Marcus Hummon Changed Country Music Forever

Marcus Hummon Changed Country Music Forever

[Speaker 3]

Welcome to an exclusive look at country music royalty, Grammy-winning songwriter Marcus Hummond. Born to a diplomat father, Marcus roamed Italy, Africa, and beyond before conquering Nashville. From Williams College stages to the Bluebird Café, he penned timeless hits like The Chick's Cowboy Take Me Away, Sarah Evans' Born to Fly, and Rascal Flatts' Bless the Broken Road, earning a 2005 Grammy for Best Country Song.

Collaborating with legends like Winona Judd, Tim McGraw, and Alabama, his lyrics shaped an era. A 2019 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, he's also a multi-instrumentalist, opera composer with Surrender Road, Broadway creator of Warrior, and film scorer for the doc The Last Songwriter, featuring Garth Brooks and Jason Isbell. In this interview, Marcus reveals his global roots, hit-making secrets, and advice for aspiring songwriters.

Stay tuned for the stories behind the songs. Now here's The Trot with Marcus. Sit back and enjoy.

[Speaker 2]

What's your favorite thing to write, though? I mean, because you have such a broad brush. Is there anything favorite, or you just go, because if you're going to write a musical, that's completely different than sitting down and writing a country song.

[Speaker 1]

Well, they do have some things in common. I mean, the building blocks of what I do and have done with my life is first and foremost a songwriter. I think, you know, I come from songs.

And I really sort of live, my thing is I always say it's not so much a vocation, but more an avocation or even a calling that I think of songwriting as really kind of a way of life. And I read recently a little article on, you know, Jason Isbell is probably one of our top, what I think of new, of course, he's been around for a while, but I think that this generation is discovering a brilliant songwriter in a way that I think reflects more on how I grew up. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and I think the greatest era of songwriting.

But he made a comment, he said, you know, I'm just paraphrasing, but he said, I write songs to explain the world to myself. And I thought, well, you know, fundamentally, that's it right there, in a sense, you know, everything we do, everything we experience, everything we feel passes prismatically kind of through the glass of songs. And I think when I think of moving on into stuff like theater or technically opera, you know, which is which is to say, doing an evening, an entire show that's all music, whatever form, the various forms that I use, those are kind of the extension of the world of song to me.

And so I'd say, you know, that's probably first and foremost, and which gets into a larger, you know, thought, which is, you know, what, you know, sort of what is a song? And that's an ongoing, you know, I'm 64 years old, and I'm still kind of discovering and at times, I've just sort of mystified by what the process is like, how, you know, what it is to sit at a piano morning after morning, or guitars, pick up a banjo, and then all of a sudden, something begins to happen. And I still kind of live for that, you know, once once I got started down that road was really kind of in college took over me, I wasn't in college for music, I didn't think I was going to go in and didn't have a perception of myself as going to, you know, being a professional musician.

And then once it started to take over, it's like a, you know, like a virus. And it, I'm afraid it's still with me.

[Speaker 2]

No, here's the thing, I believe. I believe that you're blessed, usually at an early age, you're touched, you're given this gift that not everybody gets. And it doesn't matter what era or what music you play, if you've gotten that creativity, you can't explain it.

I mean, and I understand what you're saying, because every time I start writing a song, and I have it done, and it's all finished, and I go, okay, where did that come from? How did that come about? And then you sit back and you go, okay, well, it came kind of from whatever.

But I also believe that you're given it. And if you're given it, then you have the curse, which means you'll never go away. If you really love it, which we both do, it doesn't matter.

You probably get one done project, one done, which we'll talk about your project in a second. But then you probably go, oh, wait a minute, I could do this other project. Which is completely over here, but people want to pigeonhole.

Okay, you wrote all these famous songs, but now you're doing an opera. What? I understand it, because it keeps you going, because of the fact that you're doing something different all the time.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. It is interesting, too, though, when in the world that I'm in, I do see some songwriters sort of of my generation, occasionally I'm running into situations where they have stopped. And that's tough, you know, it's tough to figure out, I mean, without naming any names.

But like some folks that I'm quite close to, and I would say even a few folks, I think are some of the best songwriters really living in roots music anyway, and really slowing down to a halt, or just calling it. And I'm not really sure when that's going to happen. You know, I figure I'm probably not one of those guys, I guess.

