Steve Seskin Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke. And today we're here with Steve Seskin. Steve Seskin is a successful songwriter who has written seven number one songs, including Grammy nominated Grown Men Don't Cry. And Don't Laugh at Me. Winner of the Nashville Songwriters Association and Music Row Magazine Song of the Year. Steve's song, Don't Laugh at Me, was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, and became the impetus for the Operation Respect project, a curriculum, designed to teach tolerance and anti-bullying in schools.
This program has been implemented in more than 30,000 schools, and Steve has performed in countless elementary schools in support of the program.
Steve Seskin:
Sure. This is a song that I wrote with my friend Tom Douglas. I do a lot of collaboration and co-writing, and it's called Grown Men Don't Cry, and it ... A little bit of a story behind it. It came out of a book. The idea was that it was a coach of a basketball team, and the coach and the kid who was playing basketball, a teenager, were pretty close. And what happened was in the book, he goes up for the last shot and in general, the team's down by one point, he gets the ball in and out. They lose the game. And the guy comes home, the kid and his dad says, "Hey, you can be disappointed, but like, stop crying. You're a man. Grown men don't cry." So it was like that typical thing we're taught about women get to show all the range of their emotion, but if you're a man, like suck it up, be a man. And so I always say, if you read that you could do three things. Either you could keep reading, like that's no big deal one way or another, or I imagine you could say, "That's right. I agree with that. Suck it up, be a man, don't cry." Or you could do what Tom did and then when he told me that I did ... because we both have sons, like, "Why are you telling the kid not to cry?" He missed the last shot of the basketball game. Our notion was a crying male or female is a natural human reaction. We do it because it happens, if you get what I mean. And so we just thought, "Wow, what a thing to tell your son." Not allow him that moment of just feeling really badly enough to want to cry about it. He missed the last shot. So then we came up with the phrase, I don't know why they say grown men don't cry, which was the secret to writing the song the way we wrote it, because it stated it in a way that said, "I don't know why they say grown men don't cry because here I am doing it." It was the phrase that gave us the way we were going to write it. So we thought of situations of when might you cry. And then I'll tell you a little more after another couple of interesting things but.
Doug Burke:
Do you mind if I take a tissue?
Steve Seskin:
No, take a tissue Doug. You know, the thing about that song that's interesting is, we wrote the first two verses in like ... I don't know, a day or two of getting together for five or six hours. Because if you remember, I said we started with this like when grown men cry. So the first verse was about other people's pain. See this woman in the parking lot, they're living in their car and it's a little bit of like ... I call it they're booked for the grace of God go I. He's crying because he didn't help him. He was in a hurry. He was going somewhere like ... We all face that situation where we see somebody in need and sometimes you are so moved and other times you're running to something and ... And the second verse is all about really me and my dad. My dad was never around. And when he was, it was almost worse than when he wasn't, but that line in it that says, "There's so many things I want to say to him. I just put a rose on his grave and I talk to the wind." Is totally autobiographical because I left New York when I was 1972. So I was 20 years old, and my dad died in '79 at age 57. And for probably the last five years of his life, we didn't really talk, we had had that falling out deal. And we always said we were going to get it back together, make amends and all that. And just, we never did and I got a call that he had had his third heart attack and just was gone. And I stood at his grave site in Queens, New York and had the little talk with him. So that's what that line about. "Put a rose on his grave and I talk to the wind." Because I couldn't talk to him anymore. But the interesting thing about that song is when we finished the first two verses, we thought, okay, there's that instrumental bridge where it changes keys. I said, "We need one more verse. What else could happen that a grown man would cry about?" And we talked about it for days and we said, "I don't know, what's going to happen." You either have to get sick yourself or I don't know. And it never occurred to us till like three days later. "Wait, the first few verses are tears of sorrow, why can't the last one be like tears of joy?" And then so it's when you ... I'm sitting here with my kids and my wife, I put my son to bed he goes, "I haven't had my story yet. Hey dad, I love you." So when the guy goes, "I don't know why they say grown men, don't cry." It's like you crying because it's good tears. Your kid said something that really resonated with you or they told you they loved you. Whatever it would be. My point is always, I don't care what kind of verse we would have written about tears of sorrow, it wouldn't have been as good as making that switch to tears of joy. I did a songwriting workshop in Park City last weekend, and I always tell songwriters, sometimes you're looking to change the wrong thing. Like when they're talking about rewriting or working on a lyric, I said, "Well, sometimes you need to just work on a little minute piece of a lyric and fix one line or one word." Other times you need to throw out the baby in the bath water because we had three other verses that we wrote, and we got rid of, because we wanted to make that switch to tears of joy and all those other ones we wrote were tears of sorrow and they just didn't feel right. So to me that last verse makes that song.
