Gary Nicholson Interview
Doug Burke:
Gary Nicholson is a two time Grammy winning producer and member of the Texas Heritage Songwriters' Hall of Fame. He has had more than 500 recordings of his songs released. His songs span multiple genres, including country, rock, blues, folk, bluegrass, and pop. After growing up near Dallas and playing in CD bars in Fort Worth, Texas, he went off to North Texas State University to play guitar and music. And after an evening partying with the legendary Gram Parsons of the Flying Burrito Brothers, he was lured to Los Angeles by Gram. Gary met up with his college buddies, Don Henley and Jim Ed Norman. This was the early 1970s heyday of the Laurel Canyon, Hollywood singer-songwriter boom, and the guitar playing and songwriting bug bit Gary. His songs have been recorded by an insanely long list of artists, which includes Garth Brooks, B.B. King, John Prine, Ringo Starr, Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Robert Plant, Reba McEntire and the list goes on and on. His 50 year friendship and collaboration with Delbert McClinton produced over 50 recorded songs and several award winning records. An amazingly kind and humble man who is overflowing with talent. You may not know Gary Nicholson, but you have heard his songs and you need to get to know him. And we're going to do that on this episode of Backstory Song. Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke. And I have the true pleasure to have with us today a member of the Texas Heritage Songwriters' Hall of Fame, Gary Nicholson. Welcome Gary.
Gary Nicholson:
Hi.
Doug Burke:
You are two time Grammy winning producer and singer-songwriter, performer with a long career. An amazing roster. I was stunned, there are over 1000 songs registered in the ASCAP directory for at least one of your spellings of your names that I found. And I believe there's over 600 recorded songs that you have written out there for people to listen to.
Gary Nicholson:
It's a number that changes... Sort of keep count of what's going on. But somewhere in some biography and an interview, I was informed that I'd had over 600 recordings of my songs, so.
Doug Burke:
Wow-
Gary Nicholson:
I'll go with it, whatever, whoever's counting.
Doug Burke:
Hey Gary you grew up in Garland, Texas. Played in a bunch of bands there. The Valiance, The Catalinas, The Untouchables. I read that you actually were under age when you and your band-mates were playing and told your parents you were playing in a bowling alley, but it turned out to actually be a strip club at one point?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, no. That was actually summer of 1966. I was playing at The Cellar in Fort worth, which was not a strip club. It was just the wildest flesh you could ever imagine, but what we... The bowling alley thing came in. It's funny how stories get morphed into other things. What we would do is our rhythm guitar player, his parents were kind of older when they had him and we could fool him pretty easy. And we told his parents that he was working at the all night bowling alley. And then we would disconnect the speedometer from his parents Ford Galaxy and drive from Dallas to Fort Worth and play The Cellar gig, which our first set would be at eight o'clock, and then our last set would be from four until five in the morning, where we were rotated with two other bands. So you'd play an hour then you're off for two hours, play an hour, off two hours. And then we'd drive home or back to the bowling alley and we'd get, everybody get their other cars. And I would go to my summer school class, which started at 7:30 to 12:30.
Doug Burke:
Exhausted-
Gary Nicholson:
And then after that, I had a job delivering prescriptions from one till six, and then I was back to meet the guys. So, I don't know how I survived that summer, but...
Doug Burke:
So it was just a rough bar. It wasn't-
Gary Nicholson:
It's the roughest gig I've ever played in my life and it's the first gig I ever played in my life. That was a steady, five nights a week kind of a thing. So this place was... It's all painted black and had DayGlow writing on the walls that says, "Live is evil spelled backwards. Motel is let them spelled backwards." behind the drum riser on the stage, there's a big painting of, shooting the finger. The waitresses all wore, only panties and bra. And they had a table with a bunch of pills around it, right in front of the band stand where a girl would do a little strip tease thing. And the last thing that would happen was all the lights would go off and a bouncer would shine a flashlight on her tits long enough that all the guys could actually see some real breasts before she ran off the platform, she was dancing on. And then there was a like a catwalk directly in front of the band where all the girls in panties and bra would dance in front of the guys in the band. And when you're singing into an Electro-Voice 664, and there's a girl who's punching on the microphone from the catwalk it's... Anyway, it's pretty rank.
Doug Burke:
The article said that they shut down the live music because the girls wanted to just deal with the jukebox. You got fired for a jukebox?
Gary Nicholson:
There was a time when we had a gig for a weekend. We were hired to play for a month, but after the first weekend we found out that the strippers would rather strip to the jukebox than our band. So we got fired.
Doug Burke:
So when did you start writing songs and why did you start writing songs?
Gary Nicholson:
I really got to the songwriting part late. I was in the first years of college at North Texas state. This is '68, '69 or so. I started writing a few songs and then my band, which was really into... By the time 1970 came around, I had a kind of a country rock band before you even call it country rock. We just had this amazing steel guitar player in our band, Larry White, and I was really into Buffalo Springfield and Poco and this kind of country rock thing. And then the bands, Big Pink came out and then Brown Album. So we were off into that kind of thing. When the Burritos record came out and-
Doug Burke:
Gram Parson's Flying Burrito Brothers?
