Hillbilly Heart (20 page)

You can burn my clothes up when I’m gone…

After two more lines I jumped out of my chair, raised my arms in the air, and exclaimed, “That’s me! That’s me! I love it!” It was pure bar-band southern rock-stompin’ fun, a good time waiting to happen, and I knew people would want to dance to it. I could hardly sit still myself. Nor could I resist singing along to the chorus:

Don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

I just don’t think it’d understand

And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart,

He might blow up and kill this man.

The song, a sad but whimsical take on love, was called “Don’t Tell My Heart.” Don Von Tress, a Vietnam veteran who’d been making his living hanging wallpaper, was the songwriter. We found out the Oak Ridge Boys and Ronnie Milsap had both thought about recording the song but then passed. The Marcy Brothers, a trio from Northern California, did record a version earlier that year, but they changed some of the words. I thank God I didn’t hear any version other than the demo of Don banging it out on his flattop guitar.

That’s what I heard, that’s what I loved, that’s what I built off of. Once I got a hold of it, I never let that song out of my grasp.

I loved it.

And I knew Joe was right. It was going to be a hit.

We went back to the bar, worked it up right there and then, and played the song that night. Actually, we played it in every set because people kept wanting to hear it. It was fun.

Working on a budget of less than six figures—$92,000 to be exact—we spent two weeks recording the rest of the songs. We started at nine in the morning and quit between eleven and midnight. Every day was a marathon. I didn’t know any other way. There’d been so much press in the tristate area about my signing and the album that I was already a big star, but I knew if I didn’t execute the album I was going to look like a fool.

What’s the saying? A man’s big chance is only as great as his preparation.

I thought about that constantly.

I’d cut a track, sing, do overdubs with different instruments, then sing, get a good vocal, and then do harmonies. I wouldn’t leave at night unless we had a good rough mix. That was the way I had done it for years: marathons, focus, staying in the moment, capturing the music while it was hot.

Harold Shedd was the boss, the overseer of the songs, the final word. But he had good instincts, and his instincts were to let me follow my gut. There weren’t any rules for an artist like me, because I didn’t fit into any specific mold. Periodically, Harold brought someone in and played them “Don’t Tell My Heart,” and the reaction was always the same: they’d say, “This is going to be big. This is huge.”

During the recording, I literally lived in my car—my Chevy Beretta. We had Shoney’s Inn to shit, shower, and shave, but my car was my office, closet, and home base. On the day of the photo session for the album cover, I parked it down by the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville. Photographer Peter Nash, who’d worked with Alabama, Emmylou Harris, and Waylon Jennings, liked that location and had planned a bunch of different setups and wardrobe changes near there. However, as I got out of my car, in the clothes that I had put on that morning, I said, “Hey, why don’t you just shoot me here?”

He snapped away, and those shots—basically the moment I stepped out of my car to do the session—turned out to be the ones everyone wanted for the cover. I was glad, too, because there was
no phoniness about ’em. That was the guy who was following his dream, the guy who was making music.

Soon after we finished recording the album, I lost my longtime house gig at the Ragtime. It happened on a Sunday night during the peak of summer. By then, people were coming from all around, from as far away as the Carolinas. The little club was packed. During the intensity of our last set of the night, a fight broke out. There were always fights, but this one had guys waving guns and knives. People were flying over tables.

“Holy shit,” I said to Terry Shelton (we were still playing at the time—well, barely playing). “Someone’s going to die.”

Terry nodded, stopped playing, unplugged his guitar, and headed offstage. He had a scar across his throat from where he’d been slashed years earlier during a brawl in another club. “I’m out of here,” he said.

“Bud’s going to fire us,” I said, referring to the Ragtime’s owner, Bud Waugh, who was drunk as hell and already screaming at us to get back onstage and play.

“The hell with that shit,” he said.

All of us followed him. The last one off the stage, I looked around and saw blood everywhere. The cops were already on their way, and Bud was going ape-shit.

When we returned on Monday to inspect the damage, he was waiting for us. He had moved most of our equipment outside the club.

“You guys are fired,” he said. “You let me down last night.”

There went my steady gig.

Gradually we picked up a club in Knoxville; another place on the Tennessee–North Carolina line; a Cowboys in Fayetteville, North Carolina; Miss Kitty’s in Marietta, Georgia; another Cowboys in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Bronco’s Lounge in Richmond, Virginia; and the Executive Inn in Paducah, Kentucky.

