Muzikmafia: Community, Identity, and Change from the Nashville Scene to the Popular Mainstream David B

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2007 Muzikmafia: Community, Identity, and Change from the Nashville Scene to the Popular Mainstream David B. Pruett

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF MUSIC

MUZIKMAFIA: COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, AND CHANGE FROM THE

NASHVILLE SCENE TO THE POPULAR MAINSTREAM

DAVID B. PRUETT

A dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded Fall Semester, 2007

______

Frank Gunderson Professor Directing Dissertation

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Barry Faulk Outside Committee Member

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Dale A. Olsen Committee Member

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

“Love Everybody…” Kenny Alphin – at least once in most conversations that we have shared since June 2004

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people whom I would like to thank for their assistance with and guidance through this project. First and foremost, I would like to express sincere thanks to my new friends and family within the MuzikMafia’s inner circle: Cory, John, Kenny, Jon, James, Rachel, Pino, Chance, Max, Dean, Troy, Shannon, Mandy, Fred, Shanna, Damien, Adam, Brian, Ethan, SWJ, Alaska Dan, Sean, Jerry, D.D., Gretchen, Jules W., Paul, Ashley, Marc, Greg, Bill, Charlie, Jon A., Jeff, Deanna, “Mama” Alphin, Shawna P., Butter, Isaac, Virginia D., and Vicky M. Second, I would like to acknowledge numerous scholars from the International Country Music Conference who taught me literally how to “look down” on Music Row from our annual meetings at Belmont University. Specifically James, Don, Pete, and Erika have encouraged this study of the MuzikMafia and have welcomed the frequent presentation of my findings. Travis Stimeling, my partner in crime, has contributed much to the development of many ideas found throughout this study. In addition, I owe special thanks to Charles K. Wolfe, who passed away much too soon, for his continual support and feedback on this and my earlier projects. Several of my colleagues at Middle Tennessee State University deserve recognition. My close friend Stephen Shearon was the first person to emphasize to me the importance of this research. Steve’s continual support over the years has guided me through the tough times and has inspired me to keep refining my ideas and approaches. My colleague and director George Riordan, who asked me each week for three years how the research was going, has earned my respect, trust, friendship, and heartfelt appreciation. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Matt Baumer who accompanied me to our first MuzikMafia show that took place on 15 June 2004. Fourth, I would like to thank my committee members Frank Gunderson, Dale Olsen, and Barry Faulk. Each possessed varying degrees of interest in my topic at the beginning but still encouraged me to flesh out the particulars, to develop my ideas, and to re-engage my subject matter from different angles. I owe Dale special thanks for his personal support over the years and for his Vorbild as an ethnomusicologist.

iv There are additional scholars to whom I would like to express my gratitude. The thoughts of Andrew Killick and Harry Berger, both of whom inspired me to engage popular music from an ethnomusicological perspective, underlie many facets of this research. Ellen Koskoff encouraged me to stand firm as an ethnomusicologist and to emphasize the information and understanding that I acquired through fieldwork. Jocelyn Neal helped me to think critically about both commercial country music and its scholarship. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Laura, who by now certainly knows more about the MuzikMafia than I do. I am indebted to her for her unconditional support, her thoughtful criticism, and her continual guidance throughout this research’s numerous stages.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... x List of Figures...... xii Abstract...... xiv

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Preface...... 1 Objectives ...... 3 Significance...... 4 Theoretical Framework and Literature Review ...... 7 Methodological Orientation and Source Reliability ...... 29 Nashville’s Musical Diversity: An Historical Overview...... 38 Organization of Dissertation...... 42 UNIT I: COMMUNITY 1. THE MUZIKMAFIA’S ORIGINS...... 47 Brief Biographies of the MuzikMafia’s Founding Godfathers...... 48 Creating the MuzikMafia...... 55 2. DEFINING THE MUZIKMAFIA...... 58 Defining the MuzikMafia ...... 58 The MuzikMafia as an Imagined Community ...... 67 The MuzikMafia as a Voluntary Association ...... 69 Structure and Polity of the MuzikMafia ...... 71 3. THE PUB OF LOVE ...... 78 The Pub of Love: Location and Atmosphere...... 79 Eyewitness Testimony ...... 82 Ethnographic Analogy ...... 85 Dyer Video Footage...... 90 UNIT II: IDENTITY 4. CASE STUDY: BIG & RICH AND COWBOY TROY...... 94 Preface...... 94

vi Background...... 94 Song Analysis: “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)” ...... 100 5. CASE STUDY: SHANNON LAWSON ...... 112 Brief Biography ...... 112 Song Analysis: “Smokin’ Grass”...... 115 6. CASE STUDY: CHANCE ...... 126 Background...... 127 Song Analysis: “I Came to Drink”...... 132 Southern Hip-Hop and the Dirty South ...... 145 7. CASE STUDY: DEAN HALL ...... 149 Background...... 149 Identity and Style ...... 152 Stage Comportment ...... 154 Song Analysis: “Kicked By a Mule” ...... 157 8. CASE STUDY: RACHEL KICE...... 166 Brief Biography ...... 166 Expressionism...... 170 Rachel’s Creative Process...... 171 Feedback Interview...... 173 9. CASE STUDY: JON NICHOLSON ...... 183 Image and Personality...... 184 Song Analysis: “Hero”...... 186 UNIT III: CHANGE 10. OCTOBER 2001 TO MARCH 2004: GROWING POPULARITY IN NASHVILLE AND BEYOND...... 200 Preface...... 200 The Pub of Love: An Attempt at Commercialization...... 202 The Demonbreun Street Roundabout...... 206 The Tin Roof...... 209 Two Doors Down...... 213 Cessation of Performances ...... 214

vii Dan McGuinness Pub ...... 218 11. MARCH THROUGH DECEMBER 2004: EMERGENCE INTO THE POPULAR MAINSTREAM ...... 222 The Move Back to Downtown...... 223 The Mercy Lounge...... 225 The Mafia Mizfits ...... 228 Debut Album Releases by Gretchen and Big & Rich ...... 231 The Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards ...... 234 Summer 2004 Tours...... 235 Bluesboro ...... 237 The Country Music Association (CMA) Awards ...... 240 The Chevrolet American Revolution Tour ...... 243 Other Televised Appearances ...... 244 12. 2005: THE SECOND WAVE...... 246 MuzikMafia TV...... 246 Raybaw Records ...... 249 CMA Music Festival 2005...... 255 National Tours ...... 256 The Chevrolet American Revolution Tour ...... 260 Televised Appearances ...... 262 Awards/Nominations ...... 263 Album Releases ...... 265 John Rich as a Songwriter/Producer...... 271 International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA) Annual Meeting ...... 273 CONCLUSION...... 277 Community ...... 278 Identity ...... 282 Change ...... 292 The MuzikMafia Dichotomy: The Social vs. the Commercial...... 323 Current Social Complexity ...... 325 Newest Members ...... 327

viii A MuzikMafia Show in 2007 ...... 328 APPENDICES APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ...... 330 APPENDIX B: Brief Biographies of Selected MuzikMafia Artists...... 332 James Otto...... 332 Gretchen Wilson ...... 332 Brian Barnett...... 333 Max Abrams...... 333 Pino Squillace ...... 334 Damien Horne...... 345 Jerry Navarro ...... 336 Elijah “D.D.” Holt ...... 336 Fred Gill...... 337 APPENDIX C: MuzikMafia Fan Survey and Results 2005 ...... 338 APPENDIX D: MuzikMafia Fan Survey and Results 2006...... 347 APPENDIX E: COPYRIGHT PERMISSIONS ...... 356 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 363 VIDEOGRAPHY...... 379 DISCOGRAPHY ...... 381 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 384

ix LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1. Text of the prelude to “Rollin’.”...... 101 Table 4.2. Text to verses and chorus of “Rollin’.” ...... 102 Table 4.3. Spanish text and translation of Troy’s rap interlude...... 110 Table 5.1. “Smokin’ Grass,” text of introduction...... 116 Table 5.2. “Smoking’ Grass,” text, form, and harmony...... 118 Table 6.1. “Pauline,” verse one...... 131 Table 6.2. “Pauline,” chorus...... 131 Table 6.3. “Pauline,” verse two...... 132 Table 6.4. “I Came to Drink,” text...... 133 Table 6.5. “Muddy Waters,” text...... 137 Table 7.1. Text and harmony of “The Sky is Crying,” verse one...... 156 Table 7.2. “Kicked by a Mule,” chorus’ text and harmony...... 159 Table 7.3. “Kicked by a Mule,” verse one text...... 161 Table 7.4. “Kicked by a Mule,” verses two, three and four...... 161 Table 7.5. “Kicked by a Mule,” verse five...... 162 Table 9.1. Form and text of “Hero.”...... 187 Table 11.1. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2004: all genres...... 236 Table 11.2. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2004: country music...... 237 Table 12.1. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2005: all genres...... 257 Table 12.2. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2005: country music...... 257 Table 12.3. Top country albums, artists, and sales in 2005...... 268 Table 12.4. Selected songs written or co-written by John Rich that peaked on Billboard’s Country Singles charts in 2005...... 272 Table 12.5. Albums that John Rich produced or co-produced in 2005...... 273 Table 13.1. MuzikMafia members born in the 1970s...... 283 Table 13.2. MuzikMafia members born in American South or in Texas...... 286 Table 13.3. MuzikMafia musicians who moved to Nashville in the 1990s...... 290 Table 13.4. Fan Survey: Fans’ definitions of the MuzikMafia...... 308

x Table 13.5. The MuzikMafia social collective vs. MuzikMafia as a commercial enterprise...... 323 Table 13.6. The MuzikMafia’s various commercial enterprises as of 2007...... 325 Table 13.7. The MuzikMafia’s membership as of summer 2007...... 327

xi LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 0.1: Map of downtown Nashville...... 19 Figure 0.2. Lower Broadway part of The District...... 20 Figure 0.3. The District as seen from the east...... 20 Figure 0.4. Map of Music Row...... 24 Figure 3.1. Photo of the Pub of Love and adjacent parking lot...... 79 Figure 3.2. Chorus melody and text to “Limo Larry”...... 91 Figure 4.1. “Rollin’” two-measure guitar riff...... 101 Figure 4.2. Text, melody, and harmony to verse 1 of “Rollin’.”...... 107 Figure 4.3. Text, melody, and harmony to the chorus of “Rollin’.”...... 108 Figure 4.4. Troy’s rap interlude in “Rollin’”: text and rhythm...... 108 Figure 6.1. Drumset rhythm for verses to “I Came to Drink.” ...... 138 Figure 6.2. “I Came to Drink,” verse one rhythm with text underlay...... 139 Figure 6.3. “I Came to Drink,” chorus, 2-beat drumset rhythm...... 141 Figure 6.4. “I Came to Drink,” chorus melody, harmony, and text...... 142 Figure 8.1. Photo of Grass River...... 175 Figure 8.2. Photo of opening text and positioning of Jon in Grass River...... 176 Figure 8.3. Photo of Grass River during Jon’s song “Seven Days.” ...... 177 Figure 8.4. Photo of Grass River during Jon’s song “Stereo.”...... 178 Figure 8.5. Photo of Grass River during “Grandma.” ...... 179 Figure 8.6. Photo of Grass River by the end of Jon’s song “Hero.”...... 180 Figure 8.7. Photo of Grass River during Jon’s song “Nothing.” ...... 181 Figure 10.1. Map of the Demonbreun Street Roundabout...... 206 Figure 10.2. Photo of Demonbreun Street as viewed from the east...... 207 Figure 10.3. Photo of Demonbreun Street as viewed from the west ...... 207 Figure 10.4. Photo of The Tin Roof (frontal view)...... 210 Figure 10.5. Map: Demonbreun Street Roundabout Area and Club Locations...... 214 Figure 10.6. Photo of Two Doors Down...... 214 Figure 10.7. Photo of Dan McGuinness Pub...... 218 Figure 11.1: Map of SoBro...... 223

xii Figure 11.2. Photo of the SoBro district of downtown Nashville...... 224 Figure 11.3. Map: MuzikMafia Locales in Nashville...... 225 Figure 11.4. Photo of Cannery Row...... 226 Figure 11.5. Photo of the Mercy Lounge at Cannery Row...... 226 Figure 11.6. Photo of Bluesboro-Nashville...... 238

xiii ABSTRACT

In this dissertation I examine the MuzikMafia, a distinct musical community that developed from a stylistically diverse Nashville scene into a social collective and commercial enterprise, both of which emphasize musical excellence and promote musical and artistic diversity. In order to understand the MuzikMafia more deeply, I explore three of its defining structures: community, identity, and change. Analysis of each aspect provides insight into what the MuzikMafia actually is, the role of music in the lives of its members, and the reasons behind the MuzikMafia’s period of commercial growth and development from 2001 through 2005. I observe how a shared musical and social ideology created a bond between several marginalized Nashville artists and how that bond, or rather its commodification, transformed the MuzikMafia into a significant part of the commercial mainstream. The dispossessed interact with the dominant structures of capitalist society in a variety of ways. Music serves as a medium of expression and often as an agent of social change through individual and group action. The MuzikMafia is an example of one such dispossessed group that eventually gained national and international popularity. I argue that, despite its numerous anti-establishment sentiments, the MuzikMafia confirms if not supports the existing hegemony of Nashville’s commercial music industry. Based upon participant observation, oral history fieldwork, and behind the scenes experiences among several platinum-selling artists, this research provides new insight into the study of popular music, presenting evidence that, not only is ethnomusicological fieldwork in the popular mainstream possible, but such research contributes much to the ongoing development of ethnomusicology and popular music studies.

xiv INTRODUCTION

Preface I arrived at the Mercy Lounge around 9:00 p.m.1 Admission was free as usual. Located in an underdeveloped area of downtown, the club was dimly lit. The creaky wooden stage and various wooden support posts contributed to the locale’s rustic interior. The noise from passing trains outside added to the other numerous ambient sounds from interpersonal conversations, the cracking of billiard balls, and the clanking of beer bottles. There were approximately 150 people present, only one-fourth of the club’s capacity. I passed the time by talking with MuzikMafia fans who had arrived early for the show’s scheduled start at 10:00 p.m. in addition to a few who were there for the first time. Things did not get underway until about 10:30 p.m. One of the MuzikMafia’s mottos is “You never know who’s gonna show,” to which I frequently add, “…or when they’re going to show.” I looked around the room and saw many familiar faces. The MuzikMafia has a dedicated fan base of approximately twenty to fifty people who regularly attend Tuesday night performances. The choice of day, time, and locale are intentional. The Mercy Lounge is more than five blocks from the tourist area of downtown Nashville, and Tuesday is “the worst night of the week” for going out to a club.2 Tonight, the focus is on the music rather than on dancing or meeting new people. A former student of mine was standing next to me. He had never attended a MuzikMafia event and asked what it was all about. “Just relax and listen,” I told him. Two-Foot Fred began the loosely-organized show with a comedy routine based mostly on his life experiences as a dwarf.3 Afterwards, John Rich and James Otto slowly made their way to the small stage, where several barstools had been positioned behind a row of microphones. John and James sang a country-influenced duet entitled “Wild West

1 I base the opening narrative on a MuzikMafia performance that took place on 31 January 2006 at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville, Tennessee.

