"Butterfly" by/Denney/Ferrell/Hicks
Chapter 10 The Butterfly Story
After the pro life song Butterfly, performed by Bluefield's Rick Ferrell and Jennifer Hicks came out, it had a little buzz around it. It was beautifully performed by Rick and Jen and it was getting a great reception from radio audiences. Much to our suprise it began to shoot up the charts and the record company, Country Thunder, was beginning to project that it could go to #1 based on audience response and dj reports. The song was reaching people in a powerful way and they were calling the stations to say so. While everyone associated with it seemed to be planning for the big party when it hit the top I was sitting down in Cocoa Florida a bit stunned that radio was playing it all!! I mean it was a pro life song! and for the most part media and it's outlets flee from such hot button issues. But mind you I was as excited as anyone, if not more.
My cowriter buddy Rick had already had 2 number one country hits so this was old hat to him! Ok not old hat but it's kind of like your first superbowl win, something we can all relate to!, the second one just isn't quite as sweet. There was one caveat though, Rick was singing this one!
Anyway this was my first superbowl and the excitement was palpable. I'll never forget when I was told about the #1 thing. I was working on our roof. I was talking to Rick on the phone who was somewhere in the USA promoting the song. I remember it because for any writer to hear the word "one" mentioned after the word "number", it's well, memorable. And also because I nearly slid off my roof. Never, ever do a jig on a pitched roof!!
Well as you know if you just listened to Butterfly that it is a different animal (very small pun intended) and Jen, Rick and I believed that the way the song came about, with all the events that brought us together and the stories around those events was in many ways an important part of the song. We thought people might be interested in how and why people might come to write a pro life song, particularly one that had such an amazing spiritual component surrounding it's birth as Butterfly did. So we decided we would write "The Butterfly Story".
Well it wasn't all that long before the song was aborted by the radio stations because it was just "a bit too controversial." But we had had a good run and no regrets. We had developed a bond between us and we were proud of our work and effort. We even received the ultimate reward as we were blessed with the testimony of many women who had changed their minds about aborting their child. It was the high point of my musical life. And like most musical adventures we were left with a boatload of good memories, a trunk full of cd's, and a story...There were to be 3 parts to the story Rick's, Jen's and mine. Below is mine.
The Butterfly Story
It had been 12 years since I had lived in Nashville. I had given it a good try, living there for about 8 years working odd jobs, some very odd. From warehouse worker to manager of a mortgage company. I was writing my Chapinesque story songs and had put together a once a week band to play them at various clubs in the hopes that I would get noticed. I didn’t, at least not in a big way. I was getting weary of the ups and downs of the rollercoaster ride that is Nashville. I was contemplating leaving for my home in Florida, but I hated losing at this thing. Then my father died. About a year later my mother followed him. I was done. Their passing, besides leaving me with a deep sense of loss, awakened me to the seemingly obvious fact that life is not forever.
I had just met Nancy prior to my dads death. She helped me so much through that period with her love for me and her faith in God. We decided to pursue my dream. I say my dream because she’s from Indiana and hoosiers may have aspirations of living in a city or, more likely, on a large farm but never would dream of taking up residence on a boat! We found one and moved aboard in Destin Fl.
I didn’t visit Nashville or write music very often. I was pretty much over the music thing. I went back to school and got my degree in psychology. During this time, I did stay in touch with 2 of my N'ville friends. When I first met Steve Wilcox in the 80's on my first trip to Nashville he worked at Lipscomb College as the food service director. He also played guitar and sang, as it is of course a prerequisite for citizenship in Nashville. Steve’s sense of humor and irrepressible optimistic view of the world was contagious. He had a house that I later moved into with him. As I look back I recall that Steve allowed me to live at his home rent free during that period because, as he said, he believed in what I was doing. The more time goes by the more that act of kindness and belief resonates warm in my heart. Also the more time goes by the less embarrassed I am that I needed the help and the prouder I am that I had a friend like Steve that would extend it.
Later he decided on a whim to take the MCAT. He dusted off a few old biology and chemistry books and brushed up on it for a month or two then aced it. How hard could it be? Just kidding Steve. He’s now Doctor Steve.
My other close buddy was Rick Ferrell. Rick had just moved to Nashville from Portsmouth Ohio the night we met. We hit it off immediately. He was a musician, loved fishing, was easy going and he was a big time b'ball player back home. Mostly, he was a very talented musician. His easy going style tricks you, but he took his music very seriously. He would go into a “zone” when he was working on a song. The kind of zone shooters get into when they’re hot. You don’t hear or see anything around you just see the front side of the rim. Rick can do that better than anybody I know. He sees the song, only the song. No distractions. Its truly a gift.
Well, Rick and I, being friends, did not need to talk everyday. We did it more the 'guy way' and spoke about every 6 months. After about 5 years of boat life, Rick called and casually mentioned between fishing stories, “hey I’ve got a song on the radio.” “You do?” I asked. He told me what it was and I recognized it. I rarely listen to the radio, but I had heard it and liked it. It was a huge hit that went to number 1. It was called “Something Like That” by Tim McGraw. It ultimately became voted the song of the decade! He followed it with another number one called “Where Would You Be” by Martina McBride. He had arrived!! He even got a record deal with Speilberg's Dream Works. He was rubbin' noses with some of the biggest names in entertainment, signin' autographs for adoring fans and was on everybody's list of best rising young artists. But still he was Rick. He didn’t change a bit. And if he had changed and who wouldn't, you never knew it. He could have forgotten guys like me that gave it up to pursue other things, but he didn’t. We still had our 6 month calls, and he and his wonderful wife Beth, and now little Issac, visited the boat a couple of times.
We tried a little co-writing. It’s hard. It was as easy as it could be with Rick because we had no pretenses with each other. Nothing to protect. I think that’s essential for co- writing. The thing is, neither of us liked co-writing! We were born painting our own landscapes and found it a little unnatural to have others adding color to our sunsets. Co-writing and writing by yourself is like the difference between deep sea fishing and backwater fly fishing they are both fishing but a totally different experience. It is however a common and useful tool for getting a song out of you. The collaboration can lead to a successful flowing full bodied song or be a jumbled, over compromised, frankensteinian assortment of ideas and melodies hitting everything but sticking to nothing. The times we got together were mostly spent catching up on each others lives though. Since I wasn’t living in Nashville, we weren’t taking the co- writing very seriously. We were mostly using it as a backdrop to our friendship and as an excuse to pop a cold one. Our overall theory was, we are both writers, we have a great friendship, so good songs would have to be in there somewhere. But if it didn't, well that was cool too.
Well, time went on. About the time Rick was having his success, I heard a song on the radio by Kenny Rogers called “buy me rose”. I was convinced it was a rip off of what I considered to be my best song “hold me”. I checked out the unknown writers and their publishers office was on the same block as the place that I played with my one night band at the Diamond in the Ruff. I was convinced they stole the idea and I was mad. I called Rick and his advice was “ you’ll write another one.” I thought, “I don’t want to write another one, I wrote that one. I’ll sue.” I considered it. I hit the internet. As time moved on I learned how hard copyright infringement is to prove . Just to be clear I never believed that Kenny Rogers had a clue what was going on, it was the publisher/writers that I believed had some questions to answer. Anyway I felt like I had lost my best chance for a cut with the death of my song. I found it only hurt when I thought about it and when you’re living on a boat in Fla, you don’t think about Nashville too often. But when I did, ouch!.
Another 5 years slipped by. Nancy and I had moved off the boat and bought a house in Cocoa Florida nearer my brothers and sister. Money was tight. We never missed a payment though. Came real close at first but then we both found good jobs. Thank you Lord. Nancy got into teaching again and I got a job with Children's Home Society as an advocate for kids. 2 years there, 6 month calls to Rick, and no writing. I left that job and began my upward adventure climbing the ladder to success by going to work with a medical facility for developmentally disabled as a coordinator or support services and behavior analyst. Got paid more money than I had ever made. Job had a little prestige, a little authority, responsibility, occasionally fun and did I say mo' money? Well of all things, at this very busy time I began writing music, but not country music, but rather Christian. Apparently I had become a strong but private believer after my dad’s death. I was convinced that without the help of God I could not have put things into perspective so quickly, if at all. It wasn’t a normal sitting by the bed natural passing. His death was wrought with guilt for me (see song “John Clayton's Bible”). I’m telling you God pulled me through by the collar. He never appeared in my room. It wasn’t immediate but I was certain, when I would let Him he would give me peace. Being a quick study, I put it all together, uh after a year or two! “ I think of God and I feel peace” uh way to go Mike.
Well I began to notice that the music was better than things I had written before. Better melodies, tighter lyrics and of course now all with Christian roots. I got in a “zone”. It fueled a wonderful new interest in writing. I wrote maybe a song a day for about a month. Then it happened. With musicians it is the danger of the chosen profession. You begin to hear the siren call of Nashville!! One you know you should ignore lest you flounder on the rocks again. It seemed implausible. Why would I ever want to go back THERE? It started as a raindrop of an idea like “ I wonder what it would be like to move back up there?” to a small stream of a thought like, “ where would I live?” to the waterfall of a question “ how could I ever leave my job with prestige, power, passion and did I mention money?! I don’t know. But what Nancy and I were thinking was that the Christian music had really flowed and we just felt like we should go with it. I am not a bible scholar but I read it frequently and most nights it would be the book on my chest when I awakened in the night. But there I was writing Christian songs. So we were just trying to figure it all out. Well the urge grew. Through all of this we had made no mention to anyone about what I was considering. That would include Rick. In fact it had been almost a year since we had last spoken. As I got deeper in my world and he in his, it just happened. Friends can do that. Not talk for a year then in a minute or two find yourself saying “ yeah what did you do yesterday”, “nothin much cut the grass” all like no time has passed. It is one of the tests of friendship.