Gary Nicholson:
We really took to that and learned three or four songs off that first Burrito Brothers record. And then eventually that's how we wound up leaving Dallas and going to the Los Angeles. We met... Gram Parsons, came over to our little crash pad that we practiced in after the Burritos played at the State Fair band show and our steel player had shown us sneaky Pete through the MSA steel guitar factory. That's how we met those guys and they invited us to their gig. And then Gram came over and hung out with us all night long until the sun came up and he encouraged us to come to Los Angeles because Larry was such an incredible steel player. He was really impressed with Larry. I was not much of a country guitar player in those.... I was just a kid that fell in love with Freddy King and B.B. King and that's kind of... All I played was blues in those days, I didn't have a fender guitar. I had a 335. But Larry was a really schooled country musician. He taught me a lot and anyway, that's how we got to California.
Doug Burke:
So, you go to California and Gram Parsons tees you up for an open mic talent?
Gary Nicholson:
What really happened is that we talked to Gram from, I guess, Bakersfield or so as we were getting there. And he said, "Well, meet me at the Palomino." So we got to the Palomino, it was talent night and Gram informed us. It was talent night and that we were going to be on the talent show. And we said, "Well, no, man. We play gigs. We're a band. We're not amateurs. He said, "No, just do it." So we got in the talent show. We won the talent show and we met all these amazing people that not... James Burton was there and Red Road's a really great steel player, fell in love with Larry, our steel player. And so we wound up sleeping on his kids' bunk beds for a couple of weeks-
Doug Burke:
Wow. James is in the Rock and Roll hall of fame.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. James is a wonderful friend. I've gotten to know him through the years. And he invited me to come and be a part of his guitar festival and Shreveport.
Doug Burke:
So, you guys form a band called Uncle Jim's music?
Gary Nicholson:
Originally, we were... The steel player and the drummer of our band went back to Texas and the bass player and I stayed and we met a banjo player, a young guy that was just really talented banjo player and high singer. And we formed a little bluegrass trio called the White Horse Brothers. The unique thing about us is we played all these original songs that I'd written and we signed three part harmony. It was the novelty of a bluegrass band that played original songs, got us gigs, opening for Dillard's expedition and the Dillard's and various, we could play some of the bluegrass festivals. We weren't the hottest bluegrass players. I was just faking my way to be on a flat picker, but we did have original songs and that's what gave us a chance. And then, so that evolved into Uncle Jim's music. And we made a couple records for an MCA division that was called Cap Records. We made a couple records and nothing happened and band broke up and I moved back to Texas, but-
Doug Burke:
No. Legend also has it that you went to college with Delbert McClinton and Don Henley at North Texas?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, the real story on that is, now Delbert didn't go to college. Delbert was playing gigs while I was in college, but Henley was... He lived in the same apartment complex as the guy that was now roommates with the guy that was the rhythm guitar player in my frat band, and this was Jim Ed Norman. And so Henley would always come around and we hung out a little bit in North Texas. And then, because of the Gram thing, I moved to California and about a month later or so... Jim had played in Henley's band, which was called Felicity. And then they changed the name of the band to Shiloh. And Kenny Rogers' wife became their manager. And Kenny was instrumental in getting them signed to a little record label called Amos Records. And the office for Amos Records is right down the street in Hollywood, from where I lived above the Golden West Recording Studio in Hollywood. And so a bunch of Texas boys wandering around Hollywood, wondering what a transvestite was and stuff.
Doug Burke:
Did you find it there?
Gary Nicholson:
We finally figured out why there was lipstick and knee pads. It was rough. Henley's band was... Don was the only drummer that I knew when our drummer went back to Texas. So he played on the demos that we got our record deal with. And then he played our showcase at the Troubadour. When we played for the record company.
Doug Burke:
Now, were you part of Linda Ronstadt's backing band with him?
Gary Nicholson:
No, I never played in Linda's band, but Linda's producer John Boylan produced our first record and I saw Linda and their whole band every day, because we rehearsed at the same rehearsal place. It's funny, I just got off the phone talking with Jeff Hannah who's from the Dirt band. And I met him during that same period of time and we were talking about the places we lived in early seventies, around Hollywood, it was really Don and Glenn. And then I found Randy Meister and they had the trio. And then they were looking for a guitar player and I would send people over to audition. They finally landed with Bernie Leadon but at this time, my band's first record was out and we were working on our second record and Don and Glenn were putting together The Eagles at this same funky little rehearsal hall there on Lankershim. So, yeah. It was interesting looking back, seeing that all go down.
Doug Burke:
Interesting part of history.
Gary Nicholson:
Mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
So you get your first breakthrough song and Backstory Song is about the songs. When Jim Ed Norman goes back to Nashville and records with Mickey Gilley, Jukebox Argument, and that gets into the John Travolta starring movie, the Urban Cowboy?
Gary Nicholson:
Right. Yeah, this was 1980. I had been playing this huge dance hall honkytonk place in Dallas for... Played the same place for a couple of years and all those song titles kept running around in my head. And I had just as a novelty out of boredom I wrote the songs Jukebox Argument, which is about two people who are arguing and they no longer speak to each other, but they argue by playing songs back and forth on the jukebox. She plays Released Me and he plays Stand By Your Man. And she plays, Don't Be Angry. And he plays Out Of Hand and she plays Goodhearted Woman and when will I Be Loved? And he plays, He'll Have To Go and The Window Up Above. And she plays Jealous Harnesses and Suspicious Mind. And he plays Cheating Heart and Lying Eyes. And she plays I'll Get Over You. And he plays Born To Lose. So anyway, you get what goes on. That was my foot in the door to come to Nashville and I had two sons at the time. I eventually had four sons. Then we moved our young family to Nashville in 1980 and I wrote for Jim Ed's company for three years and then went to Tree Publishing. I was staff writer there for 15 years.
