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Nashville
Underground
An Evening
with
Chuck Cannon * Pam Rose * Chuck Jones
Reviewed by Jace Carlton
Originally published in
The Songwriter's Connection - March 2003
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What a night!
For those of us NOT blessed with the
opportunity to live in or near Nashville, the Nashville Underground is
the newest, best kept secret that won't be secret much longer.
OK, a little background ...
It
all started as I was looking
up some info on the internet about some of my favorite Nashville
songwriters;
Pam Rose, Chuck Cannon, Chuck Jones, Mary Ann Kennedy, Hugh Prestwood,
etc. After I left Pam's website I typed
in a link for Chuck Cannon and up pops his page as a part of the
Nashville
Underground! Hmmm, what's this? I click through several
links and I'm
fascinated by what I've discovered. Initially it gave me a brief
bio and only a
couple of Chuck Cannon's MANY credits (Toby Keith REALLY likes this
guy! Chuck
had a couple of cuts on TK's early albums, and then something must have
clicked for them because FIVE cuts appeared on
Toby's "Dreamwalkin'" album, PLUS they
co-wrote
the smash hit that sent Toby's career into orbit, "How Do You Like Me
Now?"! )
You
know those "rare" opportunities you have when you're watching TV (HA!)
and a commercial
comes on for a movie "coming soon to a theater near you"? I'm
checking out the whole website and discover that three of its
members are coming to a venue near me! So I instantly order my
tickets online and THEN excitedly tell my wife
to clear our calendar for that night because I'm taking her to
Nashville! (Don't worry, I'm not a chauvinist. I politely
asked her to check
our calendar, but whatever might have been there just HAD to be
moved! I was THAT determined NOT to miss this show!) Her
head whips around and her
eyes pop out (you see, we live near San Francisco) and I calm her down
by explaining that Nashville's actually coming to us. Bewildered,
I tell her about how there's this group of top
songwriters in Nashville that have come together to form the Nashville
Underground and three of them are coming to the Bay Area. I tell
her about Pam Rose, Chuck Cannon, and
Chuck Jones and the bewilderment goes away and excitement sets
in. Now WE can't wait!
Over
three weeks later the night we've been waiting for FINALLY arrives and
we're off to the concert,
which they present "in the round", at Berkeley's famous Freight and
Salvage Coffee House
(GREAT acoustics and sound system). The house MC, "The Dude"
(that's his name, really! Remember ... this is Berkeley, ok?)
introduces them and I'm ready to give
them a standing ovation right off the bat just for coming out our way,
but I
contain my enthusiasm so I don't embarrass my sweetheart. Chuck,
Pam and Chuck take the stage and introduce themselves, beginning to
share some life stories while they
fine tune their guitars, then 2½ hours of continuous music
begins to flow with Chuck
Cannon's "We
Were In Love"
(Toby Keith), followed by Pam Rose with "I’ll
Still Be Loving You" (Restless Heart, and
co-written by one of my favorite
songwriters, Mary Ann Kennedy), and Chuck Jones finishes the first
round with "Love
A Little Longer"
(Diamond Rio).
Back
to Chuck Cannon and "I Love The Way You
Love Me" (John
Michael Montgomery), Pam shares one of her "Morpheus" cuts, "Please Don't Make Me
Say Goodnight",
and Chuck Jones sings one that Mark Wills has just recorded, "What She Sees In Me".
On
they go, round after round,
harmonizing and playing together, telling personal stories along the
way,
saying how much they love California and that they plan (not hope, but
PLAN) on
coming back for another tour in a few months (YES!), playing hit after
hit,
along with some very personal songs that THEY'RE going to make famous
through
their OWN recordings. Pam recently released "Morpheus", Chuck Jones is about
to release "Inexpressible", and
Chuck Cannon will release his sometime between next fall and winter
(hopefully!)
For
those of us in the Northern California Songwriter's Association who
attended last September's
Conference and heard Steve Seskin sing "Pictures" (what a GREAT story
behind that song!),
well, Steve's co-writer was Chuck Jones, and when Chuck began to
introduce the
song he asked if Steve was in the house, but Steve unfortunately had to
leave
early. It's the title track on John Michael Montgomery's latest
album, and as Chuck began to sing I flashed
back to our Conference ... what a great experience! OK ... a
shameless plug ... for those of you who
don't belong to the NCSA, and I don't care where you live, you
SHOULD! It's one of the premiere songwriter's organizations in
the industry and
is highly praised by "those in the know" in Nashville and other top
music centers nationwide. Check into it! Besides, some
great new announcements are about to be made that you don't want to
miss!)
OK,
back to the show ... I could go on and on and list all the songs they
sang and who took them up the
charts (or who will SOON be taking them up the charts), but you'll just
have to catch
them, or any of the other groups of NU performers that are branching
out across
the country to spread their message. Be
sure to check out their website (listed below) to see who's coming near
you and when, and then get the word out to give your whole support to
this
great movement. In the end, it'll benefit ALL songwriters.
As
the home page on their website says, " ... the Nashville
Underground
Record Collective, [is] a place where the finest performing songwriters
[can]
record their original versions of the hit songs they've penned for
other
artists, as well as those more personal songs that belong exclusively
to their
own artist voices. The artists have complete creative control and
retain ownership
of their masters."
OK,
did you catch that last line?!?! I repeat ... "THE ARTISTS HAVE
COMPLETE CONTROL AND RETAIN OWNERSHIP OF THEIR MASTERS."
FINALLY! An answer to the big shot conglomerates who've taken
over the whole
music industry, putting a stranglehold on everything truly creative
from radio to records and seemingly drying up the very life-blood
that's fed the
industry so well for so many years. I'm not
going to get into my opinions about that tragedy in this column this
month (I'll leave that for a later time, though I will say that
Courtney Love
did a superb job in addressing that issue in an article for Salon some
time
ago. Plus, I've been on the radio side of the
equation and witnessed the horrible results of the FCC rulings in the
mid-90's.)
The
Nashville Underground is the
premiere forerunner of a movement that will swell as more and more
songwriters
realize what a powerful voice they have when they pull together to give
the
listeners and the music buying public what they truly want … respect,
honesty,
and integrity returned to the music industry!
Check
them out at www.nashvilleunderground.com
Two
tickets for a great evening with three of Nashville's greats:
$30.00
Up-front
center seats: Awesome!!!
The
chance to chat with them afterwards and get autographs: FREE
The
chance to have Nashville come to YOU: Priceless!
Copyright © 2006 by Jace
Carlton
Jace
Carlton
lives in the Nashville, TN area and is a member of NSAI. A
Freelance Writer /
Photographer, Poet, Author, and former Radio DJ, he now enjoys a career
as a Songwriter, and a
collaborator much in demand predominantly in the Country genre, but
also enjoys occasionally writing for A/C, Pop, R&B, Smooth Jazz,
and
Cabaret.
As a Freelance Writer he has contributed reviews on new CD's to online
newsletters and regularly contributed book and concert reviews along
with personal commentary on the music industry to Nashville's Songwriter's
Connection e-Zine.
Jace is also the creator of the Change Your Stars! website
and its
companion daily motivational / inspirational e-mail message that's read
by over 14,000 people all over the world. For a free subscription
click here and you'll be added within 24 hours. Privacy Statement
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