Byron Hill Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke, and today we're here with Byron Hill. Byron Hill was born in Georgia and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His father taught him guitar and how to play the Carter family songs, widely considered the roots of country music. Soon, he was covering John Cash, Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson.
While attending Appalachian State University, he began performing in the coffee houses in resort areas around there and joined a trio in 1974 that failed. With his deep knowledge of the foundations of country music, he began consulting for Songwriter Magazine, and began sending off his own compositions to music publishers who were listed in the pages of the magazine. He started traveling to Nashville and relocated there in 1978, where he was signed by publisher ATV Music. When his song Picking Up Strangers by Johnny Lee charted in 1981, Byron had his breakthrough. He's gone on to write 34 Top 10 songs on over 700 recordings and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame in 2018.
Doug Burke:
So another romantic song of yours is I Can't Remember Never Loving You. This is probably my favorite double negative title in the history of music.
Byron Hill:
Good, good. Well, I guess the English class and English teacher somewhere back in the fifth grade or whatever paid off, knowing what that is for me. Yeah. I was writing with a guy from Halifax, a Canadian who was coming... He still comes to town trying to get things going. And we had been connected by a mutual friend up in Toronto that suggested that we get together, a publisher up there. So I got together with Ian and we were writing one day and this song just fell out. So like a lot of songs, you really don't know what might happen. So it was just one that we were piling up, stuff we'd written over the course of a year there and a few things. And I had sent it just thinking it might work as something for the series Nashville. I had sent it to the music supervisor for the TV series. And I thought, "Well, that's that," you know? I pitched another song to the series, probably nothing will happen. Because that's about all you can do is send it. You can't really call and say, "Hey, did you hear my song?" It's just not the way that works. They're too busy, those people. So anyway, about six months later, I get a call from her and she says, "Hey, I'm calling about this song. We got to have this song now." I said, "Okay, well, great." And so she said, "So I need you to call everybody and get it cleared because we're in a hurry. We got to..." And of course cleared in the music business means make sure everybody's on board. Make sure everybody's cool with what we want to pay. Make sure no one else has recorded it, that there's no conflicts out there. She said, "We're going to record this this week with Charles Esten and Connie Britton," who were in the show as Deacon, the character Deacon, and Rayna. So she said, "This is going to be big. This is going to be a featured song on this episode." So anyway, I never really watched the show that much. I watched it but I didn't continue watching the show when it first came out because I felt like I was at work.
Doug Burke:
You live it, everyday. Why do you want to watch that, right?
Byron Hill:
I don't want to sit there and be critical of my own business every day, and the stuff that we do. I just sort of felt like, "Oh, this is a little too close to home. I'm just going to..." Sometimes I'm frustrated anyway, I don't want to get frustrated watching this, but the show was doing well. And so when I got this call, I watched it and I was just blown away by the performance that Charles Esten and Connie Britton did. It was season five, episode 11. Doesn't sound like somebody who doesn't watch the show. I mean, I know that I probably know which minute in the episode it came on. It came on right at the end. But it was the scene where Rayna had been in an automobile accident, and she was no longer there and he had found some video tapes of her and decided to add his voice in the studio and that was all part of the storyline of the TV series, that episode. And it was very poignant. He was in the studio, her video was playing on the screen behind him as he was adding his parts. And it was really, really effective and made it onto the soundtrack album for season five and quite proud of it. That's another one that I play a lot when I'm doing my songwriter shows because I always kind of poll the audience. "Did you watch the series?" And it's amazing how many people have watched that series. And so, it goes over pretty well.
Doug Burke:
So some of your early songs ended up in movies and then this ends up in a hit series about Nashville. So-
Byron Hill:
Yeah. I liked those. I like getting things into film because it pays... The pay is more certain than waiting for something to come out on radio and hoping it goes up. You get paid right up front, so that's good. And it's exciting. I kind of like having songs and films and TV. I don't have a lot of them, but it's cool. And sometimes the songs end up better than the film, I've had a lot of that, you know? Where you end up years later saying, "Don't go rent the movie, but the song within it," you know? But Nashville, that particular season in episode five, I'm really, really, really proud of.
Doug Burke:
I thought this was a song about moms.
Byron Hill:
Really? That's great that you can relate it that way.
Doug Burke:
But it's not?
Byron Hill:
It's a love song, really.
Doug Burke:
It's a love song, but it's not... because your mom is the one that you can't remember never loving. Because from the moment you're born, you have this attachment with your mom.