Doug Burke:
Legendary publishing house with an amazing roster of writers, some of them been on the show with us.
Gary Nicholson:
What other tree people have done your show?
Doug Burke:
Bobby Braddock.
Gary Nicholson:
Oh, great. Well, he's the greatest hero of all time.
Doug Burke:
In some respects, yeah.
Gary Nicholson:
He's the guy... The most renowned Tree songwriter, I guess. He and Carley Putman and of course they did have Roger Miller and Red Lane and Willie Nelson in the early days.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, no. I read Bobby's autobiography and it sounded like an amazingly creative environment to be in.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. It was fantastic. I got there in 83. But they were still... You'd have Harlan Howard listen to your song at the end of the week, hanging out. Hank Cocker would come around occasionally with Jeannie Seely. Braddock was always around with Carley Putman and Kevin Wilson, Jamie O'Hara. And we were kind of a running bunch in those days. Anyway, it was a wonderful time to be there and Tree was a really strong publisher. Every artist came there looking for songs. So you had a chance, if you had a really good song, you had a really good chance of getting a cut.
Doug Burke:
So there you had your first number one hit song, That's The Thing About Love in 1984, but let's talk about, That's The Thing About Love.
Gary Nicholson:
Well, to co-write it with Richard Lee who wrote, Don't It Make My Brown Eye's Blue. Richard's just a really great songwriter and we hit it off and start writing a lot together. And my first B.B. King cut was a co-write with Richard as well, but at the time that that was a hit I'd just met Garry... And he produced the record and he had me come over and here at the studio. It's the first time, Don Williams had a saxophone on his record. The saxophone was played by Jim horn, who I'd met when I was doing my records in Hollywood, he was working on Beach Boys record at the same time that we were recording in the other room. And so it was a thrill to have that and to see that thing climb the charts all the way. It was the song that got me out of the worst rent house in Nashville, and allowed me to be able to buy my first house.
Doug Burke:
You've written a lot of love songs that have been recorded and this is obviously one of them, That's The Thing About Love by Don Williams. Tell me, it's not the easiest thing to read a love song, but it comes so naturally for you and you come at the topic from so many different angles. How do you keep writing love songs and where does the inspiration for cominG... Where did this inspiration come from on That's the thing about love.
Gary Nicholson:
Well, it was an idea for a song. It sounded like a song to huddle. It's not like it was from direct personal experience or anything. That's just the nature of it can be everything and that can disappear as quickly as it came and that kind of commentary on love. But to the question of, yeah, I've got so many songs with love in the title. I guess I'd like to think that, I have been with the same woman since... We met when we were 18 at North Texas State and we've been married for 47 going on 48 years, so.
Doug Burke:
I got to ask you, what is the secret for our listeners at making a love last that long?
Gary Nicholson:
Oh, probably Karmic luck. You know what I mean? There's no explaining the past life connection that we've been there, done that before and we're very comfortable with each other and it's really that she's one of the most remarkable people I've ever encountered anywhere.
Doug Burke:
Barbara-
Gary Nicholson:
Barbara, yeah. She's amazing. She has a nonprofit parenting organization called Attachment Parenting International. There's chapters of it all over the world. Actually, we've been going to Athens, Greece for the last three years for her to do teacher training there. And then she's also done that in South America, but they're changing the name of the organization to Nurture, and that's what it'll be known as in the future. But aside from that, she's a wonderful mother and she's my best friend. And so I'm a really lucky guy, so.
Doug Burke:
Wow. Sounds like it. So, did she in particular inspire and of your love songs?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, really all of them. The positive ones. And then, the thing is, I mean, I would write breaking up songs or losing love songs. My parents divorced when I was 12 years old. So I saw that side of it as well. And it's the nature of Country music. You're writing love songs. Of course that changes. I mean, it's been beer songs here for the last 20 years, I guess.
Doug Burke:
Right. Did you and Richard Lee sit down and say, "Let's write a love song today."
Gary Nicholson:
No. We started playing some changes that we liked and then just kind of the whimsical nature of, "That's the thing about love is like, you can't do anything about it. It's just you get what you get."
Doug Burke:
I really liked this line. "Well, next time you come in a natural flow, deep in the feelings with your heart, all glow." The first time I heard that I was like, "What's a natural flow? But that sounds cool."
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. You know I actually came up with those lines because Richard would remind me later that those were lines that I came up with. But I think he's the one that said something about your heart, all a glow because I think I thought, "Well, that's weird or something." Anyway, it worked and it's a real special song for me and it was particularly great for me because I was playing with Bobby Bare at the time and we were playing in New York city at Lone Star Cafe. And I was on the bus and Bobby came on the bus and he had a USA Today paper and in the little corner of the USA Today, it had a picture of Don Williams and it said, That's The Thing About Love was number one. And Bare said, "We get back to Nashville you got to help me find a guitar player because you need to stay in town and write songs all the time while you got some momentum and..."
