Kye Fleming Interview
Doug Burke:
Nashville Songwriter Hall of Famer, Kye Fleming, was named BMI Songwriter of the Year for three consecutive years between 1981 and 1983. Kye tried her hand as a folk singer in clubs in Boston, New York, Los Angeles before settling down in Nashville in the late '70s where she teamed with Dennis Morgan and they began writing hits together. They achieved their breakthrough success by writing Barbara Mandrell's first number one hit, Sleeping Single in a Double Bed, and they never looked back. Kye has written songs that achieved 42 BMI Awards, including 30 top 40 hits and eight number one songs. Her songs have been recorded by legends, including Barbara Mandrell, Charley Pride, Ronnie Milsap, Wayne Newton, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Tina Turner, Bette Midler, and others. Incredibly modest and private, it is truly, truly a special honor to have her join us on Back Story Song.
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke, and I am so thrilled and honored today to have Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame member, Kye Fleming, on the show with us. Kye, welcome.
Kye Fleming:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
It's so great to have you here. Now, Kye, you've had an amazing career, so many chart-topping hits, which we're going to go into. But I'd actually like to go back to the start. I mean you were a solo performer for many years in a wide variety of really cool places, frankly. But when did you start writing songs and why did you start writing songs?
Kye Fleming:
Well, I was in junior high. My English teacher gave us an assignment to write a poem and everybody turned it in. I wrote this four-line poem. I didn't know anything about haikus. But they put it in a book and whatever. I thought, "Hm, maybe it is pretty good. I kind of like that." And then my choral teacher was really good friends with this English teacher and that was kind of my pod there. I didn't grow up in Arkansas exactly, I mean from that point on I did. But I was a Navy brat and we lived in California and Hawaii. By the time I was in junior high, we were back in Fort Smith. I'm kind of a loner. I think I always was, so a lot of time on my hands. If you've got a lot of time on your hands and a guitar and somebody liked a poem, then what are you going to do? You're going to write a song. I still am in touch with that music teacher and I'm not in touch with many people over my lifetime. But I appreciate the encouragement that I got at that age because that really did light a fire. I remember many, many, many years from that point where of just being I got the living room and I could shut the door. I'd go in and play guitar for hours and hours and write songs. And then I ended up playing for different things and talked my way into playing for happy hour at a hotel and stuff like that when I was in high school.
Doug Burke:
What was the name of the hotel? This was in Arkansas?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. It was a Sheraton, I think. I just talked them into it. They didn't do that that much back then, but I needed places to play, hey.
Doug Burke:
You went on the road to Greenwich Village and to Boston.
Kye Fleming:
And I went to college. Well, I'm supposed to be in college, but it was a great place to live while I played Dixon Street, all the clubs and bars up and down Dixon Street at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Something that I just remembered, a few years ago I was at a thing for Emmylou and I turned around and this person said, "Hi, Rhonda." She said, "Cindy Williams here." It was Lucinda Williams. Her dad taught at the University of Arkansas. She said, "Yeah, I used to go hear you." She's younger than me. "I used to go hear you playing in the clubs up and down Dixon Street at the university." I had no idea. That was awesome.
Doug Burke:
So it's pretty amazing to me because I imagine in this era, this is the early 1970s, there's a handful of female role models for you, like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell and Carole King, but not a lot, right? And Dolly Parton.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Not a lot, no. They were singer/songwriters. If I was going to write, I had to be singing my own songs. Who else was going to do them? It was a songwriter period of time back then. There were a lot of songwriters, but not a lot of female songwriters/singers.
Doug Burke:
You kind of do the troubadour thing and get on the road to ... Got to get out of Dixon Street and go see the world.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I'll tell you how that happened. I was at the university, but I was looking around. I wanted to branch out a little bit. I got myself a gig at a hotel in Tulsa. There's this table down in front of me of a few guys. When I finished one of my sets, I sat down and started talking to them. It was Elvis' band. So Elvis was in town playing. They were sitting there and listened through my ... I mean they were there for a couple of sets. It was Jerry Scheff, Ron Tutt, Glen Hardin-
Doug Burke:
The greatest session musicians in the world.
Kye Fleming:
They were with Elvis for years.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. They were LA-based at that time?
Kye Fleming:
They were kind of based all over, but he was recording in LA and that's how I ended up out there because Jerry said, "Look, you're really good and if you want to come out to LA, I'll help set you up with a publisher." So I did. A friend of mine, my dog, and my Ford Econoline van headed out to LA.
Doug Burke:
You're sleeping in your van with your guitar?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I can't remember that much back then, but I was not sleeping in that van. We ended up out there and I got an apartment. It was only about a block from, I didn't know where to go, a block from the Chinese theater.
Doug Burke:
Grauman's Chinese Theatre there on Sunset Boulevard?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I rented one for nine months. So then Jerry set me up with a publisher. I went, played him a few songs and he signed me. So we did a few demos and whatever and I got my first cut on the twin boys, David and Andy Williams, sons of Andy Williams and his brother, David. They performed it on The Sonny & Cher Show.
Doug Burke:
What was the name of that song?
Kye Fleming:
Falling, Falling, Gone.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember where you were when you first heard it on the radio and what that feeling was like?
Kye Fleming:
No. They sang that one on the Sonny & Cher Show. Now, how did I feel when I saw them do it on the Sonny & Cher Show? That was pretty cool. Anyway, so I played around a few places. It wasn't easy to find places to play there. But one cool thing, Joni Mitchell was playing in town. I went to The Troubadour and I had a friend help me get in the second-story window in the back while she was rehearsing. It was the horn player who went on miles and miles tour with her, Tom Scott. It was just the two of them and they were going over her songs and everything. I was the only one in there. I just went in the audience. I sat about halfway up. She'd look up there and just ... They were fine with me being there and I was in heaven. Probably thought I was waiting for them to quit so I could clean up or something. But anyway, that was a highlight. Not long after that, I headed back to Arkansas because I decided to try out for the New York Coffee House Circuit. The reason I wanted to do that is I'd had it in the back of my mind since the time I was playing clubs in Fayetteville because when I was there, there was a female singer/songwriter from New York who was on the circuit and I heard her at one of the things that the school put on. I went up to her afterward and started talking. We hung out most of the evening just talking. It was finally a woman I could talk to who was doing it. They were sending her to colleges in mostly the East Coast. I'm not sure where all she went. But clearly, she went to Fayetteville, Arkansas. It was amazing. That was just a shot in the arm. It's like, "Okay, I can do that. I can do this." That was before I actually went to LA. But I remembered that. I went back to Arkansas, plugged in again to play clubs and stuff. I got in touch with the woman, Marilyn Lipsius. It was the New York Coffee House Circuit. I got in touch with her somehow. Keep in mind, no cell phones. I don't even know how I found out. All of this could have been done a lot faster maybe if there'd been iPhones. I talked to her and she set me up a gig at The Bitter End to try out. I flew up there with my guitar in hand and played a set and she signed me. So far so good. So then I went back to Arkansas. They would send me to a lot of the places where the East Coast people couldn't go because it was too far. So I did a couple of years going to Boise, Idaho and Pocatello and a lot of the Midwest towns around Chicago and stuff like that to schools.
Doug Burke:
You were not a cover act.
Kye Fleming:
I was not. Come to think of it, I said that and then come to think of it, most people actually did do covers. Let's see. Then what? What do you want to know?