2 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

3 MuzikMafia member Fred Gill, a.k.a. “Two-Foot Fred,” was born with a form of dwarfism known as diastrophic displaysia.

1 Show.” James continued with an R&B tune entitled “Good Thing Gone Bad.” John then bought the audience a round of drinks—a frequent ice breaker that also feeds his ego, self-described as “enormous.”4 Visual artist Rachel Kice captured the evening’s atmosphere with paint and a canvas set up for her in the dance area near stage left. The rest of the show contained a variety of musical acts. A black cowboy rapper named Troy sang several audience favorites including “I Play Chicken with the Train” and “Ain’t Broke Yet.” Troy describes his own combination of country, blues, rap, and rock as “hick-hop.” John followed with an up-tempo, rock version of his and Kenny Alphin’s song “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).” Shannon Lawson, whom most fans associate with a hard-driving acoustic bluegrass style, performed an electric blues ballad entitled “She Ain’t Got Nothing on You.” A black artist known as “Mista D” continued with several pop rock-influenced selections, including “Runnin’ from Love.” Local singer Shanna Crooks impressed the audience with her virtuosic vocal style that includes influences from soul, gospel, pop rock, and funk. Commercial country singer and songwriter John Phillips then performed a few of his latest songs, followed by a local emcee known as Timothy “Chance” Smith who combines commercial country, southern rock, and rap. At one point in the show, all the artists were on stage taking part in a group jam session—a regular component of MuzikMafia performances that many MuzikMafia members and fans have described as “organized chaos.” The show described here took place in January 2006. By then John Rich had charted as a songwriter fifteen Top Twenty hits on Billboard’s Country Singles charts. John and Kenny’s 2004 debut album Horse of a Different Color had already sold approximately three million copies.5 John and Kenny had made numerous network television appearances, including with The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and a cameo in the season premiere episode of NBC’s Las Vegas. Troy’s album Loco Motive6 was nearing gold certification, or 500,000 units sold.7

4 John Rich frequently references his large ego while on stage. I observed such at performances that took place on 24 January 2006, 31 January 2006, 21 February 2006, 14 March 2006, and 1 May 2007.

5 Big & Rich, 2004, Horse of a Different Color, produced by John Rich and Paul Worley, Warner Bros. 48520-02, compact disc.

6 Cowboy Troy, 2005, Loco Motive, produced by John Rich, Big Kenny, and Paul Worley, Warner Bros./Raybaw 49316-2, compact disc.

2 Troy was also scheduled to co-host with Wynonna the upcoming season of Nashville Star, the country music equivalent to American Idol. Rachel’s paintings were selling for between $2,500 and $10,000 each. As the best-known of all MuzikMafia members, Gretchen Wilson had celebrated album sales in excess of five million units and had received most industry awards possible for a new, female solo artist in commercial country music.8 James Otto, Shannon Lawson, Chance, Damien Horne, and other MuzikMafia members had opened up for Hank Williams Jr. on four tour dates the previous fall. Both James and Shannon had performed several times on the Grand Ole Opry.9 The entire MuzikMafia had also completed a second year with the Chevrolet American Revolution tour. The musicians on stage that evening were not dispossessed from Nashville’s commercial music scene as they had been in the fall of 2001, when the MuzikMafia was founded. This collective of musicians was already a significant part of the commercial music industry and American popular culture.

Objectives This dissertation is a study of the MuzikMafia, a distinct musical community that developed from a stylistically diverse Nashville scene into a social collective and commercial enterprise, both of which emphasize musical excellence and promote musical and artistic diversity. I examine how a shared musical and social ideology created a bond between several marginalized Nashville artists and how that bond, or rather its commodification, transformed their concept into the MuzikMafia, a significant component of the commercial music industry.

7 According to founding MuzikMafia member Cory Gierman, Warner Bros./Raybaw Records made an initial shipment of 400,000 units of Loco Motive; by the end of 2004 the record label was already making preparations for a second shipment; Cory Gierman, 1 May 2007, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

8 By January 2006, Gretchen had won numerous awards, including a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 2005; Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards for Album of the Year, Top Female Vocalist and Top New Artist; and a Country Music Association (CMA) Award for Female Vocalist of the Year. In December 2005 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced nominations for the 48th Annual Grammy Awards. Gretchen received nominations in four categories: Best Female Country Vocal Performance for the album’s title track, Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for her duet entitled “Politically Uncorrect” with Merle Haggard, Best Country Song for “All Jacked Up,” and Best Country Album.

9 James appeared on the Grand Ole Opry stage several times in summer 2003, and Shannon performed at the Grand Ole Opry two times in summer 2002.

3 Several underlying questions have remained consistent throughout the various stages of this research: What is the MuzikMafia? What is music’s role in how MuzikMafia artists define themselves as individuals? And how do similarities in their respective identities contribute to the MuzikMafia’s collectivity identity? The MuzikMafia’s widespread commercial success encouraged the addition of other key questions: What social and musical changes are the result of the MuzikMafia’s growth in membership and popularity? What has been the MuzikMafia’s impact on the Nashville music scene? What influence does a once marginalized, dispossessed group of artists have upon the mainstream as a result of widespread commercial success, and how does the commercial music industry recognize, incorporate, and eventually change the once- dispossessed? In this dissertation I examine three of the MuzikMafia’s defining constructs: community, identity, and change. Analysis of each aspect provides insight into what the MuzikMafia actually is, the role of music in the lives of its members, and the reasons behind the MuzikMafia’s period of commercial growth and development from 2001 through 2005. I also discuss the MuzikMafia within its socio-economic context in order to understand more deeply how marginalized social groups interact with dominant structures within the capitalist framework of the commercial music industry.

Significance This dissertation is significant for several reasons. Academic literature rarely contains in-depth musical studies of prominent popular artists or genres during their initial period of popularity. Most in-depth studies of popular music phenomena, for example, the rise of heavy metal, the development of rap and hip-hop, or the emergence of punk, occur several years or perhaps decades after a genre’s or artist’s first widespread acceptance by the general public. This study began during the period of MuzikMafia’s emergence into the popular mainstream and documents the MuzikMafia’s development as it unfolded. One benefit of such an approach is that it helps create an understanding of musical phenomena as comprising processes of local, sometimes illogical, decision- making, rather than as evolving along a logical, linear path of development from point A to point B.

4 This dissertation is the first ethnomusicological study of well-known, Western commercial artists wherein most data derive from fieldwork conducted among the artists themselves. This lacuna in the literature owes to the limited accessibility of major artists and the relative distance that academia has traditionally maintained from current trends in popular music. This research contains analyses, musical or otherwise, that include primary source information from personal interviews with the artists, observations of live performances, and experiences from behind the scenes. This study is also the first to examine the MuzikMafia and its membership in detail. Most information regarding the MuzikMafia exists in the form of newspaper and magazine articles and televised interviews, most of whose content is largely superficial and sometimes inaccurate. This is owing to the frequent lack of in-depth research required in the popular press and mainstream media. The MuzikMafia’s significance to the commercial mainstream necessitates a full and accurate account upon which scholars may base future work. Finally, this study is an exercise in popular music research that moves beyond analysis based upon secondary sources, namely commercial recordings, news print articles, and television interviews. Not only are commercially produced recordings unreliable depictions of musical identity, they are deceptive. In his 1977 book The Tuning of the World, R. Murray Shafer describes the illusion created by recordings as schizophonia, “the splitting of sounds from their original sources.”10 In this context, a sound recording introduces a gap between its original context and its sonic properties that are reproduced and disseminated without variation to mass audiences.11 The dominant roles of the producer, sound engineer, and record label executive often eclipse that of the individual musician. Social anthropologist John Blacking (1928-1990) agrees. In his essay, “Music, Culture, and Experience,” Blacking asserts, “Recordings never provide the key to understanding musical discourse; they only provide a means for repeated listening while

10 Shafer, R. Murray, 1977, The Tuning of the World, New York: Knopf: 90.

11 Starr, Larry, and Christopher Waterman, 2003, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV, New York: Oxford University Press: 37.

5 creating the illusion of objectivity.”12 Commercial recordings have significant academic importance, especially in studies on genre, musical dissemination, and audience reception. However, I deemphasize their importance here because this research is based on the artist’s conception of his/her own community and identity, rather than mass mediated depictions of the same. Blacking does not refer directly to mass-disseminated commercial recordings in his numerous theses, which is why the work of scholars such as Charles Keil and Steven Feld are significant to this study of the MuzikMafia. Feld stresses the inherent difference between commercial and non-commercial recordings: “The intentions surrounding a recording’s original production, however positive, cannot be controlled once a commodity is in commercial circulation.”13 In Music Grooves, co-edited by Charles Keil, Feld describes discourses such as “progressive versus mainstream” and “hegemonic versus counter-hegemonic” as a social process of meaning and negotiation.14 In the current study, music by MuzikMafia artists exists simultaneously primarily on two different planes: the local, i.e., weekly live shows at small clubs in Nashville, and the national, i.e., through the widespread distribution of a respective artist’s commercial recordings. This study is unique because of the inside access that I obtained into the MuzikMafia and the personal relationships that I cultivated among MuzikMafia artists from summer 2004 through summer 2007. As a result, my methodological framework emphasizes artist intent and direct observation of individual and group interaction, rather than focusing on secondary sources or reception studies.

12 Blacking, John, 1984, “The Study of ‘Music’ as Cultural System and human Capability,” South African Journal of Musicology 4: pg. 1-15; reprinted as “Music, Culture, and Experience” in Reginald, Byron, ed. 1995, Music, Culture, and Experience: The Selected Papers of John Blacking, Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 228.

13 Feld, Steven, 1996, “Pygmy Pop: A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis,” in Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 11.

14 Feld, Steven, 1994, “From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis: On the Discourses and Commodification Practices of ‘World Music’ and ‘World Beat’,” in Music Grooves, ed. by Charles Keil and Steven Feld, Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 257.

6 Theoretical Framework and Literature Review Community I frequently use the term “community” to describe the MuzikMafia. The artists themselves often use the phrase “a group of friends” to express their collectivity. However, the MuzikMafia is more than a “group” of anything. The MuzikMafia maintains a number of shared beliefs among its members, a distinct hierarchical structure and internal polity, specific rituals regarding musical performance, and self-attributed connotations of kinship. I draw upon Will Straw’s application of “community” to distinct populations within larger musical scenes and with which the MuzikMafia shares numerous characteristics.15 I also describe MuzikMafia musicians as belonging to a larger imagined community of Nashville musicians who are striving to secure a record deal with a major label. Political theorist Benedict Anderson first used the phrase “imagined communities” in 1983 to explain the origin and spread of nationalism.16 Anderson described a nation as “imagined” because its members seldom know most of their fellow-members, “yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”17 Ethnomusicologist T.M. Scruggs has examined the role of music in negotiating nationhood in Nicaragua.18 Bart Vanspauwen emphasizes the role that music plays in social and political matters: “It [music] can symbolically represent the imaginary community of oppressed groups as an untouchable ‘place’ where resistance and freedom, for once, are not antagonical.”19 My observations of the Nashville music scene support an identification of the MuzikMafia as

15 Straw, Will, 1991, "Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music," Cultural Studies, 5:3: 368-88.

16 Anderson, Benedict, 1991 [1983], Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed., London: Verso.

17 Anderson, Benedict, 1991 [1983], Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed., London: Verso: 6.

18 Scruggs, T.M., 1999, “‘Let’s Enjoy as Nicaraguans’: The Use of Music in the Construction of a Nicaraguan National Consciousness,” in Ethnomusicology 43:2 (Spring-Summer), 298.

19 Vanspauwen, Bart, March 2005, “Visualization of Subliminal Strategies in World Music: An Ethnomusicological Analysis of Socio-cultural Transformations through Maracatu and Mangue Beat in the City of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil,” in Image & Narrative, issue 10: The Visualization of the Subaltern in World Music. On Musical Contestation Strategies, [http://www.imageandnarrative.be/worldmusica/bartvanspauwen.htm] accessed 25 May 2007.

7 an imagined community, but on a much smaller scale than Anderson, Scruggs, or Vanspauwen describe. I also draw upon descriptions of “voluntary associations” by Alexis de Tocqueville, David Horton Smith and Frederick Elkin, and Gordon Wayne and Nicholas Babchuck, because of the term’s applicability to the MuzikMafia’s internal structure.20 Gramsci’s notion of “organic intellectuals” is applicable to this study of the MuzikMafia as an imagined community. According to Gramsci, all classes that eventually come into to power, develop a body of intellectuals who accurately articulate the ideas and experiences of that class and thereby able to contest the values disseminated by other classes.21 In the case of the MuzikMafia, the founding godfathers enunciated a) an assumed belief that most people have eclectic musical tastes, b) that there should be a few limitations as possible on artistic creativity, and c) marginalized artists can empower themselves through communal solidarity. In a sense, the godfathers were the organic intellectuals for those dispossessed Nashville artists who could not achieve significant commercial success for reasons including, but not limited to, non-conformity with how commercial country musicians look and sound. Identity The term “identity” is relatively new in scholarly discourse, having entered into widespread use in the social sciences in the 1950s.22 Its earlier usage had evoked connotations of personality or individuality. However, in the 1950s scholars began ascribing meanings associated with the construction of self and one’s identification with social groups. Theologian Will Herberg (1906-1977) describes in his 1955 book, Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, how one answers the question “Who am I?” by examining ethnicity and religious affiliation.23 Historian C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999) used the term to describe one’s social affiliation with a

20 Se de Tocqueville 1964, Smith and Elkin 1980, and Gordon and Babchuck 1959.

21 Edgar, Andrew, and Peter Sedgwick, 2002, Culture Theory: Key Thinkers, London: Routledge: 88.

22 Gleason, Philip, 1983, “Identifying Identity: A Semantic History,” The Journal of American History 69:4 (Mar.): 910.

23 Herberg Will, 1955, Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

8 regional group in his 1958 essay, “The Search for Southern Identity.”24 Erik Erikson (1902-1994) drew heavily upon Freudian psychology, particularly of psychoanalysis and the ego, and published several articles on identity in the 1950s that he compiled into a book entitled Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers (1959).25 Ethnomusicologists regularly deal with the subject of identity. However, despite the fact that the word “identity” appears in the titles or subtitles of various ethnomusicological works, many ethnomusicologists do not define what identity actually is in relation to music.26 The norm has become one of applying a general understanding of “identity” instead of acknowledging the detailed body of research on identity and identity theory from the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and communications studies. The dichotomy of the social vs. the individual has resulted in much debate among sociologists and psychologist in regards to identity. The result is two distinct, although closely related, speculations: identity theory and social identity theory. Identity theory (Burke 1980, McCall and Simmons 1978, and Stryker 1968) has its origins among the writings of American philosopher George Herbert Mead (1863-1961) who emphasized the social context rather than the psychological in developing the individual mind and self.27 On the other hand, social identity theory (Hogg and Abrams 1988, Tajfel and Turner 1979, and Turner, et. al. 1987) emphasizes the psychological self during social interaction. In this research, I apply Sheldon Stryker and Peter Burke’s notion of identity as “involving internalized role expectations, resulting in as many identities as distinct

24 Woodward, C. Vann, 1958, “The Search for Southern Identity,” Virginia Quarterly Review 34 (Summer): 321-338.

25 Erikson, Erik, 1959, Identity and the Life Cycle. Selected Papers, New York: International University Press.

26 Examples include Waterman 1990, Manuel 1994, Stokes 1994, Goertzen 1997, Gerstin 1998, Turino 1999, and Samuels 2004.

27 For further reading see Mead, George, 1934, Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, edited with introduction by Charles W. Morris, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

9 networks of relationships in which one occupies social positions and plays roles.”28 Put simply, identities are internalized social roles. The social networks to which Stryker and Burke refer can include race, gender, class, family, livelihood, religion, politics, and geography, and almost always refer to one’s self-identification within a social construct. In Unit II, I expand upon this notion and posit that one’s various identities are ordered hierarchically and that the hierarchy is capable of reordering itself instantaneously according to any given social context. Multiple Identities. I emphasize throughout Unit II which identities appear predominantly in the hierarchy of identities among selected MuzikMafia artists. I emphasize several artists’ identification with distinct social groups based upon race, class, age, religion, and geography. In other words, I explore the relationship between individual and cultural identity among MuzikMafia artists. In their book Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures, Myron Lustig and Jolene Koester define cultural identity as: A sense of belonging to a particular culture or ethnic group. It is formed in a process that results from membership in a particular culture, and it involves learning about and accepting the traditions, heritage, language, religion, ancestry, aesthetics, thinking patterns, and social structures of culture.29

Communications specialists Mary Fong and Rueyling Chuang define cultural identity as: The identification of communications of a shared system of symbolic verbal and non-verbal behavior that are meaningful to group members who have a sense of belonging and who share traditions, heritage, language, and similar norms of appropriate behavior.30

In both cases, cultural identity is socially constructed and maintained and demonstrates an individual’s identification with a larger group. I would emphasize that a person can

28 Stryker, Sheldon, and Peter Burke, 2000, “The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory,” Social Psychology Quarterly 63:4 (Dec.), 286.