Doug Burke:
That was nice of him to understand-
Gary Nicholson:
I mean, we got back and I've got Max D Barnes son, Max T Barnes. In an hour's time I could show him everything about Bare's gig. If you had the Detroit city lick down here, pretty much got the gig figured out. I love Bare and he was very generous to do that.
Doug Burke:
The Detroit city lick that's the...
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah, you know how that goes.
Doug Burke:
The Mitch rider lick?
Gary Nicholson:
No.
Doug Burke:
I got it.
Gary Nicholson:
You know.
Doug Burke:
If you had that you could do most of Bobby's work.
Gary Nicholson:
I loved Bobby Bare and I was a fan of his from way back and around that time, Ronnie Ciola produced a record on it and I'd been playing with Guy Clark. That was my first gig was... I played with Guy for about three years when I first got to Nashville and then started doing this gig with Bare right after I played with Billy Joe Shaver for about six or eight months or so.
Doug Burke:
When the song goes number one, do you have a number one party?
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. We had a number one party at Tree, and then the president of Tree, the lady that ran it, Donna Hilly. And then the other publisher, at that time, it was Jimmy Gilmer that was running Richard Lee's publishing company, CBS songs. They took us out for a really great dinner and we had some celebrations around it. It was fun.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Another chart topping song that was more of a breakup song with Vince Gill.
Gary Nicholson:
Vince and I met because I was playing with Guy Clark and we did a... Ronnie Ciola produced a Guy Clark and Vince and I played the guitars on it. And I was, as anyone would be amazed at Vince's ability. And we became friends from that and then he got signed to a new record deal. He had been at RCA and hadn't had much success and he got signed by Tony Brown to MCA. And he came over to write a song. And at the time I had this kind of centered block buildings in the back of my house. It's called the chicken shack. And we'd made a little studio, a little writing studio in the garage back there and Vince came over and I had already written a song called One More Last Chance, but it was like a 6/8 ballad kind of a.... That kind of RnB 6/8 ballad thing, and because I was writing a bunch of songs for T. Graham Browns records at the time. Anyway, Vince came over and we started playing this uptempo groove that's kind of like a hyped up Lay Down Sally feel and I just started hollering out the one more last chance thing and then Vince had been reading Tammy Wynettes' biography where she described how George Jones... Trying to get George to quit drinking so she hid all the keys to the cars and then he got to ride the lawnmower and went to the honky tonk. That's-
Doug Burke:
A famous story. She hid the keys to the cars, but he still drove the John Deere to the bar.
Gary Nicholson:
So that's how our second verse came about because of that George Jones story. And then he got George to ride a green tractor in the video at the end of it. That's a funny video. They were filming and Vince fell out of a golf cart that was going pretty fast.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. They caught that and put that in the video. I thought that was acting, that was an accident?
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. That's funny. That was a thrill because we were nominated for the song of the year. I think we're up against Chattahoochee and they won, but it was a big deal. It was great little way to have a number one record and Vince still plays it. And then there's a video of him playing it at Clapton's Guitar Festival with all these bad asses playing solos. And it's one of those songs that's fun to play.
Doug Burke:
So, you co-wrote that with Vince and he's obviously an extremely talented guitar player and so were you, how did you come up with the guitar licks. Who's doing what there in the song?
Gary Nicholson:
Oh, that's all Vince. I mean, we wrote the song and made a little work tape in my studio, in the chicken shack, and then he just went and cut it with Tony and all those great players and I'm not playing on the record or anything. It's all Vince doing his Vince thing. Coming straight out of James Burton and Albert Lee. That's where that particular aspect of Vince's playing comes from. But Vince plays all kinds of these incredible bluegrass player and jazz player and everything else. But I didn't have anything to do with making that record.
Doug Burke:
Yet another chart topping hit called She Couldn't Change Me by Montgomery Gentry. Tell me about this song, where did it come from?
Gary Nicholson:
That's written with Chris Knight. I was a fan of Chris Knight's the first time I heard his songs and eventually we got together and started writing and we wrote a lot of songs together and I wound up producing a record on Chris. It's called Enough Rope. Anyway, Chris is just one of my favorite co-writers. I love what he does. And that song originated with the line that he had that said, "Sometimes I think what turned her on was my old broke down boots. She wanted her real cowboy-"
Doug Burke:
It was a phase she was going through.
Gary Nicholson:
It was a phase she was going through, yeah. We had that song and I just made a little work type with a drum loop and Chris sang it and it was around and we figured it'd be something that you put on one of those records eventually or something. And my son took it to whoever our guy was at the label that Montgomery Gentry was at the time. And he liked it and miraculously they cut it and he got to be a hit record and then made a real cute little video for it and stuff.
Doug Burke:
There's kind of a story of a woman who gets enamored of the West coast and changes everything to become like this I think of a Los Angeles person. Realizes that's not real and comes back.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
You knew what LA was like, right? Chris had the same thing or did he just have the stereotype of what it was like in his head?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, I probably. I mean we're just inventing a story about what would happen to a girl that fell in love with a guy because he was a funky country dude and that's what she first liked about him. But then she puts her quiet wine in the refrigerator and throws out his moonshine and paints the bedroom blue. Anyway, she takes off and comes back and it's our little story we invented.