Although, you know, I do understand that, particularly if it comes, you get to a feeling, if you're an older writer, and if you begin to feel that what you're doing has no connection to popular culture, you know, given that popular culture kind of birthed the songwriting experience that we think of, we think of rock and roll, blues, I mean, you know, maybe, I don't know when it would have begun. But I think of it as, you know, the last 75 years, for example, I mean, if I look at that, and you feel like, well, you know, I'm, you drift into this part of your life, and, and, you know, you're, if you're, if you're writing for a publishing company, if you live in the Nashville culture, the Nashville culture is co-writing, right? And it's, and it's a fantastic thing.

I do a lot of both. You know, I write alone, and certainly all the theater and all that. But, but I actually, I grew up as a writer in this town.

And the whole word for a third, you know, consciousness, which is a very different thing, you know, the idea that whoever's in the room, you know, you don't, you don't word count, you don't count notes, you don't count, you know, songs emerge magically. And they emerge based on the energies that are there. And so everybody gets a straight split.

And that creates a kind of a democratic, egalitarian universe, you know, where, and, and the best of us don't, you know, don't begrudge that you, you look at that as this is the bonding that made, this is the best thing about the Nashville experience as writers, right? But as you're in those rooms, and of course, you know, gosh, you're so much older. And, you know, I can only imagine, yeah, the vast majority of the song still, I mean, still like 90% of everything written in popular music in almost any genre is about love.

And I mean, you know, as in love, as in Eros, and as in the age of 15 to about 25 or seven. And that was a long damn time ago for me. And I've written, you know, you think about, well, let's talk about unrequited love.

Well, you know, I've got hundreds, you know, and, and so how to stay new, how to how to listen, how to find new things, but also, you know, the joy to have experiencing when you find a young band, for example. Gosh, there's this group I just started writing with called Cherry Vance, the Cherry Vance band. And I knew the dad, there's a it's a guy and two sisters, and they're kind of based out, they're sort of based out of Oklahoma.

They just this week in the Nashville scene, one that were named as the second best new band in Nashville, which given given the amount of music in Nashville, that's actually saying something. I didn't even know they were that well known. I mean, even locally.

Right, right, right. But and I knew the young man I knew growing up because his dad is Zach Malloy, lead singer of the Nixons and was an Oklahoma band and and then songwriter. And he and I, we've written, but I've also done festivals, particularly the Oklahoma Festival with him for many years.

And I knew his other son was one of our son's best friends. So I've just kind of seen him emerging. And then he he started seeing Liv Haynes and then her sister Gigi electric guitar grunge meets folk meets, you know, they're just as fresh as can be.

And they've got that kind of fearless thing, like they don't know from what you know, they don't know if they're doing something wrong, they wouldn't know anyway. And consequently, they're fearless and but also extremely personable and kind of. Anyway, I just find I find that still really interesting to me because.

I'm able to to fit in because I'm always just generating new melodic and lyric ideas by nature, and they seem to want I found a place in their lives, so that's still fun. But I definitely can see, you know, occasionally when you run into an older songwriter, they'll be like, well, you know, nobody cares anymore.

[Speaker 2]

And, you know, and after a while that can that can settle in and become a kind of depression. So to me, you're kind of a mentor type, even though you write great tunes and you're still writing stuff. You know what's you know, the right way, I guess, is the way to do things, not that, you know, if you've written enough songs, it's like, OK, it's kind of like being a producer.

Yeah, you know, you're sitting there and you're going like, OK, that's great. But have you ever thought about doing it this way? Not saying not saying, OK, that really isn't going to work, but try this.

But I want to go back to what you said earlier, though. Yeah. The people that don't want to write anymore because they they are burnt.

They can't they can't sell their music. They don't think they can sell it. It's it's not worth it anymore.

I mean, I'm just kind of curious if I know when we get older, we kind of don't want to do certain things. But do you think that's any of it? They just don't want to fight the battle anymore.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, I do think I'm shifting where I can put some power in this thing. I do think. Yeah, Rick, I think that is that can be part of it, you know, and it's hey, look, there's a legitimacy to it as well because.

It is a different world, you know, you get singles nowadays if you're writing and you're creating things and they become streaming singles, even on major label acts, right. And if you fight that battle, however it is you do. You know, however it is you move in the world, but if you have these successes, they by and large, they're not going out and becoming terrestrial singles.