29 Lustig, Myron W., and Jolene Koester. 1999. Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication across Cultures, 3rd ed. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley Longman: 138.

30 Fong, Mary, and Rueyling Chuang, 2004, “Identity and the Speech Community,” in Communicating Ethnic and Cultural Identity, Mary Fong and Rueyling Chuang, eds., Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield: 6.

10 identify with numerous cultural groups simultaneously, a factor that arises from one’s own complex individual identity. Gramsci also acknowledges the multidimensionality of consciousness and identity. Gramsci, and later Stuart Hall’s affirmation of Gramscian theory, refers to the plurality of identity as resulting from “the relationship between the self and the ideological discourses which compose the cultural terrain of a society.”31 Unfortunately, due to limited accessibility of platinum-selling stars, there is little academic scholarship on the multiplicity of many artists’ respective public and private identities.32 Southern Identity. Scholars frequently associate southern identity with commercial country music, but southernness comprises much more. Ethnomusicologist Aaron Fox describes “country” as a particular trope of social identity and cultural style in his 2004 book, Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture.33 According to Fox, “‘Country’ intertwines distinctive local understandings of place, sociality, character, temporality, style, feeling, and sensibility.”34 I broaden Fox’s focus to include various music genres as integral parts of southern social identity and cultural style. Any cultural discussion of the South should include an acknowledgement of what it means to be southern. Southerners do not constitute a homogenous group by any means, but there are commonalities throughout the South that distinguish the region from others in the United States. According to Wilbur J. Cash, “Although there are many Souths, there is also one South.”35 Here, Cash emphasizes the numerous commonalities among people throughout the southern states that contribute to a distinct, regional identity. Many, but not all, MuzikMafia artists identify with the American South. Cultural

31 Hall, Stuart, 1986, “Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(2): 22.

32 There is significant literature on musical stardom within a capitalist framework such as Inglis 1996, Melly 1970, and Frith 1978. These and other similar studies, however, use in large part secondary sources with little or no input from the artists themselves.

33 Fox, Aaron, 2004, Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 28-29.

34 Fox, Aaron, 2004, Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 29.

35 Cash, Wilbur J., 1941, The Mind of the South, New York: Alfred A Knopf, viii.

11 connections to the region include birth, upbringing, residency, religion, music, cuisine, dialect, and heritage. Change It should not be surprising that the MuzikMafia has grown and developed since its inception in 2001. Ironically, change is among the few constants in popular music. Change is inevitable and almost expected in most popular music genres. Critical analysis of change at the group or societal level is challenging. The difficulty lies in targeting what causes change among whole populations or institutions. The factors that cause social change are often too numerous to identify and frequently cannot be limited to one or even a group of individuals. Society is made up of many institutions, e.g. social, economic, political, etc., each working interdependently with the others. The focal point of this discussion is the relationship between the MuzikMafia and its socio-cultural context in regards to change. As individuals, the MuzikMafia’s respective members had caused little change in Nashville before 2001. However, as an organized group and commercial enterprise, the MuzikMafia prompted considerable change in the music industry in Nashville and beyond, especially during 2004 and 2005. However, I posit that that MuzikMafia’s presence in and influence on the commercial music industry is an unintended consequence. The fact that the godfathers conceived the MuzikMafia in 2001 as an anti-establishment entity proves that the community’s subsequent commercial success is primarily the result of numerous external factors. According to Ferguson in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), “Nations stumble upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action but not the execution of any human design.”36 Modern sociologists understand Ferguson’s “establishments” to mean social systems or institutions. Trevor Noble elaborates, “Change is brought about through individual activity, but as the result of the structural properties of the system in which they act rather than as an intended or deliberate

36 Ferguson, Adam, 1966 [1767], Essay on the History of Civil Society, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 122.

12 consequence.”37 I return to the role of individual agency within a capitalist framework, sometimes scrutinized as “false consciousness,” in the Conclusion. In order to understand the MuzikMafia’s transformation from 2001 through 2005, one must view Nashville’s commercial music industry as a social system in which change takes place. This social system includes a complex network of songwriters, musicians, managers, music promoters, major record labels, venue owners, music publishers, talent scouts, sound engineers, producers, etc., all of whom maintain common goals of creating and distributing commercial music and making money. Systems theories in sociology, despite their numerous variations, all begin with a basic premise: society has the character of a system in that its different parts are interrelated, interdependent, and interactive. In the case of social change, however, the problem lies in identifying the extent to which those interrelationships exist and how those interrelationships reciprocally affect the individual. Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was well-known for his theories on society as a system and its processes of change. He was strongly influenced by the work of Max Weber (1846-1920) who emphasized the role of the individual on larger social structures. Parsons concluded that the character of social systems derives from basic dichotomies, or “pattern variables” as he called them, present among each of its individuals, with each pair of variables existing at opposite ends of a continuum. Examples include affectivity vs. affective neutrality, self orientation vs. collective orientation, universalism vs. particularism, ascription vs. achievement, and specificity vs. diffuseness.38 Parsons also extended of his systems theory to include sub-systems. He elaborates: A complex social system consists of a network of interdependent and interpenetrating subsystems, each of which, seen at the appropriate level of reference, is a social system in its own right, subject to all the functional exigencies of any such system relative to its institutionalized culture and situation

37 Noble, Trevor, 2000, Social Theory and Social Change, New York: St. Martin’s Press: 24.

38 Parsons, Talcott, and Edward Shils, 1951, Towards a General Theory of Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 77.

13 and possessing all the essential structural components, organized on the appropriate levels of differentiation and specification.39

Parsons is referring here to sub-systems such as the political and the economic within a broader American context. Other twentieth century sociologists have refined Parsonian theories further to include micro-systems, e.g. the family.40 Noble has emphasized that change in a sub-system will affect all other sub-systems, the primary system, and other parts of the original sub-system.41 My research on the MuzikMafia supports the position that Nashville’s commercial music industry is a sub-system according to the Parsonian explanation above.42 First, the Nashville commercial music industry is mobilizes its resources to maintain the sub-system through profit and loss. This is done through various A&R agents, artist showcases, genre-promoting radio stations, big selling stars, albums distributors, retail outlets, recording studios, and a network of marketing and publicity personnel. Second, Music Row companies have institutionalized processes of obtaining their respective goals, e.g. through signing artists, creating recordings, and marketing an artist’s image and music to the public. Third, the Nashville commercial music industry with Music Row at its center adapts to its external environment through numerous connections to other musical centers such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and with a strong connection to American society, in general, as a producer of mass entertainment. Finally, the commercial music industry in Nashville comprises numerous component parts, including imprints, publishing houses, music distributors, publicists, management agencies, copyright firms, music clubs, etc. all of which are integrated into the sub-system.

39 Parsons, Talcott, 1965 [1961], “An Outline of the Social System,” in Parsons, Talcott, et. al., Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, single volume ed., New York: The Free Press: 44.

40 For further reading on the family as a micro-system within a Parsons-like subsystem, see Bell and Vogel, 1964; Burgess and Locke, 1953; and Harris, 1983.

41 Noble, Trevor, 2000, Social Theory and Social Change, New York: St. Martin’s Press: 182.

42 I should emphasize that Nashville’s commercial music industry also forms an hegemony in the Gramscian sense.

14 Sociologist and country music scholar Richard Peterson describes the above in his “production-of-culture” perspective. According to Peterson, this perspective …chooses the alternative tack of turning attention from the global corpus of habitual culture and focusing instead on the processes by which elements of culture are fabricated in those milieus where symbol-system production is most self-consciously the center of activity.43

Here, Peterson uses the term production to refer to processes of creation, manufacture, marketing, distribution, exhibition, inculcation, evaluation, and consumption.44 Peterson’s theory of culture production is significant to this study for two reasons. First, Peterson draws heavily upon Parsons’s understanding that in complex industrial societies, culture-symbol systems are increasingly produced in self-conscious, limited milieus. Second, and perhaps most important, Peterson taught at Vanderbilt University in Nashville from 1965 to 2002.45 Much of his production-of-culture perspective is based upon direct observation of Music Row which lies adjacent to Vanderbilt University.46 Closely related to social change is the study of musical change. This is owing to the close social relationship that people cultivate while musicking. Social anthropologist John Blacking argues that music is never “action autonomous,” but rather: The sounds of music are signs and symbols of human experience in society, and they are ordered partly by cognitive processes innate to humankind and partly by the particular application of those processes which are peculiar to the different sociocultural systems in which the music is created.47

43 Peterson, Richard A., 1976, “The Production of Culture: A Prolegomenon,” in The Production of Culture, Richard A. Peterson, ed., Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications: 10.

44 Peterson, Richard A., 1976, “The Production of Culture: A Prolegomenon,” in The Production of Culture, Richard A. Peterson, ed., Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications: 10. For additional reading on musical production within a capitalist social structure, see Olmsted 2002 and Stokes 2002.

45 Peterson’s title after 2002 was professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University.

46 Peterson applies his production-of-culture perspective directly to commercial country in his 1997 landmark book, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, 1997, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

47 Byron Reginald, 1995, “The Ethnomusicology of John Blacking,” in Music Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking, Reginald Byron, ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 12.

15 In brief, music is closely bound to its socio-cultural context. The difficulty for Blacking lies in the direct application of social theory to musical contexts because of music’s uniqueness as a sonic phenomenon. Blacking’s theories as a social anthropologist are significant to this study of the MuzikMafia, especially in regards to musical change. Blacking’s deep understanding of the socio-cultural processes of musicking has contributed much to how ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and anthropologists examine music and musical change over time. For Blacking, musical change is a subset of social change, and he distinguishes between radical change and simple variation and innovation.48 In a 1977 article entitled, “Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change,” Blacking posits, “Many analyses of so-called musical change are really about social change and minor variations in musical style, if viewed in terms of the system affected.”49 In other words, if a society or system welcomes musical novelty, then the addition of new styles does not constitute musical change but are regarded rather as variation or innovation. Blacking compares musical variation and innovation to the addition of new words to an existing language; neither phenomenon results in significant changes to the larger system. According to Blacking, “If the concept of change is to have any heuristic value, it must denote significant changes that are peculiar to musical systems, and not simply the musical consequences of social, political, economic, or other changes.”50 In regards to the MuzikMafia, I observed little musical change, variation, or innovation in 2004 and 2005, but rather stark changes in its social makeup and its reception among mass audiences. Commercial Country Music: Literature and Nashville Locations. There are numerous sources that discuss the southern musical soundscape. Bill C. Malone has

48 Blacking, John, 1995 [1977], “The Study of Musical Change,” in Music Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking, Reginald Byron, ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 148.

49 Blacking, John, 1977, “Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change,” In Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 9: 2.

50 Blacking, John, 1977, “Some Problems of Theory and Method in the Study of Musical Change,” In Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 9: 2.

16 published several books that address the relationship between southern identity and various musical styles that are commonly associated with the South.51 Neil Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A History highlights the genre’s influence throughout the region and beyond.52 Curtis Ellison has examined the notion of “country music culture” in a book by the same name.53 Charles K. Wolfe’s extensive list of publications includes a study of the Grand Ole Opry and its contributions to the development of Nashville as a commercial country music center.54 Richard Peterson focuses specifically on the commercialization of country music in his Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity.55 This research references several music genres that fall under the general classification of “commercial country.” These genres include bluegrass, alternative country, Nashville Sound, Bakersfield Sound, outlaw country, and New Country, and they often contrast in musical style, topical themes, historical development, and target audience. Bill C. Malone first described “commercial country” in 1965 as: The music that developed out of the folk culture of the rural South, was created largely by rural whites from a Protestant Anglo-Saxon tradition, absorbed styles and influences from non-white and non-country sources, and was first disseminated to mass audiences as ‘hillbilly’ music in the 1920s by entertainment entrepreneurs.56

Commercial country has developed into a variety of popular music genres that are mass marketed, mass disseminated, and are generally produced in or associated with Nashville. A key component of commercial country is the “soft shell/hardcore” dialectic that Richard Peterson popularized in the 1990s.57 According to Peterson, “soft shell”

51 See Malone 1993, Malone 2000 [1985], Malone 2002, and Malone and Stricklin 2003 [1979].

52 Rosenberg, Neil, 1993 [1985], Bluegrass: A History, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

53 Ellison, Curtis, 1995, Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

54 Wolfe, Charles K., 1999, A Good Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press.

55 Peterson, Richard, 1997, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

56 Malone, Bill C., 1965, “A History of Commercial Country Music in the United States, 1920- 1964,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin: iv.

57 See Peterson 1995 and 1997.

17 commercial country music is characterized by standard American grammar, relatively little regional accent, trained vocals with a clear timbre, general song themes usually in third person perspective, “ooh-aah” vocal accompaniment, smooth instrumental style, and vocals by an artist with a refined image or who is somewhat distant from his/her fans.58 On the other hand, “hardcore” commercial country music often includes white southern grammar, a southern or southwestern accent, an untrained voice with a nasal timbre, raw emotion, rough harmonies, concrete themes usually derived from personal experience, rough or edgy singing style, and solo vocals by an artist who is generally unrefined or closely identifies with his/her audiences.59 Several MuzikMafia artists such as Gretchen Wilson and Shannon Lawson, who identify primarily with commercial country music, fall under the category of “hardcore,” while John Rich, especially during his tenure with the middle-of-the-road country group Lonestar, is classified as “soft shell.” Nashville’s Country Music Scene. The MuzikMafia has performed since 2001 at various locales in Nashville. The location of each venue is significant because of the distinctive geography of the Nashville music scene. Some areas are popular primarily for commercial country while others are best known for pop, rock, blues, or combinations thereof. I describe in the following section Nashville’s prominent areas for consuming commercial country: The District and Opryland. The District is located in the commercial center of downtown and includes a wide variety of music venues, tourist shops, and restaurants. The District begins on Lower Broadway at Fifth Avenue, extends down to the Cumberland River, and includes Printer’s Alley and Second Avenue North up to Union Street as shown in Figure 0.1.

58 Peterson, Richard, 1997, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 150-155.

59 Peterson, Richard, 1997, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 150-155.

Figure 0.1. Map of downtown Nashville: The District and the northern part of SoBro. A = Nashville Convention Center, B = Gaylord Entertainment Center, C = Schermerhorn Symphony Hall, D = Country Music Hall of Fame, E = Ryman Auditorium, F = Fort Nashboro, G = Riverfront Park.

Lower Broadway is peppered with numerous country music venues as shown in Figure 0.2. Located beside Legend’s Corner at Broadway and Fifth Avenue, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge is legendary among country music fans. The locale has been frequented by Hank Cochran, Willie Nelson, Mel Tillis, Jim Reeves, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Ray Price, Waylon Jennings, Ernest Tubb, Merle Haggard, and many others. The club’s walls commemorate its history with an array of signed photographs by many of country music’s well-known artists. Directly behind Tootsie’s is the historic Ryman Auditorium that hosted the Grand Ole Opry each Saturday evening from 1943 to 1974.60 Opry performers often exited the Ryman’s back door after their set to drink and socialize at Tootsie’s. Extending farther down Lower Broadway one finds other country music clubs such as Rippy’s, Robert’s Western World, The Second Fiddle, The Stage, Layla's Bluegrass Inn, and Nashville Crossroads.

60 Grand Ole Opry performances began at the Ryman in June 1943 and ended in March 1974 when the show moved to its current location outside of town at Opryland. Today, the Ryman hosts a series of Grand Ole Opry performances each winter.

Nashville’s second primary area for consuming country music is Opryland, a country-oriented theme park that opened in 1974 approximately five miles east of downtown Nashville off of Briley Parkway. Although Opryland officially closed in 1997, the property still contributes to Nashville’s country music culture through a large and extensive shopping mall called Opry Mills, the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, and through weekly performances from the Grand Ole Opry House, the Roy Acuff Theater, the Texas Troubadour Theatre, and the Gibson Bluegrass Showcase.