Doug Burke:
Is there something about a blue bedroom?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, I think it, maybe it's hoping for having children or whatever.
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
Gary Nicholson:
Pink shebley replacing home brew was tragic, so.
Doug Burke:
That would get you kicked out of The Cellar, wouldn't it?
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. But yeah, Chris Knight... I love Chris Knight and I hadn't talked to him in a while.
Doug Burke:
Tell me about, you said he's one of your favorite co-writes. You've done so many co-writes with so many people, as well as producing so many artists and you're such a great collaborator. Tell me what makes a great co-write and why was Chris such a great co-write?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, I think with Chris, he's a natural and he's a John Prine lover and at the time that we started writing, I'd written half a record with John. His Lost dogs and Mixed Blessings record and I was big fan of John's and Chris had this real simplicity about him in a real intentional... That's a great thing about collaborating with people who have a real strong musical persona. For me it allows me to be a bit of a chameleon and the goal is to write a solid sound. Like they wrote it by themselves.
Doug Burke:
But that album that you wrote. I think five songs with John Prine is really, really amazing.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah, I love that record. I love all those songs, but Dave's Has Done is something I'm particularly proud of. I've played that a couple of times live and then I had a band called Fortunate Sons with all these great players and we would always play We're The Lonely and I would act as though as reading the classified ads from the newspaper. I'd actually have the lyrics to our song inside the newspaper that I'm holding up. And occasionally John would come out to a Fortunate Sons gig and sit in with us and sing the song with me. And I did a video recently of We're The Lonely. It's on YouTube.
Doug Burke:
I think We Are The Lonely, is my favorite of the songs on that album.
Gary Nicholson:
Goofy things like, Big Fat Love and Quit Hollaring At Me and Same Thing Happened To Me. Anyway, that was a real special time. John would come over, Howie Epstein from the Heartbreakers was producing his record. And the way that came about is my son was working at the movie theater and he recognized John because I'd been listening to the Missing Years and taking my son to basketball practice and knew that record of John's was just in my CD player all the time. And so my son had been hearing a lot of John Prine and he recognized John at the movie theater and he handed in his popcorn and said, "You're John Prine, aren't you?" He says, "Yeah." "My dad plays your record all the time in the car." And he told John my name and John, we barely knew each other, but we'd run into each other a few times, and my son said, "Well, you should write songs with my dad."
Gary Nicholson:
So next day I get a call from John. And he says, your son said, "We should be writing some songs together." And he was in the middle of making this record with Howie and he needed to be writing some songs anyway. And he came over and we wrote a song and I had a little drum machine and threw a couple of guitars and a bass down and John sang it, we sent it to Howie and he really liked it. And he said, do that again and John just kept on coming over and we wrote half of that record together. And then I got to go to Los Angeles and play on the record too. So it was really fun.
Doug Burke:
So we lost John Prine this year to the COVID.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. It was so unbelievably sad. I was writing a song that eventually finished it. But when I heard how serious John's situation was, my friend Ray Kennedy's wife is really best friends with Fiona. Their families are real close. Their kids kind of grew up together and stuff and told me how serious John was. And I started the song of his and it was like, I can't get John Prine off my mind. And I had the song finished and I made a little recording of it and then I went for a walk. And when I came back from my walk, Delbert had called to let me know that that John had passed while I was walking. And so all of a sudden, my song that was talking about helping John get better and everything, and it didn't make sense anymore and I wound up changing it and and rewrote it. There's a video my son put together on YouTube, that's just call it prime. And then you could check it out.
Doug Burke:
I'm going to look at that right after we're done. Yeah. I mean we're lucky that you got to work with him and we have a body work to listen to and refresh our memory. We lost him. We lost Charlie Pride who recorded your Power of Love song as well?
Gary Nicholson:
I just had the strangest thing happened regarding the Power of Love. I met Clarence Thomas in this situation and I didn't realize that I was talking to Clarence Thomas and we were at this function and he came to me and said, "Someone told me you're a country song writer. So I'm a big country music fan." And he said, "You'd think the only country music I would like would be Charlie Pride." We were just kind of laughing and stuff. And he says that I liked Jimmy Rogers and Katie Wells and Hank Williams and Merle Haggard. And we talked about country music for a while and he came back to Charlotte Pride. I said, "Well, I did write a song in the eighties that was a hit for Charlie Pride, it was titled one of his records called the Power of Love," and he stopped and he says, "Wow, you wrote the Power of Love?" He said, "I've got that vinyl record at my house. I love it." And we kept talking for a while and then out of nowhere, here comes Mike Bloomberg shows up and said, "Hey, we're supposed to be over here," or whatever they disappeared. And my friend came up to me and said, "So, what were you talking to Clarence about all that time?" And I said, "Who's Clarence?" And he said, "The guy you were just talking to." I said, "That's Clarence Thomas?" And I had no idea who I was talking to the whole time.
Doug Burke:
He played for the Mets?
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Was he on the Cowboys?
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
So you have had, since the early seventies, a very special working relationship with Delbert McClinton. It is impossible for me to pick my favorite Delbert McClinton, Gary Nicholson song. And so maybe I should ask you, do you have a favorite?