Doug Burke:
So then you go to Boston.
Kye Fleming:
Oh okay. In 1975, I thought, "Okay, I'm not ready to live in New York, so I'm going to go to Boston." So in 1975, I go to Boston and I get a place in Cambridge to rent. You know how it is. In the city, people leave discarded furniture. It wasn't a furnished apartment, so I went through the streets and picked up a few things. I was only a block away from Harvard Square. So that was cool. Past themes, I didn't know about it before I went, but I found out that it was the hip place for folk singers and whatever. So I tried out there and I sang there a couple of times. But also, Jonathan Swift's in Boston had just opened. So I went over and I tried out. They put me on as the first ... They're still there. They're still rocking. But they put me in as the first person to be a regular. I had I don't know if it was one weekday or ... Because I was just a solo.
Doug Burke:
Like a Monday night or a Tuesday night when they were slower, you were the steady gig bar band essentially.
Kye Fleming:
I also went and talked myself into Pier One Oyster House in Boston. I said, "Man, you guys could really use some entertainment." Back then, I mean I was hauling around huge Altec speakers. I mean I had a truck. No little itty-bitty Bose back then. I mean they were on the scene, but I didn't have any. I'd just have to talk people into helping me unload and load and all that.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
Kye Fleming:
That was life. But man, I got him to pay me $50 a night and I had a steady gig.
Doug Burke:
Have any of the songs that you wrote and played from that era been recorded?
Kye Fleming:
No, just the one that those kids did.
Doug Burke:
So there's this treasure trove of material.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, no idea where. I don't have anything, nothing.
Doug Burke:
You don't have any recordings of that? It doesn't exist?
Kye Fleming:
No.
Doug Burke:
We got to dig this up. But you remember the songs, I imagine?
Kye Fleming:
No. I don't remember.
Doug Burke:
You don't?
Kye Fleming:
No. No. You just keep going.
Doug Burke:
Oh wow.
Kye Fleming:
It's crazy.
Doug Burke:
I bet if we put you onstage, some of it would come back to you.
Kye Fleming:
No, it wouldn't.
Doug Burke:
No, it would, okay.
Kye Fleming:
And shouldn't.
Doug Burke:
Okay. So you're saying this isn't your best stuff?
Kye Fleming:
No, no. It was just I don't know what it was.
Doug Burke:
You were learning.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
You were learning the craft.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, and basically taught myself how to play guitar. But I wasn't bad because that was part of the reason it was so good to write my own songs because I could figure out these cool little guitar things. Well, it was my song. I never did learn how to actually sit down and work out somebody else's songs.
Doug Burke:
You're done playing Jonathan Swift's in Boston. You go back to Arkansas or do you go back to Nashville?
Kye Fleming:
While I was playing Jonathan Swift's, I got to know this kid. He had a manager in New York. He had that manager come hear me in Boston. He wanted to sign me and so I was, "Sure." He wanted me to move to New York and so, "Sure." This is pretty funny. He set me up in an apartment until I could find something. Lo and behold, it was on top of Carnegie Hall.
Doug Burke:
Okay. That was crazy. That time in America, that was kind of a seedy neighborhood around there, wasn't it?
Kye Fleming:
Oh no. That was fine. Where I found an apartment was seedy.
Doug Burke:
Okay.
Kye Fleming:
It was really, really bad.
Doug Burke:
Like Amsterdam Avenue they used to call Heroin Alley, I believe.
Kye Fleming:
Nice, yeah. I don't know what they called my alley. But it was between Eighth and Ninth on 46th.
Doug Burke:
That's Hell's Kitchen. That's the Hell's Kitchen.
Kye Fleming:
Now, Hell's Kitchen is really hip and cool.
Doug Burke:
It's posh, right. Yeah.
Kye Fleming:
Back then, no, it wasn't. It was not good at all.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, no. That's Times Square.
Kye Fleming:
How old was I? I was 26, yeah, almost 27, I guess. So I mean I was thrilled. I'm in New York. What do I do? Well, maybe I could get a job because it's expensive and I'm running out of money. So I looked in the paper and I decided I would go try and get a Sam Goody's music store job. So I show up that morning and there's a line half a mile long. I go ahead and I got the job.
Doug Burke:
Out of a half-mile long line, because you're more passionate about music than everybody else on line.
Kye Fleming:
That's what I'm guessing. So it was selling guitars and picks and stuff like that. That didn't last very long because apparently I don't stay anywhere very long. But this manager, Ken Silverbush was his name, nice guy. Did he know what he was doing? Probably not. I don't know. But he was connected to a lot of people. So he got me in to play for a couple places. Steve Popovich at Epic Records put up the money for me to do a demo. By the time I got it done and all of that, he had moved to another label not in New York. That was fine. It was fun.
Doug Burke:
You lost your A&R guys.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. It was a good experience. So then I'm trying all these things. I'm trying to put together a band to play at a newly-opening club in Manhattan called the Lone Star Club, which is still there. I ended up after just being a little while in that apartment, moving out to Long Island about halfway out. I started playing at this place called The Hobbit Hole. You had a lot of coffee houses, not a lot, but there were coffee houses back then in places. So I played there a lot.
Doug Burke:
The Hobbit Hole. In what town is that, do you remember?
Kye Fleming:
Near Port Jefferson.
Doug Burke:
Okay. That's pretty far out on Long Island.
Kye Fleming:
About halfway out. This guy who ended up being a really famous writer, he interviewed music people and all that. He did an article on me and I've actually got it.
Doug Burke:
Because this is Billy Joel era. He's doing Piano Man on Long Island.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Out there in Port Jefferson.
Kye Fleming:
Of course, I'm just paying attention to folk era music. When you're that age, it's like you wanted to clip along pretty fast. It had been, but not fast enough. So I'm getting a little down. I thought, "You know what? I'm going to call my parents and see if I could just come home, fly home for a couple weeks. I just need a break." I did and they said, "Sure," of course.
Doug Burke:
Aren't parents nice? Take you back.
Kye Fleming:
I'm an only kid and I'm out buzzing around.
Doug Burke:
They're glad to see you come home. "Why don't you get a real job, Kye?"
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I don't know. I think they were afraid I would just disappear completely if they didn't just say, "Oh yeah, that's okay, honey."
Doug Burke:
They didn't say, "Join the Navy," did they?
Kye Fleming:
No, never did.
Doug Burke:
"Why don't you join the military?"
Kye Fleming:
They didn't ever give me advice because they felt like I knew what I was doing.
Doug Burke:
Okay, good.
Kye Fleming:
They were so supportive and they really would have loved for me to just come home and never said that. I mean they were so supportive. Looking back, I don't know if I could do that if I had kids. That was all fine. I had kind of hit a wall really. It was a lot of things good have happened, but I'm tired and I'm doing it all myself and still loading and unloading my own equipment and blah blah blah. About 30 minutes later, I got a phone call. This only happened maybe once a year we'd talk. It was Jerry Scheff again who was responsible for getting me to LA and signing-
Doug Burke:
From Elvis' band?