20 The Commercial Context: Theory and Nashville Scene. A discussion of musical and social change among MuzikMafia members requires a critical analysis of the commercial context in which such changes took place, which I provide in Unit III. An informed study of the Nashville commercial music industry should begin with Marx’s Das Kapital in which he outlines and critiques the role of commodity, division of labor, and revolution within a capitalist society. The collection of essays by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer titled The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture is also helpful.61 These contribute to an accurate understanding of the MuzikMafia as a commodity that its members created and developed for mass consumption. I also draw upon more recent literature. In her edited volume, Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, Regula Burckhardt Qureshi has assembled articles that examine Marxist theories and their application to current cultural soundscapes.62 Martin Stokes describes in his essay, “Marx, Money, and Musicians,” an often overlooked aspect of ethnomusicological scholarship: the ways in which musicians get paid for producing music.63 Anthony Olmsted details the various forces at work behind musical production: its means, its technological base, and its basic organization, using London’s public concerts 1660-1750 as a case study.64 I draw upon these and other studies to demystify the MuzikMafia and its professed ideology of musical diversity. The MuzikMafia is on its most basic level a collective of musicians whose common goal is commercial success. Significant to this study is Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. In his Quaderni del Carcere (Letters from Prison), Gramsci describes hegemony as “the means

61 Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer, 2001, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, London: Routledge.

62 Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt, ed., 2002, Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, London: Routledge.

63 Stokes, Martin, 2002, “Marx, Money, and Musicians,” in Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, ed., London: Routledge: 139-163.

64 Olmstead, Anthony, “The Capitalization of Musical Production: The Conceptual and Spatial Development of London’s Public Concerts, 1660-1750,” in Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, ed., London: Routledge: 106-138.

21 by which the modern state generates consent without the use or threat of force.”65 Gramsci maintained that, For a socio-politically dominant group to sustain power, it must forge alliances that establish comprehensive social authority by winning the consent of subordinate groups, thus making this authority seem a natural and legitimate construction of social reality—a reality taken for granted by culture members as the truth of common sense.66

Although Gramsci originally used ‘hegemony’ to explain socio-political processes at work in fascist Italy during the 1920s, his theories are particularly applicable to the commercial music industry in the 21st century. Ethnomusicologist Donna Buchanan applies hegemony theory from both Gramsci and Raymond Williams to folk orchestras in Bulgaria. She explains: The music of Bulgarian folk orchestras sonically embodies the life experience of its performers; its shape and content are defined through the interaction of individual musicians with the ‘complex interlocking of political, social, and cultural forces’67 that comprise hegemony, and which continually shift in accordance with particular political and economic realities at specific historical junctures.68

Buchanan emphasis on the shifting roles of various cultural forces within the larger issue of hegemony is particularly relevant to this study because of the MuzikMafia’s various power roles in Nashville and beyond. Throughout this research I regard Nashville’s commercial music industry as a kind of hegemony because of its hierarchical structure, its capitalist framework, its complex web of interrelated institutions, and its power over the working classes—in this case, local Nashville musicians. The MuzikMafia’s role within the Nashville commercial environment compares closely with that of other social groups within their respective,

65 Translated and quoted in Germino, Dante, 1986, “Antonio Gramsci: From the Margins to the Center, The Journey of a Hunchback,” in Boundary 2 14(3) (Spring): 26.

66 Hebdige 1979: 15-16, based upon Hall 1979:332; Hall 1986:14.

67 Williams, Raymond, 1977, Marxism and Literature, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press: 108, 110.

68 Buchanan, Donna A., 1995, “Metaphors of Power, Metaphors of Truth: The Politics of Music Professionalism in Bulgarian Folk Orchestras,” Ethnomusicology 39(3) (Autumn): 383. Here, Buchanan is applying phrasing used in Williams, Raymond, 1977, Marxism and Literature. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press: 115.

22 larger socio-political contexts in regards to self-empowerment, sought-after change, and “organic intellectuals,” a phrase that Gramsci used to describe individuals who inspire the lower classes to cause change. Particularly significant is the concept of “false consciousness” that surfaces in the writings of Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Gabel, among others. For Engels, “Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker, consciously indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all.”69 Gabel differentiates between false consciousness and ideology as follows: “false consciousness is a diffused state of mind; ideology is a theoretical crystallization.”70 As this research will show, the MuzikMafia’s godfathers founded the MuzikMafia with an ideology of anti- commercialism—a response to Music Row’s commercial hegemony in Nashville. However, the godfathers’ ideology was based upon a false consciousness of themselves as anti-anything. The MuzikMafia was actually a vital and expected component of the existing hegemony and quite necessary to its stability. The bulk of Nashville’s commercial music industry is located at Music Row, an area southwest of downtown between Division Street, Interstate 40, Twelfth Avenue South, Vanderbilt University, and Wedgewood Avenue as shown in Figure 0.4. Many tourists are surprised to discover that Music Row is not a single row of music-related businesses but rather an entire square mile of city streets. The neighborhood contains most of the Nashville’s music publishers, recording studios, record labels, music licensing firms, management agencies, radio networks, and video production houses.

69 Cited in Swingewood, Alan, 1977, review of False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification [1976] by Joseph Gabel, American Journal of Sociology 83(1) (July): 223.

70 Gabel, Joseph, 1975, False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification, New York: Harper & Row: 11.

Figure 0.4. Map of Music Row.

The origins of Music Row can be traced back to the late 1930s and early 1940s when hillbilly music was emerging onto the national scene. At the time, tensions were increasing between ASCAP and the nation’s broadcasters over licensing rights. As a result, the National Association of Broadcasters established in 1939 a rival licensing company called Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) that was open to all musicians and songwriters, regardless of race or genre. Commercial country benefited from BMI’s presence because of ASCAP’s reluctance to license hillbilly musicians.71 Amidst the growing popularity of hillbilly recordings and a musicians’ strike, BMI attracted the attention of Roy Acuff (1903-1992) and Fred Rose (1897-1954) who, in 1942 with a $2,500 grant from BMI, established the Acuff-Rose publishing company in Nashville. Acuff had been a popular performer and perennial host with the Grand Ole Opry, and Rose was enjoying a successful career as a songwriter. Acuff-Rose soon became one the largest music publishers in the United States with song credits such as “The Tennessee Waltz,” which Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart recorded in 1948 and

71 Malone, Bill C., 2000 [1985], Country Music, U.S.A., revised edition, Austin: University of Texas Press: 179.

24 that Patti Page re-recorded in 1950. By May 1951 Page’s version had sold approximately 4.8 million copies.72 Acuff-Rose’s catalog includes songs recorded by Hank Williams, the Everly Brothers, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison, Marty Robbins, and Willie Nelson. Acuff-Rose was the first music publisher in Nashville, and its offices on Seventeenth Avenue became the focal point of Nashville’s commercial music industry, now Music Row. In the 1950s and 1960s Music Row’s emphasis gradually shifted from music publishing to commercial music recording. In 1955 Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley converted a Quonset hut attached to Bradley’s house on Sixteenth Avenue into a makeshift studio. There he and Atkins perfected their musical style later known as the Nashville Sound. In 1957 RCA built its now-famous Studio B two blocks from Bradley’s house. RCA artists who recorded in Nashville included Elvis, Chet Atkins, Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, and Marty Robbins. Epic Records, which later became an imprint of Columbia and then Sony, set up camp on Music Row in 1954 with artists such as Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Fred Foster founded his Monument Records label in 1954, which later came under the ownership of Sony. Monument records sparked the careers of Kris Kristofferson and Roy Orbison. In 1962 Columbia Records purchased the Bradley studio around which the corporation constructed a much larger recording facility. Columbia’s session lists during the 1960s include recordings by Bob Dylan, George Jones, Tammy Wynette. Today Music Row is a national center for commercial music of varying genres, including commercial country and praise and worship.73 Music Row’s list of major

72 Malone, Bill C., 2000 [1985], Country Music, U.S.A., revised edition, Austin: University of Texas Press: 211.

73 The music industry contributes much to the economy of the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) with a combined population of 1.2 million. Recent estimates conclude that the music industry in the MSA maintains 19,437 music production-related jobs annually and produces approximately $722 million in labor income. The total number of jobs maintained by the music industry in the MSA is over 54,000, a figure that also includes 5,000 working union musicians, 19,826 jobs indirectly related to music production, and 14,995 jobs associated with music tourism. According to a recent study, the total economic impact of the music industry in the MSA is $6.38 billion annually, more than the combined impact of respective music industries in the entire state of Georgia as well as the cities of Seattle, Washington; Austin, Texas; and Memphis, Tennessee. In Raines, Patrick, and LaTanya Brown, 2006, “The Economic Impact of the Music Industry in the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro MSA,” study prepared for Belmont University and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce: 4. [http://www.nashvillechamber.com/president/musicindustryimpactstudy.pdf] accessed 21 April 2006.

25 record labels includes offices of Sony/BMG that includes imprints Epic, Monument, Columbia, RCA, Arista, BMG, and BNA.74 Other Music Row majors include Capitol Records, Warner Bros., and Universal, which owns Mercury and MCA. Smaller record labels that have become significant forces on Music Row include Rounder, Curb, and Sugar Hill. The major music publishers on Music Row are more numerous and include EMI, Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), BMG Music Publishing, Sony Music Publishing, MGM Music, Sony/ATV Publishing, and Warner/Chappell. The Ethnomusicological Past Documentation of the changes that the MuzikMafia underwent from fall 2001 through summer 2004—before I began this study—presents several challenges. First and foremost is the collection of reliable data pertaining to the MuzikMafia’s early performances at the Pub of Love in downtown Nashville. The MuzikMafia performed there only from October 2001 through July 2002. The rapid growth in popularity of the MuzikMafia resulted in larger crowds that forced performances to be relocated to The Tin Roof, near the Demonbreun Street Roundabout adjacent to Music Row in August 2002. The change in venue resulted in a drastic transformation in the atmosphere and flow of MuzikMafia performances. Also, due to widespread use of influence of alcohol and marijuana at early MuzikMafia shows, most of the people whom I interviewed had either vague or conflicting memories about details relating to their Pub of Love experiences. Finally, by the time I began my research on the MuzikMafia in June 2004, Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson had already received nationwide exposure, resulting in an audience demographic that contrasted greatly with that of earlier MuzikMafia performances.75 This presented a challenge that is common among ethnomusicologists: conducting fieldwork in the ethnomusicological past through the memories of one’s research participants.

74 Roland, Tom, 24 January 2006, “SONY BMG: One Word, Three Letters and a Whole Lot of History,” Los Angeles Chronicle [http://www.losangeleschronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=5118] accessed 17 May 2006.

75 Wilson, Gretchen, 2004, Here for the Party, produced by Mark Wright and Joe Scaife; associate producer John Rich, Sony/Epic EK 90903, compact disc. Gretchen’s debut album Here for the Party sold over 100,000 units its first week. By 15 June 2004, when I began this research, Gretchen’s album was nearing platinum sales. In May 2004, Big & Rich’s album Horse of a Different Color debuted at Number 14 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart.

26 Philip Bohlman has pointed out that the ethnomusicological past is not one past, but many, existing on different levels.76 He elaborates: The ethnomusicological past exists as a web of seamless everyday musical practices, each one producing myriad moments of history. The musical practices at these different levels may or may not be connected, but within the ethnomusicological past they form through bricolage into complex musical meanings.77

Each person’s memories of the past are based upon a number of subjective filters, and such memories affect each individual’s interpretation of experiences in the present and future. Musical Performance as Spectacle MuzikMafia members often describe their collectivity as a “freakshow,” referring directly to the diversity of artistic expression found at MuzikMafia performances. I compare this artistic collage with similar cultural phenomena such as Andy Warhol’s artistic experiments at The Factory in the mid-1960s and John Cage’s work in the 1960s and beyond that combined music, the visual arts, and dance. One of MuzikMafia’s numerous connections to these earlier phenomena is that each contributes to the idea of artistic events as spectacles. I explore this facet of the MuzikMafia using Guy Debord’s application of Marx’s commodity fetishism in The Society of the Spectacle.78 Particularly relevant is Debord’s view on the inherent illusion of social spectacles: The spectacle erases the dividing line between self and the world, in that the self, under siege by the presence/absence of the world, is eventually overwhelmed; it likewise erases the dividing line between true and false, repressing all directly

76 Bohlman, Philip, 1997, “The Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past,” in Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, Gregory Barz and Timothy Colley, eds., New York: Oxford University Press: 141.

77 Bohlman, Philip, 1997, “The Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past,” in Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, Gregory Barz and Timothy Colley, eds., New York: Oxford University Press: 141. Here, Bohlman uses the French term bricolage, which refers to a collage created from several available materials. French anthropologists began using the term in the 1920s.

78 Debord, Guy, 1994 [1967], The Society of the Spectacle, Donald Nicholson-Smith, transl., New York: Zone Books.

27 lived truth beneath the real presence of the falsehood maintained by the organization of appearances.79

Debord is adamant in his view that aesthetic autonomy in capitalist culture is an illusion and only secures the ruling class’ hegemony. I apply Debord’s theory to the MuzikMafia by positing that the MuzikMafia’s weekly shows were a spectacular commodity that created an illusion of social marginality and eventually confirmed, if not supported, the hegemony of Nashville’s commercial music industry. Habitus and Communitas Another focus of this study is on how the MuzikMafia engages or creates culture. For MuzikMafia members, culture is primarily “lived” through experience rather than through emphasis on, reflection of, or adherence to industry norms of how commercial musicians should look or sound. John Rich and Kenny Alphin have expressed this sentiment in simpler terms, e.g. “forget what people tell you to do; follow your heart,” and “love is creativity, and creativity is music; music to me [Kenny] is love,” in several personal conversations with the author.80 Pierre Bourdieu’s description of habitus, i.e. “schemes of thought and expression that are the basis for the intentionless invention of regulated improvisation,” is relevant.81 Bourdieu was particularly interested in the daily, non-discursive practices of individuals within a social framework. When John Rich, Kenny Alphin, Cory Gierman, and Jon Nicholson formed the MuzikMafia in fall 2001, their original intention was to create a weekly jam session in which like-minded individuals could enjoy a variety of styles in an informal setting.82 I describe the MuzikMafia’s weekly performances in Nashville as ritualistic, and I posit that these performances promoted communal awareness among MuzikMafia

79 Debord, Guy, 1994 [1967], The Society of the Spectacle, Donald Nicholson-Smith, transl., New York: Zone Books: 153 (thesis 219).

80 John Rich and Kenny Alphin , 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

81 Bourdieu, Pierre, 1977, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 79.

82 Cory Gierman, 6 January 2005, non-recorded conversation with author. Nashville.

28 members and fans. In effect, the MuzikMafia was community-building through ritual. At each show, artists such as John or Kenny blurred social barriers among audience members in a variety of ways. Victor Turner describes this phenomenon as communitas, or: A moment in and out of time, and in and out of secular social structure, which reveals, however fleetingly, some recognition (in symbol if not always in language) of a generalized social bond that has ceased to be and has simultaneously yet to be fragmented into a multiplicity of structural ties.83

In other words, people from all levels of society and walks of life may form strong bonds, free of the structures that normally separate them.84 Kenny often encouraged audience members to introduce themselves to one another, and he regularly stated that each should “love everybody”—the phrase that adorns the back of his guitar. In addition, MuzikMafia shows regularly included audience sing-a-longs, which also contributed to the communitas experience.

Methodological Orientation and Source Reliability As a discipline based upon fieldwork, ethnomusicology comprises numerous approaches to researching and documenting musics of varying soundscapes. Fieldwork methodologies seem to equal the growing number of fieldwork opportunities available to ethnomusicologists, including those in popular music studies. Unfortunately, because of limited access to well-known artists, research in popular music has been largely limited to musical analysis using secondary sources or to studies of local scenes.85 Using the MuzikMafia as a case study, this dissertation demonstrates that these constraints no longer need to dominate popular music research.

83 Turner, Victor, 1995 [1969], The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, New York: Aldine De Gruyter: 96.

84 Turner, Victor, 1972, “Symbols in African Ritual,” in Science, (March 16): 1100-05.

85 Examples include Berger 1999, Brackett 2000 [1995], Bradby and Torodo 2000, Leppert and Lipsitz 2000, Keyes 2002, Samuels 2004, and Fox 2004.