Doug Burke:
The flip. Do you remember if it was a windy day when you visited your dad's grave in Queens?
Steve Seskin:
Oh yeah, it was actually. Yeah, I do remember, long time ago.
Doug Burke:
You remember what time of year it was?
Steve Seskin:
It was a spring day, but it wasn't a pretty spring day.
Doug Burke:
Now your writing partner was credited with witnessing the first verse, sort of inspirational instance of the homeless mother with her mascara running down-
Steve Seskin:
That's true.
Doug Burke:
... her face.
Steve Seskin:
So my co-writer Tom Douglas, had the idea for the first verse, and the idea for the first verse is universal. It was just all painting a picture of somebody who's down on their luck and going through hard times, and how you're coming upon them in what you're thinking. And the second verse again is about my dad. The third verse is more about both of us, because we both raised daughters and sons. And so it's funny that we didn't think about that earlier on, but once we thought about turning that around to a positive thing, we just looked at our lives and said, "Yeah, sometimes I have a tear in my eye because my kid came home from school with an A and." So yeah, Tom Douglas thought of that idea, the first person that I chimed in. Interestingly enough though, the second verse about the dad, was the first verse we wrote. So we started out just vamp and I am sitting here on the porch and it's my dad. And we realized that, well that can't be the first verse, because if you end up at your dad's grave talking to the wind, where are you going to go from there? It gets pretty serious too soon. So the first verse is serious, but it's about someone else's troubles. And the second verse is more about your troubles. So there's an arc to it.
Doug Burke:
Very interesting. And so, when it was finished, how did you find the voice that you wanted to sing it?
Steve Seskin:
So Tom Douglas, when we finished the song, Tom is a really good singer. I think of myself as a really good singer too. But yet Tom has this folksy little ... there's something about the way Tom sings a song. And if you don't know who Tom Douglas is, he wrote lots of songs that you would know, he did the demo in this case. So he's saying he did a piano vocal. This hardly ever happens in the Nashville world of pitching songs. But the first person we played it for was Tim Mcgraw's ... not for him, but for his producer in his office. All these stars have ... like we call them gatekeepers, because Tim McGraw doesn't want me calling him up three times a week. "Oh, Tim, I have a new song for you." He'd literally kill himself. If every songwriter in town had his number, it'd be crazy. So they have these gatekeepers. So, you have to get it through that first person or second couple of people who like it enough to then play it for him. So the average superstar which Tim McGraw would count as 35, 40 million records, they have two, three, four or five people as gatekeepers, who are listening to and I'm not exaggerating 1000 or more songs a year, to come up with 10 to 12 songs that he might want to sing. And so they only play him out of the ... I'm guessing on this, but out of the 1000 songs, they're playing him maybe less than 100.
Doug Burke:
Although this was early in his career, earlier.
Steve Seskin:
It was seven years in, so it was about 2000.
Doug Burke:
And so you're playing for the gatekeepers, and how do they react?
Steve Seskin:
Well in this case, one of them liked it and one of them didn't like it that much. I mean that song, if he - if you think about it musically, it does not sound like a big old hit. It doesn't have a chorus, it's got verses with that phrase at the end, "I don't know why they say grown men don't cry." It's not a particularly commercial subject, men crying. So what happened was thank God, one of the gatekeepers said, "I think Tim would like that song, mainly because of the second verse." So without going into the whole story, if you know a little bit about Tim McGraw, you would know that he did not grow up with the name McGraw even. That Tug McGraw, who was a pitcher for the New York Mets is Tim McGraw's biological dad, And his mom ... I don't know the exact story, but his mom had a little weekend romance. I don't even know all the details. All I know is that his mom raised him initially as a single mom, and then she met this other guy, they got married, but they decided not to tell Tim as a youngster, as a three year old or four year old about what happened, because it makes sense. You wouldn't go into all that. And then when he was like ... again, I'm guessing 12, 13, 14, he found a birth certificate somewhere in the house, like in the back of her chest or drawers, and it said McGraw on it from the hospital. And again, I'm guessing it all these up. Don't quote me on all these facts. But that's basically the story. So he grew up till he was a teenager thinking this other guy who apparently raised him just fine. And that part's a happy part of the story. When Tim found out, wait a minute, this other guy was my dad? He apparently contacted him Tug, and said, "Where are you been all my life?" "How could you have fathered me as a child, and then you're going to have nothing to do with my life." And they had a lot of fallen out over it. And then eventually they became very close. And when Tug McGraw died, Tim was at his bedside. But you can see why he liked that second verse, because even ... And I always tell other songwriters, there's nothing in that verse we wrote that's about Tug McGraw or my dad was a pitcher for the New ... No, but that line about, "We're sitting on the porch oh, but it's just a dream because he was never around." I wrote that about my dad. The point is, whatever those words suggest, emotionally Tim McGraw latched onto them because of his story and not finding out Tug McGraw was his dad till later on.