Nancy and I made a list of pros and cons for moving to Nashville. Cons, it makes no sense at all for me to go to Nashville! Our income was good, mortgage company loves getting a check, we would be apart for at least a year until the commitment was made to one location or the other, I would have to find a place to live, and I would also have to get a job prior to going up, how hard would that be? The job would have to be high paying because now we have all our current expenses plus my new ones. The prospect of loneliness for both of us, while doing what I had so successfully failed at 15 years ago seemed a powerful consideration as well. Everyone seemed to understand why I went to Nashville in the first place and even why I gave it all up, but who in the world is going to understand why I’m getting back on that old horse?! Well, with our list of negatives heavily outweighing the positives the conclusion was obvious “lets do it!” Sure the cons list was long, but, on the other side, we really felt that, and I say this with the understanding that we do not know the mind of God because his voice can be hard to discern from our own some times, but that in some way, God was behind those songs. They were such a departure from anything I had ever written, and truly came out of nowhere because I was not an active Christian. I didn't know any Christian songs and only listened to Christian radio when scanning for a country station. Plus these songs were the only songs that I had written that I wanted to hear over and over. As out there as this might sound, I just felt that I had a co-writer.
Here’s the neat part. Within days I had a small riff with my boss. And then another one. They seemed to come out of the blue but now I have this estranged feeling at work. Nancy and I talked about it and we felt now was the time. So I did it, I quit. It was friendly. At one point, about a week after I gave my 2 week notice I got cold feet. I thought, “Mike what have you done?!” I went through the whole list of what I am up against and was humbled by the well wishers at work urging me not to leave and of course there were the residents at the facility. Few who could walk or feed themselves and only a few that could verbalize their feelings, well I had grown attached to them and in some ways felt like I was deserting them though certainly I knew they would be just fine without me- so I softened my position and I wanted my job back!
Well that wasn’t going to easily happen. In that brief window of a week, they had committed my position to a girl that used to have my position. They were going to move her over from another town. That could have all been undone, but as luck would have it, they had filled the position she had vacated. Toward the last days there, I was sitting in my office, with my boss across from me. I knew this was the moment of truth. The whole thing could have been undone by him. He asked , “Do you really want to stay here?” At that moment I knew that my future was dependent on my answer, so why in the world was I hearing this voice in the back of my head saying “Nashville”? I've heard of lots of people who hear voices and if this is what they’re talking about, I did too. It was like a neon sign flashing, only no letters just the word repeated, Nashville, pause, Nashville. It messed me up. I knew the next thing out of my mouth was going to determine whether I keep this job. Still, even then having mixed feelings I gave the most milk toast, wimpy, unenthusiastic “yes” you have ever heard. When he and I both heard it, he said, “I don’t believe you.” I thought, “I don’t either.” I knew I could convince him otherwise with some passionate corporate enthusiasm and mea culpa. Point is I knew I could turn it around but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t do it . We shook hands and he walked out and I sat there alone... and unemployed. And I thought what was that “ Nashville, pause Nashville” thing about? Was that my own brain not so cleverly getting me out of having to get up every morning and come deal with this position, or was it God wanting me to go to Nashville? I really wasn’t sure...
I came home, I wrote a song that afternoon. It was a Christian song. That felt good because I thought that would really be something. I quit my job and then lose my desire to write or worst the inspiration. That song confirmed the latter wasn’t true. I felt like I was on track.
Nancy came home and I told her how it all went down. I told her the whole story about me and the boss in my office and the “Nashville” thing. She threw a frying pan at me, no just kidding, she was great. She said "I think you did the right thing." Wow, that helped. It really did. This whole thing was going to be a huge strain on her, too. Musicians sometimes forget that their dreams are often nightmares for those closest to them. Not Nancy, she believed in my music more that I did..
Ok, next day. I need a job in Nashville or surrounding area. Good luck. I went on the internet at noon. Checked classifieds for Nashville in my given profession called a CSS. There was one position available in Nashville, and I emailed personnel. One hour, later personnel calls me. I emailed my resume and they called me back. She sounded glad to have found me. Yess! Arrangements were made for a conference call interview with the CEO, personnel director, director of nursing and the managers, for the next day. They called at the appointed time. Introduced themselves asked me a load of questions then thanked me and said they would be in touch. Yeah right!! I thought I had done well but you never really know how you're perceived. I figured I'd get an email in a day or two thanking me but no thanks however, in about ten minutes they called back! She said “When can you come up for an interview?” YESS! I thought. I said,” Friday.” She said, “Great see you then.” It was Monday. Nancy came home, and we marveled and said wow! “ that was easy”. More money even!! We could check “get a job”off the list!!
Wednesday, the phone rings and of all people, it was Rick. It had been over a year since we talked, and since Nancy and I had kept things under wraps about moving to Nashville this would be a great time to tell him of our planned adventure. Truth was, I had planned to surprise him by knocking on his door when I went up for the interview on Friday! But now would be as good a time to surprise him as any. But how best to work it for maximum impact?! This was going to be fun!
“How’s it going buddy?” I asked, calmly concealing my secret. How to break the news? It had been 15 years since I had moved away. Me moving back to Nashville was something that he and I stopped discussing years ago, particularly after we bought a house and I got settled into a new career. I knew he'd be shocked but this had to be done properly. With maximum zap!
But Rick would have none of that. He didn't leave me my opening for He dispensed with the usual catching up. It was obvious he had something to say. Excitedly, yet businesslike he said, “Mike, listen I just walked out of Herb Graham's office, he's my publisher and owner of the record company. And as I was leaving, he called me back in. He asked “Rick, do you have a pro life song?” “Well I didn't but Mike I immediately thought of you because I knew you written two of them ”. He said " Herb has developed an interest in the pro life issue and wants a song to lead off the campaign." He finished by firmly stating, “ Mike we need to write one. You’ve got to get up here.”
Ok folks, since you know what I was waiting to spring on him and now you know what he just sprung on me, you have a good idea what I was thinking. You're right, I was stunned!!! I've got tell you, I was sitting there with my mouth wide open. Surely sounding like I had just seen a ghost, I said “ Rick, are you sitting down? I'm leaving in the morning I have a job interview on Friday!” I said it like I was slowly delivering a punch line. " I am moving back up there!".
There was dead air. A lot of it.. If we had been looking at each other, we would have just been staring. We had a feeling something was up. No pun intended. Well maybe it was, maybe it wasn't but we both agreed it was pretty coincidental if not downright amazing.
Rick and I have always felt that we met for a reason. We met the first night he was in Nashville. We became best friends immediately and our musical styles were so similar. Every time He and I would do our 6 month calls he would say something like “Mike you need to get up here they're doing stuff like you write. Or, Mike, you know you’ve got all of those songs you wrote and you never really had anybody helping you, I mean you had to do it yourself. I don’t think you failed, or that your music was rejected, I just don’t think you ever really got heard.” It was all very nice to hear, but I thought otherwise. But each time his steady, unwavering encouragement would cause me to think “what if”. I would also think how kind and generous his words were.
Back to the phone call. Rick and I discussed the song we had to write. He told me that Herb already had a pro life song picked, so we have to write a better one. “What kind of song does he have?” I asked. “It's a tearjerker kind of song with the baby dying and talking from heaven,” Rick said. We set some guidelines on what we wanted to say, or rather in a song of this nature it seemed more important to establish what we did not want to say. No dying and no blaming. Rick suggested something in the Cats in the Cradle style Chapin song. Great! We hung up. I went to my couch got on my knees prayed to God that he would help me write this song. I have never done that before. I may never do it again but I didn’t think twice about doing it this time. It was automatic for at that moment it seemed like all the 'coincidences' were coming together into something more concrete. It was beginning to have purpose and make sense, not totally but it now seemed plausible that we’re not dealing with just “coincidences” any longer. It seemed plausible because a song about saving even one of His children is something God just might care about getting in on. I wrote “Choose” in an hour. Called Rick played it over the phone and he said “Perfect”. Well, it wasn’t but it encouraged us enough to keep the ball moving up court.
I get to Nashville. I did the interview. I loved the place, the clients, and in particular, the management from top down. What a blessing. I got with Rick on the night of the Ohio State vs Fla football championship game. Rick's a big buckeye fan and I'm a gator so it was a big deal to both of us. But when the game was over, we didn’t even know the score. Not kidding! We had been so involved in just getting reconnected and the excitement over the task at hand that the announcers voice and crowd noise was more of a distraction than entertainment. So we muted the game! We didn’t think there was a deadline on the song but we were in agreement that we should do it as quickly as possible.
