DAVE'S DIARY - 30 AUGUST 2009 - RORY & JOEY
RORY
AND JOEY PLAY THEIR SONG
AS A PARODY - THEIR WAY
"It's too Garth, too George Strait/ too right down the centre, too left of the plate/ the hook's too weak or the subject matter's way too strong, whatever/ yeah and it's too bad they don't just." - Play The Song - Rory Feek.
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Former Marine
Rory Lee Feek leads with both his left and right when he nails targets
in his social comment songs.
So, it's sweet solace Play The Song - Feek's parody of Nashville's
pedantic power brokers - is a big video hit.
Not as vitriolic as Larry Cordle-Larry Shell tune Murder On Music Row
but just as relevant a decade down the Lost Highway.
It wasn't the first underground hit for dynamic duo Joey & Rory but
it will have legs long after the fairy dust fades on careers of some peers.
Feek and Martin are reminiscent of eighties duo Bell & Shore whose
humorous peak was I Want A Mower Like The One George Jones Rode To
Town.
But this is a new battle in the old war by country artists trying to win
creative control of their music - not to be mistaken for refried rockers
seeking a soft place to fall.
It's no surprise one of their sweetest songs is Feek's collaboration with
Newcastle singer Catherine Britt's whose pure country wings were burned
by fame flames in Guitar Town.
But more of Sweet Emmylou later in this brief trip down the memory lane
of the duo who debut on Nu Country TV with Play The Song.
The single, accompanied by equally vibrant video, is torn from recent
back pages of Martin who recorded an unreleased solo album in 2005 titled
Strong Enough to Cry.
The couple merged careers to compete on the CMT cable TV series Can
You Duet? in 2008 and came third.
They then signed with Sugar Hill/Vanguard Records for debut disc The
Life Of A Song, released in Australia by Shock seven years after they
wed.
NOT IN KANSAS OR DALLAS ANYMORE
"It's too fast, it's too slow/ it's too country, too rock and roll/ it's too happy, to sad, to short, or it's way too long/ yeah and it's too bad they don't just" - Play The Song - Rory Feek
Feek was
raised in Atchison in northeast Kansas.
Rory, 44, says his father, Robert, was a railroad worker who moonlighted
as a country singer.
"He used to, when I was very, very young, like play in clubs and
stuff like that, and my uncle had a band but my dad, especially played
just in his bedroom, singing Merle Haggard songs and Jim Reeves and Hank
Thompson, things like that," Feek recalled in a recent Nashville
interview.
At the age of about 15, Feek taught himself to play guitar and began filling
up 90-minute cassettes with songs taped off the radio.
"I'd write every lyric out and figure out what the chords were. I
think that's how I ended up writing songs, was when you're breaking all
those songs down and you're writing the lyrics out with a pencil and a
piece of paper you start looking at how it goes together, and it makes
you start doing the same thing. That first year I started playing I was
writing songs already, and that ended up being what I would consider my
real gift."
Feek moved to Nashville with two daughters in 1995 after an eight-year
stretch in the Marines.
While serving in Japan the singer, an avionics technician, played in a
country band that toured American military bases.
He performed solo after he left the Marines and settled in Dallas before
heading east to Nashville as a writer in his 1956 Chevy.
HARLAN HOWARD
"You
broke his arm in Houston, his rib in Santa Fe/ then you drug him through
the dirt in San Antone/ and last year out in Vegas you almost took him
all the way/ then you sent him broke and busted right back home/ no matter
how hard you throw him/ he just gets back on again/ Oh I'll never understand
this crazy hold you have on him." - Rodeo - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Cory
Batten.
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Rory
broke into the business by "stalking" late legend Harlan
Howard. "A friend told me Harlan was going to be at Sunset Grill at such-and-such time," Feek recalled. "So I went over there and sat down on a barstool and waited." An hour later, Howard came in, took a seat beside Feek and they talked songwriting for hours. Howard invited Feek to visit him at his office and play some songs he'd written. Several months later Howard signed Feek to a songwriting deal and he stayed with the company for five years. "It was all I could hope that it would be," Feek revealed. |
"I'm
one of those guys that I've always been drawn to the legends and to the
people who have blazed this trail long before I was even born, and so
when I got the chance to meet Harlan. I was thrilled, but even more so
when I got to write for him and be in his company for five years and sort
of study under him. He was a master craftsman at what we do, and he had
a lot of wisdom not just for songwriting, but for life too. In that part
of his life, he was always sharing it with me and everyone else around
him. It was just an extraordinary time and I think it's one of the things
that's made me a much better writer."