Doug Burke:
Do you feel like the song has helped you get closer with your dad?
Steve Seskin:
That's an interesting question. It's interesting, I've written a lot of songs about my dad and growing up, and that one is easy for me to sing without getting too emotional. Some of them are not so easy, because I had a really rough situation as a kid. I don't want to get too into it, but my dad had his demons. He was a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde sort of guy and everybody who knew him like you're in the day thought he was the best guy ever. And he was, but when he drank too much, he turned into the other side. So, I have some other ones that are a little more emotionally like meant to help me deal with my situation.
Doug Burke:
We'll deal with those in another podcast.
Steve Seskin:
Sure.
Doug Burke:
On the melody, is there any story behind how you came up with the actual music or is that first or second?
Steve Seskin:
Sort of at the same time. And this song is what I call a lyric-driven song. So, if you notice I'm playing the same chords, except for that bridge, it's very simple, and it delivers a lot of lyric at one time. I think there's 26 syllables in that line. That's a lot of syllables. So it's a story song thing. And the music is meant to accommodate that, but to also stay out of the way. So, I always say nobody's going to walk on main street here and hum. It's not the greatest melody I've ever written and yet, it serves the song. It delivers a lot of lyric. And the part I think people remember melodically the most is - And that's really the part you're supposed to remember. So, we just did it at the same time, which is how I do it usually. I start with a lyric idea most often, but I'm adding music to the mix pretty quick.
Doug Burke:
Thank you, Steve. This has been really a treat and a pleasure.
Steve Seskin:
Well, thank you.
Doug Burke:
Thank you for all the work you do in our elementary schools around the country. You want to talk about that just a -
Steve Seskin:
Just a little bit. I wrote a song that we didn't get to do today, but it's called Don't Laugh at Me. It was turned into a curriculum for schools. Mark Wills recorded it back in 1999, then Peter, Paul and Mary, and I started out visiting schools to do assembly programs just to talk about respect and kindness with kids. And mainly because of that song. And I still do that. I've probably been to over 1000 schools in the last 20 years. Something I never did before that song. So a song can take you a lot of places. But about 15 years ago I decided it'd be more fun to write songs with students. And I started a thing called kidswritesongs.org if you want to check it out. And we've written well over 1000 songs. I go to schools and I spend the whole day working with four classrooms of kids and by the end of the day, we have a song. Here in Park City, I've been here all week at four different schools, and we've written four songs, and it's a lot of fun. It's like my favorite thing to do these days.
Doug Burke:
Steve, what song would you like to talk about next?
Steve Seskin:
Well, I thought I would do a song that is interesting in that I haven't sang the song in a long time or hadn't, I should say, sung the song in a long time till about two months ago when someone requested it at a show that I did. And I write a lot of songs, I write ... I don't know, 40 to 80 songs a year. I don't sing all of them. Sometimes it's like I don't think I'm the right singer for that song or it's a little too country for me to sing or whatever it is. So this became one of those songs that I really never sang. And I was so glad that it was a hit record for Kenny Chesney but, I just never sang it. And somebody said, "You should do your best song at a show." And I said, "Okay, what's my best song?" "All I Need to Know." I said, "You're kidding me." I hadn't sung it in like 20 years. And I sang it, I got all the words right. And I had a good time singing it. I was like, I finished it thinking like, "Why don't I ever sing this song?" I wrote this with my friend Mark Allen Springer, and it's a simple love song, which I don't write too many of those, but we wrote this about our respective wives. And it's called, That's All I Need to Know.
Doug Burke:
So, when you write a song, a great love song like that, when did you show it to your wife? And how did she react?
