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By Valerie DeLaCruz
"You can't swing a dead cat around without hitting a songwriter," a friend said to me last week in Nashville. And I think that is pretty accurate. As I was picking up my car from the valet at the Renaissance Hotel, my CD was in my bag, and the bellman asked me about it; then pitched me a tape!
CMA week in Nashville was a whirlwind. There were industry parties, songwriter awards and "meet-and-greets" all week, with the highlight being the CMA Awards
themselves. Imagine my delight when I arrived on the red carpet with in my
spice-colored silk chiffon sheath dress encrusted with matching sequins with Relentless
Nashville label head Dave Roy and discovered that we had seats in the THIRD ROW!
We were seated right behind Charlie Pride's family. Charlie was inducted this year into the Country Music Hall of Fame, along with Faron Young. Seated in our row were Cletus T. Judd, Danni Leigh, Freddie Hart, Julie Reeves and Trini Triggs. I felt like Cinderella at the ball! Highlights were the driving performance of the Dixie Chicks, Tim McGraw's new song, "Things Change," Jo Dee Messina's set design of hundreds of candles, Trisha Yearwood with Kim Richey and Mary-Chapin Carpenter singing harmonies to the song they wrote for her last album, "Where Are You Now?," and Vince Gill's off-camera witticisms. Song of the year was deservedly "I Hope You Dance," which was performed by Lee Ann Womack and Sons of the Desert. Mark D. Sanders and Tia Sillers, the co-writers, were honored, and Tia seemed ready to faint. After the awards, I was whisked off to the invitation only BMG/RCA party, where I saw Martina McBride, Pam Tillis, the Warren Brothers, Phil Vassar, Alan Jackson, Joe Galante (RCA label head), and stuffed myself with sushi and other delicious food.
Tuesday night I was the featured artist in an on-line chat on the Trans World Entertainment website (www.twec.com). That was cool but I was remote and answered questions to the moderator over the phone while they typed in my "answers." That night
was the BMI awards, also. At the "after-party" at Sunset (cool hangout for Music City folks), I spoke with Perry Howard (Harlan Howard's son and a writer-relations guy), Harry Warner, Mark Mason and David Preston of BMI. Then my friend Connie Howard and I spoke with Hugh Prestwood, an NSAI teacher and hit songwriter (Trisha Yearwood's "The Song Remembers When," Collin Raye's "On the Verge") and Jim Lauderdale (boy is he cute! Patty Loveless' "You Don't Seem to Miss Me"), and Keith Urban and mingled so much our feet tingled!
On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the annual EMI Music Publishing Hot Dog Day. There I mingled with hundreds of other writers, artists and industry types as we networked and ate picnic style. It was about 80 degrees! Phil Vassar was there celebrating his success as both an artist and songwriter.
Thursday Connie and I went to the Universal Music Group's outdoor party that honored Bob McDill, who has had over 30 #1 hits! He was presented with a huge framed print featuring about 30 album covers from those songs and artists. There we saw Kim Richey, Paul Craft, Matraca Berg, Doug Howard of Lyric Street Records, and we all congratulated Mark D. Sanders for his CMA win the night before. I think the ASCAP awards were that night but I needed a rest!
Friday morning was breakfast at Noshville (what a great name, huh?) with Jerry Vandiver, (Tim McGraw's "For a Little While"), and he was in a good mood because he just found out that his song will be on Tim McGraw's Greatest Hits album. For a songwriter, that is like getting two turns with one song. That night Connie, Irene Kelley and I went to the Bluebird to hear a performance in the round with one of my songwriting idols, Kim Richey. She was playing with Bill Lloyd, Al Anderson (BMI Songwriter of the Year) and Gary Nicholson. The evening had lots of surprise as they brought up several guests from the audience (I was dying to get up there as I know the harmonies to every Kim Richey song, but I restrained myself), including Raul Malo of the Mavericks, Jeffrey Steele (co-wrote and sang "Unbelievable" for Diamond Rio), Jessie Alexander and the piece de resistance: Gary Burr. Gary sang a song he had just completed, called "When I'm Younger," a lament about all the things we'll do someday that we should be doing now.
More hobnobbing at Fido (the Nashville writers' hangout version of Starbucks in Hillsboro) Saturday morning and ran into Aimee Mayo and her husband, who co-wrote "Amazed," the huge Lonestar hit. There my songwriter friend Garrett Mehok and I were marveling at how much progress we've made since we met at Song Camp only three years ago. That night Connie and I hung out at Nick and Rudy's, a posh steakhouse with a grand piano and we sang standards until 1am. Finally I had to pack and get out of town…I couldn't take any more partying, schmoozing and networking, but boy was it fun! Can't wait to go back next month!