Gary Nicholson:
Oh, I don't know. They're all really special to me. I love our entire bag of songs. I guess it's 35 or 40 songs that he's recorded of ours. And I love them all for different reasons. Something always comes up about Rita's Gone, and I'm Kind of Crazy. He is one that still lives because of George Strait of that, I don't know. You Were Never Mine is one of my favorites. That's a co-write with Delbert. I really liked that a lot.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about one of the songs that you wrote that was recorded by Lee Roy Parnell, you and Delbert wrote called Squeeze Me in, but really has kind of become one of the staples in Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood's performances.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. I don't know if they still perform it. I mean, I went to a Garth show in Memphis. Trisha came out and they did some stuff together and I kept thinking they were going to do the song but they never did. But they got a lot of songs to choose from. Yeah. That was a fun thing because that's the only Garth Brooks cut I've ever had.
Doug Burke:
I love the double entendre of the Squeeze me in to your schedule and-
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. We had a lot of fun writing that.
Doug Burke:
Well I think that's one of the things about Delbert McClinton, is he has a great sense of humor.
Gary Nicholson:
Absolutely.
Doug Burke:
You just know it from his records and he's the hardest working man in show business and he has a great time in his shows, but you're his friend. I imagine you guys must have yoked it up.
Gary Nicholson:
We've had a wonderful life together, really special. He's a great friend and a great guy and you never think about it because it's just part of life. But when I stop to consider things, I think I'm probably more influenced by Delbert than anybody that I have a personal connection with.
Doug Burke:
How has he influenced you?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, it's just, I just fell in love with the first Delbert and Clinton record when I first came back from Hollywood to Texas and we got married in '73 and first thing I heard was that Delbert and Clinton record. I think my friend, Tommy Spurlock gave it to me and it's the perfect fusion of RnB and Country music. It's where I live. It's the foundations of where it all started for me. It was, pre-Beetle rock and roll. And that's where Delbert comes from. It's a country music and blues stuck together in a way that's just a unique to him. He's got it. I mean, he simplifies... Before they named it Americana, he was making that blended kind of music. And it's a Texas thing too, but yeah. He's one of the best there ever was.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. It really is a combination of flavors in his sound.
Gary Nicholson:
He is a complete unique, natural guy. He used all that stuff together without ever thinking about it at all. Complete unconscious occurrence of nature that somebody was asking me about Delbert one time and I said, "Well, the secret to Delbert success is he doesn't know how to spell compromise." If anyone had ever told him, "Hey, you should cut this song because it'll be a big hit." He would just look at him like a hog looking at a wristwatch or something. He's always just followed his muse directly and done exactly what he intuitively knew was the right thing to do. It's all about choices and he's made some great ones.
Doug Burke:
And one of the great songs you wrote is, When Rita Leaves. This is one of my favorites.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah, I love that song.
Doug Burke:
Tell me about the writing of this wrong.
Gary Nicholson:
Oh man. It probably took us a while. We were trying to figure out what was actually going to happen. We had the first verse of the lipstick letter on the mirror that was smashed on the bathroom floor thing. We had all of that and a picture of her leaving everything, but we didn't really know... I think we went through a bunch of variations about what she was going to do for revenge and the whole thing about taking his rag top out in the desert and getting some gas and then she pours the gas all over the car and sets it on fire.
Doug Burke:
That line, "I had a sky blue rag top Mustang, a 1964." That car was designed by Lee Iacocca and was the very first Mustang and was both a hot seller when it came out but is now like one of the cherished collectibles. So burning that pony down is really like a crime against nature. This is a really valued antique car. I don't know if you knew that when you wrote the lyrics.
Gary Nicholson:
We knew. My sister's husband had a Mustang convertible like that and I knew that car, it would be a tragedy to have that happen.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, no. That would make a lot of guys cry. That's for sure. When Rita leaves.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. I love that song. It's-
Doug Burke:
What do you love about the melody?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, it's Rita and so it's going to be a Spanish kind of thing. It fell into that pocket and we knew that it was going to have that flavor in it. It occurs pretty naturally once you commit to that.
Doug Burke:
The flavor. So on the melody, when you find the melody, do you look for a flavor?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, it's all coming from the words for me. It's like, if the words dictate that, if the meaning links towards that, then I'll go there because it seems natural.
Doug Burke:
Well, a song like My Kind of Crazy, which is kind of a love song, what's the flavor that you're going with there?
Gary Nicholson:
It's all dictated by the lyrics. I had this thing for me that's like I look at song titles as seeds that needed to be sprouted. And it's like in that seed, if it's a title, If The House Is Rocking, Don't Bother Knocking. You know you're not going to ride it as a waltz. The title of the song can tell everything. I mean, there may be a rhythm in the actual title that sets you in that direction, or there might be just the nature of the subject matter of the title would tell you what kind of music is going to go with it. If you use Same Kind of Crazy as an example, it's like we wanted something rock and it's just sounds like it's going to be a rocker.