I was getting settled into the shared garage of an apartment I had rented. Shared because we were separated by a sheet of drywall. I was glad to have it though, it had great heat and January in Nashville, well this Florida boy needed all the heat he could get. Also it was month to month and that was how I was now living my life. I truly didn’t know if next month I would be sitting on my porch in sunny fla, all I knew was at this moment I should be here.
My “roommate” was a 30 something over the road truck driver. Probably the only truck driver in America that listened to heavy metal, hip hop and only an occasional Elvis tune. All at extremely high decibel levels. To make it even more unpalatable he would come in off the road at 1 AM just when I was in a REM state. I would hear his door open and like a conditioned lab rat waiting on a certain shock I would tense up waiting for him to hit the power button on his 500 watt sears mp3/cd player with a feature he was very fond of .. A Subwoofer!! I may as well have been sitting on his couch right next to him.. The boy just didn’t get it. When people don’t get it, I mean don't get the obvious stuff, you get kind of wary of them. I mean they’re not predictable anymore and if you cant predict, you don’t know how they will react to you beating on the wall with a broom stick, or yelling “turn that down. Pleeease”. All of which did have the immediate effect of getting the volume down. I would follow up our midnight confrontations with a heartfelt discussion the next day in the hopes that he would, one, not do it again and two, not cut me or my tires. After each confrontation I thought all would be fine, but not unlike that shocked lab rat, he would somehow completely forget our bonding earlier in the day and hit the power at midnight. No kidding. It never ended.
Work was going great. But I was beginning to get caught in that ol' nashville catch 22 that goes like this. You gave up everything to come up here to do music but you don’t have time to write because you're so busy trying to pay rent and feed your self, why? so you can stay up here in Nashville to do music, but you don't have time to... so you get the idea. It's a vicious cycle Nashville musicians are seldom wealthy enough to avoid. So on it goes.
It was all stressful, adapting to the pressures of the new job and living in that apartment. But mostly, as I began to respect the people I was working with so much my conscience began to do its talking thing. You can’t shut a conscience up like you can your mouth. It just works in the background like a violin way back there, it softens you up and you don’t even know its happening. I was worrying because the position I had worked myself into was not a hamburger flipping type job where the employer knows you may not be there tomorrow and is halfway surprised if you are. This was a residential facility for the disabled. Everyone took their job very seriously and didn’t have any use for anyone that didn’t. It's also a medical facility. Accidents and death and law suits lurk around every corner. There is great oversight by the company and governmental agencies. The facility is held to a very high standard of operation and it was arguably the best of it's kind in Nashville. Not a place for the half committed. And that’s what I was afraid of becoming. But I wasn’t there yet.
For the next month when I’d get off work Rick and I would write some, eat more and play basketball a lot. We joined a church league basketball team. Our games were scheduled ahead of time for the coldest night of whatever week it was. You notice that sort of thing when your car has a broken heater in Tennessee My heater was good enough for the balmy Florida winters but not those arctic Tennessee game nights.
Now this may not sound very humble but Rick and I were the best players on our team. Well more accurately, we were at one time in our careers the best players on our team. It so happens that time, beer and general neglect had reduced us to the 2 worst guys out there. Now I am comparing us to 6 other guys, one of whom didn’t start playing basketball until he was in his sixties. Another guy had braces on everything but his teeth. Jim was our best shooter. He shot his jump shot with his feet planted firmly on the court. It wasn’t planned that way. I’m sure he thought he was leaping, for his body went through all the preparatory motions. Speed to a spot, crouch, begin the upward thrust toward the roof but time and knee surgeries interrupted Jim's kinetic forces upward movement to where when he was at the pinnacle of his leap, his feet were still firmly attached to the ground. It's a sight to behold. But he still had a great touch.
Truth is Jim wasn’t the only one had problems. I would make trick passes to non existent people or worst to the other team or ref. Rick still had some of his stuff though. He had his best night when I wasn’t there so we'll just take him at his word that he won the game at the buzzer and scored 28 points, uh huh. Truth is he did!
The ultimate humiliation for me came in one of the playoff games. Ol' what’s his name, I won’t honor him with one, was acting captain. He picked the starting five. He pointed to the picked as he looked each of them in the eye. But when he came to my eyes he looked down, looked around my tennis shoes skipping past me and picked the guy next to me. One of the brace guys!! I thought, don’t you know I was an all american high school player. Player of the year in Jacksonville, First team All State!!?? Turns out he did. That’s how bad I had gotten. I felt like Janis Ian. Rick was all that in Ohio, but I swear we just laughed at it all 'cause we were here for what the future had in store and though our pasts were laced with a few athletic accomplishments and a source of immense pride it apparently wasn’t tied to our current self image. Good thing.
3:00 one Friday I'm at work, Rick calls. “Mike Herb just called. He’s coming into town Monday and he wants to hear what we’ve got!”. What we've got?! We had nothing!! We hadn't even sat down to try towrite the prolife song. Partly because we thought “Choose” might do it and also because we didn’t know there was a time limit on it. I had been asking Rick if he had a copy of the song that Herb had already chosen. He did, it was at Jennifer's house where he was and where he wanted me to come to right now so we could try to write this song.
Jennifer Hicks was his partner in Bluefield, their band . They met a short while back and it just clicked. They had a cd of originals that they had both invested in. It was finished but for some tweaking. They were pursuing a record deal. At the time Herb and Country Thunder records was the most logical choice. He was Ricks publisher and Jennifer worked for him as a song plugger. She would connect singers with songs. I hadn’t met Jennifer before that night. She lived in a beautiful two story house on a couple of acres west of Nashville. The kind of remote location where you ask for directions again the next time you go there. Very private.
She was lovely, very warm and acted as if she had known me forever. In a way she had because Rick in his patently unselfish way had bragged on me to where I was wishin' I was who he said I was. Jennifer was great though, she made me feel very comfortable. She seemed to see humor in the same kind of things Rick and I thought were funny, that was huge because I was trying to get acquainted on a deep level as quickly as possible. It's not something you can usually rush but Jennifer was so at ease and comfortable that it made me feel that way. But the clock was ticking.
It’s kind of weird when you go somewhere to co-write for the first time. You meet on such a superficial level yet you know that if things go well you will be deeply emotionally connected in a few minutes. Hopefully. As you know I’m not fond of co-writing and Rick is the only person I had tried it with and there were only two of us in the room. Now there was a third and someone I had just met. How will this affect the song? Heck, Rick and I had not succeeded in writing a song together that anyone recorded. And we really only finished one and even Rick didn’t record it! And it's Friday and this things due on Monday!?
Well, Jennifer played the song Herb had already chosen. It was deliberately sad utilizing angels, death, and the baby talking from the grave. All the tricks and all the things on our list we wanted to avoid. Subtle it wasn’t. I think we all felt we could beat it. Now crunch time, tip off whatever the phrase. It’s the moment that sets the foundation for it all. The “idea”, no good idea no good stuff to write around it. No good idea and you waste precious hours writing music and phrases to fit an idea that’s just not “it”. It is building a house on a weak foundation. It will fall in the end. The hope is that when someone offers an idea that it’s not only good but that the co writers see it as good. It’s very easy to be thinking what you were thinking when someone throws their idea out there and it just doesn’t get fair treatment.
Well I looked across the room and I’m looking in Ricks eyes. He’s staring back into mine and after a moment I notice he's not looking at me any longer, he's looking right through me! And I don’t think he even knows it. The kind of look where if I had said “hey Rick” he wouldn’t have heard me. So I didn’t say anything. I knew that look. He was in the “zone”. He said “what if a man has a dream and he sees his unborn baby in his dream”. The idea!!.
Rick and I began strumming in different directions but both in G. All of a sudden we're singing “I saw his face he had my eyes he had your nose... la la la.. Had a good sound to it too. Kind of catchy. Only thing is whenever I switched to b minor I notice Rick staying on G. At first I thought he just didnt see I was playing b minor then I realized no he likes that G. What it did was the minor chord gave the feel a lilting melodic sound, the g chord gave it drive and kind of a cliff for the music to build to and then fall into the next chord. I preferred the minor. Rick preferred the G. The reason I speak to this is because this is the classic confrontation in co-writing. What color to paint the sunset?
The point is that b minor was representative of a character of my music style. Styles are rooted. Roots grow deep and are hard to pull out. We had two styles meeting head on. One has to give. Which one? That is always the question. None of this was even discussed between he and I, in fact, it was happening beneath the surface. Now in the end the G chord was the best choice without a doubt. It allowed for some power to build there. It “became” the best choice if you know what I mean. Somethings you don't debate or at worst argue for sometimes if you're patient the truth will rise out of the mire on its own. That's why it is so important to trust and respect the people you are wrting with. My regard for Rick's ability was so high that I trusted his desire to stay with the G. Soon, not that night though, I would agree.
Ok, so within 15 minutes we had that the story was set around a mans dream and now we had some of the music and some of the words for the chorus. After singing over and over “ I saw his face he had my eyes he had your nose and smile” with the hopes that the next line would fall in place we realized it just wasnt ready to fall. We stopped to regroup. It was time to tackle the story. Jen had left the room for a moment and I said to Rick, probably staring at him the way he stared at me 15 minutes ago “ what if the girl has the same dream”. Silence. We knew we were there. Jen walked in seconds later and we asked what she thought. She loved it. I thought, hey this co-writing thing is great!
