against. That's the last thing I thought I would be up against. Two or three years later, Travis Tritt came out with I Don't Love You Anymore and he not only had a black vet, but he had a disabled, black vet, and featured him in that video and it was fine. But that two or three years just made enough difference. I'm not blaming that for everything. It was a bad record. But that element really shocked me completely and if I could use the language that they used and the references that they used, you would understand why it was so shocking. It wasn't just that, "Oh, you've got black guys in your video." It's the way they presented it to me.

Doug Burke:

You felt they were wrong.

Aaron Barker:

I knew they were wrong. And the record label was fine with it but there were certain parties that just weren't gonna support it.

Doug Burke:

It's hard.

Aaron Barker:

Well, it's up to them. It's your money all the time. It's your name on the record, it's your picture on the record, but there are still people that yank all the chains. That was just a shocker for me. It wasn't the the kiss of death. It wasn't the end game. But it was a part for me that my heart just went, "You know what? I just want to make songs, man, and I'll give them to somebody else to sing."

I got sent home from school one day with a shiner on my eye. Fightin was against the rules and it didn't matter why. When dad got home I told that story just like I'd rehersed. Then stood there on those tremblin' knees and waited for the worst. And he said let me tell you a secret about a father's love. A secret that my daddy said was just between us. He said daddies don't just love their children every now and then. It's a love without end, amen. It's a love without end, amen.

Doug Burke:

Love without End, Amen, which was released by George Strait in 1990, two years after Baby Blue, also went to number one.

Aaron Barker:

It went number one and it was George's first multi-week number one. He had had a lot of number ones but this one stayed for five, six, seven weeks. I don't know, a long time. That was a big leap forward. The CMA and some of those people were trying to make room for the new artists. They do that a lot, where a guy has had a decade of hits and they're ready to move on and they don't focus on them. George Strait had gotten into that little gap where his name stopped coming up at the awards shows so much, and the radio was starting to pull back. That song seemed to come out of nowhere and deliver a message George hadn't really focused on, more of a spiritual depth to it. I don't know if it had anything to do with it, but he was hosting the awards about a year or two later. I think everybody's career wants to do that and rightfully so the industry wants to move forward. Garth Brooks was trying to get out there right at that point. They were just trying to make room for the big guy but George stepped out there and stepped up and maintained his kingdom. He's still King George. There was plenty of room for all of them as it turns out. Love without End was his first multi-week number one.

Doug Burke:

You write a lot of love songs.

Aaron Barker:

I do write a lot of love songs.

Doug Burke:

And this is a love song?

Aaron Barker:

It is a love song. It's kind of a lost love song, but not over a cheating situation or anything like that. It's more of a relationship that can't really happen. It was not a forbidden relationship, but just a relationship that was pretty much fabricated in my head as I guess some loss in my life or something I couldn't have that personified itself as a love song. I try to work off of inspiration so I'm certain that something inspired it, not necessarily a human relationship but something in my life. A lot of my songs are that way. We had a turbulent household for a while when I was pretty young and I'm sure that there are elements in there that I missed and have compensated for by writing about them. Fathers for one thing. When I wrote Love without End, Amen, I've had people come say "Your father must really be something." Well, the reality is, he left when I was three. My mother, who's one of the strongest, bravest, most incredible women I've ever met, people, not just women. She raised those three boys for several years before she remarried and that was so tough. I think Love without End is compensating for that dad. When your dad leaves and you're a kid, you find role models somewhere and of course, I had an uncle who was incredibly, more like a brother. I watched Andy Griffith a lot so he was my father figure. I just put myself in the Opie thing and said, "This is how that interaction would be." That's where Love without End came from. My mother remarried. I had a wonderful stepdad, but I was a little older and didn't bond the way one would with their biological father. So my daddy songs are all filling that void. Kind of painting a picture of what I would like to have had a lot of times.

Doug Burke:

So Love without End, Amen went to number one and so you had number one party?

