Dave Pahanish Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke. Today we're here with Dave Pahanish. Dave Pahanish grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and played in coffee houses, bars, and stages, while busking in western Pennsylvania. After trying to break through in both California and New York, he headed to Nashville in late 2006. With his body of work in hand, he was immediately signed by Three River publishing. The signing paid off for them, because Dave has written three number one country hits. His biggest and proudest hits have been as the father of four girls and one granddaughter. So I'm here with Dave Pahanish, and we're going to talk about "The One That Got Away."
Dave Pahanish:
Yep. Great song, in my opinion. I love it, I should say.
Doug Burke:
I love it, people love it.
Dave Pahanish:
There was this energy to it from the moment I wrote it, before it was even finished. This was from 1996, this tune. At that time I was hell and gone from Nashville, hadn't even thought about moving to Nashville. I was just living in Pennsylvania, traveling around the region. Regionally doing colleges, coffee houses, whatever I could find. This particular time I was in some small town in the middle of nowhere. I can't remember where it was, but it was about three hours before the gig started. I pulled into town, there was a diner in town with a big line around the corner. Turned out that everyone was just taking turns looking through the window at Richard Gere because he was in town filming a movie. Just watching him have lunch. I don't know how that image stuck with me, but I was kind of like, "Oh, okay." I sat down next to these railroad tracks. I broke out my guitar, just like this, and didn't realize the night before I had my high E string tuned down to a D. Normally it's in standard key, it's up to an E, but it was tuned down, I was doing some slides or something like that and I didn't put it back. I started playing as if it wasn't. I hit a couple wrong notes like, "Why is it not doing what it usually is?" I found that. It became the whole, "That's cool, I've got to write a song around that." When it's tuned to standard key, it's hard to find that so naturally. I just started spitting out words here and there. Before I knew it, it sounded like a song about someone that just hit the big time after living in a small town for a long time. I had some experience with that. My ex wife, I was married for 17 years. My ex wife aspired to be an actress and came from a really small town in western Pennsylvania. All the ups and downs, all the sense of being, not humiliated, but always feeling like you were destined for something more but no one quite... You were the only one that was believing it. I wrote this through the eyes of a female perspective. Back then I really wasn't writing songs thinking somebody else would record them. Thinking that, at that time I was just a singer songwriter looking for a record deal to plan stuff that I wrote, that I would do, like a troubadour. But this one had a good something going on to it, and I loved the vibe of it so much. I had the first verse honed in, and a little bit of the second verse and most of the chorus. But the melody was so intriguing to me that I decided to play it that night at this show anyways. I played a lot of songs and people were digging it, but at the end of the night I was like, "What was that one song I played, that one." Most of the song was me mumbling. Trying to figure out. Sometimes you get in front of a live audience and the energy is there, and when you're on the spot the words just fall out. I probably picked up a couple of extra lyrics just from mumbling in front of people. But the vibe was so cool that I could tell right off the bat it seemed to be a special song. This is, like I said, back in 1996. Probably every gig after that I played this tune.
Dave Pahanish:
I finished it, and I was working on a record at that time with the guy that was producing my records then. His name is Joe West, he was from Pennsylvania. We ended up, years later, moving to Nashville together and working as a collaborative team. A lot of the stuff I was writing, whether I wrote it alone or with him, he would produce it and be the mirror for me and say, "What does this mean? This could be better." Anyways, he was the producer on this one. We ended up recording it for a record I did back in 96 called "Shine." It's been one of my favorite songs. Fast forward, years later I move to Nashville and start getting into Nashville. I got a publishing deal. This is like 13 years ago now. Part of my schedule A was this tune. My publisher picked it out of the batch. My publisher at that time, was a guy named Cole Right. Started a new company with Hillary Lindsey, if you know who that is.
Doug Burke:
Mm-hmm.
Dave Pahanish:
Famous songwriter, just renowned. And Dallas Davidson. At that time, they just had a few hits. Dallas hadn't had a hit at all, he was just... "Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk" was his first big break. So he was seeing some money from that, and he immediately invested into this publishing company and they singed me.
Doug Burke:
And "Schedule A" is what?
Dave Pahanish:
Schedule A is what you come in with. If you sign a publishing deal, we'd like to have the stuff that you've already recorded and songs you've already written in case there's something there we'd want to pitch. I came in with about maybe 200 songs.
Doug Burke:
200 songs on your schedule A?
Dave Pahanish:
This was my first pub deal.
Doug Burke:
Sure.