We didn't really work on the music for the verses, in fact, I think we sat our guitars down. Now we just talked about some of the circumstances that might occur around an abortion. Jen said “ what if she took the pregnacny test and failed it” and then she offered “and they were blaming each other for getting them into the situation”. We weren't writing these down but they hit me as profound statements. Ultimately they were the first 2 lines in the song.
I didn't know it at the time but Jen had just visited a college friend of hers in Colorado and the girl told Jen about her indecision of having an abortion. Learning of that later brought home to me how differently Rick and I might have been seeing that moment of writing this song from how Jen saw it. For all the sympathy that men sincerely feel about the subject it can never be as “real” for us as it is for women, whether they have had an abortion or not. They carry the child. The best a man can do is have sympathy pains. All the while something very important was going on in Jens life down the hall, her son Kellen was fast asleep. Her mind must have been racing with this whole subject. The sensitivity of the subject of abortion was not lost on me and Rick. I mean I had written 2 abortion songs 15 years earlier so I had a place in my heart for the unborn. They are the ultimate victim. Totally at the mercy of their mother. Because of that, hard as we try, I dont believe men can ever understand what women feel when the subject comes up. Not that men are not entitled to an opinion it's just that the opinion would be based on logic or morality or even emotion but it can never be as “personal” as it is for women.
Well, I think we all felt that we had started something here. I also think we knew we were tapped out for tonight. It was time to let the seeds of what we had planted grow. Only problem was seeds take time to sprout and we only had 2 days. We all said our goodbyes in the cold Nashville night.
Saturday arrived and I really didn't think about the song that much. I was happy with the way it went last night though. I didn't even pick up the guitar that day or consciously think much about where the song could go. I didn't speak to Rick or Jen guess I was halfway thinking one of them or together they might finish it up.
So I went down to auto zone to buy a windshield ice scraper since my heater wasn't able to do the job alone. Now I am very comfortable purchasing a surfboard in a surf shop or flip flops in a beach shop but this was my first ice scraper. And what Fla boy worth his weight in sand knows anything about ice scrapers? Believe it or not there are a lot of options in the ice scraper line of products. I must have given away that I had no knowledge of ice control or perhaps he saw my sunny license tag but he seemed to enjoy my ignorance in the matter. Is this how women feel in a mechanics shop? If so I feel your pain ladies. So I bought the one made in Miami, seemed the patriotic thing to do.
Anyway what I was really doing was stalling. And deep down I knew it. It's like when you know you have something really important to do, that's when you start doing all the little things you've been putting off. I was running out of little things. I didnt have many natural diversions in that little apartment other than adjusting the “poor mans cable”, my antenna on the tv. Or play the volume battle game with my room mate, my tv can go louder than your tv, because the trucker was home for the weekend. Great! That's going to make for a great writing environment if Rick or Jen don't finish writing that thing.
Hello Sunday! Got up early. Couldn't pick up the guitar until I could hear life on the other side of the drywall. I Didn't want to wake him. Though I was being polite I had ulterior motives. I was trying to train him in garage sharing etiquette. I had been doing it from the beginning but man it just wasn't taking. Anyway I like to write early but that wasn't going to happen. Around eleven I heard him stirring. One thing I hated about that living arrangement was that whenever I would sing I knew my neighbor could hear every word, note and breath. I knew that because when he talked on his phone I could almost hear the guys voice he was talking to! Aside from it just being annoying you feel like you have to be “on” whenever you're singing and hit every note. And for me that's hard even on stage! It's weird, you're in your own home yet you start to think you need to entertain. I mean what self respecting performer doesn't want to sound good? Problem is that kind of scrutiny is a huge distraction when writing a song. By its nature songwriting is a series of failed melodies and words that at some point in time may or may not come together. Listening to a song being born can be like listening to your kid learn the violin. Anyway, you really dont want a stranger in the next room eavesdropping on the process. Every other song I wrote while I was there I wrote when he was on the road. I was not going to have the luxury of privacy this time. This is our last day or Herb uses the other song. Recording was to begin Wednesday.
Well you know what I was saying about seeds and growing and all that. And remember how, when we were singing, “ I saw his face he had my eyes he had your nose and smile” and the last line wouldn't fall in. Well I picked up the guitar, sang the chorus once and at the end, as if it was already a part of the song, I sang, “ chasing a butterfly”. I stopped and said “thanks Lord”. The rest of the song started to fall out.
To start it I put Jen's lines in there. That set the tone as conversational. When the first 2 verses and the chorus were down Nancy called from back home in Cocoa. I played it for her. She cried. Now I had a woman's seal of approval. A tear. I was inspired to move forward. I added the womans dream verse so when Nancy called again to tell me something, I played it for her. She cried again. That was only 10 minutes after the first cry! Well, if hits are judged by crying, I knew we had a chance.
One of the serious challenges with writing a song about abortion is to convey the message of life without hurting anyone. We all understand that millions of women and men have made that choice. This song was addressing a couple that is confronted with that choice. There had to be the threat of the abortion hanging over the outcome but because of the ground rules Rick and I laid down very early no death, no blame, it had to have a positive ending. So what we are talking about is a positive song about abortion. That in itself is almost a contradiction.
That's where it got tough and now my neighbor was really getting down on some heavy metal stuff. He had been slowly turning the volume up probably waiting for my wall bang. I thought to myself how the scene was like something out of a bad movie. Full of cheap irony. There I was trying to write a tender pro life song while Metallica wailed away. Good vs. evil doing battle separated only by drywall. Strangely, I was not as bothered by it as I would have thought. The metal sound was so unmelodic and far removed from what I was doing it didn't conflict musically or lyrically. Just one big wall of sound.
So now the question was how to keep the song suspenseful and then end uplifting. I had a couple of versions to end it and played 'em for Nancy via AT&T and she approved. Yessss No death. No blame. Yesss.
I didn't know what Rick and Jen were doing, if they had been working on the song. Earlier in the day, before I started on it, I assumed we would get together later to finish it. I just wanted something to bring to the table when we got together. I expected Rick to call at any time. I got in the flow so I just stayed with it. It was now about 6 in the afternoon. Time to see if this butterfly will fly.
Time to play it for Rick. His standard for saying something is good is set high and I knew it. It's been great for me because it's made me become more critical of my own writing. Rick had been working in the Nashville music environment and he'd been in there competing successfully for the last 15 years so he developed an ear for discerning an average song from a special one. A person that survives and prospers as a songwriter in Nashville has defied astronomical odds and Rick was among the best of the best. The ability to identify a hit in itself is a gift. It's like those guys with divining rods that legends say can find water. Everyone can hold one but you got to have the gift to find the buried water. Why, because everybody has 'a hit' but there are really very few. Every writer thinks his or her last song is one. I mean that's a great thing, thats what keeps us going but the revelation that it isn't can break your spirit... until you write the next one. Rick not only could write hits he could recognize them.
Well I called him up and said “ hey, I been working on the song.” He said “what you got”. I propped the phone up against the tape recorder and said “can you hear me now”? A faint voice from the sofa came “Yeah”. I sang it. Seemed like an eternity between singing the last note, setting the guitar down, putting the receiver to my ear and saying “what do you think?”. “I love it, that's it” he said. Well I cannot tell you what music that was to my ears. We had done it. He wanted the lyrics so he could work on it. I gave them to him over the phone “ Talk to you tomorrow”. “See you buddy”.
It was Monday morning. Ice on the windshield. Thought I would pour some warm water on it to melt it. That works great in Florida on heavy frost. What it does in Nashville is create extra layers of ice!! Who would have known? I tried to scrape it with my Miami icemoving device and it broke! I couldn't believe it an ice scraper made in the sunshine capital of the world broke. So I found a piece of plastic on my floorboard and chipped away as my neighbors empty, but running car warmed up to a toasty temperature so they could take their kids to school. I watched as they all bounded in it and threw off their coats and mittens once inside. I wondered what that must be like. Why? Because I drove to work with my head partly out the window and viewing through a small circle of deiced windshield that's why!. And yes, a mustache will freeze and break.
I was at work when Rick called. He had been up that night working on the song. He made some great changes to the melody in the verses. Giving the song a better driving rhythm and feel. He also kept his G! It sounded great. He made some sweet melody changes in the chorus and added some chords I still haven't learned. Those changes made the song's chorus more unique particularly at the “chasing a butterfly” and “please don't kill the butterfly” parts. He also dug into that difficult melody around “the alarm went off at seven” I was very vague on that and Rick pulled it together and saved it. As Jennifer said he gave it the “Bluefield” sound. It was great.
Later that day he played it for Herb. Don't know if he cried or not and if he did I wouldn't tell you because Herb owns the company and he's a pretty big guy. But I do know he fell in love with it.... In fact he kept the recording date he had for Wednesday but now he had a new song called... Butterfly !! YEESSS!
Rick and Jennifer and Herb then produced and performed it beautifully. They gave it an artistic edge but still had a mainstream charm Rick gave up the passion like he was living the story. His vocal quality and feeling is such a huge part of what draws you in. Jennifer's contribution is powerful and magical and when she comes in on that “ I just had this dream” it still gets to me like I was hearing it for the first time..
Butterfly was written by Rick Ferrell, Jennifer Hicks and Michael Denney but there remains not a seed of doubt in our minds that the arrangement from start to finish...well let's just say we don't feel like we did it alone!