Kye Fleming:
Yes. So he called and he said, "How you doing?" I said, "I don't know what I'm going to do." He said, "Well, I was just calling to see if you wanted to meet me in Nashville." He said, "You ever been?" I said, "No, I only have driven through on my way to Boston or New York." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'm going down in about two weeks and just come. I'll pick you up at the airport. Got a place to stay." Because he had just started writing and so he had a couple of meetings with publishers. So he was going to set me up with them also. So that's what we did. I flew from New York to Nashville. Bobby Ogden, who has been the piano player for Elvis, picked me up and Jerry. We ate at a meat and three somewhere along the way. I thought, "Okay, this feels like home." That's the first thing I thought is, "My God, this feels like Arkansas." It felt really good. I had just relaxed into it and everything. The first person that he had me see was Rob Galbraith and Rob was interested in me as an artist when he heard me. I thought, "Well, that's cool. That's not exactly what I want to do but, hey, are you kidding? Yeah."
Doug Burke:
Got to start now.
Kye Fleming:
The next day I saw Tom Collins. I played three or four songs for Tom and he said, "Yeah, you're really good," and he signed me.
Doug Burke:
So explain to people who Tom Collins is at this point in time.
Kye Fleming:
He was producer Ronnie Milsap, Barbara Mandrell, and Charley Pride at the time.
Doug Burke:
How many of those three have had any hits at this points?
Kye Fleming:
I think they all had-
Doug Burke:
Something.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
But not much, right?
Kye Fleming:
Not too much. Well, Milsap had. Yes, he had just had It Was Almost Like a Song. When I realized that, I thought, "Okay. Yeah. I bet he's more pop and whatever." Because I didn't know what I was, but I was confident. I mean I sat there. Before he signed me, I said, "You know what? If you know what you want, tell me. I can write it." I actually wrote music for this stack of lyrics for a Broadway play that Sammy Cahn.
Doug Burke:
No kidding?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. That was a connection through the manager that I had in New York.
Doug Burke:
What was that play called?
Kye Fleming:
I don't have any idea. But I actually lost out to, once again, no iPhones, no computers, nothing. I lost out to Carole King.
Doug Burke:
But that was the first time you wrote for others and so you knew you could do this.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Which really became one of your signature things. I mean you were legendary for writing for others.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. It was so much fun. I mean I just fricking loved doing that project. I'm not kidding. It was good. Yeah. I just sat down and I was totally confident in that meeting. It was like I felt at home. I didn't have that much reason to be confident.
Doug Burke:
I think it was the first record that you get recorded for Barbara Mandrell, Sleeping Single in a Double Bed.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. That was actually the second. She actually recorded one that I wrote alone before that, but that didn't end up on the album. So okay, I had never co-written at that point, an actual sit in the room. David Conrad, he was kind of what they called the tape boy and the second-in-charge at Pi-Gem, which was the name of the company that I signed to. He was friends with this kid who had been there for a few years trying to get a deal. He said, "Hey, you guys should try writing something. Dennis, this is our new writer." So we met. He already had a writing gig with somebody, Bobby P. Barker, who is from west Tennessee somewhere. So he didn't live there. Anyway, we wrote a song with him. And then I just remember thinking, "Well, this is fun." And then Bobby went back to his hometown the next day and Dennis and I kept writing and writing and writing. I didn't co-write with anybody else for six years and neither did he, except a couple of songs that we did with Charlie Quillen, who also wrote for Tom. One of them was I Wouldn't Have Missed It For The World and the one that Johnny Cash ... Let's see.
Doug Burke:
She Used To Love Me A Lot.
Kye Fleming:
That's it, yeah. But I mean that was later on. It happened really fast.
Doug Burke:
Sleeping Single in a Double Bed, Barbara Mandrell records it. It goes to number one. Your second recording goes to the top of the charts. Do you have a number one party?
Kye Fleming:
We might have, but you know what? I'm not kidding. I'm a loner. I didn't go to parties. I mean I went to the award things and basically I'd just go up there ... Dennis said I'd go up there and I'd say, "Thank you," and he'd give a little talk. That was it.
Doug Burke:
If they had a number one party you might not have even gone. They had the party without you.
Kye Fleming:
They didn't do that-
Doug Burke:
They didn't do that back then? That started later?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I don't remember many. Maybe-
Doug Burke:
That started later.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, I don't remember many, maybe they did and I didn't go. I don't remember. Okay. So, here's the other important, this is a whole another thing that made all of that possible or likely or a had to be a thing. Here's the timeline. I moved there in August, I remember my connection was with Jerry Scheff and the guys in the band and they had come to town because Elvis was going to record or something again, somewhere. I went and hung out with them, they wanted to go to Felton Jarvis's place and we all went out there and it was in Franklin, somewhere in the country. I mean, he had all of Elvis's memorabilia from all his movies and it was fascinating, it was amazing. And he played the album that he had just cut, the sides that he had just cut on. So, all that was fun, and went to church with them in Franklin, Tennessee at this little downtown church. So, that's the backdrop for that.
Doug Burke:
Sleeping single in a double bed, thinking over things I wish I'd said, what is this based on? Is this like, are you putting yourself in Barbara's shoes in some way? What would her voice say? You're writing for Barbara Mandrell, right? You're saying this, "I need to write a song for Barbara."
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Well, we had met in the office, all of a sudden she's got a female writing for her. I sang the songs and it was just different. I mean, she normally had these guys writing songs for her and trying to get in her head or whatever. And I just had a female perspective in a lot of ways that they didn't. We connected, our ranges were similar. And so, it was just really easy, just sing songs and she'd, "Yeah, give me a copy of that, I want to work that up." So basically, yeah. And Tom would get ideas. Actually, he said, "I'll tell you a title, why don't you write Sleeping Double in a Single Bed? And I looked at him and said, "Yeah, no, I can't. How about," and I turned it around it's like, "I can do that." And so, we were on it. And so with Dennis's, he came from pop, just kind of, well, you can hear it, he came from pop.
Doug Burke:
Well, the critics maybe labeled some of this stuff bubblegum country.
Kye Fleming:
We actually named it that.
Doug Burke:
You guys named it that? You were marketing it this way?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah because it was.
Doug Burke:
I got to say, I love it. It reminds me of the Sheryl Crow song, "If it makes you happy, can't be that bad." Like when you hear Crackers, you can't stop yourself from singing along. It's just so catchy and bubblegummy and who doesn't like to chew bubble gum?
Kye Fleming:
Well, there you go.
Doug Burke:
What's wrong with it?
Kye Fleming:
He was happy to be signed and I was happy too. Actually, I signed in July. Once Tom realized, "Oh my God, okay. I got a team here." And he signed Dennis in January, I think of that next year. And so, we were both just happy to have a gig and to be able to write for people. I mean, that was heaven.
Doug Burke:
So, you wrote Fooled By A Feeling, Years, which is, goes to number one for Barbara but also charts on both the US Billboard and adult contemporary for both Barbara and Wayne Newton.
Kye Fleming:
I forgot that.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool with Barbara and the legendary George Jones. You have this run with Barbara of these different songs, Crackers of course.
Kye Fleming:
That was another Tom idea and I said, "Oh my God. Okay. You can eat crackers in my bed anytime. Okay, we'll do it." I just made it work. It's kind of, I don't know, it could have been even cornier but instead.
Doug Burke:
So, Tom suggested like, "Write a song about eating crackers in bed," and you're like, "Okay."
Kye Fleming:
No, I said you can eat crackers in my bed anytime because it's kind of a saying. And it was like, okay. And so, it just had to be bouncy and fun and it just had to be that whatever. And so, we just took it on, "Okay, here's a challenge, we can do this," and we did.