Feek scored in 1998 with Texan Collin Raye's hit of his song, Someone
You Used to Know - it was his first cut and peaked at #3 on Billboard.
The following year he scored when another Texan Clay Walker had a smash
with his tune Chain of Love.
He also had cuts for Kenny Chesney, Randy Travis, Charley Pride, Reba
McEntire, Terri Clark, Lorrie Morgan, the late Waylon Jennings and Buck
Owens and others.
Oklahoma singer Blake Shelton - latter day partner of Miranda Lambert
- cracked #1 in 2004 with Feek song Some Beach.
He also produced Blaine Larsen's album that year and co-wrote Larsen's
biggest hit, How Do You Get That Lonely?
After Howard died at 74 in 2002, Rory wrote for Texan singer and former
record label owner Clint Black before co-founding Giantslayer Publishing
with friend and partner Tim Johnson
JOEY - INDIANA EMBRYO
"Ten minutes later he was in the air/ she dropped the kids at school and headed home/ walked in and turned the front room TV on/ she could tell that there was something wrong/ every channel had the same thing on/ now seven years have come and gone away/ but she's still hurting like its yesterday." - Loved The Hell - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Wynn Varble.
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Martin,
now 34 and third of five children of a guitar slinging Vietnam veteran
and gospel singing farm girl, grew up with her family's music in
Alexandria Indiana. "And that's all I wanted to do, be a singer and move people, or try to anyway. I grew up listening to Dolly Parton and Patty Loveless, and later Emmylou Harris." |
But the post
high school trip out of Indiana found her competing with cowboys and cowgirl
singers.
"I moved to Nashville to be a singer," Martin said.
"I wasn't into songwriting at all. I didn't understand the concept
of it. At one of the songwriters' nights I went to, Rory was playing.
I was just really, really moved by him in particular - the way he wrote
and what he wrote about. I think it was then and there that I understood
how important songwriting is."
At first, she supported herself by working for a veterinarian clinic that
specialised in treating horses. She still loves horses and the cowboy
lore that goes with them.
In 2001, Sony signed Martin to a recording contract - veteran producers
Paul Worley and Billy Crain oversaw her first and last album for the label.
"I had been in Nashville about two years and knew nothing about music
industry," Martin confesses.
"I really never found all the great songs for the album I was hoping
to," she added.
"Halfway through making the record, Rory and I met, and we got married
probably within four months of meeting."
The album was completed in 2002 but never released nor were any singles
from it.
"Looking back, it's nothing I would record today," Martin says.
"But at the time, I was really proud of it."
BLUEBIRDS AND THING CALLED LOVE
"He swore the one thing he'd never do/ is sit here beside me in this pew/ so I just smiled and said amen/ this mornin' when he walked in." - Loved The Hell - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Wynn Varble
Martin originally
gazed at Feek from the audience at the famed Bluebird Cafe - locale for
the movie Thing Called Love.
"I didn't know who Rory was but one of the songs Rory sang was The
Chain of Love," Martin recalled in an interview with Cindy Watts
in The Tennessean.
"I just sat in the room and listened to Rory play these songs. I
was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the man I would like to spend the rest
of my life with.' "
A few songs later, Feek introduced his daughters to the audience.
Martin assumed he was married and wrote off any chance of a relationship.
But two years later her boss invited her to another songwriter's night
where Feek was playing.
Then Martin learned Feek was single and knew she had to find out if her
feelings for him were still as strong.
"That night, I showed up at this little songwriter's place, and I
go running up the steps and my feet land and there stands Rory right in
front of me," Martin said.
"And I thought to myself, 'It's over. I'm in so much trouble.' "
But it was still some time before they became a couple. Feek thought Martin
didn't like him, but when a friend indicated otherwise, he called and
left her a message. When Martin called him back she explained how strong
her feelings were but that she was in a serious relationship.
"She said, 'I just want you to know if things were different I think
you and I should be together,' " Feek says. "I had never heard
anything like that before. No one had ever said that to me. I had written
songs about that kind of love at first sight, but had never experienced
it."
A few months later, Martin's relationship ended and she called Feek to
see if he was interested in getting to know her better.
