Kent Blazy Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke, and today we're here with Kent Blazy. Kent Blazy has seven number one hits to his credit, including Garth Brooks first number one hit, If Tomorrow Never Comes. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, he was inspired to learn guitar and take up songwriting by listening to Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, Rodney Crowell, and Jerry Young. His charting songs have been recorded by Gary Morris, Diamond Rio, Kenny Chesney, Patty Loveless, Chris Young, and many others. Kent has had over 20 top 20 songs, and has co-written seven chart-topping songs with Garth Brooks. Today, Kent is going to discuss If Tomorrow Never Comes, Ain’t Going Down Til The Sun Comes Up, and Getting You Home, The Black Dress Song.
We're with Kent Blazy, and we want to talk about which song first?
Kent Blazy:
Let's talk about if tomorrow never comes. I met Garth Brooks when he was cleaning churches and selling boots. And I had a demo studio and I had singers like Randy Travis and Joe Diffie, Martina McBride, Faith Hill, and Billy Dean, who's here on this show. And none of them could get record deals. And so in Nashville, if you sing like I do, you find really good people to sing your work tape to present it to a label, so it sounds better. And so Garth thought he could make more money doing demos than cleaning churches. And so he brought me a cassette of six songs and I said, "Well, I'll start using you. You sound really great." And so we set up a time to write a song, because he said, "I'm a songwriter too." And I said, "Well, why not write a song?" And he came in the first day, and when we write with any other co-writers, if you and I were writing a song or whatever, you would like to hope you would have some good ideas to bring in, and they would have some good ideas to bring in. So I had my ideas together for him because I didn't really know anything about him yet. And he walked in, and at the time he was wearing a big cowboy hat and a duster and some kind of tall boots, and he looked like he was eight feet tall. And he came in, and he stood above me and he goes, "I got this idea. I've run it by 25 writers and nobody likes it." And I looked up at him and I said, "Gee, thanks." I said, "Well, let me hear it." And so he played me what he had and he said, "Well, what's wrong with it?" And I said, "Well, you're killing somebody off in the first couple lines of the song. So it's like killing off Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, three minutes in the movie. There's really nowhere else to go." And so he said, "Well, what would you do?" And I told him, and he said, "Okay, that's what we'll do." So at the end of the day, we had a song. And I had my little studio, so he did a guitar vocal, which Garth and a guitar can't be too bad. We pitched it around town for about a year and nobody was interested in it. And so we were going to get together and rewrite the song, and he got a call the week before we were going to rewrite it, to come and sing one song at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. An artist who was supposed to do a showcase hadn't shown up, and they said, "You can sing one song and that's it." So he came in, he sang this song. Somebody from Capitol Records, who'd passed on him for the third time that week, was in the audience to hear the other artists. And he said, "Well, maybe we missed something. Why don't you come back in?" He came back in, he got a record deal, and this was his second single and his first number one.
Doug Burke:
And so do you remember where it was, where you first met? Whose house it was in?
Kent Blazy:
It was at my house. I had my studio in the house, and in the upstairs part of the house. And so I would write downstairs and my studio was upstairs. But he came in and it was right in the living room of my house that he came in, the first time, and played me his cassette. And then he came back a few months later and we wrote in that room. And it was just, I thought at the end of the session, this guy's like, 25 going on 50. And we've been friends ever since. We've written a bunch of songs together. I think we've had five number ones together. And it's great in this business, if you stay friends with somebody. I've written number one songs with people that I never hear from again. So it means a lot to me that we're still friends and still talk and still write together.
Doug Burke:
And he was 25. And how old were you?
Kent Blazy:
I was probably 32.
Doug Burke:
Going on?
Kent Blazy:
Probably 12.
Doug Burke:
So it was a good combination.
Kent Blazy:
Yeah, it was a good combination.
Doug Burke:
And he was just very mature.
Kent Blazy:
He was very mature for his age, yes. I don't meet very many 25 year olds. And I think in the 20 or 30 years since then, 25 year olds have gotten younger, as far as how they deal with things because of cell phones and helicopter parents and all that. But he'd been kind of out on his own for a while, and he has a good savvy feel with the world. And I think that gave him a depth that a lot of people don't have.