Byron Hill:
You know what? That's interesting. I'd have to comb back through the lyric to see if anything conflicts with that. But see, now that's what... I like that. The fact that someone can relate to it a different way than we actually wrote it. You know?
Doug Burke:
So you were writing in it, not about moms, but-
Byron Hill:
It was about-
Doug Burke:
A girl?
Byron Hill:
Our gals, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Your gals?
Byron Hill:
Yeah, my wife.
Doug Burke:
Your wife at the time.
Byron Hill:
His wife, I'm sure-
Doug Burke:
Tony's wife?
Byron Hill:
No, Ian's wife.
Doug Burke:
Ian's wife, sorry.
Byron Hill:
I'm sure that Ian had her in mind. And when we were writing it, drawing from that kind of experience, you know?
Doug Burke:
So you write a great love song to the girl that you love and you bring it home and play it for her?
Byron Hill:
Well, I think I can speak for Ian on this and probably most songwriters, our wives are so used to all this. You get a new song and you bring it home, and I think they've heard so many fictitious songs that you've come up with that it's really, when you tell them a song might be inspired by them or whatever, I don't know if it hits home with them quite the way you'd like it to. They go, "Oh, okay, well who's going to cut it?" Well, we'll see. All of the sudden, it takes on a different meaning, you know? It's like, "Do you think we can get it cut?" But yeah. I mean, I love coming up with something that's inspired by my wife or my daughter or whatever, or my dad. I've written songs that way too. But-
Doug Burke:
So you're saying you hoped the reaction would have been better when you brought it to your wife?
Byron Hill:
That seems to happen a lot.
Doug Burke:
But then it gets made and it becomes a hit later, and then she tells everybody that that song is about me?
Byron Hill:
Yeah, well-
Doug Burke:
After the fact, or how does it work?
Byron Hill:
Well, I think, I think most wives or spouses of songwriters, let me put it that way. I think most spouses of songwriters know that we make a lot of stuff up, and that's kind of the general reaction.
Doug Burke:
It's part of the job, is making stuff.
Byron Hill:
Yeah, part of the job is making stuff up.
Doug Burke:
I Can't Remember Never Loving You, I just think that's a great title.
Byron Hill:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
It's a great song. And yeah, no, I really, when I read this the first time I thought this is about how he feels about his mom. And I was going to ask you, "Is it not a mom song or a mom song?" And you're telling me it's not a mom song.
Byron Hill:
Well, next Mother's Day, I think that I will play it for my mom and tell her it's about her.
Doug Burke:
There you go. Maybe we'll get some more spins on the radio, on...
Byron Hill:
Why not? It could be about a dog, too I guess.
Doug Burke:
"The only hand I've ever held onto," I mean, that's your mom.
Byron Hill:
Yeah, could be.
Doug Burke:
From-
Byron Hill:
No, that's great. I'm glad you read that into it, because that's great when a song can do that. It's sort of like a writer's trick that is sort of like something that, in this particular case, we didn't consciously do it, but a lot of times we do kind of make a song just enough where it's not necessarily about one situation. A lot of times when you find yourself writing a song and it's too genderized, you can change the personal pronouns in it so that anyone could sing it about anybody. Whether it's a guy singing a song about a girl or a girl singing a song about a guy. So these are things you do as a writer sometimes along the way through the writing process to make a song more pitchable, more-
Doug Burke:
Universal.
Byron Hill:
... universal, exactly. I mean, if you've got a song that only a girl can sing, I mean, you've really kind of limited down to half the market. So why not change those personal pronouns to make it where... or the tense, to make it work where anyone could sing it to anyone, including their mother or their dog.
Doug Burke:
So Connie and Charles are actors and actresses, and not per se classic singer-songwriters.
Byron Hill:
They are, first, I think they're both first actors, but I think that Charles, more than Connie, has really pushed his singing career too. I don't know that she has at all, but he has.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
Byron Hill:
He's toured as a singer between projects, I guess. I've really tried to get together with him. I would love to get together with him and write some time, but I haven't really been able to break through on that level yet, but I guess maybe he's been too busy with stuff, but I like his sound. I think he's got a cool sound and he's certainly a good looking guy. So, I mean, he's got a shot, you know? I mean, to me, he seems like he could be another George Strait or something.
Doug Burke:
Oh, yeah.
Byron Hill:
But without the hat, kind of maybe appeal to a different audience a little bit.