This time he was in a relationship, but he called his girlfriend and broke
it off. He and Martin were engaged two months later and were married two
months after that.
BAKING A SONG OR TWO
"Leave
the horses and cattle/ and the ranch far behind/ they've had you all week."
-
Tonight Cowboy You're Mine - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Heidi Feek.
Martin didn't
starve in the fallow years after her first CD hit the cutting room floor.
Joey is co-owner of Marcy Jo's Mealhouse - a restaurant in an 1890s mercantile
store near Joey and Rory's farm in Pottsville, Tennessee.
"We opened it two and a half years ago and it's doing really well,"
says Joey.
"For the first year, I was hands-on completely. Marcy is Rory's sister,
so it's been a family venture having this restaurant together. It was
just Marcy and I for the first year, and then Rory and I got cast on Can
You Duet? and I had to leave for about six weeks while the taping
was taking place. Once the taping was over, I came back and continued
working and then the show aired on TV and all of a sudden, people started
finding out more about Marcy Jo's. So now, Marcy Jo's has really exploded.
We have people that come from everywhere. When we are home for a couple
of days, I go down and still make biscuits and help with the breads and
throw an apron on, serve coffee and take people's orders."
"We never really thought about us being a duo, I continued to try
to go on and be a solo artist. We recorded an independent record Strong
Enough To Cry on myself, Rory produced it and wrote for it. That never
really came out in stores, nothing with radio.
CHEATER, CHEATER
"Now I'm not one to judge someone that I ain't never met/ but to lay your hands on a married man's bout as low as a gal can get/ hey I wish her well and she rots in hell and you can tell her I said so/ cheater, cheater where'd you meet that no good white trash ho." - Cheater, Cheater - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Kristy Osmunson-Wynn Varble
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It's poetic
that the duo's breakthrough hit touched on cheating - the staple of roots
country - but sanitised on modern radio.
The song, like the Sugarland hit Stay, is written from the perspective
of the cheated.
But, unlike Stay, it drips with vitriol akin to the David Allan
Coe school of revenge through song.
It's a far cry from Dolly Parton's Jolene where the victim begs
the other woman to go away.
"This song is the real world, where the woman wronged tells them
both to take a hike," Feek explained.
"The majority of how I like to write a song is sort of from a first
line, not knowing necessarily what the title's gonna be, and definitely
not knowing where the song's gonna go or what the story's gonna say -
letting the song tell us. And this was one of
those - just 'Cheater, cheater, where'd you meet her? Down at Ernie's
Bar', and the story was unfolding."
Feek is proud the song - especially the hook - is "not politically
correct."
"When that song told us, 'Did you think I wouldn't know? Where'd
you meet that no-good white trash ho'?', I was laughing just like everybody
else, I was knocked out. I brought it home to Joey, and I thought it was
hilarious. She didn't think it was hilarious, she thought it was a smash.
It's what everyone's thinking. It's what every girl would say. Even Joey,
she's very strong in her faith, in her marriage, in her morals and everything
else, but she's human and she gets riled up, and that's what she would
say in that moment, and I think that's why people are reacting to it.
We were doing a show in Sacramento three nights ago, and it was absolute
insanity, people were screaming it back to us, huge clubs filled with
people, and it was the first time we had experienced it. But Joey had
already known it from the first time she heard it in the house here, she
knew that was gonna happen."
THE VIDEO
Shock Records
roots music executive Dave Laing sourced the Joey & Rory video of
Play The Song for Nu Country TV.
It appears on C 31 in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
Directed by Peter Zavidil, the clip depicts Joey encouraged by executives
to dress in blue hair and spangles and Rory with facial piercings.
It spoofs Nashville's obsession with imaging, resulting in artists being
represented in a manner that doesn't feel entirely real to them.
"The video isn't much of a stretch from our own personal experience
in the music industry," Rory says.
"Joey had meetings like this as a solo artist, and I, as a songwriter,
have often had the 'pleasure' of songs being picked apart by Music Row
executives."
CATHERINE BRITT AND EMMYLOU
Sweet Emmylou, I blew the dust off you/ you're the only one who knows what I'm going through and/ like the hickory wind, he's gone again." - Sweet Emmylou - Rory Feek-Catherine Britt.
Feek details on their CD liner notes how he wrote Sweet Emmylou with Newcastle singer-songwriter Catherine Britt in the kitchen of an office on Music Row when she was recording for BMG in Nashville.