Doug Burke:
So he comes in with a song outline that many other songwriters in Nashville had rejected working on.
Kent Blazy:
Right. Mm-hmm
Doug Burke:
And what was it that made you ... what was it about the outline that grabbed you to say this could be a good song?
Kent Blazy:
Yeah, my mother used to tell me, tell the people that you love how you feel about them while they're still alive. And that was the concept that I saw in that song, that I wanted to bring out to him. When I told him that, he kind of got the angle that I was aiming for. And then I got the angle he was aiming for, and it all fell into place. And it's really cool because you never know when you write with somebody, how it's going to go the first time. Whether there's going to be a chemistry or you can't agree, or nobody likes anybody else's ideas or whatever. But that clicked and it's still clicking. So, that's really cool.
Doug Burke:
So were you and Garth thinking about anyone in particular at that time? Or was this a song to go out to the world?
Kent Blazy:
Well, I think we were talking about a friend of his that had died, that had maybe been a rodeo rider. And so that was in his mind. But then it was basically just a song we were writing for our wives too, just so they would know. And that was it. But you get letters from all over the world on how it's touched people. So it's been used in weddings and funerals and everything else. It's very interesting.
Doug Burke:
And so wife, Sharon?
Kent Blazy:
Sharon.
Doug Burke:
How long were you married to her at the time?
Kent Blazy:
Let me think. Probably eight years when we wrote that song.
Doug Burke:
So you come home with this song, in part is inspired by her muse. And how does she react? What does she think?
Kent Blazy:
Well, it's tough when you're a songwriter's wife, because you're hearing the stuff they've created all the time. Let me play you this, let me play you that. And so when I played it for she's like, "Well, that's pretty good." But it wasn't like, "Wow, that's the best thing you've ever done." Or something like that. And for me, I didn't ever know if it'd be a hit or whatever, but it was the song that I wanted to write that would, maybe if people heard it, change their lives, and make them appreciate what they had or whatever. And I'm just so proud that Garth was the artist that did it, because I got to write it with him rather than somebody else recording it.
Doug Burke:
And that became his first number one.
Kent Blazy:
Correct.
Doug Burke:
So did you have a number one party?
Kent Blazy:
We did have a number one party. And I wish I'd brought you a CD. I'm lucky enough to have a CD called Me and Garth, that we've had so many songs together. But on the front cover of it is, he and I standing together and he's holding a cake, and it has a number eight on it, because his first single went to number eight, Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old). And his record label wasn't having a party for him. And we didn't know anybody else who had a number eight record. So we had a party for him and got him a number eight cake. And in the picture he's holding the cake, but holding up his finger, like it's number one. And he's saying If Tomorrow Never Comes is going to be the next single and go number one. And he was right. He has a way of predicting things like that. It's very interesting. That's just kind of the guy he is. I remember he called me up when he was still cleaning churches and selling boots. And he said, "I saw where we were going to shoot the video for If Tomorrow Never Comes. And I thought, this guy's delusional. He doesn't even have a record deal or anything. And a year later he called me up and said, "You know where I said we're shooting a video. We're shooting it there today, if you want to come out." So he does those kinds of things. Interesting.
Doug Burke:
And where was that video? Where was that location on the video shoot?
Kent Blazy:
It was up in, I think Hendersonville, Tennessee. Trying to think. There was somebody he knew, I think it was Larry Gatlin's little daughter who was the little girl in the thing. And I can't remember who the elderly people were, but they were all people Garth knew that he asked to be in the video, which I thought was pretty cool.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember anything unique about the actual production song in the recording studio?
Kent Blazy:
Well, if you go back and listen to early Garth stuff, Allen Reynolds was his producer. And Allen Reynolds had done, Don Williams, Kathy Mattea. A bunch of people, but really just such a tasteful producer. And compared to what's country radio these days, it's very acoustic. It's almost like the demo's just a little bit less than what it's ... it wasn't overdone or anything else. Just embellished to bring the song out. It was beautiful.
Doug Burke:
Well, it's nice to not have to shop a song around.
Kent Blazy:
Exactly.
Doug Burke:
And have the builtin artist of Garth Brooks.
Kent Blazy:
That helps. That was the last time we had to shop his sounds around. So that was good.