After the pro life song Butterfly, performed by Bluefield's Rick Ferrell and Jennifer Hicks came out, it had a little buzz around it. It was beautifully performed by Rick and Jen and it was getting a great reception from radio audiences. Much to our suprise it began to shoot up the charts and the record company, Country Thunder, was beginning to project that it could go to #1 based on audience response and dj reports. The song was reaching people in a powerful way and they were calling the stations to say so. While everyone associated with it seemed to be planning for the big party when it hit the top I was sitting down in Cocoa Florida a bit stunned that radio was playing it all!! I mean it was a pro life song! and for the most part media and it's outlets flee from such hot button issues. But mind you I was as excited as anyone, if not more.
My cowriter buddy Rick had already had 2 number one country hits so this was old hat to him! Ok not old hat but it's kind of like your first superbowl win, something we can all relate to!, the second one just isn't quite as sweet. There was one caveat though, Rick was singing this one!
Anyway this was my first superbowl and the excitement was palpable. I'll never forget when I was told about the #1 thing. I was working on our roof. I was talking to Rick on the phone who was somewhere in the USA promoting the song. I remember it because for any writer to hear the word "one" mentioned after the word "number", it's well, memorable. And also because I nearly slid off my roof. Never, ever do a jig on a pitched roof!!
Well as you know if you just listened to Butterfly that it is a different animal (very small pun intended) and Jen, Rick and I believed that the way the song came about, with all the events that brought us together and the stories around those events was in many ways an important part of the song. We thought people might be interested in how and why people might come to write a pro life song, particularly one that had such an amazing spiritual component surrounding it's birth as Butterfly did. So we decided we would write "The Butterfly Story".
Well it wasn't all that long before the song was aborted by the radio stations because it was just "a bit too controversial." But we had had a good run and no regrets. We had developed a bond between us and we were proud of our work and effort. We even received the ultimate reward as we were blessed with the testimony of many women who had changed their minds about aborting their child. It was the high point of my musical life. And like most musical adventures we were left with a boatload of good memories, a trunk full of cd's, and a story...There were to be 3 parts to the story Rick's, Jen's and mine. Below is mine.
The Butterfly Story
It had been 12 years since I had lived in Nashville. I had given it a good try, living there for about 8 years working odd jobs, some very odd. From warehouse worker to manager of a mortgage company. I was writing my Chapinesque story songs and had put together a once a week band to play them at various clubs in the hopes that I would get noticed. I didn’t, at least not in a big way. I was getting weary of the ups and downs of the rollercoaster ride that is Nashville. I was contemplating leaving for my home in Florida, but I hated losing at this thing. Then my father died. About a year later my mother followed him. I was done. Their passing, besides leaving me with a deep sense of loss, awakened me to the seemingly obvious fact that life is not forever.
I had just met Nancy prior to my dads death. She helped me so much through that period with her love for me and her faith in God. We decided to pursue my dream. I say my dream because she’s from Indiana and hoosiers may have aspirations of living in a city or, more likely, on a large farm but never would dream of taking up residence on a boat! We found one and moved aboard in Destin Fl.
I didn’t visit Nashville or write music very often. I was pretty much over the music thing. I went back to school and got my degree in psychology. During this time, I did stay in touch with 2 of my N'ville friends. When I first met Steve Wilcox in the 80's on my first trip to Nashville he worked at Lipscomb College as the food service director. He also played guitar and sang, as it is of course a prerequisite for citizenship in Nashville. Steve’s sense of humor and irrepressible optimistic view of the world was contagious. He had a house that I later moved into with him. As I look back I recall that Steve allowed me to live at his home rent free during that period because, as he said, he believed in what I was doing. The more time goes by the more that act of kindness and belief resonates warm in my heart. Also the more time goes by the less embarrassed I am that I needed the help and the prouder I am that I had a friend like Steve that would extend it.
Later he decided on a whim to take the MCAT. He dusted off a few old biology and chemistry books and brushed up on it for a month or two then aced it. How hard could it be? Just kidding Steve. He’s now Doctor Steve.
My other close buddy was Rick Ferrell. Rick had just moved to Nashville from Portsmouth Ohio the night we met. We hit it off immediately. He was a musician, loved fishing, was easy going and he was a big time b'ball player back home. Mostly, he was a very talented musician. His easy going style tricks you, but he took his music very seriously. He would go into a “zone” when he was working on a song. The kind of zone shooters get into when they’re hot. You don’t hear or see anything around you just see the front side of the rim. Rick can do that better than anybody I know. He sees the song, only the song. No distractions. Its truly a gift.
Well, Rick and I, being friends, did not need to talk everyday. We did it more the 'guy way' and spoke about every 6 months. After about 5 years of boat life, Rick called and casually mentioned between fishing stories, “hey I’ve got a song on the radio.” “You do?” I asked. He told me what it was and I recognized it. I rarely listen to the radio, but I had heard it and liked it. It was a huge hit that went to number 1. It was called “Something Like That” by Tim McGraw. It ultimately became voted the song of the decade! He followed it with another number one called “Where Would You Be” by Martina McBride. He had arrived!! He even got a record deal with Speilberg's Dream Works. He was rubbin' noses with some of the biggest names in entertainment, signin' autographs for adoring fans and was on everybody's list of best rising young artists. But still he was Rick. He didn’t change a bit. And if he had changed and who wouldn't, you never knew it. He could have forgotten guys like me that gave it up to pursue other things, but he didn’t. We still had our 6 month calls, and he and his wonderful wife Beth, and now little Issac, visited the boat a couple of times.
We tried a little co-writing. It’s hard. It was as easy as it could be with Rick because we had no pretenses with each other. Nothing to protect. I think that’s essential for co- writing. The thing is, neither of us liked co-writing! We were born painting our own landscapes and found it a little unnatural to have others adding color to our sunsets. Co-writing and writing by yourself is like the difference between deep sea fishing and backwater fly fishing they are both fishing but a totally different experience. It is however a common and useful tool for getting a song out of you. The collaboration can lead to a successful flowing full bodied song or be a jumbled, over compromised, frankensteinian assortment of ideas and melodies hitting everything but sticking to nothing. The times we got together were mostly spent catching up on each others lives though. Since I wasn’t living in Nashville, we weren’t taking the co- writing very seriously. We were mostly using it as a backdrop to our friendship and as an excuse to pop a cold one. Our overall theory was, we are both writers, we have a great friendship, so good songs would have to be in there somewhere. But if it didn't, well that was cool too.
Well, time went on. About the time Rick was having his success, I heard a song on the radio by Kenny Rogers called “buy me rose”. I was convinced it was a rip off of what I considered to be my best song “hold me”. I checked out the unknown writers and their publishers office was on the same block as the place that I played with my one night band at the Diamond in the Ruff. I was convinced they stole the idea and I was mad. I called Rick and his advice was “ you’ll write another one.” I thought, “I don’t want to write another one, I wrote that one. I’ll sue.” I considered it. I hit the internet. As time moved on I learned how hard copyright infringement is to prove . Just to be clear I never believed that Kenny Rogers had a clue what was going on, it was the publisher/writers that I believed had some questions to answer. Anyway I felt like I had lost my best chance for a cut with the death of my song. I found it only hurt when I thought about it and when you’re living on a boat in Fla, you don’t think about Nashville too often. But when I did, ouch!.
Another 5 years slipped by. Nancy and I had moved off the boat and bought a house in Cocoa Florida nearer my brothers and sister. Money was tight. We never missed a payment though. Came real close at first but then we both found good jobs. Thank you Lord. Nancy got into teaching again and I got a job with Children's Home Society as an advocate for kids. 2 years there, 6 month calls to Rick, and no writing. I left that job and began my upward adventure climbing the ladder to success by going to work with a medical facility for developmentally disabled as a coordinator or support services and behavior analyst. Got paid more money than I had ever made. Job had a little prestige, a little authority, responsibility, occasionally fun and did I say mo' money? Well of all things, at this very busy time I began writing music, but not country music, but rather Christian. Apparently I had become a strong but private believer after my dad’s death. I was convinced that without the help of God I could not have put things into perspective so quickly, if at all. It wasn’t a normal sitting by the bed natural passing. His death was wrought with guilt for me (see song “John Clayton's Bible”). I’m telling you God pulled me through by the collar. He never appeared in my room. It wasn’t immediate but I was certain, when I would let Him he would give me peace. Being a quick study, I put it all together, uh after a year or two! “ I think of God and I feel peace” uh way to go Mike.
Well I began to notice that the music was better than things I had written before. Better melodies, tighter lyrics and of course now all with Christian roots. I got in a “zone”. It fueled a wonderful new interest in writing. I wrote maybe a song a day for about a month. Then it happened. With musicians it is the danger of the chosen profession. You begin to hear the siren call of Nashville!! One you know you should ignore lest you flounder on the rocks again. It seemed implausible. Why would I ever want to go back THERE? It started as a raindrop of an idea like “ I wonder what it would be like to move back up there?” to a small stream of a thought like, “ where would I live?” to the waterfall of a question “ how could I ever leave my job with prestige, power, passion and did I mention money?! I don’t know. But what Nancy and I were thinking was that the Christian music had really flowed and we just felt like we should go with it. I am not a bible scholar but I read it frequently and most nights it would be the book on my chest when I awakened in the night. But there I was writing Christian songs. So we were just trying to figure it all out. Well the urge grew. Through all of this we had made no mention to anyone about what I was considering. That would include Rick. In fact it had been almost a year since we had last spoken. As I got deeper in my world and he in his, it just happened. Friends can do that. Not talk for a year then in a minute or two find yourself saying “ yeah what did you do yesterday”, “nothin much cut the grass” all like no time has passed. It is one of the tests of friendship.