Dave Pahanish:
I spent about, before I got to Nashville since I had been writing since 1989, 1990. There were a lot of songs that were... I may put them on a list or something, but they were really interested in the stuff that was already recorded. I had stuff, whether it was me on a four track or me playing acoustic guitar. I'd put out about four albums before I moved to Nashville.
Doug Burke:
So everything that was on those four albums was on your schedule A, and out of all of those songs they picked this one. Or was it one of them?
Dave Pahanish:
Among others. It's one of the many, this one seemed to catch their eye. I remember Hillary commenting on one of the lines. I played it the night I got signed to this pub company. Again, they pointed out that tune. I guess I started seeing success after the first year, learning the Nashville ropes, learning how to demo sessions or whatever and what's expected at the pub level. It was a great thing. I think the first hit that I had was by a guy named Jimmy Wayne. He ended up recording about six tunes that I wrote. Me, Joe West, and a guy named Tim Johnson put this other tune together and Jimmy recorded it. We co-produced it. It was like a foot in the door. After that it happened. Jimmy put out another one that was another single. Another one of my tunes, it's called "I Will." I think then after that it was "Without You," if I'm not mistaken. And then McGraw, my publisher gave Tim McGraw about six tunes of mine. I guess Tim McGraw took a liking to the stuff I was doing and said, "All right." He's going away for the weekend, he asked for about six or seven songs of mine that we thought that he would do. He ended up cutting two of them. One of them was a song called "Right Back At You," that was a single for him. It ended up dying mid-30s or something like that, for many reasons. The other one was this song, called "The One That Got Away." So now to get to the recording part of it, which there's some interesting stories. Recorded it back in '97. The demo version of it, I call it a demo, but it was an album cut from me, it had some mojo to it. A lot of cool. Did the guitar kind of like a drum loop. My producer left the click track in. It just has a sound to it. I left him alone, we cut the drums and the bass. Acoustic guitar and the vocal, and came back a couple days later and was like, "Check this out!" And he put in some backwards guitars and some very interesting stuff, very creative stuff. Beyond the guitars at the beginning of it, he started mumbling words and he flipped it around so it was backwards. There's some backmasking lyrics. The stuff he was saying was stuff like, "This is the section of the song, we're going to flip it around, make it backwards, and make it sound cool in the song." He's saying this literally, just to see how it sounded. He flipped it around, it sounded so cool for whatever reason. Then when McGraw and the gang got the demo, they were recording the demo, they called my publisher and said that, "Tim McGraw's producer wants you to know they want it to sound exactly like the version you gave him, so they want to know what was being said in the back masking so they can flip it around so it sounds the exact same way." My publisher is the middle man on this, Joe my producer is talking to them saying, "Well tell him that it says that I just sang, 'This is the part of the song where we flip it around.'" All that stuff I just said. Then Cole the publisher goes back to them and tells them that. He comes back again and is like, "Well they know it's the part of the song that's flipped around, but what are you actually saying?" It took a while to get it straight. They could not understand that that was the actual what we were saying. As a joke, I finally said, "Tell them we quoted the Robert Frost poem where there were two paths in the wood, I took the one less trodden and that made all the difference." Once we gave them that response, they took that.
Doug Burke:
That's great.
Dave Pahanish:
I don't know that they actually. But, you listen to his recording, and if you A B it to the original one, it's pretty close. I think they wanted more substance than just, "This is the part of the song where it's going to sound cool because we flipped the lyrics backwards." Robert Frost will make anything better.
Doug Burke:
This is a very autobiographical song?
Dave Pahanish:
Not really about me, just experiences I've had with other people.
Doug Burke:
From western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Dave Pahanish:
Yep.
Doug Burke:
I've heard you say it was in West Virginia, and I've heard you say your ex wife came from a smaller town.
Dave Pahanish:
Kind of a small mining town in western Pennsylvania.
Doug Burke:
I think you came from a small town, and the town in West Virginia might have been a small town.
Dave Pahanish:
The West Virginia thing, I was playing a gig in, I think, Wheeling, West Virginia. The club was called Jaybo's. It was a small club with a band they had. Next door was the hang out for all the high school kids, they were all hanging out at this pizza place. No one was ordering pizza; they were just all parked in their cars just talking, this and that. That's kind of where I got the idea about the Pizza Hut parking lot.
Doug Burke:
And that kind of pizza place is everywhere.
Dave Pahanish:
Oh totally.
Doug Burke:
In the town your ex wife grew up in, town you grew up in.