Doug Burke:
Your songs have been used in a bunch of movies, but probably the most famous or perhaps most favorites besides the Urban Cowboy Jukebox Argument is from Crazy Heart by Jeff Bridges, where he sings, Falling and Flying. Were you surprised that they picked that song?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, the way that occurred is, it's a co-write with Stephen Bruton and Stephen had been in a 12 step program for a long time. So, I was in Austin and I was going over to visit Stephen to hang out and play guitars and visit him and possibly write a song and kind of had the chorus going in my head. The funny how falling feels like flying for a little while, because I thought it would be a song for Stephen to get into... Because of his 12 step thing. He did sponsor for various people and he was just a treasure of a guy for helping guys get sober and stuff. And that's what happened with that, but we wrote the song and then I realized after we had written the song, that it was really about what Stephen was going through in his personal life at that point anyway. We got the song written, he called and said, he was co-producing the Crazy Heart soundtrack with T-bone. And they said they're going to use our song and at first it was like, "Well, okay. Sure they are." But then, he called again and said, well, they shot a scene today with our song and so it's going to be in the movie for sure. And then they went on up using the song twice in the movie in different scenes. And it was a thrill for me. I've met Jeff Bridges because my band that was playing around town when they made the Starman movie, he came in and heard our band and loved it and invited us to be the band that played the scene in Starman that was at the motel and stuff. And I've gotten to know Jeff a little bit during that time and kept in touch a little bit. But anyway, it was great. I got to go out to California and play the song with Jeff and T-bone some other great players at the Independent Spirit Awards. Jeff won the best actor there and then the next night won the Oscar for his performance and we got to go to the Oscars with Jeff and his wife and T-bone and his wife, Barbara, and myself. And we stayed with T-bone for that week and hung out and had a big time. It was great.
Doug Burke:
I think this is one of the greatest lines about substance abuse in all of music. The idea that, funny how falling feels like flying, and then the pause for a little while. In the beginning, it must be a lot of fun and that's what draws people into it. And then after a while, it's not fun anymore.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. It's kind of the nature of drugs and alcohol. It's just it's a tough thing, because payback's tough sometimes. Stephen was such a great guy. I mean, great songwriter and one of my favorite people ever. It was always a little treasure for us to have had that song recorded and it was a great thing. It was really tough to see him go too early.
Doug Burke:
So you wrote a song called Skin Deep, which went to... I believe the album went to number one on the Blues Chart the year it was released?
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. That's Tom Hambridge produces Buddy Guy's records. And Buddy had said to Tom, "How about a song about beauty is skin deep?" And Tom mentioned to me that Buddy had said that and I said, "Well, how about a song just called Skin Deep about race." And so that's what we did. But we gave Buddy a writing credit because we probably wouldn't have written that title if he hadn't said something like that. He didn't really write it with us. But his recording... And it was the title of his record and it was kind of towards the beginning of Tom and I, writing songs for Buddy. He's recorded I don't know, maybe 20 of our songs. Every time I get an idea for a blues song, I'd take it to Tom because I knew that he would record it on Buddy if we had a song that fit. Tom's a great record producer, and he knows exactly what Buddy will and won't say, and then we can adjust our ideas to fit the records he's making with buddy. It's been really great collaboration. I love Tom.
Doug Burke:
So underneath we're all the same. You've been sort of progressively maybe writing some more socially conscious material, not just with Skin Deep, although, I think... What are you trying to say here with Skin Deep?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, it's obvious. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the song is just the fact that skin color doesn't have anything to do with who we are. I've gotten really socially conscious in my songwriting. During the Great Divide record last year and then throughout this year I keep writing these kind of songs that are more socially conscious. Just living through the Trump era led me to a lot of these things. I'm still doing it. I just had a video last week of a new song of mine called Proud Boy. It's on YouTube and you have to check that out too, but I've got a song called, Hate Is Too Heavy A Burden To Bear that was inspired by a Martin Luther King quote. And a song that's attributed to John Lewis called, Make Good Trouble. All those songs like Great Divide, God help America and Immigrant Nation and We're one, Choose Love. It's been hard for me to write just a regular kind of love song during this time.
Doug Burke:
Interesting. Yeah. You feel motivated. I mean, we've just experienced the insurrection at the Capitol this month on January 6. Lot of things led up to that and certainly Proud Boys being part of that. So I guess that, when I listened to the Great Divide, it really feels to me you're inspired by this voice of Woody Guthrie, the early protest singers of Pete Seeger and early Dylan, first on album, Bob Dylan, and even into the sixties protests against the Vietnam war with a song like 19 to a certain extent that you wrote, you have this body of protest work, that's out there. Like this voice is coming up from inside you.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. I can't help myself. That's what comes up here lately. That's just what's on my mind and on my heart. When I was making the Great Divide record, I was making a conscious effort to make it as nonpartisan as I could. I mean, someone could easily figure out where I'm coming from, if it's a song like Immigrant Nation or God help America or whatever. But I didn't want it to ever be exclusive to click bait to the left or whatever. I mean, the ideal of having a record called the Great Divide would be to try to heal, to try to shine a light on what's going on and bemoan our situation, but also bring attention to it and hopefully inspire some kind of unity or hope that someone might be able to point themselves that way. I don't know, man, I don't think I'm any kind of a healer or anything, but I am inspired by the socially conscious stuff of what it goes through and of course, Bob Dylan and everything, I mean, Curtis Mayfield and Donny Hathaway and-
Doug Burke:
Marvin Gaye-
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah, and Marvin Gaye and all of it. I mean, it's an interesting thing it's like now there's no money in making music anymore. It's kind of like I'm just kind of doing it. This is what's on my mind and this is my expression artistically and hopefully it can provide some kind of healing, hope for healing anyway.