Nancy and I made a list of pros and cons for moving to Nashville. Cons, it makes no sense at all for me to go to Nashville! Our income was good, mortgage company loves getting a check, we would be apart for at least a year until the commitment was made to one location or the other, I would have to find a place to live, and I would also have to get a job prior to going up, how hard would that be? The job would have to be high paying because now we have all our current expenses plus my new ones. The prospect of loneliness for both of us, while doing what I had so successfully failed at 15 years ago seemed a powerful consideration as well. Everyone seemed to understand why I went to Nashville in the first place and even why I gave it all up, but who in the world is going to understand why I’m getting back on that old horse?! Well, with our list of negatives heavily outweighing the positives the conclusion was obvious “lets do it!” Sure the cons list was long, but, on the other side, we really felt that, and I say this with the understanding that we do not know the mind of God because his voice can be hard to discern from our own some times, but that in some way, God was behind those songs. They were such a departure from anything I had ever written, and truly came out of nowhere because I was not an active Christian. I didn't know any Christian songs and only listened to Christian radio when scanning for a country station. Plus these songs were the only songs that I had written that I wanted to hear over and over. As out there as this might sound, I just felt that I had a co-writer.
Here’s the neat part. Within days I had a small riff with my boss. And then another one. They seemed to come out of the blue but now I have this estranged feeling at work. Nancy and I talked about it and we felt now was the time. So I did it, I quit. It was friendly. At one point, about a week after I gave my 2 week notice I got cold feet. I thought, “Mike what have you done?!” I went through the whole list of what I am up against and was humbled by the well wishers at work urging me not to leave and of course there were the residents at the facility. Few who could walk or feed themselves and only a few that could verbalize their feelings, well I had grown attached to them and in some ways felt like I was deserting them though certainly I knew they would be just fine without me- so I softened my position and I wanted my job back!
Well that wasn’t going to easily happen. In that brief window of a week, they had committed my position to a girl that used to have my position. They were going to move her over from another town. That could have all been undone, but as luck would have it, they had filled the position she had vacated. Toward the last days there, I was sitting in my office, with my boss across from me. I knew this was the moment of truth. The whole thing could have been undone by him. He asked , “Do you really want to stay here?” At that moment I knew that my future was dependent on my answer, so why in the world was I hearing this voice in the back of my head saying “Nashville”? I've heard of lots of people who hear voices and if this is what they’re talking about, I did too. It was like a neon sign flashing, only no letters just the word repeated, Nashville, pause, Nashville. It messed me up. I knew the next thing out of my mouth was going to determine whether I keep this job. Still, even then having mixed feelings I gave the most milk toast, wimpy, unenthusiastic “yes” you have ever heard. When he and I both heard it, he said, “I don’t believe you.” I thought, “I don’t either.” I knew I could convince him otherwise with some passionate corporate enthusiasm and mea culpa. Point is I knew I could turn it around but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t do it . We shook hands and he walked out and I sat there alone... and unemployed. And I thought what was that “ Nashville, pause Nashville” thing about? Was that my own brain not so cleverly getting me out of having to get up every morning and come deal with this position, or was it God wanting me to go to Nashville? I really wasn’t sure...
I came home, I wrote a song that afternoon. It was a Christian song. That felt good because I thought that would really be something. I quit my job and then lose my desire to write or worst the inspiration. That song confirmed the latter wasn’t true. I felt like I was on track.
Nancy came home and I told her how it all went down. I told her the whole story about me and the boss in my office and the “Nashville” thing. She threw a frying pan at me, no just kidding, she was great. She said "I think you did the right thing." Wow, that helped. It really did. This whole thing was going to be a huge strain on her, too. Musicians sometimes forget that their dreams are often nightmares for those closest to them. Not Nancy, she believed in my music more that I did..
Ok, next day. I need a job in Nashville or surrounding area. Good luck. I went on the internet at noon. Checked classifieds for Nashville in my given profession called a CSS. There was one position available in Nashville, and I emailed personnel. One hour, later personnel calls me. I emailed my resume and they called me back. She sounded glad to have found me. Yess! Arrangements were made for a conference call interview with the CEO, personnel director, director of nursing and the managers, for the next day. They called at the appointed time. Introduced themselves asked me a load of questions then thanked me and said they would be in touch. Yeah right!! I thought I had done well but you never really know how you're perceived. I figured I'd get an email in a day or two thanking me but no thanks however, in about ten minutes they called back! She said “When can you come up for an interview?” YESS! I thought. I said,” Friday.” She said, “Great see you then.” It was Monday. Nancy came home, and we marveled and said wow! “ that was easy”. More money even!! We could check “get a job”off the list!!
Wednesday, the phone rings and of all people, it was Rick. It had been over a year since we talked, and since Nancy and I had kept things under wraps about moving to Nashville this would be a great time to tell him of our planned adventure. Truth was, I had planned to surprise him by knocking on his door when I went up for the interview on Friday! But now would be as good a time to surprise him as any. But how best to work it for maximum impact?! This was going to be fun!
“How’s it going buddy?” I asked, calmly concealing my secret. How to break the news? It had been 15 years since I had moved away. Me moving back to Nashville was something that he and I stopped discussing years ago, particularly after we bought a house and I got settled into a new career. I knew he'd be shocked but this had to be done properly. With maximum zap!
But Rick would have none of that. He didn't leave me my opening for He dispensed with the usual catching up. It was obvious he had something to say. Excitedly, yet businesslike he said, “Mike, listen I just walked out of Herb Graham's office, he's my publisher and owner of the record company. And as I was leaving, he called me back in. He asked “Rick, do you have a pro life song?” “Well I didn't but Mike I immediately thought of you because I knew you written two of them ”. He said " Herb has developed an interest in the pro life issue and wants a song to lead off the campaign." He finished by firmly stating, “ Mike we need to write one. You’ve got to get up here.”
Ok folks, since you know what I was waiting to spring on him and now you know what he just sprung on me, you have a good idea what I was thinking. You're right, I was stunned!!! I've got tell you, I was sitting there with my mouth wide open. Surely sounding like I had just seen a ghost, I said “ Rick, are you sitting down? I'm leaving in the morning I have a job interview on Friday!” I said it like I was slowly delivering a punch line. " I am moving back up there!".
There was dead air. A lot of it.. If we had been looking at each other, we would have just been staring. We had a feeling something was up. No pun intended. Well maybe it was, maybe it wasn't but we both agreed it was pretty coincidental if not downright amazing.
Rick and I have always felt that we met for a reason. We met the first night he was in Nashville. We became best friends immediately and our musical styles were so similar. Every time He and I would do our 6 month calls he would say something like “Mike you need to get up here they're doing stuff like you write. Or, Mike, you know you’ve got all of those songs you wrote and you never really had anybody helping you, I mean you had to do it yourself. I don’t think you failed, or that your music was rejected, I just don’t think you ever really got heard.” It was all very nice to hear, but I thought otherwise. But each time his steady, unwavering encouragement would cause me to think “what if”. I would also think how kind and generous his words were.
Back to the phone call. Rick and I discussed the song we had to write. He told me that Herb already had a pro life song picked, so we have to write a better one. “What kind of song does he have?” I asked. “It's a tearjerker kind of song with the baby dying and talking from heaven,” Rick said. We set some guidelines on what we wanted to say, or rather in a song of this nature it seemed more important to establish what we did not want to say. No dying and no blaming. Rick suggested something in the Cats in the Cradle style Chapin song. Great! We hung up. I went to my couch got on my knees prayed to God that he would help me write this song. I have never done that before. I may never do it again but I didn’t think twice about doing it this time. It was automatic for at that moment it seemed like all the 'coincidences' were coming together into something more concrete. It was beginning to have purpose and make sense, not totally but it now seemed plausible that we’re not dealing with just “coincidences” any longer. It seemed plausible because a song about saving even one of His children is something God just might care about getting in on. I wrote “Choose” in an hour. Called Rick played it over the phone and he said “Perfect”. Well, it wasn’t but it encouraged us enough to keep the ball moving up court.
I get to Nashville. I did the interview. I loved the place, the clients, and in particular, the management from top down. What a blessing. I got with Rick on the night of the Ohio State vs Fla football championship game. Rick's a big buckeye fan and I'm a gator so it was a big deal to both of us. But when the game was over, we didn’t even know the score. Not kidding! We had been so involved in just getting reconnected and the excitement over the task at hand that the announcers voice and crowd noise was more of a distraction than entertainment. So we muted the game! We didn’t think there was a deadline on the song but we were in agreement that we should do it as quickly as possible.
I was getting settled into the shared garage of an apartment I had rented. Shared because we were separated by a sheet of drywall. I was glad to have it though, it had great heat and January in Nashville, well this Florida boy needed all the heat he could get. Also it was month to month and that was how I was now living my life. I truly didn’t know if next month I would be sitting on my porch in sunny fla, all I knew was at this moment I should be here.
