Rock That Country (The CD)

Rock That Country took a lifetime to make. I wrote my first song on my 18th birthday. Well, co-wrote it anyway with a good friend of mine, the late Paul Kaufman. He was ten years my senior and a hell of a guitarist. He also had a voice that sounded a lot like Elvis Presley at times.

He and I were laying around my flat and pretty much just slowly getting drunk. He brought over a 12-pack of beer and his acoustic guitar. Once we had our "buzz" on, he started strumming this tune he wrote, but had no lyrics to. Off the top of my head, I started singing. He paused after about a minute and asked to start over. Unbeknownst to me, he turned on my tape recorder and recorded the session. We goofed around with it for about an hour or so. He liked the lyrics i put to the tune and with the help of the recorder, we wrote the lyrics.

The song was called "The Hillbilly Cowboy Song". We would go on over the next few years - when I would come back from leave from the military - write another dozen songs. Our best song, to me anyway, was a ballad called "You're My Everything." We both contributed on the lyrics on that one. However, his favorite of our songs was a tune called "Heartbreak Hotel". Another one which he and I both contributed the lyrics. The music to our songs was all his. I wrote the lyrics to a few of our caaborations, one of which was like a follow up to our first song which we called "Hillbilly Cowboy (All By Yourself)". I actually have a cassette tape from a jam session we held on my first visit on military leave. We recorded from his home studio over a course of about 20 straight hours. We got pretty liquored up during this session, but we had sung all 13 songs we wrote together.

Paul passed away about four or five years after I got out of the military from a heart-attack. He drank himself to death after the passing of his father and mother years earlier. The reason he drank so much was to kill the feeling of a broken heart from a woman.

As for me, from the first time he and I wrote that first song together, I started writing poetry/lyrics by the handful. At least one a day, often times more. I would hear the music in my head. 90 percent of all my poetry has music to them in my head. It wasn't until around 2000 before I finally was able to do something about it. I contacted a man by the name of Brian Preston who owns his own studio. By 2008, I had finally put togehter enough tracks to make a CD. This occured when i learned about a company called "CD Baby". By Spetember of 2010, I had finally had my CD.

The first song I ever recorded in the studio was the song "Whispers In The Wind" which is sung by Jill Rinehart. Her husband, Mark Rinehart, would also contribute to singing several songs on the CD. Other singers on the CD include Ron Rhodus, Cathy Donovan (who is married to the original bass player of the hit musical group, "The Cars" and later played for the group, "The Outfield") And a girl named Christy Gains.

I got some lead guitar from an amazing guitarist named Kent Robbins, and from my producer, Brian Preston.

The song "Dancing On The Moon" I wrote for my younger sister when she was 16 years old. She also inspired the song "Whispers In The Wind" when she told me of her secret crush on a boy at school. When i suggested she tell this boy she likes him, she adamantly refused, saying that she did not want to risk losing him as a friend to tell him that she was in love with him. Later that evening, I penned the song.

The song "Jennifer's Eyes" was actually written for a girl named Erica Campbell. It was originally titled "Erica's Eyes". I wrote it for her to get her boyfriend jealous. It did the trick. When I went to record it, I decided to change the name to Jennifer because I thought it would be more feminine.

My favorite song on the CD is "In The Style Of James Dean". I wrote it on a Saturday morning while at work, driving a front-end loader for a recycling company. I was hung over from the night before, and the song was to reflect the night before while partying at a local night-club.

"The Ultimate High" was written for a girl I used to date. She died in an auto accident and lumbered around for a year or two like a lost sheep over her death.

The song "With Every Beat Of My Heart" was actually written as the love theme for my characters Zenakis Vinzant and Debbie Hines in my third novel "Of The Light". So in the event Hollywood wants to make it into a movie, I have the love ballad to go with it.

"It Never Changes" was written for a nurse at the hospital after I had my auto accident. She rejected my advances and because of that, a song was brought into this world. LOL

"This Pain (Flowers In The Dark)" was written for a girl I met in Iowa who came to Ohio to live with me. She was also an exotic dancer.and about 15 years my junior. She was very much into herself (with good reason) as she had one rocking body. But she was a red-head and very tempermental. We had an argument one night where she said that "I was lucky to be with her" and so, I wrote her that song. I also broke up with her weeks later by sleeping with her best friend (also a dancer) and making sure she would walk in on us on Sunday morning. My last words to her as I watched her packing her things to leave was, "Luck has nothing to do with it, bitch. It's all charm. 100 percent Southern boy charm." She more or less requested that I go have sexual relations with myself and left. Last I heard, she moved back to Iowa and was still dancing with poles.

"Can't Say No" was a song I wrote for my miliatry friend (Glenn) and his girlfriend at the time (Bonnie). Most of, if not all of, the lyrics were taken from their argument one night after spending the evening drinking at a bar. Needless to say, they broke up, but Bonnie became like a sister to me in the follwoing two years and I became like an Uncle to her two children. Glenn remained my friend all the way up until my discharge from the military, although, we were not as close as we once were before he and Bonnie broke up.

"Shades Of Black" was a song I wrote for a friend of mine who was stationed on my ship, the USS Independence (CV-62) From his jail cell, he told me he came back from one of our deployments and when he walked into the bedroom of his home, he found his wife in bed with his best friend. (They weren't expecting him for a few more days) he ended up going to the closet and getting his gun. he killed his friend, but let his wife live in so that she could live with the memory and guilt of her "cheating ways".

"Desperate Hearts" was a song I wrote for a girl who worked at an office supply store that I used to partonize on a fairly regular basis. And "Rock That Country" was just a song I wrote driving back to Columbus, Ohio from Kingston, Ohio on a Saturday afternoon after visiting with my parents. I decided to name the CD after that song because a lot of people say that my songs are a throw back to old time country, back in the days when it really rocked. Not the country fluff they play today.

I am a couple of tracks away from my 2nd CD, "Judas Wept". In recent years, I kind of slowed down a bit with my music to focus more on my books. Plus, I just kind of got the "burn out" feeling. I spend about 7 to 15 hours for each song in the studio, but I spend about 70 to 150 hours to write the songs at home. It is very draining of my mental energy to not only write poetry and songs, but to also write books.

I'm not sure when my next CD will get completed. You can hear the songs from "Rock That Country" CD and the songs that will appear on my next one. They are posted on my Youtube Channel TheCarrollBryant.