Doug Burke:
Well, I think we all need the hope for healing and I completely get that the Great Divide really isn't click bait for the left. It really is I think you speaking for the voice of the middle, which has been lost by this Great Divide in America. The middle voice of America, the normal voice, the non-extreme voice. Regular man and woman, no matter what race or creed or religion you are, that just normal voice has been lost by this great divide.
Gary Nicholson:
Yeah. It's really tough on me enough. I've tried to hang on to my friends that were on the other side. They were Trumpsters whatever, it's like, I hate to brand anybody, anything, and especially musicians because you make music together. Then you never dreamed that maybe some of your musician pals are over there on the other side and it's unbelievable. When you first get on Facebook thing going, you're saying "Everybody can be my friend," Thinking they might come to your gig or something or buy your record or something. It's like I thought a good song would be talking Facebook bullies about how you got 5,000 friends you've never met and all that kind of thing.
Doug Burke:
I'd like to hear that one.
Gary Nicholson:
But it's tough when you see some of the stuff that... For me I've been writing a bunch of stories, connected to insights actually become a memoir that I'm trying to put together and on the heels of the insurrection, I wrote the story about my dad taking me to Washington DC when I was 10 year old kid and got to meet Sam Rayburn because my dad had done some campaigning in North Texas. And he had a bit of a personal relationship with Mr. Sam. And we got to go and meet him and have lunch and he arranged a tour of the Capitol for us. And it was just so crazy to see all those weirdos marching through the Senate and guys with horns sitting where speaker Rayburn would have been. Anyway, it was very upsetting for me and anyway, I wrote a little short story of that.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I got to say, I really enjoyed your short story about the sort of birth of Whitey Johnson. I realized you're not just a great songwriter, you're a great storyteller and both in your music and in your creative non-fiction writing. And Whitey Johnson... Tell us who Whitey Johnson is for our listeners?
Gary Nicholson:
The Whitey Johnson character is a composite. I was asked to write a short story for a book called A Guitar and A Pen that was compiled by Robert Hicks who wrote Widow's South. And so a bunch of songwriters contributed to his book as songwriters writing short stories. And so the character of Whitey is like a guitar hero, that's a composite kind of character for me growing up in Texas. It's like this character was... He was black, but he was albino so his family called him Whitey and he was a guitar player that played with little Richard and did all this stuff. And anyway, Whitey winds up passing away in a fire that started by the clan to burn down the church where Whitey goes and plays a white Falcon that the preacher owns there and he can't get out of the fire and he dies in the fire. And my dad takes me to the site of the burned down church and I got a melted tuning key off the Great White Falcon and kept it. That's the story.
Doug Burke:
And it's become your alter ego in performance.
Gary Nicholson:
Colin Linden is just an amazing country, blues guitar player. He internalized all the great Reverend Gary Davis, blind Leland Jefferson and blind Willie Johnson. And he knows how to do country blues guitar playing better than anybody I've ever been around. And so when we would play together, it was just a magical thing. We just read each other's minds, And so of the story goes that I was compelled to go to Sam's men's wear on fifth Avenue where they had a white suit in the window, and it was a two for one, I was able to buy a white suit for a hundred bucks and for 15 more dollars, I could get a purple suit for Collin. And that's what started the performing of Whitey Johnson. Colin helped me put the record together. The first gig was Colin had a gig at Edmonton Folk Festival in Canada and that was Whitey's debut performance. Keb' Mo' and Robert Cray were on the bill as well. And first time I'd ever worn the suit as Whitey and performed and they took a picture, they called the Oreo picture because those guys don't even understand what it means.
Doug Burke:
Well, I have to say it's been really fun having you on the show. I really appreciate you sharing these backstories with us. Is there anything you want to promote or sell or thank?
Gary Nicholson:
You know I don't really know how to put a record out at this particular time. I'm trying to figure out how to do that. So maybe there'll be a way I do have an accumulation of all these politically motivated songs that I'll send you these YouTube links to the stuff. And so, just to encourage-
Doug Burke:
Maybe we'll post that on our site. If there's one voice and one song that you've written, you could have any living voice record, what song and voice would you pick?
Gary Nicholson:
Well, I think just because of what's going on right now, I've got a new song called Hate Is Too Heavy A Burden To Bear. It's based on a quote from Martin Luther King and I feel like a voice that could get that song to the public would be John legend, maybe.
Doug Burke:
I can't wait for our Twitter and Facebook and Instagram followers to get a hold of that. That is a great idea. Please, please, let's see if we can make that happen. Follow us on our social media. I want to thank you, Gary Nicholson. This has been amazing. Thank you for attending Backstory Song. Thank you, DJ Wyatt Schmidt, our recording engineer and MC Owens and thank you, Alyssa Golding for following and liking us on all of our episodes. We love our fans and please share these episodes and share the playlist site. You will find the first Gary Nicholson songbook on our website to be shared so that people can listen to Gary's music almost the entire day, because there's almost 500 songs out there for you to listen to. Thank you very much to our listeners. And thank you Gary.
Gary Nicholson:
Thanks so much for having me.