Doug Burke:
So the song releases, not every song releases at number one.
Kent Blazy:
Right, yeah. It fought its way up because he was a new artist. And Clint Black was really the hot person at the time. And so it was just kind of a slow rise. But at the same time, Garth was out on the road, touring in a bread truck. But people that came to his show would be going, man. They're telling their friends, if you haven't seen this guy, next time he's around, you need to come see him because there's nobody like him. And so I think that word spread like wildfire and helped If. Tomorrow Never Comes take off.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember where you were the first time you heard it on the radio?
Kent Blazy:
I was driving down the road, going into Music Row. And I don't even think he played it for me after he recorded it. So I heard it, finally heard it on the radio, and I just had to pull over. It was like, this is the answer to a prayer I've been praying. And I'd seen him do it at a showcase when he had an album release party, and he did it in that. But it was just so totally different hearing it on the radio.
Doug Burke:
So we're going to talk about Ain't Going Down Till The Sun Comes Up.
Kent Blazy:
So Garth Brooks is a really generous person and he also likes to put different combinations together to write. And he called me one day and he said, "I played a song of ours for this kid, Kim Williams." And of course, Kim was older than Garth. But he said he hated the song, but he liked one lyric in the song. He liked one line and he thought maybe that could be a song. "Do you want write with them?" And I thought, well, this guy hates my song. Yeah, I'll write with him. So we got together and we wrote a couple things with Garth, and there was a good chemistry. And so we started working together more and more. And Garth called me one day and he said, "I want to write a song with machine gun lyrics. Call Kim." So I thought, well, I don't know what that means, but I'll call Kim. And so I called Kim and said, "Hey, Garth called. And he wants to write a song with machine gun lyrics." And he said, "What the hell is that mean?" And I said, "I don't know, just get over here and we'll find out." So he came in and he had this whole idea. It was what I love about him. Once again, he had this vision of what he needed for the single off the next record, that he also wanted it to be if it turned out, a big showcase song for this NBC show he had in Dallas, that he was going to be on. So he kind of already had, in his mind, what this song was going to be, but he didn't know what the song was. So he came over and I had just bought this house in Nashville that had sat vacant for a year and a half, so it was kind of falling apart. So I had people there painting and hammering and banging and knocking walls out, and the whole bit. And so we went out on the back porch and we wrote machine gun lyrics all day in a yellow pad. And when we were as sunburned as we could possibly get from being out there, he said, "Well, I think we got enough. Let's go in and kind of just put it all together." And he said, "I want to work tape on this. I want you to get a drum machine going and the whole bit." And so I didn't have much of my studio set up because I had just moved, but I got a drum machine going. And back then, drum machines were really bad. And if there was a guitar player program and a drum machine, it was worse because it sounded like a guitar player playing drums. So I had this little drum machine going, kind of how he wanted it. And Kim and Garth were standing behind me and one of them went, "Oh my God." And I turned around and there were termites coming out of the floor and the ceiling and the wall, which isn't good when you've got a letter that says your new home has no termites. So I guess the drum machine pissed them off, which I can understand. But so I was kind of stressed out, that here's my new house that I have, and it's filled with termites. And Kim Williams had a great sense of humor. And he went, "Oh man, when Garth and I wrote Papa Loved Mama, there were cockroaches crawling all over my apartment, and it was a number one song, and this is going to be too. And he was right. Thank you, Kim Williams.
Doug Burke:
So why is the girl redhead?
Kent Blazy:
Kim Williams daughter, Amanda, is a red head and she was a wild child. And so we put it in there just to honor her.
Doug Burke:
I was wondering if it was just cause it rhymed with red head and bed.
Kent Blazy:
Well, it did. But I think that was part of it, is just get her in there and say, Mandy, we know about you.
Doug Burke:
And does she know the song is about her?
Kent Blazy:
Yeah, she knows. And she's turned into a great songwriter. She's had a couple songs on Garth's records. And so she's kind of passing on the family tradition.
Doug Burke:
So the melodies are sort of classic one, four, five, that's so catchy?
Kent Blazy:
Mm-hmm.