Doug Burke:
So, why do you think Years is, this is not bubble gum country, this is really a profound, beautiful love sad song in many ways. Is it a love song or a sad?
Kye Fleming:
It's sad, yeah. It's years of holding on to things. He's gone, I don't think it says he's died or anything but he's gone and she just keeps thinking about him.
Doug Burke:
So it's a widow, it's a song from a widow's perspective or a broken up love?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, because I mean, it says I'll leave the hall light on and it's kind of like, you can take it either way but it's sad, pulls at the heart.
Doug Burke:
And what were you thinking about when you wrote, what inspired this?
Kye Fleming:
When we would write for somebody, I just put myself in some frame of mind that's not me. I'm sure I pull from my own experiences and everything but it's like, I don't know, it's like, you're writing a movie, you're writing a play, you're writing something. All I want to do is touch somebody else who's listening. I want to move the listener in some way. If it's a fun song, I want to move their feet, if it's a heartbreaking song, I want to touch their heart. And I always wanted to be positive even in what you might consider negative songs, I always wanted to be positive. And that was due to the experience that happened to me right after I moved here. I had an awakening, a spiritual thing happened to me that could not be denied. And I know that that's why everything else happened so fast and so dramatically because that was my focus. And this was just my loving of life and being so appreciative of everything that had happened to me and who I was and my family and et cetera, et cetera.
Doug Burke:
So Kye, tell me about this spiritual awakening moment. This is like the profound story in your life. You haven't written a hit, you've been sort of bandying about America, you've seen America, you write great songs, you have this talent and it's like this wellspring of talent and then you have this epiphany, this moment. Tell me about this.
Kye Fleming:
Well, I had just moved here and Sylvia was the receptionist for Tom. We became friends and she has her own spiritual upbringing with her family. But anyway, so I did have somebody there who I could relate with on those terms but it was like, that didn't happen until right after this experience. So what happened was, because I had said no to church and no to all of that because it was so the hypocrisy. They didn't want me and I didn't want them but I thought, I don't know. I mean, I'm going to go to that church that I went to when Elvis's band was in town, we went to the church in Franklin. And so, I knew of that church, well that's 25 miles away. I drove out there. Anyway, I went in and I got up and I left because they said something that sounded racist to me and I couldn't go with that. And so, on my way back to my apartment, I stopped at a Baptist church and I went in the upstairs in the balcony and I thought, "God, this is just dead," because I grew up in Assembly of God with my grandmother, the most important person in my life. Then I left and I'm going back to my apartment in Goldilocks and I see a sign that says, "Future home of Assembly of God," blah, blah, blah. And there was a phone number and I wrote down the phone number and I thought, "Okay, next Sunday, I'm going to go." I had driven 25 miles and 25 miles back in two churches and a sign and this church that I'm going to the next Sunday is like a half a mile from my house. So I get up, I go and everything, the music, there's nothing better than people singing when it's really an alive church, when they're singing with their heart and they're not paying attention to anybody around them, they're just, it's them and God. And I had experienced that when I was a kid with my grandmother and my mom too. And then the preacher said, "You know what? I don't think I'm supposed to preach today. I think there's somebody here who," and I went, "Oh-oh."
Doug Burke:
That somebody he's talking about.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, I said, "No, no, no, no, no." I know I've been in these churches, I know what they expect. And I said, "No way, not me." And then, at the corner of my eyes I saw somebody else starting to go down front. And I thought, "Oh my God, this is big, this is it. I'm being talked to, I've got to do this." I went down. I mean, I hit the floor, I was balling. All I can say later was I knew then what it felt like to cry a river. I mean, I was pouring it out and I had a talk with God and I said, "Do you know what? I don't get this. I've worked all this time, I have scraped, I've done everything, I've been my own everything. And now, I've got everything that I've been trying to get since I was 16 and now I'm 26 and here it is, this is what I wanted. And if this is all it is, take me, I'm done." And I mean it, everything, everything in me. It was like, "I'm out of here. Please take me." This sounds so dramatic but it was. All of a sudden everything shifted, everything shifted. And all of a sudden I was in this love affair because I grew up that way. It was Jesus was the guy. And it was like I was praying to him, which I had avoided for years. I went back to my apartment and it was like that's all I cared about. I mean, just this conversation that I had going on with him, it was like, it was real. There's tons to say about that but fast forwarding it's like, I can look at everything that happened from that point on. See, we hadn't had a hit at that point. I moved there in July and this happened in October.
Doug Burke:
And so, is that experience very specifically in any of your songs?
Kye Fleming:
No.
Doug Burke:
You don't think Hugh is your super fan?
Kye Fleming:
Oh yeah.
Doug Burke:
Is your grandmother in any of your songs?
Kye Fleming:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
Which ones?
Kye Fleming:
One that I wrote just a few years ago, just me on the piano and it's called The Prayers of My Grandmother, I am the prayers of my grandmother.
Doug Burke:
And has this been recorded?
Kye Fleming:
I did it. I sang it, performed it in a documentary that was just then a few months ago and it was supposed to come out but because of the shutdowns and everything, maybe they'll re-release it but it's called Invisible and I didn't want to do a hit song, I just wanted to do that song. Yeah, that was the one that I absolutely just poured out of me from the heart.
Doug Burke:
As when you were writing for yourself and not writing for someone else?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
So, do you think you could envision that one being recorded by another voice, contemporary voice or is it just your song?
Kye Fleming:
That would be fine, I've never pitched it.
Doug Burke:
But if you could pitch that song to someone, who would you pitch it to?
Kye Fleming:
Maybe somebody like Amy Grant, who did one of our songs, somebody who would know what it meant.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Charley Pride who just passed away of Covid this weekend. He had a song Missing You, which went to number two. That was the first hit that you wrote for him and he had a really great song, not that that's not a great song, but Roll On Mississippi, which you and Dennis wrote for him. I've been listening to these Charley Pride songs on the weekend.
Kye Fleming:
You know that he owned our publishing company?
Doug Burke:
Okay. I didn't know that.
Kye Fleming:
And he hired Tom to run it. I mean, Tom had a part ownership in it after a while but he was a sweet guy, really, really sweet.
Doug Burke:
So, you saw him all the time in and out of the office, no?
Kye Fleming:
He and his wife lived in Texas. They would just come up every now and then. He was just a great, sweet guy. I mean, you could feel it in the room. I mean, he was just ...
Doug Burke:
So, it's 1980 and how does Missing You happen? Do you pitch it to him or does he say, "What do you got for me?"
Kye Fleming:
I think Tom had probably ... Because he wasn't around, I mean, it wasn't like Barbara and Sylvia and Ronnie and Steve Warner. It wasn't like those guys who became buds. So, it was funny, Dennis and I had had a lot of hits at this point. There was like a Christmas party or something at the office. Dennis had had a little bit to drink and he went over to Charley and he said, "Charley, just tell me why is it? We've had a bunch of hits and why haven't you cut one of our songs?" And he said, "I think you should." And Charley said, "Yeah, yeah." Dennis said, "I mean, we can write you something." He said, "Okay." And so, we wrote Missing You and Roll On Mississippi and he cut them. Roll On Mississippi was totally getting into driving back and forth from Fort Smith, Arkansas over the Memphis Bridge, over the Mississippi River, coming to Nashville and past the cotton fields that are no longer cotton fields. So, they'll see the little shacks and stuff, the road trip. So, I had a lot of visuals. I think we kind of had or I kind of had Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in the back of my mind anyway. They pop up in the song and that was really a joy to write. It was just so fun. It was like riding a little, well, now it would be a video but we didn't have videos back then. I can just see it all and it was just really fun and it was fun thinking about him singing it. And yeah, that was great, that was really, really fun.