Aaron Barker:

We did. That was a big one and we celebrated. Then my mother, she, of course never expected a second number one either. None of us ever expected that. But she realized that all of the number one parties were in Nashville. So we had one here that was incredible. The Woolsey Company sure knows how to celebrate these number ones and George was always gracious enough to be part of them. My mother called and said, "You know what, all of the guys you grew up with, all of our neighbors over on the south side and the neighbors that you graduated with. They don't get to see this stuff and celebrate it," so she said, "I'm gonna throw a number one party for you here in San Antonio." And I said, "Mom, don't do that." Because that's thousands of dollars. And she said, "All you have to do is bring your gold records so they can see them and we'll hang them up and let everybody look at the stuff, all your awards and stuff." So I said, "Okay." And I get down there, she's hired a band, she's had it catered by one of the greatest barbecue places in Texas. She really did a great job. Then I found out she had invited George and Erv and I thought mom, "Not gonna happen." But it was nice of her to do. He showed up. He showed up at this number one party in San Antonio with his manager and his wife. All the people I grew up with on the south side and the north side had the monstrous video cameras. This is what, 93 you said? 92? Something like that.

Doug Burke:

1990.

Aaron Barker:

Yeah. And they have those big, oversized video cameras and all of a sudden they're in George's face. They're taking home videos of George Strait at this thing and I'm watching my career completely dissipate because they overwhelmed him. I was embarrassed. I was scared. I couldn't get to him. I couldn't stop them. They were nice, but they were just a little overwhelming. The only person I could get to, of any significance regarding that, was Norma, George's wife. I got to her and I said, "Norma, I am so sorry. If I had known, I would have got security in here." And Norma looked at me and said, "He gets paid pretty good for this stuff." And it just relieved all of that worry and tension that they even realize that. This is part of it and George has always been so great about that. He's always been grateful. You'll go "George, thank you for cutting that song." And he'll go, "Are you kidding me? Thank you for letting me have a song of that caliber." He's always been really gracious like that. It was all kind of new to me. I'd been in it for two or three years and George has always been kind of intimidating to me. We're not buddies. We we don't play golf together. And to me, he's a star and I still get kind of starstruck around him, even now. Like I told you, I'm kind of an introvert and when that happened at that number one party I just was terrified. And Norma calmed it all so quickly. She was so great about it. That's one of my favorite stories about that.

Doug Burke:

They didn't have to call the cops that night?

Aaron Barker:

No, they didn't, man. Everybody was great. It just happened unexpectedly. I overreacted.

Doug Burke:

So, George was still willing to work with you after that. You had another number one at Easy Come, Easy Go.

Aaron Barker:

I did. Easy Come, Easy Go which was a blast.