29 This dissertation adopts Jeff Todd Titon’s definition of ethnomusicology as “the study of music in the context of human life.”86 Titon emphasizes the human aspect of musicking and the role of music in people’s lives. An unfortunate reality of Western popular music research is the fact that scholars are rarely able to conduct fieldwork among well-known musicians for a variety of reasons, such as an artist’s limited availability and sometimes his/her general dislike of academics. In the case of the MuzikMafia, I was granted considerable access to the artists, enabling me to observe closely their respective musical lives. This fieldwork-based approach is one of many that frequently distinguish ethnomusicology from other music-related fields such as historical musicology and music theory. Ellen Koskoff has stressed the significance of ethnomusicology as a fieldwork- based discipline, stating, “We must separate ourselves from [historical] musicologists because we do not think of our subjects as texts.”87 A separation from historical musicology may be extreme, especially when one considers the frequent convergence of ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and music theory in the study of American music. On the other hand, ethnomusicology definitely brings a unique fieldwork-based perspective to popular music scholarship. I model this study on the previous work of four ethnomusicologists or anthropologists who specialize in popular music studies. First, Harris Berger’s research on four music scenes in northeastern Ohio provides an excellent example of how popular music studies can benefit from an ethnomusicology-related approach.88 Berger emphasizes the subjective, often incongruous experiences of local artists and how they conceptualize music in performance. Second, in his book Putting a Song on Top of It:

86 Titon, Jeff Todd, ed., 2002, Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning: xiii.

87 Koskoff, Ellen, 2005, “(Left Out in) Left (the Field): The Effects of Post-Modern Scholarship on Feminist and Gender Studies in Musicology and Ethnomusicology, 1990-2004,” keynote address at the meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology Midwestern Chapter, 2 April 2005. As the title of Koskoff’s address makes clear, she is referring specifically to feminist and gender, not popular music, studies. But I feel that the sentiment is applicable in each of these cases.

88 Berger, Harris, 1990, Metal, Rock and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. I describe Berger’s phenomenological approach as ethnomusicology-related because of its emphasis on the role of music in the lives of the people who make and experience it.

30 Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, David Samuels addresses how musicians construct and renegotiate local identity amidst considerable influence from popular culture.89 Samuels includes lengthy quotes from his research participants, allowing the reader to engage the artists on a personal level. Third, Aaron Fox emphasizes in his book Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture the complex relationship between commercial country music and working-class social experience.90 Finally, in her Louisiana Hayride: Radio & Roots Music along the Red River, Tracey Laird addresses issues of music, race, media, commerce, and place within the context of a popular radio program broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana.91 Perhaps more important is Laird’s own analyses as a cultural insider and her intimate connection with her subject. The ongoing development of ethnomusicology as a fieldwork-based discipline has resulted in a process of defining and redefining what the “field” actually comprises. In the case of the MuzikMafia, I expand the notion of the field to include research among well-known musicians within the commercial mainstream. The absence of an academic model for conducting such research required that I create one. Therefore, I have adapted existing methodologies to suit the commercial context. The methodological framework that I employ is closely linked to this study’s significance and theoretical approach. Because I target individual and group identity and change, the bulk of my field research comprised working directly with people, i.e. interacting with my research participants in a variety of social contexts such as live performances, personal interviews, and intimate gatherings. The primary fieldwork for this study took place from June 2004 through December 2005. I synthesized my primary field data with occasional field observations and follow-up interviews in 2006 and 2007. My various methodological tools included

89 Samuels, David, 2004, Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

90 Fox, Aaron, 2004, Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

91 Laird, Tracey, 2005, Louisiana Hayride: Radio & Roots Music along the Red River, New York: Oxford University Press.

31 the creation of an interdependent network of communication; an acquisition of industry- specific jargon; the bartering of services; observation of live performances; numerous, formal and informal videotaped interviews; and extensive, off-camera personal conversations. As in previous popular music research by Veit Erlmann, Harris Berger, and Cheryl Keyes, I made contacts and created a network.92 When I began my research in June 2004, the MuzikMafia was in a period of transition: no longer a strictly local community of marginalized artists, but not yet part of the musical mainstream. I was unaware of the commercial success that Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson had experienced in the months prior. I first heard of Big & Rich while listening to their hit song “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” on a local radio station while driving to the Mercy Lounge on 15 June where the MuzikMafia would be performing that night. There I experienced a performance that included talented artists and much musical diversity. I spoke briefly with John, who was talking with a few people in the audience between sets. He gave me the name of music publisher and godfather Cory Gierman who later became a significant source for creating a network of contacts.93 Cory then introduced me to the rest of the MuzikMafia’s members who also welcomed this study. Once I established a working relationship with each artist, I expanded my network to include their personal circle of friends, family, managers, and publicists. These individuals provided me with unpublished biographical data and were often available to answer specific questions when other contacts were unreachable, which was often the case. My network grew considerably with the rise in popularity of the MuzikMafia. By May 2006 less than half of my research participants were musicians. Aside from MuzikMafia members, my research contacts comprised numerous managers, producers,

92 Erlmann, Veit, 1991, African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Berger, Harris, 1990, Metal, Rock and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press; Keyes, Cheryl, 2002, Rap Music and Street Consciousness, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

93 At the time Cory Gierman was Creative Director at Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) in Nashville. From winter 2004 to fall 2005, he was General Manager of Raybaw Records, a MuzikMafia- led co-venture with Warner Bros.

32 music publishers, television personnel, road crews, assistants, record company executives, promoters, stage managers, security guards, venue owners, tour bus drivers, fans, road managers, columnists, publicists, spouses, and parents, all of whom were significant sources. For the current study, I needed to internalize jargon associated with the commercial music industry. Most of my MuzikMafia contacts speak English as a native language, but I sometimes experienced difficulty understanding meanings due to the use of many technical terms associated with the popular music industry.94 I regularly included in my research dictionary entries that facilitated productive conversation while in the field. Recurring terms of significance included royalties, plugger, cuts, producer, publicist, germ, pre-production, tracking, overhead, Pro Tools, mixing, overdubbing, sound engineer, transfers, merch, masters, and EPK.95 In studies such as Jeff Todd Titon’s work with Lazy Bill Lucas, the researcher departs his/her role as an observer and becomes a participant within a given cultural soundscape.96 Even though I never performed on stage with MuzikMafia musicians, I did participate in their organization in other ways. One of my contributions to the MuzikMafia was documentation. Artists want to document their careers for numerous reasons, and such material can be quite valuable when an artist becomes better known or has faded from the mainstream. My research inventory includes over 200 hours of field video footage, including fifty-two formal interviews; approximately 28,500 digital photographs; approximately 1,500 articles from newspapers or magazines, and fieldnotes from over 100 MuzikMafia events. Participant-observation was a significant component of this study. The MuzikMafia godfathers granted me unrestricted access that included video privileges,

94 MuzikMafia percussionist Pino Squillace speaks Italian as a native language, and bassist Jerry Navarro is bilingual English-Spanish, having grown up in a Hispanic family and community in Oxnard, California.

95 A glossary containing definitions of these and other terms used in this study can be found in Appendix A.

96 From 1969 to 1971 Jeff Todd Titon was the guitarist in the Lazy Bill Lucas Blues Band, a group that appeared in the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. In 1969 Titon first published his research on Lazy Bill Lucas in a 1969 article entitled “Calling All Cows” in Blues Unlimited, nos. 60-63, cited in Titon, Jeff Todd, 2002, Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning: 174.

33 backstage V.I.P. passes to concerts, and invitations to private parties, and facilitated my entrée into the upper echelons of Nashville’s corporate music culture. From June 2004 through May 2007, I attended over 100 MuzikMafia-related events that included weekly Nashville performances, national concert tours, television appearances, artist showcases, televised performances, fundraisers, studio recording sessions, music industry conventions, video shoots, private jam sessions, music festivals, art exhibitions, private parties, and various private meals. I was able to observe MuzikMafia artists in their numerous public and private milieus, which contributed to my deeper understanding of the MuzikMafia, the respective musical identities of its members, and the MuzikMafia’s gradual changes over time. Research in the popular mainstream does not always comprise pleasant experiences; I encountered various obstacles that are often not part of local ethnomusicological studies. First, music industry personnel seldom returned phone calls in a timely fashion, especially if the topic is non-commercial, academic research. I had to adjust my methodology accordingly. Instead of scheduling an interview through one person, such as a musician’s manager, I requested interviews through various channels, including the publicist, producer, family members, and other musicians, and I followed up with numerous telephone calls and emails to each. I frequently questioned the reliability of information collected from my research participants, especially those whose annual incomes were significantly large. Each musician and his/her entourage had an agenda that was often, if not always, different from my own. I corroborated biographical data with numerous sources such as other musicians, the internet, public records, and family members. Artists withhold personal information for a variety of reasons. For example, I discovered that one of my research participants had a felony drug conviction. Public knowledge of such information might impede, jeopardize, or perhaps even further an artist’s career—a chance that few musicians or their managers are willing to take. Another artist asked me not to include the fact that they had dropped out of graduate school. One artist refused to give me his/her date of birth. Although the above information is easily obtainable through public records, dissemination of such data creates tension between the artist and the researcher and can often thwart future access.

34 On occasion I needed to confront an artist with facts that contradicted what he/she had previously provided. Sometimes an artist simply forgot names and dates; sometimes an artist intentionally omitted significant information. Follow-up was a crucial aspect of this fieldwork. I was always sensitive to the needs and concerns of my research participants as people.97 I attribute several statements in this research to anonymous sources due to the fact that public attribution of negative comments could affect an artist’s relationship with the MuzikMafia and consequently his/her professional career. I thoughtfully considered the pros and cons of including potentially harmful information to an artist’s career while accepting the responsibility of full academic disclosure. In most cases a compromise was reached that suited both the artist and researcher. Issues of copyright are at the forefront of research in the popular mainstream in which large dollar amounts are involved. In a Society for Ethnomusicology online discussion list post in March 2005, Mary Dopp raised the issue of providing research participants with copies of fieldwork recordings.98 Comments from numerous scholars were mixed. MuzikMafia musicians often requested copies of material that I collected. I obliged without compensation, because such a gesture established trust and greatly contributed to an expansion of my network. As a researcher, I could have registered for a Visual Arts (VA) copyright on all video and photographic documentation created during my fieldwork. However, the subjects of my video footage and photographs, namely MuzikMafia musicians, maintain a “right of publicity” that, in the case of a popular artist, has often been signed over to the publicity department of a recording label or a management agency.99 Were I to decide to publish visual documentation of a MuzikMafia artist, I would need authorization from his/her image licensing authority regardless of any verbal permission from the artist to

97 Titon, Jeff Todd, ed, 4th edition, 2002, World of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s People, Belmont, CA: Schirmer/Wadsworth/Thomson Learning: xiii.

98 Dopp, Mary, email distributed 1 March 2005 via the Society for Ethnomusicology discussion list, [[email protected]].

99 Geoffrey Hull, 16 March 2005, non-recorded interview by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Dr. Hull is a copyright attorney, professor, and co-founder of the Recording Industry Program at Middle Tennessee State University.

35 videotape or photograph a given performance. As a result, I have omitted in this study most image, video, and sound files that include MuzikMafia artists. In addition, the researcher cannot claim exclusive rights to the distribution of his/her footage of a particular artist even if done so with verbal permission. According to Judge Carlos Moreno, who presided over the 2001 case Morrill v. The Smashing Pumpkins, “Absent a written agreement, the copyright for a music video is a joint ownership between the performing artists and the video’s producer.”100 Were a MuzikMafia artist to redistribute my research materials for financial gain, I would only have legal claim to a portion of the monies incurred, because the musician and I are considered by law to be co-authors. On occasion I engaged the MuzikMafia as an active participant. Cory Gierman frequently solicited my opinion on matters of the MuzikMafia’s commercial direction and performances by specific artists.101 I sometimes performed in private jam sessions with MuzikMafia artists which also contributed much to the success of this research project. I never performed with MuzikMafia artists on stage because I wished a) to avoid any possible conflict of interest, i.e. any visible promotion of myself as a performer alongside such well-known musicians, b) to avoid blurring my role as an academic researcher, and c) to respect the MuzikMafia’s process of selecting its own talent. The accuracy and reliability of published information on the MuzikMafia is as important as the data collected through fieldwork. This research includes little information from online blogs, fan forums, non-reviewed websites, or unstructured conservations with fans. Such data is useful for reception studies of popular phenomena, but in the current study I emphasize historical facts, primary sources, applicable theories, artist intent, commentary from reliable secondary sources, and my own personal observations and critical analyses. I do include significant information from structured interviews with fans with which I compare with my own analyses. In addition, my data from numerous personal interviews with fans and a fan survey that I conducted in 2005

100 Morrill v. The Smashing Pumpkins, 157 F.Supp.2nd 1120 (2001 U.S. District Lexis 16720; C.D. Cal. 2001), summarized in Entertainment Law Reporter 23:9 (February 2002): 15-16.

101 For example, on 19 April 2005 Cory asked my opinion on the possibility of booking Cowboy Troy on NBC’s The Oprah Winfrey Show in promotion of Troy’s upcoming album Loco Motive. I advised against the booking because Oprah’s target audience differed greatly from that of the MuzikMafia.

36 and 2006 reflect the vast amount of information, including misinformation, on the MuzikMafia disseminated by the mass media. I consulted a variety of online resources due to the nature of this research. I considered sources as being reliable if their factual content on the MuzikMafia was largely accurate, if there was some process of peer reviewing or editing, if there was an established history of regular publication, and if a hardcopy was the primary medium of dissemination. Reliable sources used in this study included online versions of established newspapers or news magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Tennessean, New York Daily News, USA Today, and Time Magazine. I considered the substance of any promotional material whose content was controlled by a profit-driven entity to be factually questionable for the purposes of this study. Examples include websites that are maintained by record labels and management agencies.102 How an artist creates and markets his/her own image is highly relevant, but in the case of many MuzikMafia members, such promotional strategies are handled by separate entities thatt frequently manipulate information to make artists more marketable. Billboard Magazine’s website provided information regarding artist history and chart placement of songs that sometimes did not appear in the periodical’s weekly hardcopy publications.103 In addition, Billboard Magazine’s online archives proved invaluable as well as those of its online subsidiary Billboard.Biz.104 Rolling Stone Magazine’s searchable online archives provided helpful articles that documented the MuzikMafia’s rise in popularity.105 I should point out that album sales and related statistics that appear in this research differ among the various reliable sources that I consulted. Such data are used for

102 Exceptions include current news and dates that appear on artists’ websites. I often compared such data with other sources to confirm the MuzikMafia’s history of out-of-town performances, awards received, and television appearances.

103 Billboard Magazine’s official website can be found at [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/index.jsp].

104 Billboard.Biz’s official website is [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/index.jsp].

105 The official website for Rolling Stone Magazine is [http://www.rollingstone.com/].

37 many reasons in popular music studies, but few scholars have examined how reliable sources such as Nielsen Soundscan and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) collect their data. In my research I regularly observed inconsistencies between statistics released by Nielsen Soundscan and those reported by the RIAA regarding gold and platinum certifications. The above irregularities derive from how each source compiles its data. Nielsen Soundscan only measures over-the-counter, point-of-sale transactions from certified retail locations. The RIAA bases its data on unit shipments minus returns from manufacturers to retail stores, internet-based companies, non-retail record clubs, specialty stores, etc., when calculating gold and platinum certifications. Unfortunately, the RIAA does not calculate weekly sales of commercial music and, therefore, has much less influence over chart placement of titles than Nielsen Soundscan or the agencies to which it reports. In brief, both Nielsen Soundscan and RIAA are important sources, respectively, depending on the data required.

Nashville’s Musical Diversity: An Historical Overview The MuzikMafia emerged in 2001 from the Nashville music scene. The MuzikMafia’s musical inclusivity reflects, in several ways, Nashville’s own diverse cultural soundscape. The city’s current population of approximately 550,000 supports a thriving music scene that has historically welcomed musics of varying genres.106 In addition, MuzikMafia members acknowledge their collective and respective identities as being influenced by their Nashville surroundings. Art Music, Dance Bands, and Jazz The early presence and historical significance of art music, dance bands, and jazz in Nashville is little-known. However, these styles were integral components of musical life in Nashville during the first half of the twentieth century and beyond. Between 1900 and World War II, Nashville’s art music scene comprised a variety of ragtime performances, operas, a symphony orchestra, Broadway shows, dance clubs,

106 The population of Nashville-Davidson County in 2004 was estimated at 546,719 by the United States Census Bureau, [http://www.census.gov/popest/cities/SUB-EST2004.html] accessed 21 April 2006. Nashville is in a largely rural area of Middle Tennessee; therefore, the city’s population statistic includes that of Davidson County in which Nashville is located.