Steve Seskin:
Usually by the way, the other Tim McGraw's story about how the first person we played it for recorded it, that hardly ever happens. So, I played this for my wife long before Kenny Chesney recorded it, and she loves it. I've written a lot of songs about it. We'll celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary, September 21st. So, we've been hanging out a long time. But this particular song, it was funny because it's ... I'm an artist and a creative person first, but I'm also not an idiot. I don't always write songs in exactly the voice that I would write, meaning that I would never say, "With a little luck, this old truck will get me home today, with a little more I still have this job tomorrow Weather man says wet weekend." That's like a country lyric, but you can picture a guy in Arkansas, who's driving the truck or ... you got what? My wife would look at me like I was crazy if I said - But I'm in Nashville, writing songs for country singers, I need to be sensible about that. So the imagery that I'm putting in that song, is for a common man, country guy Southern, and that's with a lot of the songwriters in Nashville, they come from all walks of life. Some of them are that guy, and others of them have two PhDs and they grew up in New York. You know what I mean? But they're still going to try and write like that guy would sound, because ... here's a good time to say this. When you write a song, it's not about you, you're not writing the song for you, the writer. It might help you get through something like when you asked me how that, the Grown Men Don't Cry helped me through my dad's death. There's a little bit of that, but really it's all about the audience. So when I write a song, I'm writing a song for you, meaning anyone, the audience to hear and be moved by it or think it's funny, but it's all about the audience. So, I'm hoping in that song, that anybody who's had a long term relationship is going, "That's right. That's all I need to know." No matter what happens to me in this world, because God knows life throws you a lot of curves, I have you, and that's solid. And I'm hoping other people have that you, either that, or they go, "Oh, I love this song but my wife died five years ago." And it makes them teary because they don't have that person anymore. Or they've been in 16 bad relationships in a row and they're wondering like, what would it be like to feel that way about somebody? You get what I mean? Everybody's got to weigh in, but it's not about me, the writer, it's about the listener.
Doug Burke:
So this is not precisely about your wife. She was more the muse to inspire you, but it's not, of course -
Steve Seskin:
Not in the verses, but in the chorus, like, "Hey, that's all I need to know in a world where most things come and go, I'll always have you to hold. And that's all I need to know." That's about my wife and Mark Allen Springer's wife.
Doug Burke:
So that's the secret to 38 years of marital bliss?
Steve Seskin:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
For you.
Steve Seskin:
If you say so.
Doug Burke:
For you.
Steve Seskin:
Marital bliss takes a lot of hard work to achieve. But anyway, I really liked that song and I've started singing it again.
Doug Burke:
So how did it get to Kenny Chesney?
Steve Seskin:
That's a funny story. I don't know if I should say this. Oh, well, so, I had written a song with my friend, Allen Shamblin called, Life's a Dance. And some of you out there might know it. And a guy named John Michael Montgomery recorded that song and it was a really big hit for him. It was his first hit, it was on the charts, it sold lots of records. So often when you get lucky as a songwriter, you go back to the, well, soon after thinking, "Oh, he's going to want more of my songs." In fact, I'd like to thank John Michael Montgomery because he not only recorded Life's a Dance, but a song of mine called no man's land at one called If You've Got Love. So I had three top five records with him. And I like him very much. However, when we finished that song, we said, "Oh my God, the first person we should get this to would be John Michael Montgomery because he was hot." Selling lots of records, "Let's get it to him." So we sent it to Kentucky through his manager, and we said, "Please let us know as soon as you can because we just wrote this and we want to get it out in the town." It's not easy getting songs cut by the way, I don't want to make it sound like it is, it's super competitive. But you will never succeed if you don't try sort of thing. So it's a lot of like throwing spaghetti at the wall. You have a new song, you're playing it for everybody you could possibly think of that might like it, hoping that one person says, "Yeah." So anyway, we get it to John Michael Montgomery's manager, and we hear back about three days later, and the message is John really likes the song, but he's wondering if you could do a rewrite on the first line of the second verse, because he doesn't feel like he can sing that line. Mark Allen Springer and I are looking at each other saying, "The second verse, first line, what line is that?" Oh, heaven knows. I ain't even then close to being God's gift to women." Well the only reason you could not sing that line is because you think you are. And so we sat there for a minute. And John Michael Montgomery is this tall, strapping good looking guy. He probably is God's gift to ... Whatever. We sit there and we're like, "Oh my God, that's like our favorite line in the whole song." Because it's got a charm to it. It's followed by the line, "But in your arms, I feel like I am." It's just like a perfect ... So, I'm happy to tell you that we stuck to our guns. We were going to call his bluff. We sent back a message said, "No, we can't change that line." And I'm sitting there thinking, "There's hundreds of thousands of dollars that are slipping through my fingers right now." But then I gambled, I said, "He's going to say, okay, I'll sing it that way." No, he says, "Not singing that line." I said, "Okay." And then I thought, "Well, who else could we get this to?" And Kenny Chesney had just started his career. I want to be careful how I say this. He's a little shorter than John Michael Montgomery. He has a little less hair. Interestingly enough, three years later, he was on the cover of People Magazine as one of the 25 most sexy men in the world. Okay. But in 1993, when we were thinking like Alan Jackson, the tall drink of water kind of guy, and then we thought well, Kenny Chesney, let's try it with him. And the thing is, he loved the song, and one of his favorite lines in the song is, "Heaven knows I ain't even close to being God's gift to a woman." So the song ended up in the right hands, and it was a big hit for him. And there you go. So it's easier at the beginning of an artist's career, you might have went to school with them, or you're just hanging out at the same bar or playing golf with them or, whatever it is. And it's easy to hand them a tape or back in the day, as soon as somebody gets to be a big star, they put up a little wall behind, between you and them. And rightly so.