I was still living in San Antonio. I was a pretty happy guy, playing these happy hours on the Riverwalk, doing a lot of cover music from Waylon and Willie because that's what people that come to San Antonio expect. It's in a little club called The Lone Star Cafe on the Riverwalk. They kind of expect Texas music. I was doing the Willie and Waylon and some of my own. I got a call one day, after the happy hour thing, from the publishers here. They said, "You need to be doing some co-writing." I didn't know what that meant beause the two songs prior to that were both self written. I didn't know what co-writing was. I just wrote them out of inspiration of my own. I had gotten this concept about writing that if I could paint, if I was a visual artist, I would paint. I would take these ideas and these visions in my mind, or whatever I'm looking at, my interpretation of it, and put it on canvas. So I thought of my writing the same way; I can't paint so I use words. I'm gonna take this vision and paint a picture using words. That's how I thought of my writing. When they said, "Co-writing is when we get you with another hit songwriter, and you all get together and write a song." I don't know if I said it out loud, or it just rang in my head real loud, but I've never bought a painting with two signatures at the bottom of it so it didn't make a lot of sense to me. But they said, "That's what we do in publishing. We think of it as networking in the corporate world. We combine resources. Another hit songwriter, their publishing company gets involved. They have connections and we have connections. We get these things done." It became a business venture. They made an appointment for me with a writer, who is now also Hall of Fame writer, Dean Dillon, who had had a lot of Geroge Strait hits. I didn't know him; I knew of him. I got a real cheap hotel room in South Nashville and the next morning, Dean Dillon was knocking on my door. Here's a stranger and he's got a guitar with him. He comes in and he sits down on the floor, and I sat on the floor, and we did a thing I call co-staring because we didn't know each other. We didn't know what to say. Dean finally started talking and said, "Let's go get license plates for my Pontiac." We went riding around. He had restored a '65 Pontiac Bonneville convertible. It's beautiful. So we're styling, we're riding around, we go get license plates. We start talking and Dean is talking about a divorce that he's going through with three young children involved and it was really wearing on him bad. My thinking was, I don't know if Dean's gonna want to write at all because he's having some trouble. I thought, "Man, I just drove all the way from San Antonio to this cheap hotel, we probably ought to try anyway." So I started trying. I said "Dean, why don't we write about what you're talking about." He said, "I don't want to crawl in that dark spot and try to write a song." And I thought man, I'm having trouble here. I brought up the analogy of "it's our painting, we can paint it however we want, maybe the way it could be or should be or the way we wish it was." And he kind of opened up to that idea, as opposed to just writing about how it is. We went back and started playing guitars. Dean has all these beautiful chords and he's such a great melody guy. He gives us a direction and starts rolling out these words and I think it was kind of therapeutic for both of us. We ended up with Easy Come, Easy Go which is a relationship that ends but it ends on "This just didn't work out. Let's just move on." That was so healing for both of us. Ironically, I was getting a divorce at that time too, but I didn't know it yet so it didn't even cross my mind. Then I learned a lot from Dean: how to approach a song more conversationally. The mentors that I had worked with earlier, who were so gracious after my first number one to invite me into their homes, were a little older-school than Dean or than what George did. They were from the early 60s era and the rules were a little bit different in that they like hard rhymes. If you use the word love, you had to use dove or above, you weren't allowed to go enough or tough or anything phonetically close. They counted syllables. Dean almost talks conversationally in his music and that opened up a whole new thing for me. The co-writing thing was such a great lesson. And we wrote Easy Come, Easy Go. That thing went number one and then we had a big number one party on that. We've been, from my perspective, really, really good friends for a very long time and gone through a lot of changes together. Dean is doing so good now and he just keeps writing hits. He's iconic.

Doug Burke:

So one of the things I ask songwriters is talk to me about a song that's on the shelf. In your case, is there a "voice" that you would love to sing this song?

Aaron Barker:

Yeah. When I write, I write more about myself. While I was signed with George's company, I felt an obligation to co-write. That's corporate stuff and its business. I came into this thing writing by myself. Those first couple number ones and some since then I wrote by myself. I feel like I did my obligatory co-writing, and I loved it - the people and the friendships you make. But I have since come back to writing by myself. When I do that, I write the song for the song when I get inspired. I write for the song. Then I cast it. It's kind of like, you read a novel and then you go, you know, Tom Cruise would play this lead part great. You don't consider that when you're writing the novel; You wait until it's written and then you pick your cast. That's how I do my songs. I have one called Then He made Horses.

Doug Burke:

Tell me about the song first and then I want to know who you'd cast.