38 and vaudeville.107 Nashville’s music scene expanded dramatically during the radio’s Golden Age in the 1920s. The city’s first significant attempt to enter the radio race was WSM (650 AM) that went on the air on 5 October 1925.108 Nashville’s dance bands during the first half of the twentieth century were mostly white, but the city also supported a thriving black music scene. Educational institutions and professional schools such as Fisk University, Tennessee State University, Meharry Medical College, Walden University, Roger Williams University, and Gupton’s Embalming School gave blacks the opportunity to pursue careers.109 Many Nashville-based jazz bands were reaching the national scene by the end of the 1940s. This was owing to Tennessee State University, which had one of the top jazz education programs in the country at the time.110 Chick Chavis founded the university’s dance band The Collegians in 1946. The Collegians were voted the Best College Band in America in 1949, an honor that afforded the group a performance at Carnegie Hall followed by a national concert tour.111 The popularity of commercial country and rock and roll in the 1950s and 1960s eclipsed that of dance orchestras and jazz bands in Nashville. However, by this time many black musicians were already an integral part of or had decided to take part in Nashville’s separately developing scenes for blues and rhythm and blues. Rhythm and Blues Nashville has supported a thriving rhythm and blues scene since the mid-1940s. Urban migration and forced segregation at that time resulted in much black entertainment

107 Broome, Paul J., and Clay Tucker, 1990, The Other Music City: The Dance Bands and Jazz Musicians of Nashville, 1920-1970, Nashville: self-published: 1.

108 Although WEBX went on the air in 1924, its significance is eclipsed by the more powerful and widely popular WSM that aired its first broadcast the following year.

109 Broome, Paul J., and Clay Tucker, 1990, The Other Music City: The Dance Bands and Jazz Musicians of Nashville, 1920-1970, Nashville: self-published: 49.

110 Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970, 2004, Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press: 11.

111 The Collegians’ performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City took place on 9 April 1949. Other acts that evening included Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, and Wynonie Harris. Well-known personalities such as Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman made guest appearances at the event. Broome, Paul J., and Clay Tucker, 1990, The Other Music City: The Dance Bands and Jazz Musicians of Nashville, 1920-1970, Nashville: self-published: 63.

39 being centered on Fourth Avenue North and Jefferson Street. These districts housed many black theaters, nightclubs, and restaurants, the most famous of which was the Bijou Theater located on Fourth Avenue North.112 Nashville radio contributed much to the local rhythm and blues scene. WLAC rivaled WSM for national popularity in the 1940s. During the 1950s and 1960s WLAC was reaching a many as fifteen million listeners each night, making the station one of the most listened-to nighttime rhythm and blues outlets in the country.113 During the 1960s Nashville club goers experienced shows by many of the nation’s top stars for blues and rhythm and blues. Jimi Hendrix and his bassist Billy Cox moved to Nashville in 1962, where they frequently performed in Printer’s Alley and at Club Del Morocco on Jefferson Street.114 In 1963 Etta James recorded her live album Etta James Rocks the House at the New Era Club located at 1114 Charlotte Ave in Nashville.115 Sam Cooke performed a concert at the Sulphur Dell baseball park in the late 1950s. Memphis- born saxophonist Hank Crawford accompanied Ray Charles during many of Charles’s concerts in Nashville in the late 1950s and early 1960s.116 Nashville’s popularity as a center for rhythm and blues expanded in the 1960s with two nationally syndicated television programs: Night Train and The!!!Beat. WLAC- TV debuted Night Train in Nashville in October 1964, five years before the show’s better known Chicago counterpart Soul Train. The!!!Beat premiered in 1965, was hosted by Hoss Allen, and was among the first television programs to be broadcast in color.117

112 Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970, 2004, Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press: 4-6.

113 Barlow, William, 1999, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio, Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 164.

114 Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970, 2004, Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press: 17.

115 James, Etta, 1964, Etta James Rocks the House, produced by Ralph Bass, Chess Records CH- 9184, LP record.

116 Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970, 2004, Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press: 21-22.

117 Nashville celebrated its R&B roots in an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame from March 2004 through December 2005. Entitled Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945- 1970, the 5,000 square foot, multi-media exhibit highlighted significant milestones in the city’s R&B history. Country Music Foundation Records released in February 2004 a two-disc set with the exhibit’s

40 Rock Nashville is little known for its rock music scene, which also includes a variety of related genres such as rockabilly, heavy metal, punk rock, and new wave. Yet the city has celebrated a close relationship with rock music since the rise of rock and roll in the 1950s. Significant artists from the 1950s and 1960s who either performed or recorded in Nashville include Elvis Presley, who performed on the Grand Ole Opry in 1954 and recorded over 200 songs with RCA on Music Row; Jerry Lee Lewis; Chuck Berry; the Byrds, who performed on the Grand Ole Opry in 1968; Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix. One of Nashville’s earliest locales for various forms of rock-related music was the Exit/In, which opened in 1971 at 2208 Elliston Place just off of West End Avenue. Artists who performed there in the 1970s include Jimmy Buffet, Willie Nelson, John Hiatt, Linda Ronstadt, Guy Clark, and John Prine as well as comedian Steve Martin. During the 1980s the club expanded its repertory to include Fats Domino, Dizzy Gillespie, k.d. Lang, The Police, Bo Diddley, Billy Joel, Hank Williams Jr., R.E.M., and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. By the 1990s the Exit/In was one of Nashville’s premiere rock and pop venues, attracting artists such as Lucinda Williams, Hootie and the Blowfish, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.118 Since 1998 the Exit/In has undergone a series of renovations but still continues to book mostly rock-oriented acts. Rap and Hip-Hop Nashville’s hip-hop scene experienced a period of underground development from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. The MuzikMafia’s southern hip-hop artist Chance (b. 1980), who grew up in Nashville, remembers the Large Brothers as being the only crew of significance throughout the 1980s.119 By the mid-1990s Nashville’s fledgling hip-hop scene included groups such as Haystack, Drop Car Full of White Boys,

same name that comprised era-specific, Nashville-produced R&B recordings. The compact disc set won a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 2004. Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm and Blues, 1945-1970, 2004, compiled by Daniel Cooper and Michael Gray, mastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio & Alan Stoker , Country Music Foundation Records B0002100-02, two-compact disc set.

118 Eck, Tara, 3 January 1998, “Exit/In Looks to Past Glory in Hopes It'll Fuel Future Growth,” Nashville Business Journal, [http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/1998/01/26/story4.html] accessed 17 May 2006.

119 Chance, 24 April 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

41 and Count Bass D. There were no clubs in town that supported hip-hop culture or rap music. Instead, the above artists performed at a variety of venues, ranging from local house parties to campus events, especially those at Tennessee State University in Nashville or Middle Tennessee State University in nearby Murfreesboro. POW Shadows was the dominant emcee in Nashville in the mid-1990s, but at the time, the city’s hip-hop culture was still considered an underground phenomenon.120 The premiere venue for Nashville’s hip-hop artists in the late 1990s was the Bar Car located in Cummins Station on Tenth Avenue South. Turntablist United Crates organized the city’s first ciphers at the Bar Car in 1998. Host Father Abraham promoted an atmosphere of friendly competition among Nashville’s top emcees at the time: POW Shadows, Cash Villain, 187 Blitz, Boom Bap, and Kyhil. In 1998 the hip-hop magazine The Source organized at the Bar Car an emcee battle that POW Shadows won. Nashville’s rap scene continued to develop after 1999 with much influence from future MuzikMafia member Chance, who organized numerous battles and ciphers between 1999 and 2004 for his and other rap crews. I will return to Chance’s contributions to Nashville’s hip-hop scene in Chapter Six.

Organization of Dissertation I organized this research around three basic underlying questions: 1) What is the MuzikMafia? 2) What is the role of music in the lives of its respective members? and 3) What is the interrelationship between the MuzikMafia and the commercial context in which its exists? These questions have rarely produced definitive, consistent responses among MuzikMafia members, fans, or the media, requiring me frequently to incorporate my own ethomusicological analysis. The current chapter is an introduction to this study of the MuzikMafia. The current chapter lays a foundation for understanding this study’s significance, theoretical approaches, research design, and the Nashville context in which the MuzikMafia existed. In Unit I, “Community,” I attempt to define and explain the MuzikMafia by examining its members and their early experiences with one another as an organized

120 Chance, 24 April 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

42 collective. I present in Chapter One, “The MuzikMafia’s Origins,” the collective’s founding members in the form of brief biographies. I refer these and other MuzikMafia artists throughout this research, and brief biographies allow the reader to become familiar with specific artists, their socio-cultural roles within the MuzikMafia, and why they created the MuzikMafia. In Chapter Two, “Defining the Community,” I examine events that led to the formation of the MuzikMafia and how its artists define their collectivity. Surprisingly, no two definitions are alike, but there are many similarities among them. I further explain the MuzikMafia by drawing comparisons with other groups such as imagined communities and voluntary associations. I analyze in Chapter Three, “The Pub of Love,” the MuzikMafia’s first performances as a community in 2001 and 2002 using ethnographic analogy, eyewitness testimony, and critical analysis of live video footage. Unit II, “Identity,” constitutes a significant portion of this study because of the modality’s significance to understanding the MuzikMafia. Each of this unit’s case studies contains a detailed song analysis with exception of Chapter Eight that focuses on Rachel Kice whose primary medium of expression is visual art. Musical analysis can be a vital tool for targeting identity here because most of the MuzikMafia’s core artists write their own songs. I examine in each song stylistic elements such as harmony, rhythm, melody, meter, tempo, form, instrumentation, etc. that link musical expression with the artist’s identity. I emphasize local live performances by MuzikMafia artists rather than commercially produced recordings or national concert tours. Not only are commercially produced recordings unreliable depictions of an artist’s intentions, they are deceptive. Moreover, performances on national concert tours are staged and choreographed to maintain consistency. An important factor of my musical analyses throughout this unit is artist feedback. I began with my own musical analysis which I then compared with that of each respective artist in a feedback interview. I met with each MuzikMafia member and had them discuss their music as well as my musical interpretation. I inquired into their reasoning behind textual themes and the use of specific musical elements. Such is often omitted in popular music scholarship due to limited accessibility to major artists.

43 Fortunately, MuzikMafia members who appear in this unit were more than willing to discuss with me their intentions and compositional processes. My analytical approach varies somewhat among this unit’s various chapters. No MuzikMafia member is identical to the others despite many striking similarities. In Chapter Four that focuses on John, Kenny, and Troy, I explore the topic of racial identity since such dominates much of their music as well as their personal and public lives. I emphasize musical style in Chapter Five, “Case Study: Shannon Lawson,” because of the significance of bluegrass music of his Kentucky childhood and Shannon’s subsequent return to bluegrass music on two different occasions as an adult. I highlight with Chapter Six, “Case Study: Chance,” the MuzikMafia’s contribution to southern hip-hop, using an artist named Timothy “Chance” Smith. Chance’s musical combination of hip-hop, country, and southern rock emphasizes his southernness and his own working class identity. In Chapter Seven, “Case Study: Dean Hall,” I examine the artist’s musical identity vis-à-vis his process of artistic creation. Dean’s father is well-known songwriter Tom T. Hall who has greatly influenced how Dean composes music. I integrate Dean’s identity as a songwriter into an analysis of his own blues-rock musical style. I also examine Rachel’s process of artistic creation in role in the MuzikMafia in Chapter Eight. Rachel is unique because she is one of few MuzikMafia members who does not regularly play an instrument on stage. Rachel is a graphic artist who translates musical sound into a visual format, namely through paintings done at MuzikMafia performances. This chapter is distinctive because I take the reader through a step-by-step examination of Rachel painting during at an actual MuzikMafia event. Such reveals how Rachel conceptualizes musical sounds and how she transforms them into specific shapes, colors, textures in her artwork. I save a discussion of Jon Nicholson for Chapter Nine, the last one on an individual MuzikMafia artist. Jon’s role as a founding godfather; his own combination of gospel, rock, and soul; and his song “Hero” express much about the MuzikMafia and the respective identities of its members because of his significant role in the MuzikMafia. Jon is a founding godfather in addition to John, Cory, and Kenny, but Jon’s song “Hero” is

44 the only one that has served as the MuzikMafia’s informal anthem since January 2004.121 Written shortly after the community began performing together in 2001, “Hero” contains many identity-revealing traits of the MuzikMafia’s core members: themes of living as a social outsider and following one’s dreams, musical variation among numerous performances, self-empowerment, and intimacy with the listener or audience member. The emphases in Unit III “Change” are two-fold. First, I note the physical changes in the MuzikMafia, including its performance locales, public exposure, membership, and the growth of its fan base. Second, I interpolate discussions of the non- physical changes such as those pertaining to identity. I have grouped the unit’s chapters according to the MuzikMafia’s various stages of growth and development. Chapter Ten documents the community’s history and changes from October 2001 to March 2004. During this time the MuzikMafia was still considered part of Nashville’s local music scene. In was not until March 2004 when Gretchen debuted her song “Redneck Woman” at the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, that the MuzikMafia first attracted significant national exposure, eventually leading to the early release of Gretchen’s debut album Here for the Party. The MuzikMafia relocated to the Mercy Lounge around the same time. Entitled “March through December 2004,” Chapter Eleven examines the community’s emergence into the popular mainstream. This period of development represents the first wave of MuzikMafia artists to receive widespread and continuous national exposure. Gretchen’s swift rise to the Number One spot on Billboard’s Country Singles chart in summer 2004 resulted in the MuzikMafia’s presence and significance on the national scene. The rapid growth in Big & Rich’s popularity despite their relatively little radio airplay caused significant change in the image and message of commercial country music. As a result, MuzikMafia members frequently appeared on national television and took part in various national concert tours. Chapter Twelve, “2005: The Second Wave,” explores the next phase of MuzikMafia, namely its growth and development throughout 2005. I highlight the community’s various successes, including the launch of its own television series on CMT, the MuzikMafia co-venture with Warner Bros., the label’s first three artists,

121 In 2004 Jon’s song “Hero” was given special attention at shows throughout the year, including performances on the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour in November and December.

45 numerous televised appearances, awards by Gretchen and Big & Rich, summer and fall tours, and the release of additional albums by five MuzikMafia acts. I return in the dissertation’s Conclusion to my original questions concerning the MuzikMafia, the role of music in the lives of its respective members, and the MuzikMafia’s place with the context of the commercial music industry. I summarize several aspects of the MuzikMafia’s community and identity which I then juxtapose against the MuzikMafia’s social and musical changes within their commercial framework.

46 UNIT I: COMMUNITY

CHAPTER ONE: THE MUZIKMAFIA’S ORIGINS

Introduction

1. Respect and accept all forms of music, people, and forms of self expression 2. Never speak ill will of anyone or anything 3. Be the best at what you do 4. Do not promote yourself before any other artist 5. No disrespect towards women 6. No “hard” drugs 7. No negativity towards other MuzikMafia musicians 8. Ask what you can give to the MuzikMafia, not what can you get from it 9. Do not ask to join the MuzikMafia1

These are the rules. Since the MuzikMafia’s first performance on 23 October 2001, many musicians have been asked to join or at least to perform with the MuzikMafia. Those who could not meet the above criteria have been asked to leave. The core membership of the MuzikMafia is small—less than twenty individuals. Separately, they are artists, each of whom has experienced relative degrees of success and failure, respectively, in their personal and professional lives. Together, they have contributed to significant change in the commercial music industry in Nashville and beyond. But what is the MuzikMafia? Since beginning this research in June 2004, I have posed the above question to MuzikMafia members, tour personnel, a MuzikMafia sub- community known as the Mafia Mizfits, Nashville songwriters, publicists, agents, managers, media representatives, record company executives, MuzikMafia fans, and to myself on numerous occasions. The responses are as diverse as the MuzikMafia’s membership. Seldom are two definitions identical, but many evoke connotations of

1 According to MuzikMafia members and other cultural insiders, there is no official list of regulations that appears in written form. I conflated the above summation from personal interviews with MuzikMafia members from June 2004 through May 2007. In most cases, each artist provided only three or four different “rules.”