Doug Burke:
So I like to ask the songwriters who sit down with me, talk about songs that might be recorded earlier in your career that you'd like to see recorded by a contemporary voice. And so if you could pick any song in your... that you've written and pick the dream voice today to record it, do you have one?
Byron Hill:
Oh, man. Well, the tough part about answering that question is I've got a bunch of things that I think have not been... have not seen the light of day, like they should, you know? And I think every writer can say that. So, I probably have a dozen songs that I feel like were perfect for George Strait and whether they were pitched to him or not, or whether they were pitched at the wrong time or whatever, I don't know. But for one reason or another, they just haven't been cut.
Doug Burke:
So what's number one on that list for George?
Byron Hill:
I've got a song that is really one of my favorite tunes that not many people have heard, but I've put it on one of my CDs. It's called My Daughter's Father. And it's just a really good song. It's one of those songs I think someone should record, so.
Doug Burke:
And it's about?
Byron Hill:
Well, it's about in her eyes, I don't have to walk on water. I don't have to shoot for the moon or whatever. I don't have to do big things. All I have to do is be my daughter's father, so that's the idea. And I think it's a really good song and it's waiting, waiting to be recorded, I guess, by someone. It was recorded. I will to be fair, a great singer in a big artist in Canada put it out as a single, and he did a wonderful job. A guy named Gord Bamford. He's not really known down here the States, but he's huge up there. And he did a great job on it.
Doug Burke:
I have a daughter and I think that it's a real special relationship, and I feel bad for parents who just have boys. Because girls rock.
Byron Hill:
Yeah, yeah. My daughter came along with me the last two days on two shows that I did. I just do the writer kind of shows and she was there, just wanted to hang out with me. So she went with me and it was really great having her alongside. So yeah, she's 34 now though, she's not a kid anymore. But she's around.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Does she have daughters of her own?
Byron Hill:
No, not yet.
Doug Burke:
Not yet, not yet? You're not a grandpa yet?
Byron Hill:
No, not yet. Not yet. I'm helping her look around. I'm keeping my eyes open too for the right guy. Every time I meet one in the music business, I kind of go, "Hmm, do you know this guy?" And she'll say, "No, no. Can you send me a link to his page?" It's a whole different thing, but she's picky. I think that's the problem. She's very picky, but she'll find the right guy someday.
Doug Burke:
Next one we want to talk about is Nothing On But The Radio. This was a hit for Gary Allen. This also went to number one.
Byron Hill:
Yeah. Right. Well, I like to preface the song story with a little bit about Gary, because I met Gary through a friend out in California, who said, "You got to come out here and hear this guy." And so I happened to be in Los Angeles for an event, I believe it was the ACM Awards that year. I was out there for some big music thing and I believe that's what it was for. But I had arranged to go to Downey during my trip and see Gary play in a club there. I was kind of excited to go to Downey too, because Downey, I've always liked all kinds of music, but The Carpenters were always great in my mind.
I thought, "Man, if I could just meet Richard Carpenter someday," or whatever, I thought, "Man, that was such a great producer, he was." And of course, his sister was an amazing singer. And so I thought, "Well, this is cool. I'm going to get to see what Downey's like." Well, I didn't see much of Downey and I saw a lot of a dive bar there, listening to Gary play. And so after the show, Gary and I stepped outside and Gary said, "Hey, is there something you can do for me in Nashville?" And I said, "Well, let me start sending you some songs. I mean, that's a good way to start. If you like something, I can maybe send you the tracks and you can put your vocal on it and let's see what happens." So that's what we did. He picked four songs and I sent him the tracks and he went into a little studio in LA and added his voice. And I didn't think they sounded right. They sounded pretty good, but I didn't think they were in the right key. So I told him, I said, "Look, if you can come up with a little bit of money, come to Nashville. We'll do it for the bare bones cost of the studio, the engineer, and some musicians. And we'll go in and see what we can do with these four songs and cut them in your key and just make them... make it your record. You know? So we did. And then when I got in my photo session and got all that done, and then I started carting them around to some record labels and within a short amount of time, well, it was really that week, four labels were interested. So to make the long story short, we signed him to Decca Records. Decca Records gave me a guarantee that I could work on it. I could be his producer, but there was a co-producer going to be put with me, the head of A&R at Decca at the time. So, that was fine. Mark Wright and I co-produced the first three albums for Decca. And so then musical chairs happened at Decca, MCA, Mercury. They all kind of went through this big merger thing and I was out as the producer and... but Gary and I stayed friends and these things happen. So I always felt like when he recorded Nothing On But The Radio, it was kind of him returning the favor, because he had always liked the song. He had heard the song earlier and loved it. And so he finally recorded it. I wrote the song with Brice Long and Odie Blackmon, and it's an old Marilyn Monroe quote. Marilyn has been a good source I think, for song titles. So anyway, we wrote this tune and Gary cut it and I just couldn't believe how cool it sounded. You know? So it ended up doing really well for Gary and came out at a tough time for Gary. It was when he was going through some stuff with his family and it was a very scary moment. We didn't know how the record was going to do, but somehow it just kept going and it ended up being number one for two weeks.