So that's still the money for writers and for the publishing community. So we've been gutted in the age of streaming. That's the negative.

The positive, of course, is that that there's so many more. There's so much more access for artists. There's so many more possibilities out there than there were when I was coming up.

There was one way to do it. I mean, you know, like you'd move to L.A., New York or Nashville and you start playing and you start playing live, period. And and you would either try to engage labels to come here or just by sheer osmosis or something.

They would if you were in the right place, you know, the right person could just drift into a room and your job was to build a local following. You know, your job is to make it where you were. And even if you're in Nashville, it's still a town with 17 universities and a seven mile radius.

So there's a lot of people and they're just a lot of young people looking for music as they still are. And so that was the only world that that I knew. And then, you know, and then once you got into the spin of the major labels, then that was an odd creature, too, because you you have to become a kind of a corporate five year plan and a lot of money is getting thrown at things.

But if you don't start selling records right away, then you're, you know, there's you're dropped and there's no development. There's not necessarily a long plan. And and nowadays it is conceivable that you can be just ignored by record companies.

And next thing you know, you're filling the Ryman when you're in town.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, because they don't they don't want to deal with them. A lot of people I deal with.

[Speaker 1]

A lot of people don't. You're right.

[Speaker 2]

They have been on a label and they don't want to be on the label anymore. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. Stuff and stuff to make money with a label.

[Speaker 2]

I mean, yeah, the royalties are the splits are. Yeah. I mean, they're not very much anymore.

And so a lot of people to me, they want to be independent and they go, I don't want to deal with them. I don't want to tell me what to do. You still love to have their money.

[Speaker 1]

Right now. Yeah, that's the fun part. They can bank.

They can bankroll more production options. You know, you can you know, you can have maybe a string section on something and it doesn't have to be a cent or whatever. Yeah.

But yeah, I see that sometimes with people that upstream that have these new deals where they have some financing, they got a label or they create a label. And after whatever you've paid out in a video or some maybe a publicist and whatever comes in, you're you're going to 50 50 split. And that's really not a bad way.

That's not a bad business model. If you hit a lick, you hit a lick, you know, a knockout. If you get one of those multimillion stream things, that's you know, that's like real money that you get to keep.

[Speaker 2]

And then you have your own label or you did at one time or you still do.

[Speaker 1]

So right now, like the songs for Emily Project, I'm actually on my I'm on my son's label. So my son, Levi Haman, who's done really great work and he has a writing buddy who's a writer, producer and one of the and really one of the top mix guys right now to name Eric Arges just did Colby Kelly's duet records produced it and it very successful. But they started a small label and they signed a young lady here in town.

Ava Claire is very talented at Belmont. And then this Kira Leis out of L.A. It was just she just won some big tick tock award. But she's quite interesting.

Almost Fiona Appleskin. Oh, I love really. Yeah.

Real far out. And then they then they brought me in, you know, and it was, you know, of course, I'm Levi's dad. But and I, you know, I was starting to record these Emily Dickinson things again for my own just because I wanted to.

And Levi felt that it had value. And, you know, before long, we were we worked on a deal. And it's been it's been a very interesting thing to have your son be your A&R director.

And, you know, plus it's this age. So he's like constantly telling me, you know, get, you know, get content, you know, give me some vertical content. I actually remember when I first started out, I decided to make a pilgrimage to Emily Dickinson's homestead and went to Amherst and and I was out there.

I got there, drove in Western Mash. You know, I got this rent a car and I get there and it's just before the last tour. It's like five o'clock starting to rain.

And I call Levi and he's like, I don't care if it's raining as you get your ass up there and you get me some footage. And, you know, and we've had a lot of fun and now we're on the first ballot for the Grammys. And that's fun.

I mean, sure, we won't probably won't get it, but we won't get the second ballot. But we're but at least we got that far and had some fun duets. Daryl Scott, my buddy, a wonderful duet with Mary Chapin Carpenter and a recent one with Sarah Evans.

And that, too, is nominated in the first ballot, that song. But so it's been it's been a long time since I've done a record, an actual record record where it's just as an artist. I've done several musicals and a little opera in the last decade, which are like double albums, to be honest with you.

They can be 25 song length kind of things. But it's different. It's a different experience when the artist, when you decide to do a record.