47 family or a group of something that promotes individuality, acceptance, and musical diversity.2 In this unit I examine the MuzikMafia from several perspectives. In the current chapter, I introduce the reader to the MuzikMafia’s four “godfathers” in the form of brief biographies. In Chapter Two I examine the creation of the MuzikMafia in the fall of 2001, and I explore how MuzikMafia members define their collectivity. My data come from one or more videotaped interviews with each artist, in addition to hundreds of informal conversations with MuzikMafia members backstage at shows, on the telephone, at private parties, during meals, at home, in bars, etc. With the above data, I describe the MuzikMafia from a cultural perspective, identifying similarities between the MuzikMafia and imagined communities and voluntary associations in the literature. In Chapter Three I examine the MuzikMafia’s first public performances at the Pub of Love in downtown Nashville. By focusing on the origins of the MuzikMafia and how its members view their collectivity, one can better understand the MuzikMafia and its purpose before significant development and change—a topic that I address in detail in Unit III.

Brief Biographies of the MuzikMafia’s Founding Godfathers In order to understand the MuzikMafia community, one should examine the respective backgrounds of its founding members. After all, the MuzikMafia did not simply coalesce out of nothing in the fall of 2001. The MuzikMafia comprises like minded individuals whose lives, although diverse in cultural and geographic background, contain similar threads of identity-building experiences. The godfathers’ brief biographical sketches appear in no particular order. I base the biographical sketches primarily on extended personal interviews with each artist rather than on published secondary sources. In order to guarantee accuracy of information—research participants, especially those in the commercial music industry, are not always forthcoming when describing their personal lives—I have corroborated much data with reliable sources such as family members, published biographical information, documents of public record, and other MuzikMafia members. I have

2 The above descriptions derive from direct personal contact with the author in the form of interviews with MuzikMafia members and fans or fan survey questionnaires since June 2004. I will address definitions of the MuzikMafia that have appeared in the media in Chapter Fourteen.

48 included biographical sketches on fifteen of the MuzikMafia’s other core members 2004- 2005 in either 1) the case studies dedicated to individual artists in UNIT II or 2) in Appendix B. Cory Gierman Cory’s position as one of only four godfathers makes him an integral component of the MuzikMafia community. He is also one of few MuzikMafia members who does not regularly perform on stage. As a music publisher by trade, Cory oversees many of the business-related matters of the community. Cory was born on 24 June 1975 in Vassar, Michigan.3 Much of his youth was spent between Vassar, where he worked on the family’s hay farm, and Pine Island, Florida, where the family spent its winters.4 His musical interests while growing up included Top 40 hits on the jukebox in his family’s restaurant: country music as well as heavy metal, rock, and rap. He studied agriculture for two years as an undergraduate before deciding on a career in the music industry. Following his graduation from Belmont University in Nashville in spring 1998 with a B.A. in Music Business, Cory worked for several music publishing companies on Music Row, such as Famous Music, Broadvision, and Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG). His job duties ranged from tape copyist and song “plugger” to creative director in charge of artists and repertoire (A&R).5 Cory’s collaboration with MuzikMafia musicians began long before the community’s first performance together on 23 October 2001. The first artist whom Cory signed at Broadvision was future godfather Jon Nicholson. Godfather Kenny Alphin and Cory had known each other from Famous Music where Kenny had just started working as

3 Much material from this section comes from multiple interviews between Gierman and the author, the most significant of which took place on 6 August 2004 at the Universal Music Publishing Group main offices, Nashville, Tennessee. Vassar, Michigan, is located approximately eighty-seven miles north of Detroit.

4 Pine Island is one of the largest islands off the west coast of Florida located west of Fort Myers. The island’s cities include Pine Island Center, Bokeelia, Pineland, and St. James City.

5 A song “plugger” is one who takes songs written by someone else and pitches them to major labels or song publishers for inclusion on another artist’s album.

49 a songwriter when Cory arrived in 1997. It was Kenny who introduced Cory to Jon when Cory became Creative Director at Famous Music. Cory had known future godfather John Rich through Kenny from early 1999. John had been working with Kenny as a songwriter at Famous Music. Cory, Kenny, John, and Jon openly discussed with one another their respective dissatisfaction with the music industry in early 2001. Such conversations gave rise to the MuzikMafia as an organized collective in October of that year. John Rich John Rich’s role in the MuzikMafia is significant and multi-faceted. As an established insider in Nashville’s commercial music industry, John was a significant force behind the MuzikMafia’s inception and its early popularity, and he is responsible for the addition of many of its members. The oldest of four children, John was born 7 January 1974 in Amarillo, Texas.6 His childhood included a stern religious upbringing as well as rigorous guitar lessons. John’s father was a devout Baptist preacher as well as a guitar instructor at a local music store. Although John performed mostly gospel music at a young age, his primary listening preference was bluegrass. He admits, however, that his musical palate later included interests in artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Bob Wills, Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner, Vince Gill, Johnny Horton, Roger Miller, Johnny Cash, Ralph Stanley, Jim and Jesse, and Aerosmith.7 Following the family’s move to Tennessee in 1989 and the ultimate divorce of his parents one year later, John began competing in Nashville talent shows. His first Nashville appearance was at the Judy Martin Talent Contest held at the Broken Spoke

6 Amarillo is located in the Texas panhandle at the intersection of Interstate 40 and Interstate 27 approximately 120 miles north of Lubbock. John is the oldest of four children; his siblings include two sisters Jamie (b. 1975) and Joy (b. 1978), and brother Isaac (b. 1981).

7 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

50 Café just north of Nashville’s downtown area near Interstate 24.8 The experience inspired him to enter as many talent contests as he could in the Nashville area.9 In summer 1992 John secured a job performing in a band at the Opryland theme park in Nashville where he met Dean Sams.10 Both from Texas, John and Dean performed regularly in the Opryland show Country Music U.S.A. In January 1993 the two decided to form a group called Texassee which also included Richie McDonald, Michael Britt, and Keech Rainwater. John played bass guitar and sang backup vocals. Texassee celebrated considerable success which led to a record deal in 1995 with RCA/BNA, a subsequent name change to Lonestar, and a series of award winning albums, including Lonestar in 1995 and Crazy Nights in 1997, both of which were certified gold by the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA).11 John left Lonestar in January 1998 to pursue a solo career. He later stated that his reason for leaving was a matter of opinion concerning the group’s direction: “The band had a different musical style than I did. I left the band because my natural style was in direct contrast to the direction they were going.”12 According to Kenny:

8 The Broken Spoke Café is located at 1412 Brick Church Pike, three miles north of downtown Nashville.

9 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

10 Located off of Briley Parkway nine miles east of downtown Nashville, Opryland opened on 30 June 1972 and ceased operations on 31 December 1997. The theme park was replaced by Opry Mills, a 1.2 million-square-foot entertainment/shopping facility adjacent to the Grand Ole Opry house and the Opryland Hotel complex; Hartmann, Stacey, 2000, “The Thrill has Gone ... Somewhere Else: Opryland Rides Find Homes in Other Parks,” The Tennessean, Saturday 1 July, 2000, [http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/07/01/rides01.shtml] accessed 5 April 2005.

11 While on the above tour in 1993, John met Troy Coleman (AKA “Cowboy Troy”) at a Dallas music club called the Borrowed Money Saloon. In 1995 Lonestar was named Best New Vocal Duet/Group of the Year by the Academy of Country Music. “Lonestar,” from Century of Country, [http://www.countryworks.com/artist_full.asp?KEY=LONESTAR] accessed 5 April 2005. “Lonestar: From There to Here, Greatest Hits – Bio,” from About Country Music.com [http://countrymusic.about.com/library/bllonestar-bio.htm] accessed 5 April 2005.

12 Princeton Songwriters, 2001, “Interview with BNA Recording Artist John Rich,” in New Jersey Country Music Scene, Jackie Hinczynski , ed., April 2001 issue, [http://www.babswinn.com/Archives/Old/Articles/JohnRich4-01.htm] accessed 6 April 2005.

51 Lonestar had a meeting, and they decided that where John wanted to go and where the rest of the band wanted to go was too different. He was out of the band in January, and in February, he met me.13

Although John was known throughout the commercial country music industry, he experienced substantial difficulty in acquiring a solo record deal with a major label. With the help of friend and manager Sara Vaughn, John recorded a demo that eventually reached Joe Galanta of BNA Records. Galante subsequently offered John a recording contract in fall 1999. John’s debut album, Underneath the Same Moon, was scheduled for release in October 2000. However, BNA decided against releasing it at the time and consequently dropped John from the label’s roster in June 2000. Kenny Alphin Known by friends and fans as “Big Kenny,” Kenny Alphin is a significant figure in the MuzikMafia.14 In addition to his status as godfather, Kenny contributed significantly to the development of one of the MuzikMafia’s fundamental principles of artistic expression: “Music without Prejudice.” Kenny was born on 1 November 1963, one of four children to Bill and Mary Alphin.15 Kenny’s youth comprised much exposure to rural life on the family’s cattle farm in Culpeper, Virginia.16 Kenny’s interest in music began to develop from the age of two through singing lessons from his mother, who was the choir director at a local church. By the time Kenny graduated from high school in 1982, he had gained proficiency on saxophone and drums, in addition to showing exceptional aptitude for art, mathematics, and physics.17

13 Loy, Robert, 2004, “Kenny and John Make it Big, Strike it Rich,” in Country Time Standard, September 2004 issue, [http://www.countrystandardtime.com/bigandrichFEATURE.html] accessed 5 April 2005. 14 Appropriately named, Big Kenny stands about 6’3” tall and weighs approximately 190 pounds.

15 Big Kenny’s siblings are Charlene, Robert, and Wallace; Charlene is the subject of Big & Rich’s song “Holy Water,” and she also appears in the song’s video.

16 Culpeper, Virginia, is located approximately eighty-seven miles northwest of Richmond.

17 In 1981, following his junior year of high school, Kenny attended the Virginia Summer Governor’s School for the Arts at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg to develop his artistic interests further.17 Kenny had been nominated for the Governor’s School by three different high school faculty—a rare honor in the Culpeper County school system—namely Jane Harvey [Sisson] (art), Ashby Mitchell (mathematics), and Thomas Earles (chemistry and physics).

52 After graduation Kenny opened his own contracting business, which eventually made him a short-term millionaire. As a result of a recession in the real estate business in the late 1980s, Kenny lost his business and most of his wealth. Within a year he was bankrupt. With little money, a recent divorce from his wife of five years, and few, if any, business prospects, Kenny returned to farming with his father for several years before deciding to move to Nashville for a new start.18 Kenny moved to Nashville in 1994 to try his luck as a professional musician. He had been encouraged by his modest success in songwriting and performing with local bands in Virginia.19 With the help of a friend, Harlan Howard, Kenny received his first publishing contract in 1995 as a songwriter at Famous Music. There he met future godfather Cory Gierman, who began working at Famous as a tape copyist six months after Kenny arrived. While working as a songwriter for Famous, Kenny performed regularly in and around Nashville with his band, Big Kenny. In 1998 Kenny’s musical success led to a recording contract with Hollywood Records in 1998, which resulted in his debut album Live a Little the following year. In 1999 he experienced brief commercial success with the release of two singles from the album, “Candy Colored Glasses” and “Under the Sun.” The video from the latter was featured on VH-1, and the single was included in the soundtrack for the film Gun Shy (1999), starring Sandra Bullock and Liam Neeson.20 Unfortunately, Hollywood Records did not release the entire album Live a Little following its completion in 1999, and subsequently they dropped Big Kenny from the label.21 As a result of his bittersweet success as a solo artist on the national scene, Kenny decided to form a new musical group in 1999. When he informed John of his idea, John

18 During this time, Kenny continued to work for Nobel Construction which contracted primarily in northern Virginia; postal correspondence with Mary Alphin, 27 October 2005.

19 Kenny was performing music on a part-time basis while working for Nobel Construction in the late 1980s.

20 Gun Shy, 1999, written and directed by Eric Blakeney, produced by Sandra Bullock, Hollywood Pictures, 1 hour 41 min.

21 Hollywood Records did not release Live a Little until 1 March 2005, almost two months after Big and Rich’s album Horse of a Different Color was certified double-platinum by the RIAA on 11 January 2005.

53 suggested calling it luvjOi, because “that’s what you [Kenny] are all about,” combining Kenny’s “love everybody” motto with his penchant for unique creative expression.22 It was during luvjOi’s moderate success in Nashville when Kenny, John, Cory, and Jon formed the MuzikMafia in fall 2001. Jon Nicholson Jon Nicholson’s diverse musical background, combined with his position as one of the four founding godfathers, makes him a significant contributor to the birth, growth, and development of the MuzikMafia. Jon describes himself as the “soul branch” of the MuzikMafia, but his musical style includes numerous additional influences, such as country, blues, gospel, funk, and rock and roll.23 His music is comparably the most challenging to categorize among all MuzikMafia musicians. Jon was born on 4 August 1973 in Madison, Wisconsin, to Judy and Bliss Nicholson. He acquired an appreciation for commercial country stars Johnny Paycheck and Hank Williams Jr. through his father, who owned a landscaping business. Jon began his musical training at an early age and continued throughout college. His mother began teaching him to sing by age two, around which time he started taking piano lessons from his grandmother. Jon received formal piano instruction at age four, but he never dedicated himself to gaining proficiency in reading musical notation. Begun in 1985, his first band, Here and Now, performed primarily hard rock, punk, and heavy metal music. Jon received his first professional exposure to gospel music as a pianist for his local church. In fall 1991 Jon began his studies in biology with a minor in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.24 Pre-occupied with performing and composing

22 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

23 “Jon Nicholson Electronic Press Kit (EPK),” 2005, produced by Live Animals Productions; from MuzikMafia’s official website, “Jon Nicholson” [http://www.muzikmafia.com/?action=artist&artist_id=12&PHPSESSID=62b80d5f5555bba320a3e7012d5 a9ba5] accessed 10 January 2005.

24 Founded in 1916 the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire comprised c. 11,000 students as of 2005.

54 music, Jon only attended class sporadically, resulting in poor grades and his eventual withdrawal from the university. In 1993 Jon left the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire at the end of his sophomore year and returned to Madison. He worked as a bouncer in a local bar, supplementing his income with music in two ways: through solo performances and regular gigs with a local band called Under the Gun, a local country-rock group. Jon played keyboards and sang backup vocals from winter 1993 to 1996 with Under the Gun, an opportunity that allowed him to perform his own material on a regular basis. Jon moved to Nashville in 1996 where he first met Kenny. The two became friends and eventually shared an apartment together at Oakwell Farms in Hermitage, fifteen miles east of Nashville. Their meeting had been set up by mutual friend Mitch Ballard, a music publisher at Cupid Music. Jon supported himself by performing at well- known Nashville clubs such as the Courtyard Café, the Boardwalk, and the Bluebird Café.25 When Cory began working at Broadvision as Creative Director, he immediately signed Jon as his first songwriter. Jon continued to work as an independent singer/songwriter in Nashville until 2001 when he founded his rock band Stroller.

Creating the MuzikMafia The idea of the MuzikMafia was conceived in early 2001 by John, Cory, Jon, and Kenny. John had been dropped by RCA/BNA Records the previous year, and Kenny had been dropped by Hollywood Records in 1999. Jon had known Kenny since their songwriting days at Famous Music and, later, Broadvision Music Publishing. The two had also shared an apartment together since 1996 in nearby Hermitage, Tennessee. John had met Kenny at a local Nashville bar through a mutual friend who had arranged the meeting. Cory had worked for various music publishers where he pitched songs by Kenny, John, and Jon to various record companies on Music Row. Their conversations throughout 2001 concentrated on two themes: a) Music Row’s marginalization of them

25 The Courtyard Café is located in the lobby of the Courtyard Hotel at 170 4th Ave North in downtown Nashville; the Boardwalk is located at 4114 Nolensville Pike, and the Bluebird Café is at 4104 Hillsboro Road.