Doug Burke:
What is it that the classic song structure-
Kent Blazy:
It's like Chuck Berry. It was so good. To me, if Dylan was the songwriter that changed the world, Chuck Berry changed Rock and Roll. And he was so good at being able to write those fast lyrics that were all about teenage lust and love, even though he was probably in his thirties at the time. And so it's just, Garth knew he wanted that kind of song that would just get people up, get people excited. And there'd been some other songs out about that time that kind of had that same groove. He loved Bob Seger, and I think he had something about Get Out Of Denver or something. It was a real kind of uptempo thing. And maybe Katmandu and a couple of things like that. And so I kind of just thought, well, it's in between Chuck Berry, and maybe Bob Seger, and something like that. So that's kind of what we came up with. And it's just one of those things that, you still hear it on the radio and you start driving too fast. And in live shows, it's awesome. And the funniest thing to me, the coolest thing was, he knew that it was going to be in his Dallas show. But what we didn't know, was he was going to fly across the auditorium, singing this song at the same time. So Kim, when we kind of heard what he was going to do, Kim and I, and our wives, hopped on a plane and went down to Dallas. It's like, we got to see this. And so Kim and his wife were sitting behind me. And Garth took off from the stage, went up about 20 feet in the air and then started flying, probably 50 or 60 feet up above the whole audience, all the way to the back audience at the end of the auditorium. And Kim looked at me. He said, "You couldn't drive a roof nail up my ass with a sledgehammer right now." That's a good Eastern Tennessee way of saying something, Kim. But yeah, it was true. And the day before, when he had tried it for the first time, the rope had broken. So that's how brave he is. He's like, well, it didn't work yesterday, maybe it'll work today. And it did, so ...
Doug Burke:
So this was the first song you wrote with Kim Williams?
Kent Blazy:
No, this was probably the third or fourth song. The first one we wrote, it was interesting. The song that Kim hated had a line in it called, what never happens, what I'll never forget. And so he thought that could be a song. So that's the one that Garth said, "Well, let's get Kim over here and we'll work on that song." And what the funny thing was on that, like I said earlier, Garth's a spewer. So we were working on that song. We took a break, and Garth was over in the corner, and he was kind of singing a bluegrassy feeling thing. And I'm from Kentucky, and I said, "Well, what is that?" And he said, "I don't know, I'm just making it up." And so I said, "Well, let's make that one up." And so we went ahead and wrote that, and it's a song called Cold Shoulder. And it ended up, when we wrote it, Garth didn't have anything going on. And he told us, "Well, that's going to be on my third album." And we're like, yeah right. So third album, that song's on his album. And it's one of my favorite because it's a bluegrassy song. And once again, it's Allen Reynolds and Garth's production, which is almost just like the original guitar vocal on it or whatever. And so we became ... we wrote two songs that one day. So when you can do that with somebody you don't even know, that's probably a good thing. And so we just started writing together, and-
Doug Burke:
So tell me about working with Kim on this song. He's no longer with us. What was his contribution?
Kent Blazy:
Kim Williams was larger than life. He had been burned over 90% of his body in a clean room that blew up. He was an engineer and he had a hundred operations in one year, and he decided that God wanted him to be a songwriter instead of an engineer. And so he moved to town and, no pun intended, but he had a fire under him like nobody I've ever met. He would work, he wrote four times a day, every day. He was just eat up with it. And so he was so much fun, he was so funny. But he was so smart, he read all the time. And he liked arguing about philosophical things, especially religion and spiritualism or whatever. But when you were with Kim, you were always going to laugh. You're always going to have fun. And he was such a great songwriter on knowing how lyrics should lay in. Garth's one of the best songwriters I've ever written with too. I don't like hearing people saying, well, he just had a lot of help. No, he's an incredible songwriter. So we just had fun that day. And that's where the magic happens, when you're having fun and there's no pressure, and it's three friends laughing. And, well let's stick with Amanda in there. Red head, let's put her in there, and what else can we do just to make it fun and funny and still be real life? And so that was the cool thing about it.
Doug Burke:
And this song went to number one.
Kent Blazy:
Went to number one, yeah.
Doug Burke:
And so you had a number one party.