Dave Pahanish:
Everywhere.
Doug Burke:
In Wheeling...
Dave Pahanish:
I've gone to a couple of high schools. I lived in a lot of small towns. Growing up I was in Ohio, I lived for a while, New York, upstate New York, I lived in Jersey. Then in Pennsylvania. All the small towns are essentially the same. At least out there. I had a lot of research.
Doug Burke:
This is about coming from a small town?
Dave Pahanish:
Coming from a small town, someone goes away and gets famous, or whatever. Come back to the small town and they're the "one that got away." It's all about getting out of a small town. If you're in a small town and there's a part of you that you were destined for something more, it can be quite a drag to be dealing with the small town politics and all of that stuff. Playing in the same old bars. Not a lot of positive feedback. Now it's like, if you accept it it's a great place to live, great place to grow up. Sometimes you've got to go out there and get the crown before you come back and realize what you had. It was really good. Then you leave the crown behind, just put it on the shelf. I think that's all I can think about for that tune. McGraw recorded it, it was never a hit. I wish it was. Hopefully... I could hear it on the radio, but it's a little bit different from the standard country songs that are out there. Breaks a lot of the Nashville songwriting rules. I rhyme a word with the same word. A little bit, I would say cryptic, but it seems like people get the message. It's universal enough that people kind of... It's a good feeling song, and I think there's a lot of people out there that connect with it. At least, that's what it feels like when I play it. If they don't connect with the words, they certainly connect with the melody. It's one of my most, as a song writer, people that know me usually know that or point out that tune as one of their favorites.
Doug Burke:
Do you want to play it?
Dave Pahanish:
Yes, I'd love to.
That's it.
Doug Burke:
There's a line in there where you say, "Like an American girl." Online, "American Girl" is often capitalized as if it's a reference to the Tom Petty song.
Dave Pahanish:
Well, no not really.
Doug Burke:
Good.
Dave Pahanish:
I remember thinking that when I wrote it, that it also had some, because of that song that it became something they grasp onto a little bit more.
Doug Burke:
In the aftermath after you wrote it...
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
You recognized the association.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Because that girl was from Sarasota, Florida, and this girl is from western Pennsylvania.
Dave Pahanish:
Really she could be from anywhere.
Doug Burke:
Ohio... She could be from anywhere?
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah, I was writing it more universally. I put bits and pieces of my own experience into the things I had seen. So it wasn't specifically about one person, it was just... I made it very universal.
Doug Burke:
A composite.
Dave Pahanish:
I think some of the stuff that young ladies got to go on. I lived in Hollywood for a while. You know, all the soul sucking sacrifices and demeaning things that sometimes people either do or don't put up with on their rise to fame, or for the sake of trying to make a living in the business. Especially women. Guys too, but still.
Doug Burke:
Dave.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah?
Doug Burke:
We're going to talk about the song "Honey Honey." Is this out yet.
Dave Pahanish:
It is not. I just wrote this like two months ago. I just wrote it and recorded a demo in my studio. It sounds really good. My wife is singing the lead part, because it's supposed to be a female song with an underlying male part underneath.
Doug Burke:
So it's a duet?