Doug Burke:
And did you have a number one party?
Byron Hill:
We did. We did. We had a number one party downtown at one of the honky tonks downtown, that was probably the most exciting number one party I've ever been to because it was just loud and fun and a lot of people there. So that was a completely different kind of number one party than some of the others, which are usually held in lobbies of buildings and things like that. But this was a pretty wild party, and fun. And family and friends were there, it was great.
Doug Burke:
It was right on Broadway here?
Byron Hill:
Down on Broadway. I think it was in Robert's. I'm not sure which club it was in. I have to remember, but Robert's is still there. I believe that's where it was.
Doug Burke:
But it was fun?
Byron Hill:
Oh, man.
Doug Burke:
In 2004?
Byron Hill:
Yeah, and Gary was eating it up and having a blast. So I run into Gary now and then. Great guy.
Doug Burke:
So you wrote this with Odie and Brice. Talk to me about the co-writing process on this one.
Byron Hill:
So I was over at Reba's company at the time, and I remember we got together in one of Reba's writing rooms and it just sort of fell out. I mean, it was like any other writing appointment. I mean, we were writing together anyway, the three of us, on a lot of songs at the time. So it was just one of those, you know? It didn't really stand out as anything all that special. It was just another good song that we thought might get cut eventually.
Doug Burke:
It's a love song.
Byron Hill:
It is. And it takes some risks in there. It's kind of got some sexuality stuff in it, which is kind of cleaned up and done the way it should be for radio, I guess. And interesting little backstory on that, before the record came out, my mom was really getting frustrated because I had not had a hit in a while. And I guess it had been a few years or something, I don't know. But anyway, she was really ready for me to have another hit so she could talk about it at the grocery store, you know? And so this one came out and she was really proud. She could tell all her friends at the grocery store about it. Well, about six months later, she calls me and she says, "I finally got that song." I said, "What song, Mom?" She said, "That Nothing On But The Radio. It's kind of embarrassing. I didn't know it was about that." I said, "Well, Mom, yeah. What did you think it was about? You didn't really think it was about turning on the radio, did you?" But anyway, she's... It's funny, she's 93. She's still with us, and I like telling that story because it's just so her. Kind of went over her head there for a few months but she was proud of the song. I don't know if she's proud of it anymore but it's a funny story.
Doug Burke:
So was there anybody in your life that this was inspired by at that time? Were you enamored with someone? Or you and Odie and Brice were talking about-
Byron Hill:
No. Three writers just got down and wrote a clever song, is kind of what it was.
Doug Burke:
That's it, huh?
Byron Hill:
Sometimes, there's no... I mean-
Doug Burke:
There's no motivational or-
Byron Hill:
Well-
Doug Burke:
There's no muse?
Byron Hill:
Yeah, I mean-
Doug Burke:
In every song?
Byron Hill:
Yeah. I mean, we were grown boys, so we kind of knew, grown men. So we knew how to make the song steamy, let's put it that way. But no, it wasn't about anyone in particular I don't think.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, in this process, I've discovered a lot of the songwriters are grown boys.
Byron Hill:
Yeah. I often say a lot of it, a lot of writing is... People ask me that all the time, "How were you inspired to write this or that?" And a lot of times I say, "Well, sometimes it's as much perspiration as it is inspiration, you know? You just got to roll up your sleeves and work at writing and use all the knowledge you have and make it work." It's not always inspiration.
Doug Burke:
Sometimes perspiration?
Byron Hill:
That's right.
Doug Burke:
So Politics, Religion, and Her is one of your later catalog songs, right?
Byron Hill:
Well, it was written about 1995, I think-
Doug Burke:
Oh, early.