Aaron Barker:

Well George Strait introduced me to rodeo. I love the rodeo. I used to go every year in San Antonio in February and watch rodeo. But George does this roping thing. They were kind enough to invite me to that, where I got to know these cowboys not just watching from a distance, but watch them prepare, watch them compete, watch them win, watch them lose, watch them interact with each other. I learned that they're athletes for one thing, they're not little hicks from out there on the farm. They're solid as a rock. They're tough guys and gals too. There's barrel riders and barrel racing. I love all that stuff. These are in shape people and I admired that so much, but mostly I admire their relationship with their horses with their animals. It's almost like they were family. It wasn't this is my pet horse. There's a bond there. I admired that bonding between these cowboys, cowgirls, and their horses. Fast forward about 15 years, I got involved with the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, after the BP oil spill or the Deep Horizon. That damaged tourism so much. Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, a woman named Carol Dover, reached out to songwriters here to bring us down to try to rebuild the tourism by putting songwriters in festivals all over the Gulf Coast. It generated a little bit of tourism like that. Through that I got invited to an event in Wellington, Florida. It's a horse community, but it's Polo and dressage, it's not rodeo. It's very upscale elite. These horses are incredible. They come from Belgium and stuff. People shop for months overseas and then have them brought over and go through all this paperwork. As different as that was from the team roping that George had introduced me to, I realized that bond between the rider and the horse was identical. The same passion and respect, mutual between the animal and the handler. That was an eye opener for me. that it's not a cultural thing. It's about that horse. While I was in Wellington, Carol Bellver, who had introduced me to all the stuff from the Florida Restaurant and Lodging, had a horse she had brought over from Belgium named Rocco and that horse did not take to he. She had it for a couple years and it just wasn't working out. She had to sell him. She found a wonderful buyer but she had to part with that horse. The exchange time was while we were in Wellington and watching her part with that horse was incredibly sad, knowing this bond that they had. I was, in my mind, watching this cowboy from Texas, separate himself from his horse, and so I was inspired to write a song. When it calls, you just have to do it. It kind of speaks to that bond, that it's a lifelong bond. Basically God made everything in six days and then he made horses for cowboys. When he made Cowboys, he gave them this tough life so he gave them horses to ride that trail with. It's a tribute to horses and also the people that love them. I love the song. Commercially, I don't know it's three-quarter time which they would call a waltz and they would hate it. It's really six-eight time which is similar. I would love to have Willie Nelson sing that song. I think George could do it. I mean, George can sing anything. But Willie is more of a cowboy, cowboy and George is a rodeo cowboy. There's kind of two different personalities there. Willie is the kind of guy you think he was born maybe 100 years late because he would have fit into the Wild West really well. He loves that and he's good at it. George is a rodeo type cowboy, current, modern, farm-raised, that kind of cowboy. The horse thing is more of a Western type cowboy thing than a rodeo cowboy. So yeah, Willie.

Doug Burke:

The question I had in my mind is have you written any song for Neil Diamond to play?

Aaron Barker:

God, no. I've just been inspired by him.

Doug Burke:

There's no song in your repertoire that you would say, "God, I would just love it if Neil Diamond sang this."

Aaron Barker:

No because I'll never be good enough, I'll never feel good enough about a song to even show it to him, much less pitch it to him. He doesn't need my help, neither does Willie. They both write wonderfully, which was a blessing with George. He can write and he does write, but he didn't write a lot of his records. That was good for all of us here in Nashville.

Doug Burke:

So one of your rodeo songs is I Can Still Make Cheyenne by George Strait.

Aaron Barker:

Yes it is.

Aaron Barker:

During that time, of the 90s, early 80s, that was a prevalent aspect of country music. It wasn't so dance driven and party driven like it is now. It's kind of like a big frat party out there now. Everybody's having fun. The writers and artists, a lot of the artists of that time, were covering life experiences that were maybe a little more serious than a frat party. If you look at Garth's If Tomorrow Never Comes, if you look at The Dance, these were were pretty serious topics. My experience with country music, the market overall, was that when I had a bad time in my life, I could turn on the radio and know that I wasn't the first one to ever have that situation. As a writer, I feel there's some responsibility to send something out there that might sound really negative, like a breakup, but it can have a very positive effect on people. I experienced that, I mean, I'd hear The Dance, even though I was really sad and maybe having trouble at home in my marriage and I'd hear The Dance and as sorrowful as that song can be, it's really a positive thing. I realized I'm in The Dance, I'm part of The Dance right now. This is how The Dance goes. I feel a responsibility as a writer, it's subconscious, to try to not put anything out there that would damage or offend people. I wish more people thought that way but I think there is some cultural responsibility at least if you're going to be in country music. It's an American art form, a folk type, and I think it should focus on the values that Americans have. We have certain moral directions and yeses and noes. They're changing all the time but to sort of formulate that into something musical and into a story is where I started relating it more to my years in the band instead of trying to think like a rodeo guy that called home. I thought, "You know what? I've lived that myself." So yeah, I had a good co-writer. And I guess people look at that and go, "Oh, Erv Woolsey, that's why George cut it." That is not correct at all. Being part of George Strait's organization was sometimes a deficit because they were very, very critical. George always took the best song. He didn't care who wrote it. He didn't know who wrote them. I heard, and I can't validate this or verify it, but when he was traveling by bus, he was listening to like 4000 songs a year and recording 10. He never overcut; He cut 10 songs. If you got a call on Monday or Tuesday and they said, "George Strait just cut your song," you knew you were on that record because he didn't cut 11 and then drop one off. A lot of artists will overcut and labels do that because then they have an extra album later. George never did that. He kept it 10 at a time for a long, long time. He may still do that, I don't know. That's a lot of songs to listen to: 4000 songs to get one. That song was just in the pile, I guess like everybody else's. Yes, it's got his manager's name on it but he was a legitimate contributor to the song. It wasn't just put on there to make points. Erv and I were very good friends, spent a lot of time together visiting, talking, and hanging out. Just because he doesn't sit down and craft out a song doesn't mean he doesn't have a good idea. Any writer will tell you that. Some of the best ideas come from just being in a restaurant. Somebody will say something and you go, "Oh my god." So that's kind of how that happened.

Doug Burke:

I like this song because it reminds me of pay-phones.

Aaron Barker:

Yeah.

Doug Burke:

There's a generation that doesn't even know what you're talking about when you mention a payphone, but there's a payphone in the story.

Aaron Barker:

That's funny you would bring that up because I was told, "Be careful what technology you use on a song." The guy that told me this said, "I wrote a song had a code-a-phone in it." I'm going, "What in the world is a code-a-phone?" Well, it's an answering machine. He said, "By the time I demoed the song, they were out of style completely.

Doug Burke:

What in the world is an answering machine?

Aaron Barker:

Yeah, what is that? So now we have message; you get your voicemail. That never crossed my mind with Cheyenne. It was just so natural to go, "I left that phone dangling off the hook on a payphone." Now, 15 years later, it didn't even take that long for payphones become sketchy. I take pictures of them when I see them so I can show young people what I'm talking about. I'll take the receiver off the hook and say, "This is a phone dangling off the hook." They're hard to find. That's why America is in so much trouble. We don't have Superman. He has no place to change anymore. All the phone booths are gone.

Doug Burke:

I think if someone wrote this song today that the wife would be texting the rodeo cowboy that there was someone new.

Aaron Barker:

Yeah. Well, again, I was writing off of inspiration. It's not a big leap to go from a rock 'n' roll guy, on the road all the time. That life and the rodeo life are very, very parallel. Although rock 'n' rollers aren't near physically as rodeo guys. But our lifestyle, in that we're gone a lot, that we are passionate about it, that we will forsake that comfortable lifestyle. It's really not a choice. We don't forsake it, we just have to do this. I know that rodeo guys are same way. It's not a choice. The woman that says, "You need to choose,"doesn't understand that guy or that person. It's not just guys, I keep using guys. There are a lot of great women or rodeo people. It wasn't a hard leap for me to take my experience on the road as a rock 'n' roll player and insert it, insert cowboy here, because it's the same kind of life. The story is accurate, except that mine was more of a music experience than a rodeo experience. But same thing. And my days on the road, when I wanted to call home, I had to stop the van or the bus or the car, whatever we were in, and find a payphone at a gas station. I'd put in my quarters and call home and it would ring, then ding and I put it in more quarters. That's all a thing of the past now. I think it goes fast but I never dreamed when I wrote Cheyenne that payphones would be out of the conversation at any time in this foreseeable future. It kind of dated the song.