Dave Pahanish:
Kind of a duet, but more of a... This song, it's called "Honey Honey," came from a dream I had. Through the years I've had dreams of songs, and I usually wake up and my first reaction is, "Dang, I wish I had written that." Then I think a little bit and I realize I just dreamed it, it's not out there yet, it's in my head. I threw it down on paper, and they usually come pretty quickly. I was staying out in a cabin in Mount Eagle, Tennessee. Oddly enough, I had just gotten out of a publishing deal with Thirty Tigers. I was taking the time to let songs fall out of the sky, I wasn't going to start reaching. You start trying to triple and quadruple your quota, you're squeezing songs out like, "Maybe I'll write a song about this today." I took advantage of the fact that I had no one waiting for songs, and just go back to the old days when inspiration would just hit me and I'd hear a melody in the distance and I'd let it fall into my lap. My wife said, "You should take a notebook," because I was staying at this cabin at this gig that I do in a place called The Smokehouse in Mount Eagle. They put you up in a cabin there, but she couldn't make it this time so I was going alone. She was like, "Take your notebook, you never know." I'm like, "I'm not looking for songs right now, whatever." But I took the notebook, oddly enough. I go to sleep, and I have this dream. Lily Mae Richie, had a band called Gypsy way back when, but now she's a good friend of mine. She's an astounding singer songwriter, fiddle player, multi-instrumentalist. Her whole family is, but she plays fiddle for Jack White. After she played fiddle for a while for him, he heard her playing back stage, just playing guitar and singing a tune, he said he wanted to produce a record. Now she's on her second, which was recently produced by Dave Kopf. She's been on a lot of late night shows, doing very well. Touring with Robert Plant, opening for him, playing in Robert Plant's band. She's just, music is her soul. Her and her family. It's a very admirable quality, when you meet someone who is 100% not about the money, the prestige. They're playing at a small bar, wherever they go, they are the music, they live the music, and they always have. Anyways, I have this dream, Lily Mae was on the radio singing this song. I woke up and I was like, "Did you hear Lily Rae's new single?" I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, it was a dream. I started writing it, it took about an hour to write, it came out very quickly. It's a song about a girl that falls in love with somebody head over heels and she goes to sleep and wakes up in a panic one morning because he's gone, she thinks he's left her, the love of her life. She's starting to wonder where has he gone, and then as the song progresses, the song itself is a dream about a dream. She is in that same slumber, she's waking up, he taps her on the shoulder at the end and says, "Hey, wake up, I'm right here. I'm going to be here forever." There's a nice happy ending to this story. She goes through the whole gamut of panicking about losing someone, and thinking "There's no reason to panic, we're so in love it's never going to end." Then at the end she wakes up. That's what I mean by the male voice plays a part of a shadow at the beginning. Theoretically, the male voice gets louder and louder throughout the whole song until the end it's like, his voice is predominant in the mix saying, "Wake up, wake up. I'm right here." It's kind of a neat song. It's a dance, it's a dream.
Doug Burke:
So when you're in a dream like state, this unreal stuff can happen, this impossible stuff can happen. Sometimes nightmarish.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Are there any elements of that in this song?
Dave Pahanish:
Just the fact that she thinks he's gone. That's really about it. Very simple. I sing it a lot now because I love the song so much, but it really is meant for a girl to sing. I hear Lily Mae's voice. Lily Mae has this pure mountainy, Appalachian-esque voice that is kind of what I hear. I sent it to a publisher I'm working with, Kelly King, and she's like "I love this song, I can hear Tim and Faith. I can hear so many," she mentioned bunch of other female artists or duets that she could hear doing the song. Hopefully it gets in the right hands. I'm not one for pitching songs, and I'm like, "How am I going to show this to Lily Mae without saying 'You should record this song,'?" She's a great friend, a great fiddle player. She always says, "Any time you need fiddle on anything, just let me know and I'll play." I sent her the track to add fiddle on.
Doug Burke:
Smart move.
Dave Pahanish:
P.S., I dreamed you singing this song, oddly enough. She said something like, "I love this tune, it sounds like a dream." But whatever, let nature take it's course. She's a prolific songwriter herself and certainly doesn't need a song, but she loves music, I know that.
Doug Burke:
Do you want to play the song for us?
Dave Pahanish:
I'll play it for you.
That's it.
Doug Burke:
The first time I listened to it, it reminded me of Hank Williams.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
That time, it almost reminded me of Buddy Holly.
Dave Pahanish:
Oh really?
Doug Burke:
I'm getting this classic Texas country feeling.
Dave Pahanish:
Totally. I hear that, yeah. Old Texas two step.
Doug Burke:
Is that what?
Dave Pahanish:
It could be a Waltz, it's 6/8 time.
Doug Burke:
It is a waltz, isn't it?
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah, I'll send you the demo. I really played up, the fiddle part is beautiful, there's a nice dreamy mandolin that comes drenched in verb. The third bridge, if you want to call it, you hear this, almost like a carousel oregon. Like you're on a merry-go-round, you know? I was thinking like the scene in Gone With the Wind where they're waltzing around the room.
Doug Burke:
Is it more of an Ozark Mountain kind of sound? Or is it more universal than I'm trying to place it somewhere.
Dave Pahanish:
It is universal, but the voice I hear in my head is kind of a Gillian Welch, Appalachian.
Doug Burke:
I'm taking it back to Patsy Cline maybe?
Dave Pahanish:
That too. It could be anything, it's open. There's a lot of singers that could sing this, and it would take on a little bit of a different character. It's cinematic, I see images.
Doug Burke:
What images do you see?
Dave Pahanish:
Waltzing in a neon lit saloon, dancing in the middle of a crowd with no one around. Even though they're there, the only people present are the two just head over heels in love. That type of thing. Hopefully other people are seeing that too, but that's what I've... With the recording and in my mind, it would make for a very nice video, that's for sure.
