When It All Goes South

Cut by cut with Randy

1.  “When It All Goes South”   (John Jarvis, Rick Carnes, Janis Carnes)
               I went up to see Don Cook about a year ago at his song publishing company.  He was waiting for me with all these beautiful ballads and all of these songs that were just perfectly written.  I said, “Don, don’t play me anything predictable.  Play me the most obscure and different things you’ve got.  We’re looking at reinventing ourselves.  Pretend we’re a new band and find me some songs that would get somebody’s attention.”
                He said to his assistant, “Go get me that old John Jarvis song”
                 As soon as I heard it I went, “Gollleeee.  This is just unbelievable how different and fresh this is.  Don’t play this for anyone else, whatever you do.”
                I did get some strange looks from the other guys in the band when I brought the tape of this to them.  But, I gently persuaded them.
                I just felt like this was the most original song I’d heard in years.  It’s a funny song, too.  It certainly doesn’t sound like everything else that’s going on in the music world.  And, that’s why I like it.

  2.  “The Woman He Loves” (Troy Seals, Eddie Setzer)

                We had already recorded 10n songs when we heard this one.  The demo was done like a N’Sync pop song, with kids singing it.  It was really great. Teddy said, “Let’s just do it.  What are they going to do, fire us?”  So he and I produced it ourselves.  We just went in and recorded it in just two takes.  James Stroud played drums.  Josh Leo played guitar.  Michael Omartian played keyboards.  Teddy played bass.  And I just sang the song.
                We’ve been playing this one live. And from the very opening lines, this is a song that people fall in love with.  I had no idea that Troy Seals, the same guy that wrote “When We Make Love” for us, wrote this one too.

3.  “Clear Across America Tonight”  (Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, Ronnie Rogers, Greg Fowler)

Teddy, Ronnie and Greg played me this when they were writing it.  They had written it as “Clear Across Texas”.  Had the chorus and everything.  I said, “I don’t think it should be just one radio station in this song.  It should be a satellite hook-up.  It could be clear across America.”  So then we went to work and changed it around a lot.
Then we fooled around with it some more by putting in that phasing sound effect on the vocal where the guy is told he’s “breaking up.”  We never put a gender on the DJ.  Because a lot of the late night radio folks are gals.

4.  “Will You Marry Me” (Jefferey Steele, Al Anderson) duet with Jann Arden

I saw Jann Arden on an Anne Murray TV special.  She came out and did this song called “Insensitive”, and I went “Wow.”  I thought that was  just an amazing song and I fell in love with her voice.

            A few months later I was driving down a road in Alabama with my son.  I told him that I was going to record this song, but that I heard it as a duet between a girl and a boy.  He said, “What about Jann Arden?”

            Well, I knew I wanted that different sounding kind of voice, someone special and unique.  So we called Jann in Alberta, sent her the song and she loved it.  I was riding down the interstate in Oklahoma and she called me on my cell phone!  I couldn’t believe it.  She said she’d love to do it with me if she could work it out with her schedule before she went out on tour last fall.  So she came to Nashville and did it.

            When we do it on stage, there’s all kinds of proposals in the audience.  It’s just like James Stroud told me when he produced the session, “It’s always good to have a wedding song.

5.   “I Can’t Hide My Heart”  (Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, Ronnie Rogers, Greg Fowler)

We tried to record this song two or three times, but we never got it right.  It was always too “ballady.”  None of us were happy with the ways it had turned out the other times we’d tried it.

I showed James Stroud how it sounded when we originally wrote it.  He came up with this thump to give it some punch and we added some echo.  Maybe it’s because he’s a drummer, but I found I could communicate with James on rhythmic ideas that I’ve never been able to communicate to a producer before.  You can especially hear it on this song.

And the lyric is certainly true of me.  I really can’t ever hide what I really feel in my heart.

6. “ I Can’t Love You Any Less” (Teddy Gentry, Randy Owen, Ronnie Rogers, Greg Fowler)

                I held back when I recorded that vocal.  It would have been real easy to pull out all the stops and make the song sound real emotional. When God blesses you with a voice and you’ve had a certain amount of success, it’s real easy to get carried away with yourself.  But particularly on this, I tried to let the song do the singing as opposed to me forcing it on somebody.

                We debated about using steel guitar during the recording session.  I said, “Let’s do it as stone country as we can.  It’s a weeper.  Let’s make sure they understand where we’re coming from.”

                This is a tender, sad song.  I think that line is so sweet: “Girl I hope you never feel the way I feel tonight.”  This guy is torn apart, but he doesn’t wish this misery on the girl, because he really, truly still loves her.

7.  “Reinvent the Wheel”  (Brad Crisler, Walt Aldridge)

                We had never worked with Rick Hall before this album, but we’d always wanted to. I knew he was a great song finder and a great producer.  He told me that everybody in the world had this song on “hold.”  But nobody had the guts to actually go and record it.  I guess that’s because it’s a little sarcastic about the music industry.

