Today, we are so thrilled and honored that our dear friend, author and songwriter extraordinaire, Alice Randall, is our guest blogger. She is one of the most interesting and articulate people we know, as her blog entry will demonstrate! Alice is always witty, insightful and creative and we are sure you will enjoy getting to know her.
If you haven’t done so already, please purchase Alice’s latest book, Ada’s Rules here. We have our copies and can’t wait to start reading. Like all of her novels, we know we’ll love it and think you will as well. We can’t wait to hear what you think!
“Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I like best about Nashville—and it’s that we help each other. My favorite story about this involves two amazing women Matraca Berg and Trisha Yearwood.
Almost two decades ago but not quite, I got an opportunity to write a song for a television show. I asked my friend Matraca who had written several number one songs if she would help me. She quickly agreed and we sat down to write. And we sat down to write. And we didn’t get much of anything done. We both knew it. I thanked her for her time and said I would recommend the show use a classic country hit where our song was to have been. I woke up the morning I was supposed to be turning in our new hit song and I was depressed. I took my daughter to school depressed. An hour or so later the school called saying my daughter needed something I had forgotten. I was failing as a mother and as a songwriter. I got in the shower and started scolding myself. I said, in my head, “You’ve got a picture of your Mama in heels and pearls and you’re trying to make it in your daddy’s world—and it’s never gonna work.” Then I said that same thing, right out loud except instead of saying the never work part I said, “you’re an American girl.”
I raced over to Matraca’s house with those few lines. She let me in. I don’t think it was an hour later we had it all. Days later Wynonna recorded it. Shortly after that, the day we were supposed to do overdubs and master the record and provide it to the television show, Wynonna collapsed on a plane. The song that almost wasn’t, wasn’t again. Then it was. I remembered my friend Trisha Yearwood was recording not far away an album of her own. With no preamble I ran over to that other studio. I told her every syllable of the truth and I begged her come sing our record—sing in Wynonna’s key and sing our song like she had been our choice from the first. And she did. She left her studio to come save my good chance.
Not long after that record spent two weeks at number one. And none of it would have happened in any town but Nashville where friends still help each other raise barns even if the barns are hit records or fancy healthy organic soap companies. This is a town of creativity and community and integrity and that is why I love it so and for so, so, so, long.
And that’s why I’m guest blogging. Deena is a good friend with a good product. And when we say good down here we mean great. We mean fine. We mean as it should be. And I guess that means this story is really about three amazing women.“
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