Doug Burke:
Did you play this for your wife?
Dave Pahanish:
Oh yeah. I demoed it, the first time I showed her she was like, "That's really good, I love that," she loved it.
Doug Burke:
Did she cry?
Dave Pahanish:
I don't think she cried on this one. This isn't...
Doug Burke:
It's not a cry song.
Dave Pahanish:
It's a story song, which I don't do too many story songs, but this is one, and I know I told you this story before hand, but if you don't know the story it's one that you hopefully listen to the whole way through and there's a reveal at the end that it is a dream. It sounds like a dream, just interesting. There's a happy ending.
Doug Burke:
It's a happy dream. Happy dreams are the ones you want to remember when you wake up.
Dave Pahanish:
And it's about someone dreaming about, this means so much to me, it's a nightmare to think it could disappear. There's no reason to think that it would because it's that good, but you don't want to dwell on that too long. If you had a bad dream about the one you love leaving, it's a very disturbing feeling. Or whatever dream about the one you love being with somebody else is even worse. You wake up in a jealous rage, this one is more of a...
Doug Burke:
Love is lost, it's gone.
Dave Pahanish:
It's falling down. Everything that I had is no longer there. But he is. Forever.
Doug Burke:
Next, Dave, we're going to do "Without You."
Dave Pahanish:
Yes. A song very dear to my heart. 100% autobiographical, with the exception of the fast cars line. That was more of a metaphorical, I don't collect fast cars, it's the idea of a fast lifestyle, whatever you want to call it. This is very autobiographical. A lot went into this song. Like I told you earlier, I was married for 17 years before I moved to Nashville. Got to Nashville, got a publishing deal, which was probably one of the first major things that happened after I had been performing and writing songs for about almost 20 years. Never thinking Nashville was the place. But I moved to Nashville, got the publishing deal. I started getting rolling, but still the feeling that I hope something happens. Having a steady paycheck to write songs was very nice, because before that I had to play just about every night just to make ends meet. Then I got divorced not long after that, which was kind of odd but at the same time it was 17 years spiraling downward marriage. We just didn't belong together. Got married too young, for whatever reason. We're both much better off now. Anyways, 17 years, got divorced, it was starting to feel like... My two kids moved back to Pennsylvania, so I'm down here alone now. Still doing gigs a lot. I walk into another bar, it's near the airport in Nashville. I immediately scan the room and I see this really good looking girl. I just caught the back of her, I didn't see her face yet. I was like, "She's good looking," I could just feel it, I could see it. Then as I kept looking at her I realized that somewhere during the time that I was captivated by her, she was looking at me as I was watching her. I got caught. Instead of her acting like, "What is he staring at?" Negatively, she just gave me this smile. There was something about that smile. It was endearing, she was happy that I was looking at her. Then I find out later that she was also watching me, before I realized it. The second I walked it. It's a little chemistry. Anyways, this is my first gig at this particular place. I was relatively new to Nashville. I just auditioned there a week earlier to get a gig. It was like a piano bar, like a dueling piano bar type thing, but I played guitar. I played a little piano, but mainly guitar. They were like, "We're kind of a piano place, we really like what you do. If our piano player calls in sick one day, which she's never done in the last 10 years, maybe we'll give you a call. Maybe we'll try it on a different night." Regardless, I got the runaround. They called me because he actually calls in sick this one night. I come in for this gig, there she is. This is my first time there, I wanted to do really well. Got up on stage behind the piano, set up my gear, and these two young ladies walked up to me. They said, "We're flight attendants with Southwest, this is where we stay when we're in town. One of our coworkers is a singer. We were wondering if maybe you could get her up on stage to sing a song or two." I'm like, "This is my first time playing here, I don't want to break any rules or do anything that they're going to be upset at, because I want to continue to play here or maybe get my own night. Maybe I'll come over with you guys and we'll work something out. I'll see how well she can sing, and we can get something professional together and then I'll call her up in a little bit." They were like, "All right." I set up, walk over to the table, and as we're walking to the table, I'm like, it's the girl. It's the girl that caught me looking at her. She was the flight attendant they were talking about. She had the same smile on her face. So I sit down. I'm kind of shy by nature, I don't know if shy is the right word, a little bit inward. We were just smiling at each other. She's a socialite, she could talk forever to just about anybody. We sat down like, "Hi, how are you doing? Funny you caught me looking at you," whatever. I didn't even think we paid any attention to that. We started going through a couple of songs. She's like, "Do you know any Bonnie Ray?" We did Angel from Montgomery. I don't know what else we ended up playing that night. We did Landslide. Regardless of which, we were friends and we hit it off right away.
