Hangin’ Out with Nashville’s Honkytonk Hitman

Continued
Mike: This "musical crack" will make things start to disappear, including your credibility. The addiction of playing for a loud and rowdy crowd discombobulates your way of thinking. You become fooled into thinking that they are cheering for you when in all truthfulness you are just another guy, in another cowboy hat, singing the same old cover songs as the guy next door and the one that will follow you later that night. They are not really screaming for you. They are screaming for all their favorite cover songs that you play for four hours straight, without a break while you are pushing your tip jar in an attempt to make any money that you can. You know you have made it to Broadway when you play for 4 hours straight, make $20, and then pay $70 to get your car back because it was towed away while you were at your gig.
If I had it to do all over again I would have come to town, got a full time job as quickly as possible, and concentrated my efforts on writers nights and tried to come up the ranks that way.

Mary: You're a talented songwriter. In your opinion, what makes a good country song?
Mike: A great country singer can make just about any song good. In a lot of ways I don't believe there is really such a thing as a real "country song" per say. You can take a classic country song and change the production and singer and you have a rock song. George Strait is such a great country singer that he could sing "Purple Rain" and you would swear it was a great country song.

Mary: How often do you write songs? Is it a routine, or do you write when inspiration strikes?
Mike: I am not a person that could go to work everyday and just write songs for a living. There are great writers in Nashville that can do that. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. When I write a song I have to be inspired by something that is happening or has happened to me, or someone that I know. My songs are a direct reflection of who I am. They are very personal for me.

Mary: What was the inspiration for writing "God Needed You Too" and will it be released on an album?
Mike: When my wife Stacy first moved to Nashville she called upon an old friend Dana Kaye who was a news anchor for channel 5 in Nashville for help. Dana and Stacy knew each other in Louisiana where they were both born and raised. Dana opened her home to Stacy and gave her a place to stay in Nashville until she was able to get on her feet. Stacy and Dana stayed in touch throughout the years and she never forgot her act of kindness.
Dana passed away on Friday, June 30, 2006. My wife talked to her daughter Alden who wanted to know if Stacy would help her write a song for her mother's funeral. Stacy told her that "she really needed to talk to her husband because he would be of more help".
On Saturday afternoon I went to O'Charley's with my wife and met Alden and her Uncle Keith. She shared stories with me about her and her Mom and how she was feeling at the time. She handed me little snips of poems she had started about her Mom and how she wanted the song to sound. I left with the deep feeling of responsibility to help this young girl find her voice to express how she was feeling now that she had lost her Mother.
I went home and I sat in my office reading the snips of poems she had started and just drew a blank. I picked up my guitar and strummed a few chords and nothing came to me. I got on line and read about Dana's career as a television news anchor and all of her accomplishments and had an uneasy feeling that I was going to fail.
It was 2AM and I lit three candles in my office and thought about my own mother who passed away when I was just 16 year old from cancer too. I thought about how we had that in common. Then I thought about my sister who had struggled with brain cancer for ten years until she passed away just last July. I had just done a show in Iowa and was coming back when I got the call. I knew something was wrong when I saw my father's number pop up at the time he should have been in church. When I started thinking about these things in my own life then the words started rolling off my pen. I picked up my guitar and started writing down the words. I would go back and forth to make sure that the song was tailor made for Dana.
The morning came early and I skipped church to call my buddy Robert Ellis Orrall and see if I could use his studio. We went in and in about four hours later we knocked out the demo.
I left the studio and jumped in my truck and headed to the O'Charley's in Bellevue where we had first met Alden and her Uncle Keith. My wife had brought me my dress clothes and a tie to put on in the bathroom. we then headed to the funeral home in Dickson for the wake.