And, you know, and again, maybe it's a generational thing. Like I come from the age of LPs and, you know, we like breathlessly go to the store and we buy the latest, right? We look at the paintings and we read whatever he wrote and, you know, Joni Mitchell stuff.

So I still kind of look at the look at the album as, you know, a real thing, not just a collection of singles. Got this show coming up for the label. We're going to do this big show and Kira's flying in from L.A. and I'll do some Emily stuff. But I'm also there's a I've been wanting to do I haven't done I I'd like to do like a Rolling Stone for the for the audience. And I wonder, you know, if people. That's such a famous song that I'm assuming they will, but they it's hard to explain like what that meant, you know, but what I have to say of my own songs, there's three songs of mine that I pretty much have found that if I play in a room where people have anything to do with, say, country or kind of roots music, I haven't run into the position of the wall of like, I mean, people know the songs.

I mean, I you know, I'm grateful for that. They certainly don't know everything I've had recorded. But, you know, at all.

But if I play Bless the Broken Road, that that's still happening. I'm like, that song is still living. It's still having a life in a way.

And I've noticed that Cowboy Take Me Away also seems to be those two songs. I haven't yet run into that. Like, you know, what the hell is he doing?

You know, or what I do get a lot is that people think I'm doing covers, you know, but that's the old. That's the truth. That's the reality of the songwriting.

That's the damn truth. Or I do. The other one is Born to Fly.

I find Born to Fly still is something that seems to be remembered. And, you know, and also just from a standpoint of royalties, like looking at the world of that, those those songs are still doing they're doing well. They're fine.

You know, I keep thinking, you know, Bless the Broken Road was written. I mean, that's 28 years old. I mean, that the original the first recording of that course is the Dirt Band because it was written the the writing part of it was Jeff Hanna and I and when it was an opportunity to get on the Dirt Band.

OK, yeah. So that's that's the background. That's where it wasn't written for.

I mean, it was many, many years till Rascal Flatts did it. And there were and there there was even an artist that did a single on country radio with it. Melody Crittenden on Asylum Records.

[Speaker 2]

I did see I read about that.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. And I did the first piano version. It was absolutely written on piano.

I mean, I brought it. I brought the verse and a chorus, the rough verse and a chorus to Jeff on piano. It's a very specific piano part.

But my version, which, you know, not that many people heard because nobody bought my record when I was on Columbia, the Columbia record. It was one of the great, expensive demo sessions of all time. That's like half that record got recorded and then like three or four songs were singles.

But I couldn't get it. I mean, I couldn't get arrested at radio. Like I think I read somewhere back in the day that is like the entire state of Texas like never played anything on.

And I have family in Texas.

[Speaker 2]

But, you know, I sit here and listen to the story about this song and I, you know. When did you realize? I mean, obviously, you wrote it with co-wrote it and then you when did you realize that, oh, my, this thing is this thing's got this running.

It's not just walking or crawling. Yeah. And now you're here years later.

And I always said, if I could just write one song that everybody would like, kind of like you're playing LaPaul and Simon, Simon, if I could write a bridge over troubled or just one, that's all I need is one. And just have one of those that play, you know, that tune you have, just like you said and the other two you mentioned, it's still got it's still got it. And do you ever have the feeling that when you finished it up, that would ever be that you'd be talking about it almost 30 years later?

No, I don't know.

[Speaker 1]

I don't think. No, I mean, I remember thinking. I remember this a long time ago, but I do remember thinking this is both Jeff and I thought it was really good, but I do remember that when I first handed in the demo was just me on a piano.

I remember my publisher at that time was BMG and my publisher. I remember saying something to the effect of it's nice, but, you know, it's it's a little too gospely. And, you know, in the in that era, this would have been like ninety one or two or whatever.

Like you didn't want to you didn't want a song that was CCM like that wouldn't cool, you know, unless it was. But I mean, it was like it. And the funny thing was just the the genesis of the song was really about a conversation with Bobby Boyd, you know, in a bar.

And he was talking about divorce and pretty country, country stuff, you know, in a way. And I think just having the word God in it, God bless. And I remember being a little bit like I was a little bummed that that that was the take on it, because I but then I and I also remember that when they cut it.

When the Dirt Band cut it on the album Acoustic, there was piano in it, but it wasn't something that it wasn't quite as central as I'd kind of hoped. And and I love Rob's voice. I mean, Bob's voice.