Doug Burke:
First time you heard her voice, what was your feeling?
Dave Pahanish:
It was very cool. She's got a sultry, very raspy Bonnie Ray-esque type...
Doug Burke:
Stevie Nicks?
Dave Pahanish:
Not as much Stevie Nicks. I could see her couched in a nice cocktail dress on a piano singing sexy jazz music, that's her thing. She's got a great voice and it fits her character too. We got up on stage, we sang a few together, and she told me later before I got there she was thinking about leaving and going back to her room and calling it an early night. She ended up staying until close. We sang all night. We talked later, and that was the end of it. She told me, "This was great. I'm actually coming back here, I live in Austin, Texas, that's why I wear this hat."
Doug Burke:
Did you get her number?
Dave Pahanish:
No, I didn't get her number.
Doug Burke:
You didn't get her number? You're that shy and inward and you didn't get her number.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah, but I did get the idea that she was coming back. If I tell the whole story, I was still... My wife and I at that time were separated, we had been separated for a few months, and for the kid's sake we said we were going to get a divorce, we were both relatively broke. As far as getting a lawyer and all of that stuff. We wanted to take our time and get the divorce. There was no reason to rush, until that night. Then all of a sudden there was a reason to rush.
Doug Burke:
So you did not kiss her goodbye?
Dave Pahanish:
I hugged her. It was a great hug, felt good. But she did know that I was still married at that point. I was actually wearing my wedding ring out of 17 years of habit. I just didn't... It becomes a part of you after that long. Anyways, during the night I took a break and I was sitting with her and her captain was there. Her captain had been drinking a good bit, he was being very vocal. He was like, "There's something going on between you, I can feel it. There's an energy there." Then one of the other flight attendants was like, "Stop, he's married." I didn't want her to think I was going onto her, so I didn't tell her the whole story of we were getting divorced and this and that. I didn't want it to sound like a come on or anything like that. Anyways, he was like, "It doesn't matter, there's more to this story. I could feel this." He saw something coming. That night we said goodbye. She told me, "I'm coming back every Friday night. This whole month I'm booked for Nashville flights, and I'm doing overnights in Nashville. Maybe I'll see you again. Maybe we'll sing together again if you're playing here." I was like, "I'm not." But I came back anyways. I found her on MySpace, through the information given. Southwest Airlines, I knew her name, Kristin Lee. Beautiful. Bang, there she was. I sent her a message, "Nice meeting you. I hope maybe we can sing together sometime." Whatever. She was very curt with her response. "Yeah, great meeting you." That was it. Because of the information she had. I come back the next week. She knew I was coming. I come in, drinking my coffee, we're talking. About halfway through the night we were just chilling and I said, "By the way, there's something I left out last time. My wife and I are getting a divorce." By this time, my wedding ring was gone. We were getting a divorce, and I told her a little bit more of the story. She let out this sigh of relief like, "Thank God." We danced, it was a beautiful night. We ended up staying together that night. We didn't sleep together in the Biblical sense, but we slept together and both made it clear that we weren't ready for a sexual relationship yet. Are you allowed to say that on the internet? Just kidding. Anyways, we spent the night. Beautiful things, just talking all night. One of those nights. I do recall that evening, she put her computer up and she had a playlist going of all the songs that she was listening to. I was just blown away that there was all this music out there that she was so connected with that I had never heard before that moved me so much. Different world comes from Texas, I'm from up North, but our connection to music was the same. It was like new beginnings all around. One song was this Eva Cassidy song came on in the middle of the night. The next morning I woke up like what was that one song? I can't even remember the name of it now. If I had a golden thread. Blew my mind. That was one of many songs. Just a magical evening. I kept coming back. I came back the next week. By the next week, I had already written a song to her and about her. I pronounced my love for her. If this is the real you, I'm in love with this, I'm in love with you. We were an item at that time. About a month later, she's no longer staying on her time off in Austin, she's staying in Tennessee with me at the house I was at. We were like Bonnie and Clyde, just felt like we owned the world. It was a really good feeling, that in love feeling. Lasted a long time. It's still there. Anyways, who knows. Six months later, it's like, all right, I want to get married to her. I knew this. She's an old fashioned girl, I had to get permission. And she's a family girl, so not only did I have to get permission from her parents, but I had to meet the rest of her family. One of the people that was very close to her and still is, is her sister. Two years older than her. Her sister lived in Belize, Central America, so in order to get permission from everybody, I had to meet her sister finally. We flew down to Belize, spent a weekend there. I met her sister. I remember her sister looked over with a smile on her face and said, "I approve." I was in.