Doug Burke:

That went to number four on the country charts.

Aaron Barker:

Yeah. That's an odd thing too. I had a lot of number ones, but I think the term "hit" is actually formulated from the word impact, when a song had an impact on people. Then they got this number system. But if you look historically, a lot of the biggest, most impactful songs weren't ever number one. They were like number 15, and stuff, and this was kind of proving that out to me. Cheyenne was not a number one song but historically, it's still one of the most popular songs. There are big artists and you hear later on they've never had a number one song yet you know every word of every song they ever did. You go, "Are you kidding me?" But yeah, I don't go much by numbers.

Doug Burke:

Right, right. I think this song has aged well in the sense that there's a story arc to it. The rodeo cowboy gets the bad news and it's not unexpected.

Aaron Barker:

No, it's pretty natural, kind of like it happened before maybe. But what I love about it, he goes, "Well, that's alright. He goes right back to his rodeo blood." That's what his life is.

Doug Burke:

So you had a lot of other songs recorded by people other than George Strait. One of my favorites is What About Now?

Aaron Barker:

Yeah. What About Now. That's a funny story if you have time.

Doug Burke:

Yeah, I got all day.

Aaron Barker:

I was watching TV one night and George Strait came on the TV. He's leaning on a Chevy Silverado truck. The truck was pretty and he was pretty and it all looked good, but he wasn't singing. Man, George Strait is a singer. He was just talking about this truck and I thought, "If I wrote something really cool about trucks," and I'm not a good on-demand guy, but I thought "Man, maybe I can find some inspiration on traveling or transportation or something that would relate to that type of a commercial and make it really good and get him to sing it in the next commercial." So I worked on this thing for the longest time, even called in friends on it. We wrote it, we demoed it, George came to Nashville, and I made an appointment to go play. He hated it and he said, "I'm not singing that thing." And I went, "Oh, no. All that work down the drain." Then I actually ended up locating the General Motors guy that was in charge of that ad. I was thinking, "Well, if I get him on board, maybe he'll influence Strait a little bit." He hated it so here this thing sits at home in my fire hazard drawer - the drawer with all the songs nobody liked. It just sat there for the longest time. Then one day a friend called me from a studio in downtown Nashville and asked me to bring him a CD, a copy of something we'd written. I drove in and I walked into his studio. I was dropping it off. He's in there with another friend of mine, it's Ron Harvin and Anthony Smith. They're trying to write this song together and I drop off the CD. They start explaining that they're trying to write this big power ballad. I think it was right after Lone Star had done Amazed, that big power ballad. So they were trying to get into that vein because we all knew Richie McDonald and Dean Sams, we knew them all really well. They were thinking, "If we get a good song, we'll get to record." But their drum machine, that they were new to, was playing a fast beat and would not slow down. It was broken, it was malfunctioning, but they couldn't slow it down to get to this power ballad beat. It's on this tempo thing. And they're really frustrated and they're telling me their dilemma, and I'm starting to go, "You know what, that old Chevy commercial that nobody liked would go really good with that beat and if we changed some lyrics around, we can get to the story y'all are trying to tell." So we just started talking about this. And we took a broken drum machine, a broken Chevy commercial and a broken power ballad and ended up with a song called What About Now. I think they were going to call it How About Now. That hit me kind of sideways like how now brown cow? It just sounded a little too nursery rhymeish or something. So I said, "How about What About Now instead of How About Now?" That was no big deal to anybody, just my own personal preference. So we wrote that song and we did a great demo on it. Then Lonestar recorded it. That doggone thing went number one. I think it stayed seven weeks at number one. It was a big hit for Lonestar. We were all thrilled to death because Ron and Anthony are two of my dearest friends and to have a hit with them. That was kind of new to them. And boy, you talk about celebrating...