Doug Burke:
And the melody on this one come to you at the same time?
Steve Seskin:
Yeah. To me this is a bit of a classic country melody. The beginning of it is very and then the chorus was like a big ballad - I just sort of came to me. Melodies just happened that way for me. I do work on them, but a lot of it is instinctual of just like, what do I want to say here? And what do I want the music to say to accommodate what the emotional meaning of the words are? So the song Don't Laugh at Me I wrote with my good friend, Allen Shamblin who's written so many songs you'd know, The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert, who we talked about earlier. I Can't Make You Love Me if you don't Bonnie Ray. And he's like my best co-writer, in that we've written 138 songs together in 30 years. And we just like we're best friends and we write a lot of songs and there's nothing I haven't talked about with Allen. Everything my wife knows, Allen knows. So, one day we were just talking about our kids. He and his wife have three kids and my wife and I have one son, but one thing they all have in common, was that they'd all had problems here and there in school with people teasing them or making fun of them or them doing it, the whole bullying situation. And that is present in our schools, whether we like it or not. And I think when I was growing up, people just went, "Oh, boys will be boys. Girls will be girls, it's just part of life." And then, it just started getting more and more serious. It's connected to school shootings. We can't just ignore it. All of us want our kids to go to school into a safe situation. And that doesn't mean just physically safe, it also means heart safe, emotionally safe. The kid's going to learn at school, and that's why they're there. It helps that they're in a situation where they feel pretty good about being there, and things happen. But I think it's important for schools to do everything they can to be on top of this kind of thing and to be proactive about it. So when we wrote this song, we were just remembering our own childhood and thinking about our kids and who knew that it was going to be turned into this whole program, a curriculum for schools. So, briefly a guy named Mark Wells recorded this out of Nashville. Then when Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it, they started doing it at conferences for teachers. And then, the day after Columbine happened, which was the first school shooting really of note. That's the day that Peter Yarrow called me the next day and said, "We need to make this song a curriculum for schools," Because the two kids at Columbine by the way, not to forgive what they did, but they were both ostracized and, there was a reason they ended up going off and doing the horrible thing that they did. So long story short, Peter is hard to say no to. And he called me up and said, "Would you guys donate the song to a curriculum for schools?" Not all uses of the song, because we didn't do that, but for that usage. And we said, "Absolutely, if you think it could help." And then he started raising money and started a foundation called Operation Respect. Which is a curriculum that is dedicated to making schools, safe places and kindness, respect, friendship, community service, all these good things that schools are already trying to impress upon our kids. I'm not bragging because I didn't do this. But that curriculum is in over 35,000 schools in America. It's in 17 other countries, Croatia, Taiwan, Israel. In Israel by the way, if you ever want to check out, it's called the Voices of Peace choir and there's 75 Palestinian kids, and 75 is really kids singing this song in Hebrew, Arabic and English, back and forth, which is pretty chilling. Pretty amazing. And so this song has taken me all over the world. I would have never started the school programs that I do, had it not been for Peter starting that foundation. So, it's called Don't Laugh at Me and I'll ... be happy to sing it for you.
Doug Burke:
It's beautiful. So that might be the first anti-bullying song ever written? Hard to know what -
Steve Seskin:
I don't know-
Doug Burke:
But where did it come from?