Doug Burke:
The Missing You, "Will I wake up every morning, throw some water on my face. I look up in the mirror, I can see that nothing's changed." Who's he missing?
Kye Fleming:
That's just a relationship.
Doug Burke:
It's kind of a broken up song, heartbreak song, huh?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. But it's got a lilt to the music that keeps it from being so sad.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, a lot of your work has that counterpoint between the melody and the lyric.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I felt ... I mean, Dennis is a good old guy, we had so much fun. I mean, we were perfect to write together, just perfect because he plays guitar great. He'd just sit over there and just come up with all this stuff and say, "Don't play it," and I'd say, "Play that. No, no, no, no, no, backup, backup, backup. What did you just do, what was that? Don't play that, play that, play that, play that." It was so fun because he was full of interesting things over there and I was hearing how to put them together a lot of times because I knew what I was trying to say lyrically. It was the perfect match.
Doug Burke:
No kidding? You guys really, amazing body of work. And so, I want to talk about Sylvia, Sylvia Kirby aka Sylvia Hutton aka Sylvia, who was the receptionist as you mentioned.
Kye Fleming:
Yes. She hadn't been there very long when I got there, I don't think. She was just singing around the office all the time. And I mean, she had plans. I mean, she wanted to be an artist and she was planning on it and that's why she came to town. And so, Tom, I can't remember if he used her for spur demos sometimes, I can't remember. I would think he might've but she was just singing all the time. Then when she got a deal, I mean, we had songs that she had already decided she wanted before she got her deal.
Doug Burke:
And just hanging around the office she's like, "I want that. When I get my deal, I'm going to record that."
Kye Fleming:
Oh yeah because she was looking, I mean she knew that she was going to do it.
Doug Burke:
I think of Proud Mary and Roll On Mississippi. These are the songs about the Mississippi River. It's almost like untouchable at this point. How could you do better than Roll On Mississippi? Anybody who wants to try to take on the Mississippi River, you have this high bar to get over because this is the definitive song. Although, that Johnny Cash song was pretty darn good too, now that I think about it.
Kye Fleming:
Johnny Cash grew up right near there too, so he spent some time on the Mississippi, I'm sure.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, the song I'm thinking of is, "Taught the weeping willow how to cry, cry, cry."
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Taught the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky. Tears I cried for that woman are going to flood you, big river, big river. That's the song I'm thinking. That is about the Mississippi River, of course. This, Roll On Mississippi, the production values on this, it has everything in it. It's got the strings, it's got the steel pedal, it's got whistling. And it's whistling in the song, which is just... Did you think of it that way when you wrote it, there would have all these elements?
Kye Fleming:
The production was Tom, and he loves strings. The singers back then, they think they were the Cherry Sisters, the harmonies and everything were just-
Doug Burke:
Yeah, the harmonies are great. Do you write the harmonies, or did they come up with that?
Kye Fleming:
No, we just wrote the song, just guitar, vocal, that's all we ever used. Dennis has an interesting voice, and I feel like... I mean, he sounds great on it too. And Charley's voice, I mean, gee, it's a movie. His voice is perfect for the song. I know that it was made a little easier even imagining it because of Dennis's voice. The same way with me and Barbara, and me and Sylvia. You know what I mean?
Doug Burke:
Yeah, we miss Charley Pride. Boy, what a legend.
Kye Fleming:
Groundbreaker. Oh my God.
Doug Burke:
Why was he a groundbreaker? Because you were a groundbreaker.
Kye Fleming:
Think about everything that he went up against. I mean, being black and-
Doug Burke:
He was a professional baseball player like when Jackie Robinson was breaking through, right? And all the prejudice that he probably endured.
Kye Fleming:
I'm sure that the reason it was possible was because of the mild person that he was, such a good-hearted person. And it took that to keep from upsetting anybody. That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. I mean, I like to think that I'm that kind of person. I mean, that's wonderful. It's a shame that we just haven't got past the black, white thing. Just not past it even now. It's just so sad. And look, even with that, look what he did in country music. I mean, he became a really beloved character in country music.
Doug Burke:
You had some middling songs, charting songs. You Don't Miss a Thing was the first one in '79.
Kye Fleming:
I'm glad you got all this down, because I don't remember - remember nothing.
Doug Burke:
Heard on the Mend in '81 went to number eight. Sweet Yesterday goes to number 12.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, I liked that one. Just like we did for Barbara, we wrote for her voice and we wrote for Sylvia's voice, just keeping those voices in mind as we wrote them.
Doug Burke:
But it's really not till '82 when Like Nothing Ever Happened and Nobody go to number two, number one. And nobody crosses over to 15 on the US chart and five on adult contemporary.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Two songs that I can remember off the bat that I had the idea and didn't want to say anything about them for a little while, one of them was I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool, because it could go a lot of different ways and I wanted to know what I was doing before even bringing it up to Dennis. Nobody was another one. It was like, "Oh my God, there's so many twists and turns."
Doug Burke:
Yeah, the word play in this is great.
Kye Fleming:
And it was like I was so excited. It was like a Rubik's Cube. It was like, "Okay, I can do a Rubik's Cube." But I knew that I could... You can feel it when you know that there's an end game. You can feel, "Okay, I can make it. I can do this." And we had a blast working on that because of all the twists and turns in the lyric was so fun and the music fun. I mean, that's all that was.
Doug Burke:
Kye, you're kind of famous for being such a stickler for words, and I often ask the songwriters on this show, "How do you know when a song is done?" And you kind of like are a polisher and a polisher and a polisher I've heard.
Kye Fleming:
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
Doug Burke:
Was Nobody a song that you rewrote until you... When did you know it was done?
Kye Fleming:
Not necessarily rewrite... I mean, rewriting a line, rewriting a line. It's a process that you know what you want, you know the feeling of what you want, and you know that it takes certain words... Everything is vibrational, as we know. So it either buzzes my body or it doesn't. When a line clicks in, it's like I feel it in my body. I'm talking about lyrically, but it's a combination too, because the lyric and the music, I mean, that's why it was so fun.
Kye Fleming:
Dennis and I wrote together, just the two of us for all those years. We went to the office every day for seven, eight hours, and that's what we did. We'd have a song or two songs sometimes going. We could hang with them. We weren't interrupted by, "Yeah, I've got so-and-so. I'm writing with so-and-so tomorrow, and I'm writing with so-and-so the next day, and so-and-so the next day." None of that. I think that was really important and it was so fun. I've just never enjoyed it the other way. So I like to really, really enjoy writing a song. And if it takes a long time, I don't care. I want to milk it.
Doug Burke:
You just said something I've never heard on the show, and this is part of your brilliance. "Everything is vibrational, you know," and I had never thought of that. Music and songwriting and the combination of sound and lyrics being sung vibrate in the air against your eardrum. That's what this is about, and everything is vibrational, you know?