The gigs earned new fans, like Raymond Bullock, a Vietnam vet
who came into Bronco’s almost every night just to hear “Some Gave All.” His mission in life was to find homeless veterans and drive them to the VA hospital or wherever they needed to go. He drove an old limo—and I mean old—but he wanted the vets to feel like they were going first class. One night he piled me in the back of his limo with about eight other vets who weren’t able to or didn’t want to go into the bar. I pulled out a cassette with a rough mix of “Some Gave All” and gave it to Raymond.

“This is the song I told you guys about,” he said, sliding the tape into the stereo. Then he turned to me. “Is it a hit yet?”

“It’s not out yet,” I said.

“Well, get it out, man. It’s the best song I’ve ever heard.” Then he cranked it up.

I knew something big was going to happen once that album was released. I felt it in my bones. But I was worried. As crazy as my world had been a few months or even weeks earlier, it was getting even crazier. It was like the ground was shaking and the sky was filling with thunder. Something was going to happen. I called Jack daily. “You gotta call the label and get them to move on this record,” I implored. “It’s time. It’s past time. We’re losing time. I might die here if I don’t get out of here right now,” I said in a voice that was as close to screaming as I got. “I’m going to die here.”

“Patience, my boy,” he said. “Harold takes his time and thinks these things out.”

“But I don’t
have
time,” I said. “You don’t understand what it’s like for me. If I stay here, I’m gonna run out of air. It’s like I’m a big fish in a tiny bowl. There’s not enough oxygen in the water.”

In October, Cindy filed for divorce. There were no hard feelings. Both of us recognized our marriage was a relic from another time. I gave her half of my share of the royalties on the six songs on
Some Gave All
that I’d written while we were together. I wanted to give her something that no one could ever take away—a thank-you for all she’d endured while we were together.

In December 1991, Mercury finally came up with a plan to release
Some Gave All
. Jack McFadden and I sat down with Harold Shedd, Buddy Cannon, and other executives in the label’s conference room. They explained they were going to put my album out early the next year. I clenched my fist and thought,
finally
. It was about time.

As we dug into the details, I shared my thoughts on artwork, song sequence, song titles, and the most important part of all, the first single.

I told them how the crowds where I played all had the same reaction to my songs. They come in used to cover bands that play boot-scootin’, line-dancin’ cowboy music, so the first time they hear my Appalachian swamp rock, they hate me. They wanted to hear straight-up, boot-shuffling country music, and I don’t really do that. “But as soon as I played ‘Don’t Tell My Heart,’ they hit the dance floor and the rest of the night was a flat-out good time.”

Everyone at the table nodded.

“I’ll tell you something, though,” I continued. “The name of that song is wrong. Everyone calls it the Achy Breaky song. They yell it all night long. ‘Play that Achy Breaky song.’ I hear it every night, all night long. ‘Play that Achy Breaky song.’ I could probably just play it over and over. I think it should be called ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’”

Harold leaned halfway across the conference table, nodding as though he’d found where the treasure was buried.

“I think you’re right,” he said.

After agreeing that “Achy Breaky Heart” would be the single, we made plans to shoot a video of me performing the song live. One of the promotion people suggested a dance contest, too. A couple of weeks later, we met with choreographer Melanie Greenwood, singer Lee Greenwood’s ex-wife. She got up and did a few line-dancing moves for me.

“Yeah, that looks cool,” I said. “That’s exactly what I see a lot of them doing in the club. But it needs a hook, like the Twist—something that connects the dancers to the singer.”

“What do you do when you sing it?” she asked.

“Uh, I don’t really move,” I said. “I’m the singer… If I do move,
it’s probably something like this—” I got up and kinda moved my hips from side to side.

She froze her discerning eye on me for a moment, then smiled. “I got it.” And she did. She showed me a small move, which I tried, and suddenly everyone at the table began high-fiving each other.

The dance created in that conference room soon became known around the world as the Achy Breaky. We made an eleven-minute instructional line-dance video and later shipped it to cowboy bars and dance clubs across the country. Mercury sponsored a nationwide dance contest. Suddenly everybody was doing the Achy Breaky and the record wasn’t even shipped yet. The stage was set.

PART III

Be Careful What You Wish For

CHAPTER 19