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Britt,
whose song Lucky Girl appeared on Nashville star Kellie Pickler's
self-titled second disc, wrote the song during her Nashville era.
"She was a big Emmylou fan like my wife Joey is," Feek wrote. "I think I started singing the opening line and melody and it all just fell out from there. We wrote the whole song together pretty fast. I had hope that Catherine would cut it one of her records at the time. I thing Joey was secretly hoping she wouldn't so she could record it some day but unfortunately and luckily it didn't happen. The track on this is really gorgeous in my opinion. Joey and I probably sing this song more often than any other. A lot of people tell Joey she sounds like Emmylou, what an amazing compliment." |
TO SAY GOODBYE
"Ten minutes later he was in the air/ she dropped the kids at school and headed home/ walked in and turned the front room TV on/ she could tell that there was something wrong/ every channel had the same thing on/ now seven years have come and gone away/ but she's still hurting like its yesterday." - To Say Goodbye - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Jamie Teachenor.
Feek and
Martin are belatedly enjoying success but have compassion for those who
die too young or leave partners behind.
"We're not kidding when we say we're in awe of it all, especially
to be together as a husband and wife, that's a pretty extraordinary opportunity,
and we're having a great time, and we're getting a chance to go out and
promote music that we believe in," Feek says.
"I was a single dad for about 12 years," Feek added.
"Last winter was the very first time we were by ourselves, Joey and
me. I've never been by myself. I've always had the kids."
Feek's daughters, now 20 and 22, decamped the family farm for the bright
lights of Nashville.
But it was another family tragedy - the death of a loved one without being
able to say goodbye - that inspired their song To Say Goodbye and
video on its own web page.
In July 1994, Joey's only brother, Justin, was in a car accident about
a mile from their farmhouse in Indiana.
He was 17 and on his way to the county fair.
Joey and Justin were a year apart in age and the best of friends.
A nearby neighbour ran from the scene to the house to get Joey and her
mom.
On the side of the road that night they held Justin's hand. They cried,
and they prayed with him. Several days later, he passed away. He never
regained consciousness, so Joey never got the chance to tell him her feelings.
NURSING HOME
"He sits beside her in the nursing home/ through her silver hair he runs a comb/ he hangs their wedding picture on the wall/ she don't remember who he is at all/ he tells her stories about the life they've lived/ from their first kiss to their last grandkids/ for seven months now she just sits and stares/ but if she wakes up he's gonna be right there." - To Say Goodbye - Rory Feek-Joey Martin-Jamie Teachenor
Over the last few months, Joey & Rory received hundreds of emails from people around the country who bought their album and heard the song.
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In
their emails, they said the song helped them to realize that one of
the reasons their pain was still so deep was because they'd never
had the chance to say goodbye to the loved ones that they lost. Joey & Rory created the web site as on online community where people could share their personal stories and potentially say goodbye to the loved ones even after they're gone. On June 15, Justin's birthday (and Joey and Rory's anniversary), in the den of their farmhouse, Joey recorded her own personal goodbye to her brother Justin. |
The duo showcased
their originals early on a disc that also featured covers of Shawn Camp-Mark
D Sanders song Tune Of A Twenty Dollar Bill, former Derailers lead singer
and latter day preacher Tony Villaneuva-Dan Demay tune and footwear fetish
Boots.
But it was a movie audition that prompted a waltz version of historic
Lynyrd Skynyrd hit Free Bird.
Feek revealed in the liner notes Martin was asked to sing the song at
an audition for a movie Paper Wings.
"They were looking for a female lead that could play an aspiring
country singer," Rory wrote.
"We read the script and loved the story. It was part of the story
line. It was a great script, hope the movie comes out soon."
They finished their disc with the Patrick Jason Matthews-Rebecca Lynn
Howard title track.
Grammy-winner Carl Jackson produced The Life Of A Song - he added
his banjo and harmonies with Bradley Walker.
Fiddler Aubrey Haynie also added mandolin on a disc featuring Rob Ickes
on lap steel and dobro, pedal steel guitarist Mike Johnson, drummer Tony
Creasman and bassist Kevin Grant.
Feek, Bryan Sutton and Ilya Toshinsky also play acoustic guitar - pianist
Catherine Marx added synthesised strings.
The Life Of A Song is one of the freshest discs unleashed - a new
millennia advance on The Woodys and Bell & Shore with country comment
enriching the melodic roots.
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