Kye Fleming:
Okay, and so right now, as you're saying that, I feel it in my body. I've got tingles all over my body because it's true and because we're saying something important, and so that I feel it. Of course. And the whole spiritual thing that happened to me just clicks right in there. I mean, if something is off, it's off and it's not activating vibrationally. It's not activating anything love or excitement or positive. And even a sad song. Even a sad song activates the body in a certain way. That's why I was not good at trying to teach songwriting. I wasn't good at it, because what I wanted to teach them was that.
Doug Burke:
How to make people vibrate.
Kye Fleming:
And what they wanted was, "No, tell me how to write and..." I don't know.
Doug Burke:
When does it need a chorus? When does it need a break? When does...
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. And it's like, "Yeah, well, you can feel for that." Nobody told me when a chorus... Okay, look at the layout of Sleeping Single. I mean, I don't know. Were there other songs that... We didn't think about it that way. It was like, "Okay, it's basically a chorus." There are no rules if it works. And then when that works, then other people start copying it and then they call it a rule.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about your work with Ronnie Milsap, Smoky Mountain Rain is one of the vibrational songs for posterity. I Wouldn't Have Missed It for the World. Carolina. Where do we start? I guess the first one was Smoky Mountain Rain, which went to number one on the country and adult contemporary, number 24 on the Billboard chart, is the state song for Tennessee. When you wrote this, did you know that this song would be a forever song, this is going to last forever, people are going to be listening to this for a long, long time?
Kye Fleming:
I don't know if Dennis did, but I never thought in those terms, but I knew it felt big and it felt big partly because we wrote it for Ronnie. Absolutely for Ronnie, for that piano and for everything. And we knew he would just nail it. It needed to be a classic sounding idea. I know what happened. We knew we wanted to write something for Ronnie, and Tom gave us another idea and it was Appalachian rain. How about Appalachian rain? And I know that he was thinking because of Kentucky rain. Was like, "Yeah, that's a really hard word to deal with." Yeah.
Doug Burke:
What rhymes with Appalachian, Tom? Nothing.
Kye Fleming:
So we thought about where he was from and all of that. And it was like, "Well, gee, Smoky Mountain Rain. We can do that."
Doug Burke:
I had this other young group, Bandits on the Run, on the show and we talked about how the Eskimos have 200 words for snow. This song made me realize that we don't have enough words for rain. And I started thinking, "There's Seattle rain looks a certain way. New York rain looks a certain way. London rain looks a certain way. And LA rain, it never rains in California. Except when it does, it pours. Kind of looks this monsoonal way." What does Smoky Mountain rain look like?
Kye Fleming:
Smoky. Smoky.
Doug Burke:
It's kind of misty and-
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, misty. You're looking through clouds. You can't see that far in it. I mean, hanging on the mountain is like in those clouds.
Doug Burke:
You can almost taste it, huh? In your breath.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Smell it.
Doug Burke:
So were you there when Ronnie recorded it?
Kye Fleming:
No, I don't think we were there when he recorded. They would usually call us in when it was almost done or when they were getting ready to mix or something like that, and we get to hear them. But we were generally at the office writing more songs.
Doug Burke:
I see. So when you hear this the first time...
Kye Fleming:
They nailed it. They so totally nailed it. And that piano part, it's like, "Oh my God. Ronnie, that's awesome."
Doug Burke:
Really, it's a classic. It's a forever song. And I Wouldn't Have Missed It for the World is also a classic.
Doug Burke:
Very complex love song.
Kye Fleming:
That goes back to my story too, because it's like the feeling that I wanted out of that was eternal love.
Doug Burke:
So when you say it goes back to your story, you mean your spiritual story, your inspirational epiphany moment.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, just wanting... I mean, to me, and I don't know if it does to anybody else, but to me, it feels uplifting.
Doug Burke:
Totally. Even though I lost you, girl. Right?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. And it ended up that... I guess it was Tom shared a letter with us from a couple in Florida, and that was their song because their little girl drowned in the ocean. I mean, that just wiped me out. Even though I lost you, girl, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. And of course they felt that way.
Doug Burke:
Have you gotten a lot of letters or notes over the years about this song or...
Kye Fleming:
No. Maybe the artists do. I don't know. I'm sitting here right now and there's a wren on my... I've got a little suet feeder out there, and I've only experienced that three or four times in this house. He or she just isn't leaving. I mean, will fly away and come back. That's unheard of.
Kye Fleming:
Well, you want to talk vibrationally. What that means to me is that my mom who passed about three or four years ago. For my dad, I feel him when there's a hawk. For my mom, I feel her when there's a wren. So it's very special that while we're talking, that that's going on.
Doug Burke:
Think she's visiting us?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Because I never thought of this song that way in terms of being about someone you lost. I always thought of it as a boyfriend, girlfriend. I guess when you write the songs, do you think of it in those universal terms?
Kye Fleming:
Lyrically, I think of it in every angle that I can come at it from to see what to say about it. Even better if it fits more than one scenario that I can think of.
Doug Burke:
I think the line, "You've made my whole life worthwhile with your smile," just the syncopation, it's just one of the all-time greatest lines. The internal rhyme of it.
Kye Fleming:
I love internal rhyming. That's a must for me. And I like it when it's not obvious. It just goes by in the song. But that's another part of music, isn't it? If the lyric can be musical, then I'm really, really happy with it. If it can just have emphasis when the music has emphasis. If you hear a song playing somewhere, it catches your ear because of the structure of the song.
Doug Burke:
Anything else you want to say about I Wouldn't Have Missed It for the World by Ronnie Milsap?
Kye Fleming:
Well, after hearing that story, I always go there and I think of them. They didn't know that the writers ever got to read that note. I think of it every time. I'm happy that it helps them, and that's reason enough for that song, whether it was ever a hit or not.
Doug Burke:
You kind of morphed into a different phase of songwriting, Give Me Wings by Michael Johnson with Don Schlitz, and What About the Love by Amy Grant with Janis. I think I sent you the video of Dancing in My Dreams by Tina Turner. I don't know if you had a chance to look at that.
Kye Fleming:
I haven't. I just saw that when we started.
Doug Burke:
Which one of these do you want to talk about? There was a shift.
Kye Fleming:
Well, these all came... I mean, you know I quit after... '77. I signed in '77, and Dennis and I wrote until I quit. I think it was '82.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, you quit on the top. You were BMI Songwriter of the Year, and you're just, "I'm done."
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, Tom thinks that he burned us out, and particularly me. That's not right. I just felt like, "Okay, done that and that was awesome. Now what? Now what do I want to do?" So I took off time and I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But when I came back, I signed with the old Pi-Gem crew, which was David Conrad and Mary Del. That was like homecoming. Kent Robbins, great songwriter, who had been at the other company too. And Mike Reed. That's when... Well, he was signed to Ronnie Milsap's company. He's a great guy. We wrote There You Are.
Doug Burke:
There You Are, Willie Nelson's song. Yeah.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Love Mike. He's awesome. I wanted to get back to writing some different kinds of music and some pop. I just wanted to branch out a little bit, and so that's what I did.
Doug Burke:
Kye, tell me about one of your favorite songs that we haven't talked about yet.
Kye Fleming:
One is I wrote it with Verlon Thompson. That was when I was with Almo-Irving. It's called Cross My Broken Heart, and Suzy Bogguss cut it. That was a number one for her. It was just one of my favorite songs. There's a TV show that Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis did called Moonlighting. I was watching it one night and one of them said, "Yeah, cross my broken heart." And ding, ding, ding, ding, songwriter, songwriter. Actually, that reminded me of being in a movie theater when Tom Cruise said, "You had me at hello," or whatever that line was. I was in the theater in Nashville, and it was like I heard all this rustling and I thought, "Yeah, yeah, that's all the songwriters getting their pens out to write down the title." But anyway, where titles come from. But anyway, I just wanted to say that I love that song.