Steve Seskin:
But it came again from our kids' situations that our kids were going through. Allen and I talked about growing up. He was short. He lived in Texas and people used to call him names. And I got glasses when I was seven years old and I was always on the heavy side. Look, I don't know a person on earth that doesn't have a story about when somebody rugged on him or was teasing them or calling them names. I figure like everybody could possibly be subject to that. So, even if you use the beautiful blonde girl in your high school, well people think she's dumb. Well they say, "Oh, she's beautiful, but not much up here." Well, how do you know? Have you ever even talked to her? So it really runs the gamut. When Peter, Paul and Mary recorded that song by the way, they said that when they first heard it, they'd been singing together for 45 years, but they'd never had a conversation about being bullied when they grew up. And that song created a dialogue for them to say, "Hey, what happened when ... Paul Stookey and Mary Travers and, they suddenly were ... They knew each other so well, but they suddenly had this opportunity to talk to each other because of that song. And to me, that's another side of what songs are about, to create conversation, to inspire people, to make them cry, to make them laugh, to make them think. But also, the other side of songs, and I don't write too many of these, but I also value the song, it just makes me want to dance, it makes me want to move. There are some great songs that are just fun songs, a little hook. Whatever. I just tend as a writer to be more apt to write things that are going to pull up your heartstrings. That's my goal.
Doug Burke:
So you and Allen finished the song. It's unlike any song that's been written in terms of the subject matter, in many respects. And so, how do you decide what voice is the right voice for this song?
Steve Seskin:
Oh, well this is a good opposite to the Tim McGraw story. We finished the song and everybody in town passed on it. Garth Brooks, John Michael Montgomery, Kenny Chesney, all the people that ... This was already in 1999, I'd had a lot of hits as a writer. Everybody's, "No we don't want to sing a song about Don't Laugh at Me. Don't call me that." I'm serious, nobody bit. And there was this artist named Mark Wells, and he heard this song and just fell in love with it. I'm a big believer of the right artist finds the right song. Sometimes it's hard because there's all those gatekeepers again. And I remember a story where Mercury Records, they were fine with him recording it, but they didn't want it to be a single, they didn't want it to come out on the radio. They thought, "Well, this will just be an album cut." And they went up to Kentucky apparently to hear Mark in a concert. And he did that song. And again, I'm not bragging or anything, I wasn't there, but the whole place stood up. It was like a five minute standing ovation. And one of the groups of people there in the front row, was 25 wheelchairs with people with disabilities. That's when the record company, they like to just make us think they know everything in terms of marketing and what's ... That's when they looked at each other and, "Well, maybe this should be a single. Look at that reaction to it." And it was a number one record, but it could have easily never came out. I've been on both sides of that equation. I've had songs where I thought, "Well, this was a big old hit." And it never came out. I have a song last thing I'll say is, Reba McEntire just recorded like now as in September here of 2019, it just came out. Allen Shamblin and I wrote it 21 years ago. And it's called Cactus in a Coffee Can, it's a long story song. It's sad. I don't think it'll ever be on the radio, but you never know. What if Reba decides, "I want this on the radio." It would probably happen. So again, a lot of that's out of our hands, we just write the songs and hope they find good homes, and we write a ton of songs. I don't care what song writer you have on this blog show, we write a ton of songs that don't get recorded, that don't have the interest level. I've written 2,500 songs and I've had about 100 of them recorded. Some of the songs that haven't been recorded are like my favorite songs. You never know. Well, Don't Laugh at Me has turned into a worldwide movement. And for that we thank you, Steve-
Doug Burke:
Oh my pleasure. Thank you. I'm glad of that.
Steve Seskin:
... 2500 songs you've written that one has changed the world.
Doug Burke:
All right. We got one more. Well, let's do one more song.
Steve Seskin:
Sure.
Doug Burke:
How about, No Doubt About It?