But I particularly love Jeff, you know, who I was my I wrote with. And and I was kind of thinking he would sing it. So I had sort of mixed feelings, but I also felt like, well, that that's a success.

There it is. That's over. That's the done.

That's it. I think it was really Jeff later on who realized that they were playing that song on the with the Dirt Band. And he was noticing that people.

You know, without it being a single, without it having had a lot of exposure, he was noticing that there was a connection in audiences and there was something about the song. And I, of course, I think that we inadvertently had kind of tapped into a blood, the zeitgeist of how we love today. We love later, you know, as young people.

We by the time we're 25, you know, we've probably lived in college with somebody we've had, you know, and then they're more often there are people who are getting divorced and remarried or second marriages, et cetera. And and in that sense, it's very, you know, I mean, I couldn't tell you the number of people. It was just last night I was playing the show.

I did it and probably eight people came up and said it was their wedding song. And I know, too, from even before, because my wife's a minister and even before it ever became a hit, I was asked to play that at weddings that she presided over over and over again. And and so it did become a thing between Jeff and I.

We we began to believe, I think, by the late 90s that it needed to have this. It needed a penultimate experience. And we thought maybe it would be Bette Midler was looking at it at one time.

And. I think a lot of artists were looking at it, but the Flats guys, the Rascal Flats guys, that was kind of curious because I was writing with them for their first couple albums and I had, I guess, three cuts or whatever. And I remember that the guys would say to me they knew the song.

And again, this was a testament to the song. It was just sort of something that for some reason, even before it was a big, you know, a big a big Grammy winner and all that, it was like people kind of knew it and they were like, we're going to do that song someday. And I'd always be like, yeah, yeah.

You know what? Stop telling me that you're going to do the damn song. Just do the song.

Do it. Yeah, just do it. I don't want to hear about it anymore.

Stop telling me that you really dig it, you know? Yeah. And then that third record, which is the record that ended their time at Lyric Street, you know, they were kind of about to have a pretty famous breakup with their management.

They had one of the first 360 degree kind of relationships in Nashville. Now that's very common, of course. But at the time and they were about to just, you know, that was about to break up.

They had their album. They were the hottest band in country music and they put their first single out. It was a song called Feels Like Today.

And I love that song, by the way. It's an English writer. I can't think of his name now, but it went to like 12 or 15, which for them was like that was a huge disappointment and was kind of part of the whole experience of that their time at Lyric Street and with this management producing team was ending.

And I think there was what I was told was that there was a possibility they would can the entire record. Of course, that record subsequently became their biggest record, but they didn't know that. So they went back and they said, well, let's just do one more song.

Let's go back and cut one more song because we just we need something to kind of, you know, hit that like inaugurate and then you can hit you hit all the various rhythms. We don't have that first single. And they decided to try this song, Bless the Broken Road.

And I remember I was out of the country and didn't know about this stuff. And when I got back in the country, I went over to BMG and they said, you know, did you have you heard? Have you heard this damn thing?

And I'm like, what do you know? What are you talking about? You know, and and.

And it was one of those things, too, like the like songwriters often talk about, like if you hear your song, you pull over the side of the road, you know? Yeah, yeah, that is absolutely true for me with Blessed Broken Road. The first time I heard it, I thought it was so good, Gary.

I mean, everything about it, like, you know, a lot of times their production for Rascal Flatts through the years has been, you know, heavy layered, particularly, you know, particularly in a way when they got with Dan Huff, because he's so good at that. Yeah. But that's not really.

Anyway, that's not what happened with Blessed Broken Road. You can hear the piano, you hear the one electric acoustic guitar. It's very it's there's great space.

There's a lot of emptiness. It's very vibey at pockets in a certain way. Gary, you know, sang the living you know what out of it and and also didn't over saying it.

I mean, he just kind of he's capable of crazy gymnastics vocally, but that doesn't lend itself to a song like Blessed Broken Road. Right. That song, Blessed Broken Road is built for it's built on a melody.

It's built to be sung in a different, you know, in a more in a little more honest fashion. And anyway, I just I have to say, you know, and it's not true. It's true that sometimes you hear stuff that people record of yours and you're always happy for it.

You're always grateful. Oh, sure. But you don't always dig it.