Doug Burke:
Why do you like that song so much?
Kye Fleming:
It was fun. It was fun to write. I loved writing with Verlon. It's really fun to sing. I actually sing it myself and then really, really love singing. I just like it. It feels like a complete song.
Doug Burke:
That was when you knew it was done really easily, huh?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, I love that.
Doug Burke:
You didn't have to rewrite that one. That one flowed smoothly, huh? And then Suzy cut it and it went to number one.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I think it was on the Aces record. I'm not sure the name of that record.
Doug Burke:
You've worked with so many different people. Obviously, Dennis Morgan was this sort of launch pad, but then these other people, like writing this song for Suzy. Did you know it was going to be for Suzy? Or was it just cross my broken heart, I just saw it on Moonlighting, Bruce Willis said this to Cybill Shepherd and-
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, I was just writing with Verlon. We'd been writing a few songs and I went into the office and I said, "I think this would be really cool." And he, again, is a great guitar player and great singer too. We wrote a few good songs. I was writing with Vince Gill some about that time, and we wrote something he had on his RCA album called Losing Your Love. I'm losing your love. It's slipping away minute by minute, day by day. That one too. But he can sing the phone book and make it a hit. He's ridiculously so good.
Doug Burke:
So how does this song get to Suzy? One of your pitch people?
Kye Fleming:
It could have been Verlon. They may have been friends or something. I can't remember how successful she was at that time, but she clearly was doing well.
Doug Burke:
The right voice for the right song. Boy, sometimes that's what it takes.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Yeah, and she sings it like a bird.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, she's obviously a successful woman in the industry. You broke some of the barriers in some respects as a woman writer in the late '70s in the industry. Tell me any unusual stories of being a woman at any of these ceremonies or...
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. CMA started giving... This was the first time they gave a Triple Play Award. That was for I think if you had three or more songs on the chart at the same time, something like that. It's so different these days-
Kye Fleming:
But at the same time, something like that. It's so different these days. It's like people are writing multiple times a day with different people. They're just writing so much more. It was just not that fast pace back then. So, they started this Triple Play Award, and I looked around and it's like I was getting an award and I was the only woman in the room except for photographers or whoever, and Tammy Wynette. So good company. So, I'm standing around and afterwards and there are different people coming up, doing interviews and taking pictures and whatever, a whole lot going on, and this photographer comes over and I'm holding the award and he said, "So, who's award are you holding?"
Doug Burke:
My own.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
The Triple Play Award for having three songs in the charts.
Kye Fleming:
You can’t blame him.
Doug Burke:
Do you want to take my picture now?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, exactly. But, you can't blame him. There just weren't that many of us back then.
Doug Burke:
So, it was kind of a systemic bias that you broke, but you didn't... I think you've told me you didn't feel a lot of overt prejudice.
Kye Fleming:
I wasn't noticing it. I was just doing my thing, just being me. I was just happy. I was just happy to have a little family, go into the office, write, do whatever. And just perfect for me. I didn't really notice what all was going on around me or not.
Doug Burke:
Well, we thank you for breaking the barriers.
Kye Fleming:
You know, I didn't know I was doing it. Oh yeah, one other thing. So Sylvia and Barbara, obviously were cutting our songs and Barbara got the opportunity to do... It was a week or two weeks, it might have been two weeks, in Las Vegas. That was her first Las Vegas gig. That's how Wayne Newton actually came into the picture, because it was at the Frontier and, I don't know, it had something to do with him. But she asked Sylvia and me to go with her and her band in buses to Las Vegas and sing background. That was just a ball. That was so much fun. So Sylvia and I wore tuxes. So hey, I've played Las Vegas.
Doug Burke:
Well, that's impressive. I did not know that.
Kye Fleming:
And it was really cool because so many of the songs, I knew them.
Doug Burke:
Because you wrote them.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Here's another thing about Barbara. She's that way, everybody even knows that about her, but it's really authentic. She's so giving. She's doesn't have to be the star. You know what I mean? She'd stand up there every night and say, "Yeah, and Kye wrote this and that. And Sylvia, she's a beautiful singer herself," and she was just family. I mean, it really, really felt like family back then. Just good times. Looking back it was just easy and slow and just the way I like it.
Doug Burke:
So, you were at the Frontier Casino?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. I don't think that's there anymore. In the daytime I went horseback... I took a cab out to some horse place and ranch and went horseback riding out in the countryside, in the desert.
Doug Burke:
Did you grow up riding horses?
Kye Fleming:
No. It was one of those stories where you don't know any better than to turn the horse back toward the barn. And then it's like, "Uh oh, hold on."
Doug Burke:
Yeah, right.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Those trail horses, once they start going home, they know they're going home.
Kye Fleming:
No, but I did always like it.
Doug Burke:
But you're not a cowgirl.
Kye Fleming:
No, I'm not a cowgirl.
Doug Burke:
And you haven't written a lot of Western songs like that, about cowgirls and cowboys?
Kye Fleming:
No, and actually, it's kind of interesting that, Dennison, I really did without thinking about it. We just were who we are, and that kind of shifted Barbara's direction too because she was doing a lot more country sounding records before us.
Doug Burke:
You took her in a pop direction.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah, yeah. That was perfect because I think that probably helped them get interested in her for a TV show too, The Variety Show. That was more pop, and everything just worked out.
Doug Burke:
So, you had some really fantastic songs with Janis. She had that song, 17, and was this teenage or young '20s superstar. And then she stepped away from music as well. And I guess you guys connected and wrote Some People's Lives and What About the Love, both of which are just incredible songs. You want to talk about Some People's Lives?
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. She was writing for MCA Music and they sent her to Nashville to co-write with some writers. I had written Give Me Wings and a few songs with Don Schlitz, and he was with MTA. So, he had been writing with her when she was in town. And he said, "You guys should try getting together and writing." So, we did. The first one that we wrote was called Don't Rush the River, and she's actually doing that right now for a nonprofit that she set up after her mother died, the Pearl Foundation. And she's doing an album of songs and she's put that song on there. So that'll be fun for me to hear. So, that was the first one we wrote and that one was, to me, a spiritual kind of song. So then, we wrote Here a Little Bit, and then I would fly out there for a couple of weeks at a time. And we were writing out there, and we wrote Some People's Lives. And the story behind that, when a friend of Janis's had a restaurant all in the Hollywood Melrose Avenue, La Brea area, and it wasn't doing well. So, we'd ride every day and we were going there for lunch. Sometimes we'd be the only ones in there. And one day she was sitting there and she was so down and she said, "I think I'm going to lose the restaurant. I don't know. I'm so depressed." And, and she started talking about suicide and she said, "How can suicide be illegal?" Anyway, she went into all this stuff. So Janis and I left, and she was taking me back... That was when I was still staying in hotels. She was taking me back to my hotel and she pulled up and we were just sitting there and I said, "Man, I've got to write." And she said, "Yeah, me too." And we went in to the hotel and started that song. It was powerful. The air was different. I can feel it right now. I can feel how it was in the room because we needed to write something about what we had just heard. It was totally out of feeling that from, Mary was is her name. And we worked on it for three days. We didn't have the last line. I just had to do something. It had to be important and everything about it had to be right. After two or three days that line popped in. It was like, "Oh my God, that's it. That's it." So, we went the next day. She had paper place mats, and I took out a pen. Janis had brought her guitar. I took out a pen and I wrote out the lyric on her placemat, and we sang it for her. And we said, "This is your song." The interesting thing was that she was so happy that she forgot totally about where that came from. And she was like, "Oh my God. Oh my God, that's my song?" Okay, let's fast forward. Bette Midler cut it. I was back in Nashville by then, maybe two years later or something like that. And she called me and she said, "I just wanted to tell you I went and bought my song, and it's just absolutely wonderful on Bette."