8.  “I Write a Little”  (Randy Owen, Don Cook, Ronnie Rogers)

                Well, the story behind this goes way back to when I was dating my wife Kelly.  She was an army brat and I used to write her letters when her father was stationed in Germany.  I started working on the song when Kelly was over there.  I thought a lot about what it meant to get letters from a military family.  I think we sometimes forget how many people are in the service stationed far away.

                Whenever Alabama would play for military audiences, I’d ask the generals, “What’s the most important thing to a soldier?”  They’d kinda laugh and say, “Mail Call”

                I really like all the sound effects that Don Cook and I used in the production.  I originally wanted to have Elvis Presley’s voice in there talking about coming home from Germany.  But we couldn’t work it out with his estate.

9.  “Down This Road”  (Michael Dulaney, Michael Lunn)

                That’s “Randy’s Song.”  I just love that part about Mama crying the day I moved out.  It’s exactly the way things were for me…my Daddy, the little white church, all those things.  The song really just hit home for me.  It made me feel like singing from my heart.  The song is “This Is Your Life.”

10.  “Love Remains” (Randy Goodrum, Rob Mathes) Teddy’s duet with Christopher Cross

                That’s Teddy starting off the first verse.  I’m singing on those little repeats at the end, but I begged them to leave as little of my voice on there as possible.  I wanted this to be just Teddy with Christopher Cross.  We’ve both always been bug fans of Chris.  He has such a unique voice and has written some great songs.

                Michael Omartian is an amazing musician and producer.  Glen Campbell had introduced us to him in Los Angeles years ago, and he seemed like a nice guy.  We knew that he’d worked with Christopher, so Teddy called him and asked him to put this together. I think the sound really works.  It could be a really big pop record.

11.  “Start Living”  (Steven Dale Jones, Amy Powers)

                This is a lesson in life.  It was a tough song for me to decide to do.  People are going to say, “That is so sad.”  But you know what?  It is so true. And truth is more important to me than almost anything.

                The guy goes through life with a dead-end job and then he dies.  Being raised the was I was raised, I wanted to add the line about him seeing the Pearly Gates…that’s when he’ll really start living.  Rick Hall wanted to do the song the way it was originally written.  But I didn’t want to do it and not leave any hope, because I believe there is hope.  There is something after death.  So I added that for the ending.

                It made a more complete cycle of life.  And that’s what this song’s about.  It was a very tearful ending for me…I had to sing it two or three times because there was so much emotion in my voice.

12.  “Simple As That”  (Chapin Hartford)

                It’s the story of a man and a woman celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary.  They’re looking at a baseball game, sitting there in their folding chairs and wearing their ball caps.  And what it all boils to is in the title….love should be as simple as that.

                Don Cook found this song.  This guy thinks he has THE ANSWER.  He runs home to tell his wife, “Baby, I’ve got it.”  She goes, “Oh, I know.”  And her ideas of what’s perfect are totally the opposite of what his are.  We’ve all been through that, right?  If you’ve been married or if you’ve had a relationship, you’ve been through this.  The song is funnier that all get out to me.  When I heard it, I laughed out loud.

                It’s Jeff’s least favorite.  So I knew I was on to something good.

13.  “You Only Paint the Picture Once”  (Teddy Gentry, Randy Owen, Ronnie Rogers, Greg Fowler)

                In the middle of writing this, Ronnie and I were talking.  I said, “Well, it’s a picture of life.”  Ronnie said, “Well, let’s say exactly that.”  I said, “And you know what?  You can’t live it twice.” Ronnie said, “That’s right. You only paint the picture once.”  I said, “That’s it.  Let’s put that at the end of the song.”

                This life we go through is a very special journey.  We’re touched by one another.  And you can’t live it twice.

14.  “Wonderful Waste of Time”  (Jeff Cook, Lisa Cook, Rosko Heermance)

                It’s Jeff turn to shine.  That’s him singing lead.  He’s like that “beach” groove ever since we did “Shaggin’ on the Boulevard.”  The rest of us took a “hands off” approach and just let Jeff do his thing with Don Cook.  He brought some of his buddies to play on the track and that made Jeff happy.

15.  “Right Where I Am”  (Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry, Ronnie Rogers, Greg Fowler)

                The reason why this is the last song on the CD is because I think as far as our career goes, I just feel like I’m happy where I am.  That’s how the song got started.  You’ve been around the world in the music business.  You’ve been up.  You’ve been down.  You’ve been in the middle.

                At some point in your life, you hope you’ll find contentment right where you are.  And that’s what the son’g about.  It is just a love song, but incorporates the details of everyday life in the year 2000 in the lyrics.

                Mark came up with a lot of those effects you hear in this.  He was experimenting when we were doing the demo.  So he was a real creative force in this particular production.

16.   “Second Chances”  (Skip Ewing, Bob DiPiero)

                This is the “bonus” track.  It will only be for sale on certain pressings of the CD.  It’s a really neat song…Skip Ewing and Bob DiPiero wrote it.  It took me a while to get the right production and sound, but I finally got it put together the way I wanted it.

                It is the neatest story.  It’s about a woman who’s going out.  She’s starting to take second chances, trying one more time to deal with love.  She’s lost the tan line around her finger and a little time, but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten about romance.

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