Doug Burke:

So you had number one party?

Aaron Barker:

Oh yeah, we did. I think we had a couple of them because they were ASCAP writers and I was BMI. So we had one with BMI and one over there at ASCAP. It was a great time because when it happens with just friends you know. I don't know if it was their first number one but it was close to it. And so it was all new. We just had such a big time. And the irony of the whole thing is about a year after that song came off the charts, guess who called to see if they could use it for a commercial? It was actually Toyota. But Toyota used that thing for about a year. They went to each region at a time across the country with it for about a year. It got to be full circle. It was going to be a commercial. It had to go through the number one selling route to become the commercial that it was meant to be in.

Doug Burke:

Did they use the lyrics or just the melody?

Aaron Barker:

The whole little chorus. What about ow, How about tonight. They talked about Toyota's the whole time.

Doug Burke:

You need a Toyota. What about now? How about tonight?

Aaron Barker:

I just couldn't believe it. It got to be what it was supposed to be and I got to share it with some really dear friends and we all celebrated and had a good time.

Doug Burke:

I always let the artists pick the songs. Is there another song you like to talk about or do you want me to just ask you about stuff?

Aaron Barker:

Oh, you can ask me and if I think of something I'll tell you about it. You mentioned something earlier about the female in the Cheyenne song.

Doug Burke:

Yes.

Aaron Barker:

It sets up with this guy, he knows something's wrong in his household with his spouse. He knows it's wrong and so he's walking down the hall and they kind of cross paths and she said, You know, we need to talk." He kind of knows where this is going. And she says, "I need to tell you this man. I've kept it to myself but there's somebody else and it's someone you don't know. And someone you haven't talked to in a long time and you don't know him." And it turns out, it's her, she's leaving him for her. It's called I'm Leaving You for Me. It kind of hits him really hard because he's got all these suspicions. She's got a guy on the side, she's leaving me for another man and she just turned right around and says, "That's not it at all. I'm leaving you for me." That's a hard one to argue with. When your girlfriend or wife says, "You know what? This ain't about another person. I'm just leaving you for my own good." I think it's a powerful song but I'd like to see it get cut someday.

Doug Burke:

So Aaron Tippin cut that.

Aaron Barker:

He did. I shouldn't have forgot that but I did. And you know why? This is an interesting little thing. When Aaron Tippin actually went into the public and said, "I'm looking for country music." That was not a real popular thing to say because everywhere we traditional writers were taking our songs everybody was saying, "Well, that's too country." And my response was, "I'm sorry, I thought I was in Nashville." But it was an era that it was just too country. It probably still is that way. But that song kept getting that back - "That's too country." And here comes Aaron TIppin, I love his music and his wife, too, they're great writers themselves and great singers. I loved Aaron's work and all of a sudden he's in there asking specifically for country music. I was so proud of him and he got that song and he actually cut it. Of all times for him to go a little outside of traditional. I was a little disappointed in his track on it because I think if Aaron Tippin would have just did the typical Tippin on it, it might've done a little better. I don't know what it did on the charts.

Doug Burke:

It went to 17. It was 1999. I still think if you make the top 20, top 40.

Aaron Barker:

Well, I guess it is. It's just such a good sentiment that i would like more people to hear that. Some women's group out of Colorado picked up on it and used it for a theme for abused women, battered women. It's good for that. It's got the strength in it, where women go, "You know what, that's enough. I'm leaving you for my own good." That is such a powerful message, not because I wrote it, it's just a good way to say it without preaching. And Tippin did. I apologize Aaron, I forgot about that. I have a good memory, it's just short. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't more traditional. I expected the typical Aaron Tippin.

Doug Burke:

So today, 2019, 20 years later, if you could pick a voice to record this song.