Doug Burke:
That's a good sign.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
So you had to meet her parents first before you spent the money to go to Belize.
Dave Pahanish:
I had met her parents a few times. For a little while, I was her friend, her older friend in Nashville. 11 years older than her.
Doug Burke:
Her older friend that she's living with.
Dave Pahanish:
She was pretty on her own, so her parents didn't know exactly where she was staying all the time when. But finally we came out with it all, I met them. Her dad and mom were super cool. Her dad is a big music fan. We connected right away on a music front, Leon Russell, whatever. He turned me on to Rocky Erickson, all these. He's been in the Texas music scene since the mid sixties and seen a lot of people that I had always loved.
Doug Burke:
So you felt obliged to ask for her hand in marriage, and you did that? How did that go?
Dave Pahanish:
Certainly. They were very happy with it. Met her sister, got the same thing. Fast forward, down in Belize I got all the thumbs up. The only thing left to do was buy the ring and all of that. I should say that before I met her, before that night that I walked into that bar, the only substantial thing that really happened was acquiring a publishing deal. It really seemed like overnight after I met her, everything started... Things are turning around. That's when Jimmy Wayne called me in the middle of the night and said, "Man, this album of yours." I had an album out at that time I had gave him. He's like, "I want to record this one, this one," he ended up picking six tunes off this record that he was going to record. It was fantastic. The first one we recorded was a song called "Do you Believe me Now?" He didn't get permission from his record label. He came over, and Joe and I, the song shop that we were, we produced it like it was ready to go on the radio. He took a disc of it, slit it under Scott Borchetta's door. Got a call from Borchetta an hour later saying, "Congratulations, Jimmy, this is your next single." They pulled the single that they had ready to go out for him. This song hit the charts, climbed like a bullet. It's in the song. "I met her all of a sudden, the world opens up." Songs were being recorded, I got a song on the charts, everything's changing. I got up the next morning after her sister approved of me, early in the morning. To me, the best songs come out through inspiration. Almost, like I said about the other tune, just floating out of the air I hear a melody, I figure it out. The song, the mojo of the song is there before I even put the words in. Then the only task would be to just put the words in. I was rambling on about everything I had known up to that point, about how much success had started coming along ever since we met. About the first night we met, about the music and everything I do and how little it seemed to mean without her, and how it was all coming together. I thought this was really cool, I'll hone this in, I'll write this tune, and before I leave I'll sit with the family and I'll say thank you and, "I wrote this song for all of you guys," it wasn't just about our relationship, it was about the whole family opening their arms to me. I only got a verse and a chorus in and I was so happy with it. I remember I was sitting up, we stayed in these bungalows. They weren't cabins, it was like an open air. This place was in the middle of the jungle in Belize, run off of a generator. Very rustic, but very cool. I started early in the morning, and I'm like, "I got a really great song." I just couldn't get it out of my head. I'd start talking to people and go, "Wait a minute!" And think of another line, I'd run up. Two hours later I'd hear Kristin, "Dave! Come down! We want to see you, we want to hang out." I was just drawn in. I could not get away from this song. I got as far as a verse and a chorus and I'm like, "What am I going to write next?" That night, middle of the night, her sister is pregnant, goes into labor. Oh my God, it was a big ordeal. We were in Belize, and it takes an hour to get to what they called the hospital, it was a clinic at this guy's house. We're driving there on these bumpy third world country roads. This experience of going through this with the family, going to this clinic, the doctor wakes up in the middle of the night and we're sleeping on the floor because there's not enough chairs. The one guy that owns the resort wakes up in the morning and there's a scorpion crawling next to him.
Doug Burke:
How far were the contractions apart when you arrived? Do you remember?