Doug Burke:
Yeah, it's the title track from the album. It's her best selling album in Bette Midler's career, I believe. Although it wasn't a single, it's not really a radio friendly, I guess. From a Distance, I think was the first hit I think in four different singles -
Kye Fleming:
Which means a lot of people got to hear Some People's Lives because of From a Distance.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, yeah, because they bought the album and it's the title. Bette loved it enough that she named the album after it.
Kye Fleming:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
And the line you're talking about in the chorus, "Didn't anybody tell them? Didn't anybody see? Doesn't anybody love them like you love me? Because that's all they need." Is that-
Kye Fleming:
That was it, that that's all they need. Doesn't anybody love them like you love me, because that's all I need.
Doug Burke:
You know, when I hear this story in this COVID era, I really feel for all the restaurant owners in the world, particularly in our own communities who have really suffered, and the workers in those restaurants.
Kye Fleming:
It's hard enough to make a go of a restaurant. Mary's didn't make it back then. It's hard. And then with this on top of it, I don't know how people are doing this.
Doug Burke:
We have to love our restaurants. That's what I'm taking away from Some People's Lives. We have to, because that's all they need, is for us to love our restaurants and use the takeout until we get the vaccine and wear your mask if you're in a restaurant and not eating.
Give Me Wings, Michael Johnson went to number one on the country charts.
Kye Fleming:
I think that was Billboard Song of the Year.
Doug Burke:
So, you co-wrote this with Don Schlitz, legendary.
Kye Fleming:
We started writing together over at MCI. He always worked in an office too, smoked like a chimney and the room would just... It was horrible. I would just sit there and just... But, I did it. We wrote several things. It was really fun to write with him because he's a wordsmith too. So, the day that we wrote that, Brent Meyer poked his head in the door and said, "What are you guys working on?" And I said, "Well, we just finished this." And he said, "Play it for me. Play it for me." We played it for him and he said, "Okay, I want it." He took it to The Judds and he cut it on them. It didn't gel. It didn't come out right. And he said, "Give me another shot," and he went to Michael Johnson and oh my God, it just didn't fit with the voices or it didn't work that well as a duet, I don't know what it was with why it didn't work for The Judds. But, it certainly worked for Michael.
Doug Burke:
And what's the song about?
Kye Fleming:
Songwriters sometimes have titles that pop in and you hold onto it for a while or whatever. And sometimes you just get in the room. It's like, "What do you want to write?" "I don't know." And we're just trying to come up with things. Well, that morning there was something about it, and it's not a new idea by any means. And I think I threw that out and it was like, well, let's do a story song. It just kind of took shape. It just worked.
Doug Burke:
It's kind of like if you love someone, let them go. But it's a different angle on it.
Kye Fleming:
I remember too. We wrote it, we came back to it the next day, finally satisfied with it. And it was like, "Yeah, yeah/" Brent didn't hear it until we had polished it. And then it was done.
Doug Burke:
I have had the total unique pleasure of you sharing with me an uncut song that you've written that you want to talk about called Sometimes She Remembers. You shared a demo with music by Ben Cooper and a demo singer Alyssa Bonagura. Did I say that right?
Kye Fleming:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
Tell me about this song.
Kye Fleming:
So, my mom had about 17 years of the slow exit of Alzheimer's. And what a brilliant life and a sweet, brilliant exit. It doesn't always happen that way, I know. And a lot of people have a lot of hard times. I'm not saying it was all easy, but I am saying that for whatever reason, she was just appreciative of life and people and everything all the way to the last day. She was just a light. My dad passed. She had had it for three, four, five years and my dad passed. And then, I had to eventually put her in assisted-living and then in a nursing home. So, it went through all the steps. And the nurses would come in and she made their day.
Doug Burke:
Why is that?
Kye Fleming:
Because they'd walk into the room and, like she saw them for the very first time. She was just, "Oh honey, hi!" And it was just so sweet all the time. And it's hard working... I just feel for the nurses who go in every day. And there's so many hard things in a nursing home. And especially nowadays. One of the nurses, who I got to be really good friends with, and I was driving down and back and forth from here to Fort Smith, Arkansas. I got her in a place in the country. All the nurses and the people who work there, they lived in the area and they'd all either had a grandmother in there before or whatever. So, it was really a sweet place. And one of the nurses, I got to be really good friends with said, "You know what? I don't think..." After my mom passed, she said, "I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can do this." She's still nursing, but she moved to a hospital to work, I think. She just couldn't go in there without her being there. I meditate in the mornings and sometimes out of a deep meditation. And I just came out of this meditation and I actually just wrote out the lyric.
Doug Burke:
The chorus, the "Sometimes she remembers, she looks at me and out of nowhere, there's a glimmer. I'm her daughter. She's my mom. It's not the same, but nothing's wrong. I appreciate the moments I have with her. And it's okay if only one of us remembers."
Kye Fleming:
Yeah. Yeah. And then the verses are just absolutely things that she did. And probably the most personal song I've written. I was writing with this young kid, great piano player, and I said, "I've got this thing." And he just took it and did the music on his own. It's beautiful.
Doug Burke:
And you end with, "It's like the calm after a brilliant storm has passed. That says it all."
Kye Fleming:
What more can I ask?
Doug Burke:
Wow. I think we'll end on that, Kye Fleming.
Kye Fleming:
I think that's good.
Doug Burke:
This has been an amazing treat for me. Is there anybody, anything, anyone you want to plug to say thank you or a shout out to?
Kye Fleming:
I would like to thank this little wren who just kept coming back over and over and over and now she's left as though it must be time. And the wren...
Doug Burke:
So, a wren was telling you any voice in America to cut your song Sometimes She Remembers, who would you like to have cut this song?
Kye Fleming:
You know who just popped in my head again? Probably because of... It was Bette Midler.
Doug Burke:
Oh wow. There you go. Bette, if you're out there, we want you to cut this song, please. You heard it here first at Backstory Song.
Doug Burke:
Please follow us on our social media. We've got a lot going on. We're releasing a song every day and an episode like this generally every weekend. This episode, we're going to release on Christmas day for the spirituality of it in your honor, Kye Fleming. I have to thank you. It's really been a thrill and an honor.
Kye Fleming:
Thank you so much. You know, I'm not comfortable doing these things. I'm in my heart and my head so much that I can't find words, and that's funny coming from a lyricist.
Doug Burke:
Well, your words thrilled me, inspired me today and I hope they inspire our listeners. Please share us. We're looking to build an audience. We need your help. Please, please listen to the Spotify playlist so our songwriters can get paid. Thank you very much, Kye Fleming.
Kye Fleming:
You're the best. Thank you.