Kent Blazy:
We had a number one party. Garth was so busy, it took a while to even have a number one party with him. But they had it at ASCAP because Garth and Kim Williams were ASCAP writers. And it was just so much fun to be celebrating with two great people, great friends, and just knowing that you created this out of a day that you were just laughing and having fun. Until the termites showed up. But the other funny thing was about this, Kim was kind of a worry wart. He was always turning things over in his mind, and his wife was a nurse and he kept calling me up. And he goes, "Garth can't sing this song. This song is too fast. He can't sing this song." I said, "He did it work tape. He did fine." He said, "I'm going to get some oxygen from my wife. I'm going to take it down the recording studio when he sings it. And so if he needs oxygen, he can breathe the oxygen while he's singing the song." But Garth went in and I think he sang it in one take. But I've got a work tape on it, of just me and him and that terrible drum machine. And it's so close to the record, it's scary. It's like the record without any other instruments on it. But it's just the vision that he has, that I see very few artists that have this vision of how things can be. And he's the best at it.
Doug Burke:
Anything about the production of, it is an incredibly fast song. What's the time on it?
Kent Blazy:
Well, the thing that it's a short song because it's so fast. And so at the time, radio was kind of making their singles longer. So what he did was, at the end of the song, he started fading it out, but then he brought it back up and all the musicians kicked in again. But Chris Leuzinger on guitar, his guitar parts were so incredible. And Terry McMillan was a harmonica player in Nashville, and probably the best harmonica player in Nashville at the time. And he played harmonica all over the song, and nobody was using harmonica at the time, and so that really stood out. And at the end, Terry and Chris Leuzinger are getting into a battle between the harmonica and the guitar, and it just elevates it further than what it was already, which is really cool. And it just made it a fun song. It came out in the summertime, and it's always good to have uptempo song in the summer. And then being on TV and him flying across the stage, that didn't hurt either. So it was just one of those magical songs, and the artists knowing exactly what he wanted and what he was going to do with it.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Getting You Home.
Kent Blazy:
I had been working a long time with this artist by the name of Corey Batten, and Corey is an amazing talent. He's a great piano player, great guitar player, singer, and good looking guy. And so I was shopping him around to try to get him a record deal. We had a meeting at RCA Records and I knew it wasn't going very good with the woman that we met with, because she was watching the worst hundred hurricanes in a hundred years at the same time. So I kind of got the idea she wasn't interested. So when we left her office, another person from Sony came up to me and said, "Hey, we got this artist, Chris Young, and he's had three singles out. They haven't done any good. And if he doesn't have a hit, he's going to get dropped from the label. Would you write with him?" And so Corey was standing right next to me and I said, "Yeah, if I can bring Corey." So we set up an appointment to write a song with Chris. And in the meantime, Corey is what I call a spewer. Garth's a spewer too. And that's, to me, a guy who you'll be working on a song, and you'll take a little break, and they're off in the corner and they're working on something else. And so, one day Corey and I took a lunch break, and I always feed the writers at my house, that way you don't have to go out and break the vibe of what's going on. So Corey's gotten real good at getting mustard and ketchup and stuff out of the refrigerator. So he had his head in the refrigerator and I heard him sing this little thing. No guitar, just his voice. And I said, "Well, Corey, what's that?" And he said, "I don't know. I just made it up." I said, "Here, sing it into my phone." So we're sitting there with Chris, he's an artist who needs a hit song, and it's hard enough to get with artists to write. And so it was one of those days where between the three of us, nobody liked anybody else's ideas. The most stressful thing you can have as a writer. You just kind of sit there and stare at each other, like we could do for 30 minutes or whatever. And so we sat there and I said, "Hey guys, I got this idea. Corey sang it into my phone a couple of weeks ago. I think it could be a good idea for you." And so I played it and Corey said, "Well, I love that." And I said, "Well, yeah. Of course. It's your idea?" And Chris said, "Well, we don't have anything better to do. Why don't we write that one?" So we started writing on the song and three professionals couldn't think of what rhymes with door that was clean. So we sat there looking at each other and I said, "Well, how about singing, her black dress hit the floor?" And Corey goes, "You're just a dirty old man." And