Dave Pahanish:
I don't remember that, but I do remember us following them. Once we got on roads where you could go at high speed, we were traveling at high speed. I was in the back of a pickup truck. Open air. Put my ear in through the window to hear what they were talking about on the phone, and I could hear Allison in the car in front of us screaming, telling everybody to be quiet. "Are you okay?" "Shh!" Just wanted peace and quiet. Allison is a real tough girl, she's awesome. That's Kristin's sister. We get to the hospital, and she gives a natural birth to a beautiful little girl. It was... I felt kinship, I felt welcomed in. Going through something like that with the family, that felt one with everybody. We got back, next day. I'm like, "There's my second verse." I started honing that in, writing about this and that. Put it together, and I got even more personal. This was my song, this wasn't a song for anybody else. I was just writing it to write it because it felt good. I rambled at the end, I remember the original version wasn't just repeating the same chorus, it was different. I was talking about all the little things, the dreams that we had. We were living in this loft downtown in Nashville. I talk about the downtown loft and this and that, the house, the dog, all the things we talk about. All the "Maybe someday"s were in there. It was super autobiographical. That's where the expertise of Joe West came in. Like I said, my collaborator at that time. We got together, and banking it off of him we were like, "Let's get rid of this, this, and this. This is a bit too much." We universalized it, but it kept the personal touch. I had some different ideas. The fast car thing was an idea of mine, but I wasn't sure of that line. Regardless of which, we settled on it, felt really good. We cut a version of me singing it, playing guitar, and I did a banjo track. At that time we were recording out of RCA Studio C, Joe's publisher was right next door. It was a cool thing to be able to record a song, "Wow that's really cool, we've got to run this over physically to my publisher, who's in the Sony building, and show her." It was Kelly King. We did this, she's like, "I love this song." We were happy with just guitar and vocal, which nowadays, a lot of songs get cut off at guitar and vocal, but most of the time it's a little bit more in depth. Fast forward, we put this on a record that I had put out. It was called "Nashvillian." No, it was the first one. It was the one that Jimmy Wayne had. This one was just called "Dave Pahanish," and it was all the stuff that since I had moved to Nashville, all the cool songs that I had done up till then. I was working as an artist, but at the same time, all the stuff that I was putting out, we were wanting it to be available to other people to also record. A friend of mine at that time was named Emily West. Great country singer, fantastic singer. She's had a lot of success herself. She was signed to, I think RCA, I'm not sure who Keith Urban is signed to, but she had my record. She went to a label party. Someone actually snapped a picture of this, and it's on the internet, but she and Keith Urban were friends so she walked up to him and she showed him my CD. There's a picture of her with her finger out like this, and you can almost see his head nodding looking at the back of the CD, seeing my picture on the front. Someone from a distance took a picture of this, and she said, "This song is you, this is your life. It's just strange, you've got to record this tune." He took the CD home, next day I guess he was out with Nicole Kidman, they were going to the grocery store or something. This was all stuff I had heard. Actually, Keith Urban told me this, he said, "We're on the way to the grocery store," and he flipped this CD in, they listen to this tune. He's like, "That's really cool." The moment when he knew they had to record it is when they were talking through the grocery store, he said Nicole was singing it in the grocery store. He's like, there's a connection. He told me, "It's like, the things that really get me about it is how it seems as if I had written it." Because he just had a little baby girl. I'm talking about my niece, he's talking about his little baby girl. Not only, in my case fast cars was a metaphor, but for him he's like, "I collect old vintage cars and guitars." It was his life, totally. Perhaps even more than mine on the literal sense. He's like, "I would like to record it," and I was very pleased to say yes. I guess about six months later, he called again and he said, "I know I said I was going to record this and I haven't gotten to it yet, but I want you to know that I really am going to do it. It's just taking a little while to get into the studio." A couple months later, did it, it's the first single off the new album, straight to number one.
Doug Burke:
The first time you write an incredible love song that's inspired by someone like Kristin.
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
And you play it for her, what happens? How does she react?
Dave Pahanish:
She cries. If it's good. If she doesn't cry, then I need to work on it some more.
Doug Burke:
What happened this time? It was in Belize?
Dave Pahanish:
Yeah, that was the first time she had heard it. I may have given her some snippets when I was first started writing it, like, "Listen to this!" She's my muse, my mirror. Just like I said about Joe, it's like, whenever I got a new one, I always even get a little nervous because I fall in love with a tune and it's like, what if people don't get it? What if it's going to die?
Doug Burke:
What if Kristin doesn't cry?
Dave Pahanish:
What if she doesn't cry? But if she does, my next performance for whoever else, I'm not as nervous. It's already passed the litmus test. She cried on the first song I had ever written for her, which was another love song the second week we were together, or third week. It was good.
Doug Burke:
Do you want to play it for us?
Dave Pahanish:
I would be honored to play. All right.