Steve Seskin:
Okay. Well that's another love song. But has a really interesting story. Two interesting stories. This is one of the simpler songs I've ever written. And when you do a lot of co-writing which I do, you keep ideas on your phone, on your notes section, and you run them by other writers like, "What do you think of this?" So No Doubt About It. There's certainly a cliche. And one week like four people said it to me, just in my regular course of my life. I live in San Francisco, somebody says, "No doubt about it, the Giants are winning this year." Or death and taxes, no doubt about it." Whatever. People just kept saying, "No doubt about it." And I thought I better write this down. All these people, there must be some reason all these people are saying that to me. And I'd run it by co-writers and they'd say, "Well." And I didn't know how I was going to write it. I had no idea, what am I even going to do with that? And co-writers would say, "It's a cliche, don't you think?" And I said, "Yeah, what else you got?" Which is a typical co-writing exchange. It's like, "No, let's work on something else, that doesn't excite me." For like a year, I'd run it by people. And then one day I ran it by my friend John Scott Sherrill, who I ended up writing it with and I said, "Here's a song. The idea it's called No Doubt About It." And he said, "Man, that's great." And I remember sitting there thinking, "Really? Why is it so great? Explain it to me." And he said, and keep in mind, the guy I wrote this with is like ... well I call him the love machine, because every song he writes has a baby in it, darling, sugar, honey pie. Sometimes there's four of those things in one song thing. So every song he writes pretty much has a girl in it. I write songs like Grown Men Don't Cry, Don't Laugh at Me, like about all kinds of other stuff, because that's what I do. But occasionally, I go down this road and I thought, "Well, maybe he's the right guy to write this with. He seems excited about it." And he says, "What if the couple, they're in love and they're so much in love that there's no doubt about it." And the first thing we came up with was ... So it was just, "What if they were meant to be together?" Like it was ordained. And we started thinking about, they were so much meant to be together just like other things that belong together. And the first thing your instinct would be to think of other romantic ... Like the flowers need the rain, like the moon, the tide and the moon. Like the stars and the ... I don't know about anybody else, but for me, that makes me want to throw up a little bit. It's a little too ... really ... sappy kind of deal. And so we were just about ready to give up the idea, I said, "I don't know. We need to think about it. Maybe we can find another way to write it." And it was a Saturday morning and I was in Nashville at the publishing company that we both wrote at. And there was nobody else there, because since I don't live in Nashville, when I'm there I work like seven days a week. I'm there to write songs. It was a Saturday and we go downstairs from the writing rooms to make a cup of coffee. And we go looking around the kitchen area there for a cup. And for whatever reason, there are no cups. There are no porcelain cups. There are no paper cups. There are no cups. And all of a sudden, he says to me, "We better go to the store because what good is coffee without a cup?" Because if you think about it, you're not going to stand there and pour the coffee. If you could see a video now, you'd see my hand pouring the pot into my mouth of hot coffee. You're not going to do that. We went and got some cups and we came back and wrote ... So, a funny story about that song, which is so weird, but we wrote that in 1995, and a guy named Neil McCoy recorded it. It was his first number one record as an artist. It was actually my first number one record as a writer, because I had those other songs before, but they had gone to like number two, number three, number four. And you don't get a number two party. When you have a number one record as a writer, you get a number one party, no number three. And so it was really cool. And Neil McCoy came to the number one party, and all that was great. And I hear through the grapevine from somebody that when Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert got married, their first dance at their wedding, was this song. That they were friends with Neil McCoy, and Neil McCoy came to their wedding, and at the wedding, the first dance was. They sang this song and I thought, "Wow, that's really flattering." Out of all the songs in the world, they chose our song to play. I don't know, Blake Shelton over Miranda Lambert. And I said, "If I ever get a chance I'm going to thank them for using the song." I thought, "That's really sweet." And then like another five years go by or so, I'm busy. I have a lot going on, and somebody else mentions that to me, and I thought, "Darn it. I'm going to take care of this." So this just goes to show that I don't read People Magazine or I don't like keep up with all the gossip. So I didn't have any way to get in touch with Blake or Miranda, but I did know Blake's producer's name is Scott Hendricks, and I called up Scott Hendricks. I said, "Scott, it's Steve. Listen, I've always wanted to thank Blake for using No Doubt About It as the first dance at their wedding." Now you have to know that Scott is a pretty talkative guy, silence on the other end of the line. Nothing. I said, "Scott, are you there?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "Well, is there a way I can get in touch with Blake?" Because I want to make sure he didn't think I was trying to get Blake a song. Because that would probably be the case. I said, "I just want to thank him." He goes, "I don't think that would be a good idea." And I said, "Why not?" "Do you not read the papers or?" So of course, Blake and Miranda had gotten divorced like six months earlier. And I just didn't know about it. And I said, "Oh, I don't think that would be a good idea." He was saying, "You missed your window of thanking him, or them for using that song. It wouldn't work anymore."
So, now McCoy made this his title song on that album.
Steve Seskin:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
How did it get to Neil? Did you pitch anybody else first?
