LimeWire Music Blog

Seventeen years is a long time. Back in 1992, Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers had decided to hang it up as a recording act. They released their farewell album, Adios, for Liberty Records, and their final single together, “Pretty Woman Have Mercy.” At the time, the singer admitted that there was some bitterness in his heart toward Music City. However, as another great Texan, Bob Wills, once sang, time changes everything. Gatlin, and his brothers Steve and Rudy, are back with The Pilgrimage, a new set out next week on Curb Records. Gatlin admitted that his mindset about the country music Mecca had changed, and he had too.

“When I left here,” he begins on a fall morning on Music Row, “I thought it was a love-hate relationship, and I characterized it that. You know what Mark Twain said about ‘It’s amazing how stupid my father was when I was 13, and how smart he had become by the time I was 30.’ I was sitting in a bathtub in Oklahoma City, and it dawned on me. We had talked about coming back to Nashville, and trying this, and Leslie Satcher was encouraging me. She told me there were young songwriters all over town who loved my songwriting. I said, ‘They don’t care anything about me.’ The ace tunesmith wasn’t about to give up that easily. “She said, ‘Larry, I write songs with them every day at Tree. I know what I’m talking about.’ I thought if you want to go back, and you want to make music with your brothers and Mike Curb’s giving you a record deal…If you want to go back, and make another run at this business again, you don’t want to go back mad at Nashville, thinking they ran you out of town…What’s that about? I had to look down in my own heart, and change that love-hate relationship to just a love relationship. Some great things happened to me in this town.”

Gatlin says philosophically “it was our time then, and when it was over…we left. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It’s the way life is. One of these days, Tiger Woods isn’t going to win all the Golf tournaments. The Yankees have found out they’re not going to win every year. My beloved Dallas Cowboys haven’t won a playoff game in 14 years…It just doesn’t happen that way, so that’s part of my maturing — realizing that this town didn’t do anything to me…except good. We’re trying to get back in, they’ve opened their arms to us in a lot of ways.”

“Along the way one night, my son asked me, ‘What’s wrong with country music? It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound the same.’ I said, ‘Hold it, son. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just different. Those young kids are doing it their way. We’re doing it our way. We’ve got to realize that the world is a different place, and will never be the same.

One of those ways is Curb Records offering the Gatlins a record deal, of which The Pilgrimage is the first release. The lead-off single is the interestingly-titled “Johnny Cash Is Dead And His House Burned Down.” If it sounds like there was a strategy plan from all concerned to bring the Gatlins back, think again.

“I would love to tell you that it was a big grand strategy — that we sat down with our record company, and our management and our business people and our producers — that we had this grand design, and we thought it out. But it just did not happen that way. It’s like that old saying that God laughs at man’s plans. Terry Choate asked me, ‘Why don’t you record some new music you’ve written, and let’s see what happens.’ Along the way, he introduces me to Leslie Satcher, and she and I wrote a couple of songs together, and she introduces me to Jon Randall (Stewart), and we wrote a song together.” With those pieces falling into place as far as getting Gatlin involved again in the creative community, the inspiration for the new single came from out of left field. “Along the way one night, my son asked me, ‘What’s wrong with country music? It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound the same.’ I said, ‘Hold it, son. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just different. Those young kids are doing it their way. We’re doing it our way. We’ve got to realize that the world is a different place, and will never be the same. After all, Johnny Cash is dead and his house burned down! So, I wrote that song and got John Carter Cash involved, and then I wrote a song from an idea that Roger Miller gave me years ago.”

Cash’s involvement on the album turned out to be another case of the circle being unbroken. “We asked him to do the liner notes because his father had done the liner notes for The Pilgrimage (Gatlin’s first disc, released in 1974 on Monument Records). It kind of took on a new process. Johnny, in his liner notes, talked about “Sweet Becky Walker” and “Penny Annie,” two songs that he especially liked. We said ‘Hey, John Carter is a great record producer. Let’s do those songs over, and put them on this album. I was trying to think of a name for the album, and I thought ‘What do pilgrims do? They go on pilgrimages…they go on journeys…” So, that’s kinda what happened. There wasn’t any grand plan we sat around to do. I think it’s like that old deal about if you’ll bring the bucket, God will bring the well. I brought the bucket — my bucket is the songs I write, two brothers who are great singers and great guys, getting in the studio with great musicians, and it took on a life of its’ own.”

One difference that fans might note concerning The Pilgrimage is the fact that Gatlin collaborates as a songwriter with the aforementioned Satcher and Randall — something he hadn’t done much of in his career. “If I’ve learned anything in this business,” he told LimeWire Music Blog, “I hope I’ve learned to be more open. I never co-wrote songs before, almost never — a couple of songs with Barry Gibb years ago, but that was about it. I’m going to write the songs, and I still am going to do my part — but I’m open to others whose songwriting I respect. The good thing is having people that you trust and respect…so it’s worked out.” In the same vein, Gatlin had no problem turning over control of the video for “Johnny Cash.” “We had a lot of help on that from Eric Welch and all the guys who did that. I wouldn’t have known how to make that old Hatch Show poster come alive, but those people do, so it worked out.”