Byron Hill:
... somewhere in there. '94. Yeah, that song is one of my favorites. When you sit down and write with someone for the first time, someone you respect and you've heard their songs and you kind of go, "Okay, I really got to do good today because I've got to be on today because I'm writing with somebody that I highly respect, and I want it to go well." Well, that's what happened when Tony Martin and I got together and wrote this song. I don't know if he felt that, but I did. We got together and I really wanted to come up with something good. And I can't remember who came up with the title, but it was one of those titles that sort of... I like to say, "If a title's good enough, it'll write itself," which is of course not true. But as a writer, it sort of feels like that sometimes. The title really kind of tells you what to do. And Tony is one of those writers that he can see around corners long before a lot of writers can. He's a real brilliant guy. He knows what a song needs to do before you even get there, to this corner or whatever you're at. And so we wrote this song very fast. It was probably within about 45 minutes, we had the song and we pitched it directly to the pluggers right away, as soon as we finished writing it. And it was like, "Get this thing wrapped up quick. We got to get this out there." You know? So it was that kind of panic on the song. They loved it. And it just had that cuttable quality. You just kind of knew. And again, it was a different time. It was in '94, '95. Back then, you knew when you came up with something that clever and that well supported by the lyric and that well-written, and I don't brag about my songs that way, but you just know when you've got one that you know is going to go out and get on hold pretty quick. And that was one of those. It's not that way anymore, really. But back then in '94, '95, you could come up with a great song and you kind of had a feeling your publisher could get it on hold pretty quick. These days, not so much I don't think, because so many artists want to write. It's just a little different now, I think. But that song did end up getting on hold right away and cut by Sammy Kershaw, which turned out to be the perfect voice for it. Sam, he just felt that song and did a great job on it. And to this day, when I go out and play shows, I do a lot of shows and people always respond to that song. Even though it didn't go Top Five, I don't even think it went Top 10. Yeah. But it did great out there at radio. And that song kind of taught me a lesson that it doesn't matter if songs go number one, really. It's what people remember. I mean, if you've got a song that's an impact song, it can go to number 15 and be an impact song, something that people... that really makes people remember the artist, and it's something that people want to hear at the artist's shows and hear at writer's nights. And Politics, Religion and Her is one of those that people seem to want to hear, you know? And it didn't go nearly as high as something like Picking Up Strangers, or Foolhardy Memory. I've got this thing about number one songs. I really don't like to count them. I used to, but that song right there is probably the reason. Sort of like sort of like asking... just because your children, one of your kids didn't go to college or whatever it is, does that make them worse than the ones that did go to college? So, I mean, it's sort of like Politics, Religion and Her, I love that song as much as anything I've written, you know? So.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, they're all your children.
Byron Hill:
That's right. That's right.
Doug Burke:
You have to love them the same.
Byron Hill:
Exactly. Exactly. So just because they didn't go number one, I think just feeling the audience's desire for that song makes me really super proud of it, even though it didn't go that high in the chart.
Doug Burke:
So this is a break-up song or a recovery song. A lot of your guys in the songs seem to have trouble recovering from the opposite sex putting the hurt on them. And again, was there any personal story here or just again, your imagination?
Byron Hill:
Oh, well, yeah.
Doug Burke:
You and Tony Martin having an imagination
Byron Hill:
Well, I think-
Doug Burke:
... about a girl that-
Byron Hill:
I think both of us had enough experience to write it. So, yeah. I mean-
Doug Burke:
There were enough girls you didn't want to talk about?
Byron Hill:
Yeah, or maybe one or two back there, that it hurt to talk about, you know? which is what that song's about. You just don't want to talk about her because it hurts too much.
Doug Burke:
Right.
Byron Hill:
Which is in the lyric, you know?
Doug Burke:
Yeah, let's talk about NASCAR. No one ever says that, do they?
Byron Hill:
Well, not that way I guess-
Doug Burke:
No, it's just-
Byron Hill:
It gets done, I think, I think Sammy may have put, "fast cars."
Doug Burke:
Oh, really?
Byron Hill:
I think. One way or the other, but I've started singing it. I used to sing it NASCARs, because NASCARs is weird. It's a plural, it's got an S on it but it's... NASCAR is not plural. It's the organization. But I think I've been lately singing it "fast cars." I don't know why I keep flip-flopping. Sometimes when I'm doing it live in a writer's night, I'll do it NASCARs, because it sounds kind of hillbilly to say that, because it's got an S on it, and it's not the way people really talk. But lately I've been singing "fast cars." We kind of flip-flopped on that, and honestly, I guess it's because my age, I can't remember which way we actually wrote and which way Sammy cut it. But I'd have to listen to his record again.