My “roommate” was a 30 something over the road truck driver. Probably the only truck driver in America that listened to heavy metal, hip hop and only an occasional Elvis tune. All at extremely high decibel levels. To make it even more unpalatable he would come in off the road at 1 AM just when I was in a REM state. I would hear his door open and like a conditioned lab rat waiting on a certain shock I would tense up waiting for him to hit the power button on his 500 watt sears mp3/cd player with a feature he was very fond of .. A Subwoofer!! I may as well have been sitting on his couch right next to him.. The boy just didn’t get it. When people don’t get it, I mean don't get the obvious stuff, you get kind of wary of them. I mean they’re not predictable anymore and if you cant predict, you don’t know how they will react to you beating on the wall with a broom stick, or yelling “turn that down. Pleeease”. All of which did have the immediate effect of getting the volume down. I would follow up our midnight confrontations with a heartfelt discussion the next day in the hopes that he would, one, not do it again and two, not cut me or my tires. After each confrontation I thought all would be fine, but not unlike that shocked lab rat, he would somehow completely forget our bonding earlier in the day and hit the power at midnight. No kidding. It never ended.
Work was going great. But I was beginning to get caught in that ol' nashville catch 22 that goes like this. You gave up everything to come up here to do music but you don’t have time to write because you're so busy trying to pay rent and feed your self, why? so you can stay up here in Nashville to do music, but you don't have time to... so you get the idea. It's a vicious cycle Nashville musicians are seldom wealthy enough to avoid. So on it goes.
It was all stressful, adapting to the pressures of the new job and living in that apartment. But mostly, as I began to respect the people I was working with so much my conscience began to do its talking thing. You can’t shut a conscience up like you can your mouth. It just works in the background like a violin way back there, it softens you up and you don’t even know its happening. I was worrying because the position I had worked myself into was not a hamburger flipping type job where the employer knows you may not be there tomorrow and is halfway surprised if you are. This was a residential facility for the disabled. Everyone took their job very seriously and didn’t have any use for anyone that didn’t. It's also a medical facility. Accidents and death and law suits lurk around every corner. There is great oversight by the company and governmental agencies. The facility is held to a very high standard of operation and it was arguably the best of it's kind in Nashville. Not a place for the half committed. And that’s what I was afraid of becoming. But I wasn’t there yet.
For the next month when I’d get off work Rick and I would write some, eat more and play basketball a lot. We joined a church league basketball team. Our games were scheduled ahead of time for the coldest night of whatever week it was. You notice that sort of thing when your car has a broken heater in Tennessee My heater was good enough for the balmy Florida winters but not those arctic Tennessee game nights.
Now this may not sound very humble but Rick and I were the best players on our team. Well more accurately, we were at one time in our careers the best players on our team. It so happens that time, beer and general neglect had reduced us to the 2 worst guys out there. Now I am comparing us to 6 other guys, one of whom didn’t start playing basketball until he was in his sixties. Another guy had braces on everything but his teeth. Jim was our best shooter. He shot his jump shot with his feet planted firmly on the court. It wasn’t planned that way. I’m sure he thought he was leaping, for his body went through all the preparatory motions. Speed to a spot, crouch, begin the upward thrust toward the roof but time and knee surgeries interrupted Jim's kinetic forces upward movement to where when he was at the pinnacle of his leap, his feet were still firmly attached to the ground. It's a sight to behold. But he still had a great touch.
Truth is Jim wasn’t the only one had problems. I would make trick passes to non existent people or worst to the other team or ref. Rick still had some of his stuff though. He had his best night when I wasn’t there so we'll just take him at his word that he won the game at the buzzer and scored 28 points, uh huh. Truth is he did!
The ultimate humiliation for me came in one of the playoff games. Ol' what’s his name, I won’t honor him with one, was acting captain. He picked the starting five. He pointed to the picked as he looked each of them in the eye. But when he came to my eyes he looked down, looked around my tennis shoes skipping past me and picked the guy next to me. One of the brace guys!! I thought, don’t you know I was an all american high school player. Player of the year in Jacksonville, First team All State!!?? Turns out he did. That’s how bad I had gotten. I felt like Janis Ian. Rick was all that in Ohio, but I swear we just laughed at it all 'cause we were here for what the future had in store and though our pasts were laced with a few athletic accomplishments and a source of immense pride it apparently wasn’t tied to our current self image. Good thing.
3:00 one Friday I'm at work, Rick calls. “Mike Herb just called. He’s coming into town Monday and he wants to hear what we’ve got!”. What we've got?! We had nothing!! We hadn't even sat down to try towrite the prolife song. Partly because we thought “Choose” might do it and also because we didn’t know there was a time limit on it. I had been asking Rick if he had a copy of the song that Herb had already chosen. He did, it was at Jennifer's house where he was and where he wanted me to come to right now so we could try to write this song.
Jennifer Hicks was his partner in Bluefield, their band . They met a short while back and it just clicked. They had a cd of originals that they had both invested in. It was finished but for some tweaking. They were pursuing a record deal. At the time Herb and Country Thunder records was the most logical choice. He was Ricks publisher and Jennifer worked for him as a song plugger. She would connect singers with songs. I hadn’t met Jennifer before that night. She lived in a beautiful two story house on a couple of acres west of Nashville. The kind of remote location where you ask for directions again the next time you go there. Very private.
She was lovely, very warm and acted as if she had known me forever. In a way she had because Rick in his patently unselfish way had bragged on me to where I was wishin' I was who he said I was. Jennifer was great though, she made me feel very comfortable. She seemed to see humor in the same kind of things Rick and I thought were funny, that was huge because I was trying to get acquainted on a deep level as quickly as possible. It's not something you can usually rush but Jennifer was so at ease and comfortable that it made me feel that way. But the clock was ticking.
It’s kind of weird when you go somewhere to co-write for the first time. You meet on such a superficial level yet you know that if things go well you will be deeply emotionally connected in a few minutes. Hopefully. As you know I’m not fond of co-writing and Rick is the only person I had tried it with and there were only two of us in the room. Now there was a third and someone I had just met. How will this affect the song? Heck, Rick and I had not succeeded in writing a song together that anyone recorded. And we really only finished one and even Rick didn’t record it! And it's Friday and this things due on Monday!?
Well, Jennifer played the song Herb had already chosen. It was deliberately sad utilizing angels, death, and the baby talking from the grave. All the tricks and all the things on our list we wanted to avoid. Subtle it wasn’t. I think we all felt we could beat it. Now crunch time, tip off whatever the phrase. It’s the moment that sets the foundation for it all. The “idea”, no good idea no good stuff to write around it. No good idea and you waste precious hours writing music and phrases to fit an idea that’s just not “it”. It is building a house on a weak foundation. It will fall in the end. The hope is that when someone offers an idea that it’s not only good but that the co writers see it as good. It’s very easy to be thinking what you were thinking when someone throws their idea out there and it just doesn’t get fair treatment.
Well I looked across the room and I’m looking in Ricks eyes. He’s staring back into mine and after a moment I notice he's not looking at me any longer, he's looking right through me! And I don’t think he even knows it. The kind of look where if I had said “hey Rick” he wouldn’t have heard me. So I didn’t say anything. I knew that look. He was in the “zone”. He said “what if a man has a dream and he sees his unborn baby in his dream”. The idea!!.
Rick and I began strumming in different directions but both in G. All of a sudden we're singing “I saw his face he had my eyes he had your nose... la la la.. Had a good sound to it too. Kind of catchy. Only thing is whenever I switched to b minor I notice Rick staying on G. At first I thought he just didnt see I was playing b minor then I realized no he likes that G. What it did was the minor chord gave the feel a lilting melodic sound, the g chord gave it drive and kind of a cliff for the music to build to and then fall into the next chord. I preferred the minor. Rick preferred the G. The reason I speak to this is because this is the classic confrontation in co-writing. What color to paint the sunset?
The point is that b minor was representative of a character of my music style. Styles are rooted. Roots grow deep and are hard to pull out. We had two styles meeting head on. One has to give. Which one? That is always the question. None of this was even discussed between he and I, in fact, it was happening beneath the surface. Now in the end the G chord was the best choice without a doubt. It allowed for some power to build there. It “became” the best choice if you know what I mean. Somethings you don't debate or at worst argue for sometimes if you're patient the truth will rise out of the mire on its own. That's why it is so important to trust and respect the people you are wrting with. My regard for Rick's ability was so high that I trusted his desire to stay with the G. Soon, not that night though, I would agree.
Ok, so within 15 minutes we had that the story was set around a mans dream and now we had some of the music and some of the words for the chorus. After singing over and over “ I saw his face he had my eyes he had your nose and smile” with the hopes that the next line would fall in place we realized it just wasnt ready to fall. We stopped to regroup. It was time to tackle the story. Jen had left the room for a moment and I said to Rick, probably staring at him the way he stared at me 15 minutes ago “ what if the girl has the same dream”. Silence. We knew we were there. Jen walked in seconds later and we asked what she thought. She loved it. I thought, hey this co-writing thing is great!