“We were running the song down, Randy Scruggs was playing his guitar, and John Carter grabbed Mother Maybelle’s 1934 Gibson and put it in his hands, and then he grabbed his mother’s autoharp, and that thing came alive.”

Of the new material on The Pilgrimage, the singer is excited about “Black Gold,” one of two tracks co-written with Satcher. The idea for the song came at a dinner at her house. “When I come to town, I try to make time to go out to her and David’s house — her mama cooks chicken fried steak, creamed gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad and sweet tea. Leslie and I got to talking about the oil business, and about the oil field, and what it’s like. She asked me, ‘What did your daddy do.’ I told her, ‘He was a driller. He worked seven days a week, eight hours a week — no days off. If the rig was down, he didn’t get paid — that was a day he was looking for a job — no weekends, vacations, union, no insurance…nothing…just work.’ ” Gatlin didn’t think the conversation would lead much further. “We were talking about that over dinner, and I was helping her mama clean up the dishes, and I looked over and Leslie had her guitar, and she was over in the corner just wailing. She said, ‘Come over here, and tell me about the oil business,’ and we wrote this song.” Satcher had one more thing to ask. “She said, now I want to produce this on you…I know how they’re doing it…you go that other stuff you’re doing, and that’ll be fine, but I want one that sounds like the stuff they’re doing in Nashville now. I’ll be darned if it doesn’t. She did a great job.”

Another track off the album is “Handsome Young Gringo.” Gatlin confesses that he was inspired to write the song as he was thinking about one of his all-time favorite records. “One of my favorite songs of all time was “El Paso” by Marty Robbins. What a great record! It was perfect, from front to back. I really don’t know if I was thinking about that song or not, but I wrote it about 15 years ago when I moved back to Texas, and maybe I had heard it on the radio or something, and I envisioned that girl dancing in that bar. So from that, I did my take on it…It’s a different song, obviously, but it did have something to do with it. It’s another guy in the bar,” he jokes, “not the one who gets shot. I talked to the record people. Doug Johnson, the head of A&R at Curb said, ‘We love the Johnny Cash record, and Americans…that’s who,” but we need something a little edgy. So I sang it for him, and he said, ‘That’s it. Let’s record it.’ We did it, and he said take it to Mike. We recorded it, but I forgot to take it with me. So, I sang it to him, and he said he loved it. It was a case of different musicians, different sounds, different layerings, colors, fabrics of the album.”

Three of the tracks on The Pilgrimage, while new recordings, are not new songs at all. As previously mentioned, two songs from The Pilgrimage were re-recorded, with John Carter Cash as producer. One, “Sweet Becky Walker,” features Kris Kristofferson (who sang on the 1973 original) and Gatlin’s daughter, Kristin, on harmony. The other, “Penny Annie,” features quite a bit of country music history. “I told John Carter that I wanted to change it a little bit. I always envisioned that it was in North Carolina or West Virginia — kind of an Appalachian setting and we put a little tempo to it. We were running the song down, Randy Scruggs was playing his guitar, and John Carter grabbed Mother Maybelle’s 1934 Gibson and put it in his hands, and then he grabbed his mother’s autoharp, and that thing came alive.” A recording like that might not have taken place twenty-five years ago. “Again, that’s from being open to other people’s talents and abilities,” he admits.

He also goes back and revisits one of his biggest hits, 1979’s “I’ve Done Enough Dyin’ Today.” Though it only peaked at # 7, the song was a favorite of many, including Frank Sinatra. Joining Gatlin on duet vocals (only the second time he has ever performed a duet) on the track is Lari White. Sharing the spotlight was an easy task, he claims. “She’s a fabulous person with a great heart. She’s a great songwriter and a great entertainer. We just kind of met each other in New York. She was in Ring Of Fire: The Musical, and I met her up there. I didn’t know her well, but I went by after the premiere that night, as they were having a press conference. I mouthed to her ‘I love your singing…you were great.’ ” She said, ‘I love your songwriting. You’re great.’ Every now and then, I’d be in New York and I’d see her there, as she was doing some other Broadway things. I asked her to be our special guest at the Friars Club, then at the Ryman for a benefit for the Vanderbilt Voice Center. I said, ‘Let’s do this thing. I think it would be a great duet.’ And it came off great. What a great singer she is. I’m glad she consented to do it.”

The album closes with the inspirational “Fill Me,” which Gatlin says came about from somewhere higher. “Years ago, Phil Johnson at Spring Hill Music called me, and said I want you to do a gospel album. I said, ‘I don’t have any songs. I don’t think that’s what I want to do right now.’ So I went out the next morning for my morning run, and much like what happened a few years ago when someone wanted me to write a book I didn’t want to write, I got this little voice that said, ‘I’ve been real good to you…You might ought to write that book and tell people about it, that same voice said, “I’ve been really good to you. You might ought to do that gospel album. I said, ‘Lord, I don’t have any songs. He said ‘You will,” and they started coming, and that’s one of those. I was at the Masters tournament in Augusta when I had the idea for that song. I don’t know why they come when they do, but I don’t question it, I just write them down.”

Hopefully, The Pilgrimage will influence Larry Gatlin to keep writing them for years to come.

For more information about the album or the Gatlin Brothers, log onto their website.

images via MySpace