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Barry Dean discusses the hard things about country music. He talks about great artists who have slipped through the cracks and his opinion on how we treat “Kings and Queens” in the country music industry. He gives a glimpse into meeting singers and artists as a songwriter and shares a bit about Eddie Arnold, Garth Brooks, Roger Miller, and other huge names in country music.
In this episode:
- A bit of Midwestern Geography
- Betty’s Fireworks best bang in town
- Meeting Roger Miller
- How comparison can be toxic
- The hardest thing about country music
- Going on air with Charlie Pride
- Breakfast with Eddie Arnold
- You don’t have to sing to sing
- The making of 1994
- Garth Brooks
Watch the video version here:
Quotations:
“I like to say I’m the person happiest to be a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee.” – Barry Dean
“Country music has, it seems, sometimes done a bad job loving our kings and queens and the people who have given us so much. You know, I do sometimes worry that we haven’t shown ’em enough love” – Barry Dean
“I love that he [Charlie Pride] died an insanely rich and successful man… [he] was married to his high school sweetheart and was just fabulously successful and fabulously wealthy. And so many of those ass hats who wouldn’t play a show with him, died broken in the bottle.” – Gary Scott Thomas
“I got to meet him [Eddie Arnold], and he would have breakfast at this little place called Vandy Land. And so other new writers and I would go eat there just to see if he’d talk to us sometimes. And sometimes he’d sit down and tell us stories or encourage us or “What are you doing today? How’s it going there?” And he was very, very kind” – Barry Dean
“We didn’t think we were writing a song that Jason Aldean would record. We were just laughing and having fun. And that’s just our remembrance of the darn thing, you know. But we had so much fun remembering the songs and the three of us writing it.” – Barry Dean
“You know, Garth will always have a space in country music and country radio and country in general because of the way he’s treated people.” – Gary Scott Thomas
Guest’s Bio:
Barry Dean takes nothing for granted. Even after earning a GRAMMY nomination for Tim McGraw’s “Diamond Rings and Old Barstools” and topping the charts with four No. 1 singles, he remains awestruck each time he hears a song he wrote on the radio. Dean still can’t help but think of how he seemed destined to work a 9-to-5 in Kansas––a fate that now seems preposterous, given his track record: two No. 1 singles for Little Big Town, “Pontoon” and “Day Drinkin’;” “Think a Little Less,” which topped the charts for Michael Ray; “Heartache Medication” which most recently hit #1 for Jon Pardi; Ingrid Michaelson’s Top 40 smash “Girls Chase Boys;” and an ever-growing list of country and pop successes prove Dean is doing exactly what he was made to do.