We didn't really work on the music for the verses, in fact, I think we sat our guitars down. Now we just talked about some of the circumstances that might occur around an abortion. Jen said “ what if she took the pregnacny test and failed it” and then she offered “and they were blaming each other for getting them into the situation”. We weren't writing these down but they hit me as profound statements. Ultimately they were the first 2 lines in the song.
I didn't know it at the time but Jen had just visited a college friend of hers in Colorado and the girl told Jen about her indecision of having an abortion. Learning of that later brought home to me how differently Rick and I might have been seeing that moment of writing this song from how Jen saw it. For all the sympathy that men sincerely feel about the subject it can never be as “real” for us as it is for women, whether they have had an abortion or not. They carry the child. The best a man can do is have sympathy pains. All the while something very important was going on in Jens life down the hall, her son Kellen was fast asleep. Her mind must have been racing with this whole subject. The sensitivity of the subject of abortion was not lost on me and Rick. I mean I had written 2 abortion songs 15 years earlier so I had a place in my heart for the unborn. They are the ultimate victim. Totally at the mercy of their mother. Because of that, hard as we try, I dont believe men can ever understand what women feel when the subject comes up. Not that men are not entitled to an opinion it's just that the opinion would be based on logic or morality or even emotion but it can never be as “personal” as it is for women.
Well, I think we all felt that we had started something here. I also think we knew we were tapped out for tonight. It was time to let the seeds of what we had planted grow. Only problem was seeds take time to sprout and we only had 2 days. We all said our goodbyes in the cold Nashville night.
Saturday arrived and I really didn't think about the song that much. I was happy with the way it went last night though. I didn't even pick up the guitar that day or consciously think much about where the song could go. I didn't speak to Rick or Jen guess I was halfway thinking one of them or together they might finish it up.
So I went down to auto zone to buy a windshield ice scraper since my heater wasn't able to do the job alone. Now I am very comfortable purchasing a surfboard in a surf shop or flip flops in a beach shop but this was my first ice scraper. And what Fla boy worth his weight in sand knows anything about ice scrapers? Believe it or not there are a lot of options in the ice scraper line of products. I must have given away that I had no knowledge of ice control or perhaps he saw my sunny license tag but he seemed to enjoy my ignorance in the matter. Is this how women feel in a mechanics shop? If so I feel your pain ladies. So I bought the one made in Miami, seemed the patriotic thing to do.
Anyway what I was really doing was stalling. And deep down I knew it. It's like when you know you have something really important to do, that's when you start doing all the little things you've been putting off. I was running out of little things. I didnt have many natural diversions in that little apartment other than adjusting the “poor mans cable”, my antenna on the tv. Or play the volume battle game with my room mate, my tv can go louder than your tv, because the trucker was home for the weekend. Great! That's going to make for a great writing environment if Rick or Jen don't finish writing that thing.
Hello Sunday! Got up early. Couldn't pick up the guitar until I could hear life on the other side of the drywall. I Didn't want to wake him. Though I was being polite I had ulterior motives. I was trying to train him in garage sharing etiquette. I had been doing it from the beginning but man it just wasn't taking. Anyway I like to write early but that wasn't going to happen. Around eleven I heard him stirring. One thing I hated about that living arrangement was that whenever I would sing I knew my neighbor could hear every word, note and breath. I knew that because when he talked on his phone I could almost hear the guys voice he was talking to! Aside from it just being annoying you feel like you have to be “on” whenever you're singing and hit every note. And for me that's hard even on stage! It's weird, you're in your own home yet you start to think you need to entertain. I mean what self respecting performer doesn't want to sound good? Problem is that kind of scrutiny is a huge distraction when writing a song. By its nature songwriting is a series of failed melodies and words that at some point in time may or may not come together. Listening to a song being born can be like listening to your kid learn the violin. Anyway, you really dont want a stranger in the next room eavesdropping on the process. Every other song I wrote while I was there I wrote when he was on the road. I was not going to have the luxury of privacy this time. This is our last day or Herb uses the other song. Recording was to begin Wednesday.
Well you know what I was saying about seeds and growing and all that. And remember how, when we were singing, “ I saw his face he had my eyes he had your nose and smile” and the last line wouldn't fall in. Well I picked up the guitar, sang the chorus once and at the end, as if it was already a part of the song, I sang, “ chasing a butterfly”. I stopped and said “thanks Lord”. The rest of the song started to fall out.
To start it I put Jen's lines in there. That set the tone as conversational. When the first 2 verses and the chorus were down Nancy called from back home in Cocoa. I played it for her. She cried. Now I had a woman's seal of approval. A tear. I was inspired to move forward. I added the womans dream verse so when Nancy called again to tell me something, I played it for her. She cried again. That was only 10 minutes after the first cry! Well, if hits are judged by crying, I knew we had a chance.
One of the serious challenges with writing a song about abortion is to convey the message of life without hurting anyone. We all understand that millions of women and men have made that choice. This song was addressing a couple that is confronted with that choice. There had to be the threat of the abortion hanging over the outcome but because of the ground rules Rick and I laid down very early no death, no blame, it had to have a positive ending. So what we are talking about is a positive song about abortion. That in itself is almost a contradiction.
That's where it got tough and now my neighbor was really getting down on some heavy metal stuff. He had been slowly turning the volume up probably waiting for my wall bang. I thought to myself how the scene was like something out of a bad movie. Full of cheap irony. There I was trying to write a tender pro life song while Metallica wailed away. Good vs. evil doing battle separated only by drywall. Strangely, I was not as bothered by it as I would have thought. The metal sound was so unmelodic and far removed from what I was doing it didn't conflict musically or lyrically. Just one big wall of sound.
So now the question was how to keep the song suspenseful and then end uplifting. I had a couple of versions to end it and played 'em for Nancy via AT&T and she approved. Yessss No death. No blame. Yesss.
I didn't know what Rick and Jen were doing, if they had been working on the song. Earlier in the day, before I started on it, I assumed we would get together later to finish it. I just wanted something to bring to the table when we got together. I expected Rick to call at any time. I got in the flow so I just stayed with it. It was now about 6 in the afternoon. Time to see if this butterfly will fly.
Time to play it for Rick. His standard for saying something is good is set high and I knew it. It's been great for me because it's made me become more critical of my own writing. Rick had been working in the Nashville music environment and he'd been in there competing successfully for the last 15 years so he developed an ear for discerning an average song from a special one. A person that survives and prospers as a songwriter in Nashville has defied astronomical odds and Rick was among the best of the best. The ability to identify a hit in itself is a gift. It's like those guys with divining rods that legends say can find water. Everyone can hold one but you got to have the gift to find the buried water. Why, because everybody has 'a hit' but there are really very few. Every writer thinks his or her last song is one. I mean that's a great thing, thats what keeps us going but the revelation that it isn't can break your spirit... until you write the next one. Rick not only could write hits he could recognize them.
Well I called him up and said “ hey, I been working on the song.” He said “what you got”. I propped the phone up against the tape recorder and said “can you hear me now”? A faint voice from the sofa came “Yeah”. I sang it. Seemed like an eternity between singing the last note, setting the guitar down, putting the receiver to my ear and saying “what do you think?”. “I love it, that's it” he said. Well I cannot tell you what music that was to my ears. We had done it. He wanted the lyrics so he could work on it. I gave them to him over the phone “ Talk to you tomorrow”. “See you buddy”.
It was Monday morning. Ice on the windshield. Thought I would pour some warm water on it to melt it. That works great in Florida on heavy frost. What it does in Nashville is create extra layers of ice!! Who would have known? I tried to scrape it with my Miami icemoving device and it broke! I couldn't believe it an ice scraper made in the sunshine capital of the world broke. So I found a piece of plastic on my floorboard and chipped away as my neighbors empty, but running car warmed up to a toasty temperature so they could take their kids to school. I watched as they all bounded in it and threw off their coats and mittens once inside. I wondered what that must be like. Why? Because I drove to work with my head partly out the window and viewing through a small circle of deiced windshield that's why!. And yes, a mustache will freeze and break.
I was at work when Rick called. He had been up that night working on the song. He made some great changes to the melody in the verses. Giving the song a better driving rhythm and feel. He also kept his G! It sounded great. He made some sweet melody changes in the chorus and added some chords I still haven't learned. Those changes made the song's chorus more unique particularly at the “chasing a butterfly” and “please don't kill the butterfly” parts. He also dug into that difficult melody around “the alarm went off at seven” I was very vague on that and Rick pulled it together and saved it. As Jennifer said he gave it the “Bluefield” sound. It was great.
Later that day he played it for Herb. Don't know if he cried or not and if he did I wouldn't tell you because Herb owns the company and he's a pretty big guy. But I do know he fell in love with it.... In fact he kept the recording date he had for Wednesday but now he had a new song called... Butterfly !! YEESSS!
Rick and Jennifer and Herb then produced and performed it beautifully. They gave it an artistic edge but still had a mainstream charm Rick gave up the passion like he was living the story. His vocal quality and feeling is such a huge part of what draws you in. Jennifer's contribution is powerful and magical and when she comes in on that “ I just had this dream” it still gets to me like I was hearing it for the first time..
Butterfly was written by Rick Ferrell, Jennifer Hicks and Michael Denney but there remains not a seed of doubt in our minds that the arrangement from start to finish...well let's just say we don't feel like we did it alone!