I said, "I won't argue that point." And Chris said something like, "Well, I'm 23. I don't want to get kicked off the radio." And so we kicked around some other things and nothing was hitting us. And so we took a lunch break and I was fixing him a lunch, and Corey said he was looking around my office and I had a song about standing in the kitchen with nothing but an apron on, that had been a number one song. And Ain't Going Down 'til The Sun Comes Up, which is a little risque. And he said, "You know, Chris, we ought to go with his line." And Chris said, "Well, we ain't got anything better to put in there, we might as well do it. So we finished the song. Chris did a guitar vocal in my little studio. And he took it down to RCA records. They called me up that day and said, "We love the song. We want to cut it on Chris. And so I said, "Great." So they called me the next week and they said, "We cut it, we love it. We want it to be his next single, but ..." And so when a record label goes, "but", you start wondering what the but is. And I said, "Okay, so what's the but here?" And they said, "Well, we love the title, Getting You Home, but in parenthesis we want to put, The Black Dress Song." So I felt like the dirty old man got vindicated on that, that he got his line in the title of the song. And this ended up being Chris's first number one too. So I think he's had 10 or 12 since then. So what I was aiming for was, Steve Cropper lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but he was the main guitar player on all those Stax records. There were Otis Redding,, and Sam and Dave and all that. And his style was so ... I don't even know how you would call it. So tasteful, but so minimal. He didn't try to play real fast. He didn't try to show off what he did. He just always came up with a lick that you remembered in the song. And so after we were working on the song a little bit, I came up with this. And I kind of felt like it was a Steve Cropper thing. And then just the groove of it. So that was what I was aiming for. And the band really did a good job on getting all that together when they went in and recorded it. Because you never know how it's going to change once it gets into the recording studio. But they kept the lick I came up with, they kept the groove, so that was really cool. And I think there was nothing like that, at the time, out on the radio.
Doug Burke:
So did any radio station have a hard time with the black dress hit the floor line?
Kent Blazy:
No, they didn't. And I think it was just how times have changed. Because when Garth and I had Somewhere Other Than The Night, that had standing in a kitchen with nothing but an apron on, Tucson, Arizona wouldn't play it because it was too risque. And so times had changed in that period of time that there's, on TV, everywhere else, what you can get away with. So no, we didn't have any problem with that.
Doug Burke:
Did you ever look back to see if the sale of black dresses increased after the song was released, in the Nashville market?
Kent Blazy:
It did. Yep, it did.
Doug Burke:
It did? You remember that?
Kent Blazy:
And also, I found out with the Somewhere Other Than The Night, was it increased the sale of aprons for a while too. So that's pretty good.
Doug Burke:
And so when you took this song home to your wife, Sharon, what did she say?
Kent Blazy:
She thought that was a pretty sexy song, and she hadn't really heard something like that. So it got a better response than If Tomorrow Never Comes.
Doug Burke:
Have you ever bought her black dress since?
Kent Blazy:
Well, what happened was unfortunately, right after that, she was going through a brain tumor treatment and she passed away before it got to be a number one song.
Doug Burke:
I'm sorry.
Kent Blazy:
So, that's probably one of the last songs she heard that I'd written. So after that, she kind of really went downhill fast. But she got to hear it. So, that's what counts. I always felt like she had a little push in getting it to be a number one song. A little angel help, maybe.
Doug Burke:
That's interesting.
Kent Blazy:
Yeah. But a lot of women started showing up at our shows with black dresses on, so that's good. And throwing them on the stage to Chris Young. So hey, if that helps.
Doug Burke:
What else can we talk about on that one? Because it's such a sexy ... it's such a sexy line, but it's just the right amount where it's not too far.
Kent Blazy:
Right. Yeah, that was kind of what I was aiming for, is when I go out and do shows, that song's so well known and it's the women singing the song, not the guys. So they're all into, hey, buy me a black dress and take me home. So, that's really cool.
Doug Burke:
And so you had another number one party this time. Not your first, but Chris Young's first.
Kent Blazy:
Right. Chris Young's number one party, first one. They had it at BMI. It was just so great because Chris is such a great singer and a really good guy. And you love helping somebody out that really needed a push and didn't have it. And he was the guy, and he did such a great job singing and he's got that low voice. Kind of that sexy voice, and that just helped make it a hit.