Steve Seskin:
Actually, this was pretty much pitched to Neil. His producer was a guy named Barry Beckett, who's since passed on. But Barry Beckett came out of the whole Muscle Shoals R&B meets Blue-Eyed Soul that kind of world. And we just felt like the song was fit into that. I can't quite do it justice, as the singing style, but it just had that groove, and Barry Beckett loves songs like that. So we played it for him and he played it for Neil. Neil's from Texas and he just loved that song. And interestingly enough, is the publishing company where I wrote, had three hits on that album. The song that came out after No Doubt About It, it was called Wink. Which is way more uptempo kind of commercial than this song. And I remember when we got the word that ... because this is like record company business stuff, and we don't have a say in that usually. They never call me and say, "Should your song be the first single?" And I'm like, "Yeah, it should be." We were thinking, "Oh, please don't make this song, our song the first single." Because Neil hadn't had a hit yet. If you remember, I said it was his first number one. And I said, "This song's ... it's not a ballad, but it's like. And Wink was like a stone cold, commercial number one sounding song. We thought, "They should put them out in that order." Wink and then No Doubt About It. Well, we get the word that No Doubt About It, it's the first single. And we were like, "What? That's going to backfire." And it was a number one record. So it was Wink after it. So what do I know?
Doug Burke:
And so do you know any reason why they chose your song over Wink?
Steve Seskin:
No, I really never found out what their strategy was, but in this case they were right. One other quick story about back to Grown Men Don't Cry, is Tim McGraw chose that to be his first single. And all I'm going to tell you is because he really loved the song and he loved that it was about his dad, in his mind it was about his dad, that also is not scream off the page as the next big country hit, I am certain that the people at his record company were not thrilled when he walked in and said, "I want Grown Men Don't Cry to be the first single." They're like, "What?" And yet at that point Tim McGraw had sold like 28 million records. So they're not going to say, "No, Tim, we don't want that." So, I got lucky in that case, because here's the thing, in the Neil McCoy story, again he had never had a hit, whereas Tim McGraw had already had 25 hits. So an artist of Tim McGraw's stature, he can put out whatever he wants, and radio is going to play it. And so in that sense we got lucky that that song, which I love, that it got recorded by an artist of the stature of Tim McGraw because, it's a song that could easily still be sitting in my catalog even though I think it's one of my best songs. We just got lucky that an artist like that decided he wanted to record it and demanded that it was the first single. And it was a number one record. And we had a number one party, and you know what Tim and God did at that party? One last thing. He held up a yellow legal pad, with a pen attached to it, and he said, "I want to thank Tom Douglas and Steve Seskin for writing this song Grown Men Don't Cry. And if you guys don't mind, I'd also like to take a minute to thank all the songwriters in Nashville who start every day with this, a blank yellow legal pad and a pen, and come up with an idea for a song, get out their guitar, and write the great songs without which I would not have a career." That's Tim McGraw talking. And that's super cool. Because, I'll just say not every artist who doesn't write songs, who need songs to make their career what it is, not every artist feels so moved to recognize you mentioned the word ego before. There are some big egos ... and it's Neil McCoy also nicest guy you'd ever want to meet, down to earth. Tim McGraw, just super sweet. Faith Hill, his wife. If you saw him walking down the street in Park City, they'd say hi to you. They're like regular people, as much as they're superstars. And personally, that means a lot to me
Doug Burke:
So not every song on the first week of release hits number one, what's the feeling like when you get a song that goes to number one the first time?
Steve Seskin:
Oh, it's fabulous. What it means on the charts with radio, it means that song is being played on more radio stations more often than any other song that we can list in that genre. So pop has a different barometer. But, it's a great feeling. As a songwriter who also sings, I play in anywhere from 50 to 200 seat places, coffee houses and cafes and house concerts. And I love that. But the notion that Tim McGraw did Grown Men Don't Cry and that 3 million people bought the record, that's 3 million people that are hearing my work via him. That's way more than I'm ever going to get to just given how my life has turned out. I wouldn't want to be Tim McGraw, tell you the truth. Most writers I know like I said earlier, they love just that, "Yeah. I wrote that song." Kind of thing, but they wouldn't want to be on a stage every night, laying it down and putting it out. That's a big responsibility. And the people that do it, were born to do it I think, in general. The people who try it, who were not born to do it, they usually burn out and you wonder whatever happened to so and so. But the ones that keep doing it for 20, 30, 40 years, in country music, George Strait, Tim McGraw or Kenny Chesney, or Reba McEntire are born to sing. Dolly Parton. Those people with longevity into their careers, they love getting up on a stage and they still pay a price I think for people talking about them when they're in the ... The old joke used to be, which is worse. If you're a star, which is worse, being on the cover of the National Inquirer or not being on the cover of the National Inquirer? Well, I don't know about you Doug, but I don't want to be on the cover of the National Inquirer.