Aaron Barker:

I'd go for Blake Shelton.

Doug Burke:

You wouldn't go for a woman?

Aaron Barker:

Well, it's written from the male perspective, but I guess it could be. I've never looked at it that way. I don't know if it'd be preaching if a woman did it.

Doug Burke:

The girl group is doing it in Colorado.

Aaron Barker:

Well, I guess it could. I'll look at that lyrically and see how that translates over. But to me, it was the guy getting kind of shut down on it. He's thinking all this stuff and you feel that with him and then she goes, "Not about that, man. It's about me." So yeah, either way, but I would pick Garth or George, a traditional singer. Blake Shelton's a good friend of mine. I don't know that he would get that serious with a song. He's kind of a fun guy, but he does sometimes. There are a lot of great singers out there. There are a lot of new ones coming in too that I'm really excited about.

Doug Burke:

You've written some Christmas songs.

Aaron Barker:

I have.

Doug Burke:

That's a different kind of task. That is a task where you're sort of being dictated by what you have to write about.

Aaron Barker:

Well, you got your subject cut out for you. Also you are never gonna make much money on it. They play them for two weeks a year. So there's no chart, there's no airplay thing. I's all minimal. It's about the season. It's just about having fun or telling an important story that is good for that two weeks. I wrote a song when I was really young about things going on in my own household with my family, the Christmas cookie making and so the song is called Christmas Cookie. All I did is one of those little cassettes like I told you about earlier where I just put it on a cassette and kind of leave it. And I never thought much about it again. I'd play the song once in a while, but not the casette. Lo and behold, 25 years after I wrote it, Strait's office called and said, "Do you have any Christmas songs?" And I said, "No, I don't." And I didn't, that I knew of but my wife reminded me that I had that Christmas Cookie song. I said, "Man when I wrote that, I was a kid. I didn't know anything about writing. It's kind of silly and I don't hear George singing some of those words and stuff." I got real analytical about it. She said, "Look, that's my mother's favorite song that you ever wrote. Just send it to him." So I did and he cut that song on a special release, Target stores Christmas record. I was blown away. George came to me and he said, "You know, that's going to be a classic someday." He said, "It's going to take a long time because they only play them two weeks a year. But they're gonna play that every year until it just becomes a standard." I think he said standard, not a classic. But lo and behold, about two years later, one of my favorite groups of all time from right here in Nashville, the Oak Ridge Boys recorded that song and I went, "Wow, George Strait, Oak Ridge Boys. Does it get any better than that?" That doubled the airplay at Christmas time because some play Oak Ridge and some play George and some play both. The last time it got recorded, that's when I knew I had arrived as a songwriter, when the guys out of Louisiana called Duck Dynasty, put it on their Christmas record. An album called Duck the Halls and so it got recorded by three - George is huge, Oak Ridge Boys - Hall of Fame stuff, and then Duck Dynasty, who at that time were just household names. They still are. I guess, I don't keep up with that. What an honor to have this song I wrote when I was a kid and had kind of just written off because of the time span. And all of a sudden, it gets played now. I'll play it at a show, even in July, and that's the one people go, "I had no idea you wrote that." They really don't do that at Christmas. "Here's a song that was written by Gershwin." They don't do that and theu dont do, "Here's one that Gene Autry wrote for Chris." They don't do that, they just play them. So people don't really know where they come from. Then I'll play that live and people go, "I had no idea. We've been been playing that for Christmas for years." Christmas songs are interesting. I've had a couple of them recorded. It's not a commercial venture. For me, that was completely by accident but I did write one after that intentionally that George recorded as well. And I love it too.

Doug Burke:

That's Old Time Christmas.

Aaron Barker:

Yeah. It's a beautiful song. And that made that same album. I was blown away because George goes in and cuts records in three days and you just kind of hold your breath if he's got your song on hold. When he came out of that studio, he had cut two of my songs and I was stunned because I didn't even think I had any Christmas stuff.