55 because they were artists who combine genres and b) the cultural distance that Music Row maintains from the average Nashville musician.26 In October 2001 John, Cory, Jon, and Kenny formed the MuzikMafia with themselves as “godfathers.” The founding members drew upon popular secular connotations of the term “godfather” as depicted in television, literature, and film, for example, the movie trilogy The Godfather based upon Mario Puzo’s 1969 book by the same name.27 In this context, a godfather is someone of Italian descent who oversees a relatively secretive but socially powerful, family-oriented, and often illegal, commercial enterprise. The godfathers’ conversations concerning the MuzikMafia name took place over several meetings at a club called 12th and Porter located in downtown Nashville. According to Cory: We wanted to screw “the man” for having all of the power. We [John, Jon, Kenny, and I] all felt as if we had been beat down by the system. We’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing…let’s just do it together. Let’s go play music ‘cause we want to play music and see what comes out of it. Let’s do it Mafia style.28

Cory later said that their Mafia reference was first used in a joking manner. The four godfathers liked the toughness that the Mafia connotation suggested and welcomed the term’s association with secrecy, illegality, and the underground. According to Cory, “It wouldn’t be just John Rich going in to talk to a record label; it would be all four…we wanted to use intimidation… you know, where we’d just walk in there [to record companies] and demand stuff.”29 In actuality, the godfathers probably demanded nothing from major labels on Music Row, but Cory’s sentiment above clearly expresses the godfathers’ wish to exchange power roles with industry executives.

26 Numerous personal interviews between the MuzikMafia godfathers and the author, August 2004 through May 2007.

27 Puzo, Mario, 1969, The Godfather, New York: Putnam. The movie trilogy was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and comprised The Godfather: Part 1 (1972); The Godfather: Part II (1974), and The Godfather: Part III (1990).

28 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

29 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

56 I should emphasize the casualness with which the godfathers promoted their beliefs in musical hybridity and the interests of the “common man” during the MuzikMafia’s inception. John, Kenny, Cory, and Jon each possessed diverse listening tastes. The eclectic music that John, Kenny, and Jon created was the result of a myriad of styles that had influenced their own respective musical identities. The godfathers assumed that, because their respective musical influences were diverse, most listeners also had eclectic tastes. As I explain in Chapter Two, the godfathers did not intend for early MuzikMafia performances to be a rule-breaking social spectacle, but rather a gathering place for friends and fans to be themselves. In this chapter I have briefly introduced the MuzikMafia, its four founding members, and its creation in 2001. Each godfather has contributed to the growth and development of the MuzikMafia through their own version of “music without prejudice,” implying music without preference given to any particular genre archetype. In the presence of such diversity, there are many underlying characteristics among the MuzikMafia’s godfathers and other core members. Before examining the MuzikMafia further at the individual level as I do in Unit II, one must understand what the MuzikMafia community is and how it began.

57 CHAPTER TWO: DEFINING THE MUZIKMAFIA

Introduction Defining the MuzikMafia is no simple task. Self-definitions are similar among the community’s members, but none are exactly alike. The MuzikMafia’s pronounced emphasis on individuality and diversity accounts for its members’ many divergent views on their collectivity. Based largely upon testimony from personal interviews, the research for this chapter’s first two sections begins with the MuzikMafia’s origins. I then address the community’s collective identity, i.e. how members view themselves as a group. In a third section, I envision the MuzikMafia theoretically by analyzing it both as an “imagined community” and as a kind of “voluntary association” existing within the hegemony of the Nashville commercial music industry.

Defining the MuzikMafia Many of the responses below come from the MuzikMafia’s core members. Additional definitions come from people who are directly involved with the MuzikMafia, including musicians who regularly perform with the MuzikMafia but who are not yet viewed as full members—a process that I will discuss later. From June 2004 through May 2007 I asked each research participant to define the MuzikMafia in their own words. In most cases where I conducted interviews with the same research participant over this approximate three-year period, I included the same question each time: “What is the MuzikMafia?” My goal was to solicit each person’s concept of the MuzikMafia and to compare these responses with others. Moreover, in subsequent interviews with the same individual, I wanted to document examples of change, where applicable, in each person’s perceptions of the MuzikMafia. I could then link changes to a variety of influences, including a) personal growth and development, b) change in status within the collective, c) media influence, d) lucrative recording contracts with major labels, e) considerable financial gain, and f) national popularity. I found that most, if not all, responses by each individual, respectively, remained relatively consistent over time.

58 Although each MuzikMafia member defines the collective differently, patterns of similarity can be seen when examining all responses together. In the following section, I present selected members’ responses, and then synthesize them into a single, composite definition. According to Jon, “Everybody involved has a different idea of what it [MuzikMafia] is and what it means. [The] only ones who really know are the godfathers…similar to the gospels of the Bible.”1 Jon expanded on his views about the origins of the MuzikMafia approximately one year after our first interview and amidst the MuzikMafia’s considerable national popularity: MuzikMafia is an outbreak of a musical virus . . . Everybody has their own interpretation. It matters when you came into the MuzikMafia, what was going on at that time, what experiences were happening. In the later years here when everything is going, you know, gangbusters, we got record labels, and people selling millions of records and all that. It seems like it’s this big thing where, you know, with these guys are involved in all kinds of stuff. But really what it was about was a bunch of friends hanging out and bullshittin’, you know, and talking about world domination and all that stuff. [We were] talking about kicking everybody else out of Nashville, all the old-timers that were messing up the music business and manufacturing artists—all the stuff that pissed us off about the music business. And we wanted to change all that. So we got all our friends together and started playing, started networking, and created something more powerful than any of those people [industry personnel], that’s more powerful than any record label or anything else. It [MuzikMafia] is the governing force in Nashville. It [MuzikMafia] takes all the lines out and all the borders and everything, and makes it wide open for whatever kind of music you want to make.2

Kenny describes the MuzikMafia as follows: We’re a family; we check each other; when one of us gets too far out of hand, everybody pulls them back. It’s hard to screw up with so many people behind you. It’s like a group of trees standing in the forest with their branches touching. No one tree can fall. If it does, there are trees on all sides there helping him stand tall.3

1 Jon Nicholson, 3 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

2 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

3 Kenny Alphin,, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

59 Cory, the only godfather who does not regularly perform on stage with the MuzikMafia, views the MuzikMafia as an empowering and a somewhat visionary entity: It [the MuzikMafia] is tough; it’s our own organization to take the power away from the big companies. We want to join people up to go in as a force. It gave us something to feel bonded by and to give each other support and encouragement to follow their dreams.4

John, probably the best-known of all MuzikMafia musicians as of 2001, says: It’s multi-pronged: it’s family, but it’s also a representation of the absolute best of the best of the best that the world has to offer—at least our world here in Nashville—to music. There is nobody better in Nashville than [Muzik]Mafia. If they were [better], we’d already have invited them over. It’s people covering your back. It’s a gang; it’s blood oath. “Abundance” and “alliance” both have been used from the beginning; but alliance is really it. It’s not anti-establishment; it’s anti-certain thought processes.5

Not long after their first performance at the Pub of Love, the godfathers created an acronym to further define the community: M.A.F.I.A (Musically Artistic Friends in Abundance). The word “abundance” was later changed to “alliance” in January 2004. The above denotes a change in self-perception and intent. The MuzikMafia began as an open jam session at the Pub of Love, free for anyone who wanted to attend. The initial acronym refers to the godfathers’ idea that there are undoubtedly many more people who share the same belief of “music without prejudice”—a populist-based MuzikMafia motto that I will examine later. The “alliance” reference reflects the godfathers’ more unifying intention among its membership amidst the growing popularity of the collective. In order to define the MuzikMafia further, I turned to several artists who are regular fixtures on the MuzikMafia stage. Former Mercury recording artist James Otto, who has been with the MuzikMafia since its first performance, describes the community as follows:

4 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

5 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

60 It’s friends and a group of artists. It has become a creative cocoon to me, full of creative spirits bouncing off the walls. Everyone is supporting each other’s vision for who they are and what they want to become, helping to chip away and define what’s great about each artist. It’s a place to take criticism who those whom you respect. It’s a place where everybody is encouraged to be the best they can be.6

Drummer Brian Barnett, who also has been with the MuzikMafia since its first show and who toured tour with Big & Rich from summer 2004 through summer 2006, reinforces the familial relationship that the MuzikMafia’s musicians share with one another. In addition, Brian emphasizes the humility that each musician must have. He elaborates: MuzikMafia is like a family of musicians…You have to be able to step up to the plate as far as far as musically …[sic] and you need to be humble are far as socially…[sic]. In order to be a part of the [Muzik]Mafia you have to have gone through some shit, basically, because you really don’t know how to be humble if you’ve only had success. That’s what keeps everybody together.7

Damien Horne (a.k.a. Mista D) is a more pop- and rock-oriented musician who began performing with the MuzikMafia in August 2002. He frequently expands upon public conceptions of the community. According to Damien: “Musically Artistic Friends in Alliance” is just the basis. It’s really more than that. It’s a family. They took me under their wing and helped me in all areas of my life: musically, financially, etc. They pull each other up. They elevate everyone else in the Mafia. It’s a body, but everyone is his/her own part. You don’t necessarily get along with everyone else all the time, but they’re still your family.8

The MuzikMafia’s membership contains two artists who combine rap and commercial country. The first is Troy Coleman, an African American cowboy rapper who had known John from Lonestar tours through Texas in the early 1990s. Troy describes the MuzikMafia as a place where “friends get together regardless of genre of music or type of art that you perform … If it’s painting, playing, singing, rapping, poetry

6 James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

7 Brian Barnett, 7 June 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

8 Damien Horne, 25 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

61 recitation, whatever, you get together to display your wares…Friends give you feedback and give you support.”9 Timothy “Chance” Smith, is the MuzikMafia’s second rap artist. He views the MuzikMafia as “a breeding ground for greatness. It’s a place where, if you need help, there are people to help you.”10 Shawna Pierce (a.k.a. Sista Soul) is a funk/soul singer who regularly performs with Chance. She elaborates: MuzikMafia is an alliance of musicians and friends who come together for the purpose of sharing music in a non-territorial and loving environment. It’s a network of friends and family. Who help one another and encourage one another. It’s just like a sanctuary. The purpose is to celebrate music of up and coming artists in a non-territorial environment. It’s a tribe.11

Virtuosic blues-rock guitarist Dean Hall joined the MuzikMafia in spring 2004. By the time of his induction, MuzikMafia artists Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich were growing in popularity vis-à-vis widespread exposure in the mass media. Dean describes the MuzikMafia as: Not a band; even though there is a band playing on stage. It [the MuzikMafia] is a philosophy and an idea of people helping one another. It really is “musically artistic friends in alliance.” It’s people who are talented and who are trying to fight this town [Nashville]. You never have to look up; you only have to look back to help the next person in line. It’s completely opposite of how this town operates.12

The MuzikMafia’s regular auxiliary musicians closely identify with the family metaphor above. Hispanic bass guitarist Jerry Navarro, who started performing with the MuzikMafia at Jon’s invitation in January 2004, identifies the MuzikMafia as a family. He continues:

9 Troy Coleman, 29 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

10 Timothy Smith, 8 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

11 Shawna Pierce, 9 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

12 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

62 They’ve taken care of me both monetarily and emotionally; they’re great friends and great people. They help in any way they can. They have literally helped me pay my bills, including monthly rent. It has taken me a while to accept their kindness, because I’m used to being a sideman. They want to help everybody rise up; help each other out. The musicians grow to know each other on a deeper level; that creates and understanding beyond the music.13

Saxophonist Max Abrams, who has assumed the role of lead auxiliary musician and stage manager at performances, has been with the MuzikMafia since November 2001. Max understands the complexity of the MuzikMafia, and he regularly reflects on both its public representation and its personal meaning to him. According to Max: It [the MuzikMafia] is a lot of things. It’s kind of a closed society [like the Italian Mafia] for the disenfranchised. It’s a lot of things because you’re dealing with a collection of individuals who have slightly different goals. There is a sphere of ideas and views circling around about what it is. It’s a collection of individuals who have a fundamental belief in the idea that the boundaries that exist between genres [of music] are less than people perceive. The boundaries between people are less than people perceive. We are all actively interested in showing people through multiple senses how narrow those barriers really are.14

Auxiliary percussionist Pino Squillace, a native of southern Italy, expands on the Mafia metaphor and its Italian connotations. He explains: The [Italian] Mafia started in Italy to empower the individual; it was good for the people who couldn’t act against political corruption; created by families whose sole responsibility as an unpaid volunteer was to bring justice where there was injustice, because the institution was corrupt and biased. MuzikMafia doesn’t realize this yet, but it is doing the exactly same thing. They’re saying, “fuck the institution; who gives a shit about radio!?” We’re going to give the individual the power against the institution; we are protecting the citizen of the music world. There is a real correlation between MuzikMafia and the Italian mafia, that’s its essence. The MuzikMafia comprises people who are respected in the [Nashville music] community who have a sense of justice and responsibility and who look out for the community. They [the Italian Mafia] took care of the people so that all has [sic] an equal opportunity.15

13 Jerry Navarro, 24 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

14 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

15 Pino Squillace, 15 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

63 Expressionistic painter and performance artist Rachel Kice has been with the MuzikMafia since fall 2001. She often appears with the MuzikMafia on or beside the stage, capturing the “atmosphere” of each performance on her canvas.16 According to Rachel, the MuzikMafia is “a very good time; it’s a love for music, a love for talent. It’s a lot of different people who are outside the mainstream building a house together.”17 Two- Foot Fred, who starred in Big & Rich’s video for the song “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” defines the MuzikMafia as a “close-knit group of friends who get together for the sake of playing music.”18 After soliciting responses from the MuzikMafia’s core performing artists, I turned to those persons who are actively involved in the MuzikMafia but who are not official members. Marc Oswald, who manages Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich, and Cowboy Troy describes the MuzikMafia as a collective group of artists accumulated by the godfathers: Some they [the godfathers] have brought in and kicked out. Some they’ve brought in and they’ve stayed in. Now it’s basically a not-for-profit collective that operates purely for the creative benefit of the people who are in it. Record companies call it “creative process A&R.” I call it R&D [research and development]. That’s the way they create their music and imaging. The way that they work together, it’s more like a laboratory of trying things out—no bounds.19

Paul Worley, an award-winning producer and the Warner Bros. executive who signed Big & Rich to the label in August 2002, describes the MuzikMafia as “a tribe.” According to Paul, “the MuzikMafia travels as a tribe, with each new successful artist pulling the others along with them.”20 John’s brother Isaac Rich also participates in the MuzikMafia. Isaac was present at many of the Pub of Love shows and made a cameo appearance in Gretchen’s video for

16 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

17 Rachel Kice, 20 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnsonville, Tennessee,, computer video file, personal collection.

18 Fred Gill, 11 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

19 Marc Oswald, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

20 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

64 the hit song “When I Think about Cheatin’.” In addition, Isaac has written songs with Chance and other MuzikMafia artists. In regards to defining the MuzikMafia, Isaac emphasizes the community’s early days: It started out among people who were tired of doing the grunt work of the music business. Instead, they decided to get together to have fun and to enjoy the music, not having to worry about microphones; to just [sic] get together to play each other’s their stuff. Mafia is a group of friends who are amazing artists in whatever they do who have something to offer: to build the mafia and to make it better; it’s the most amazing thing in the world to see. You never know who’s going to be there.21

Isaac’s sentiment, “you never know who is going to be there,” is significant. I will return to it in further detail later in this chapter. From the above responses, it is clear that the MuzikMafia is ambiguous at best, with individual members possessing numerous interpretations of their collectivity. However, there are similarities in meaning and connotation, especially with regard to familial relationships among MuzikMafia’s members. There is also a purpose involved in coming together. The MuzikMafia is a kind of mutual-aid society or empowering entity that provides benefits to its members. The MuzikMafia is also a group of talented individuals, forming an elite class among Nashville musicians. In a separate but related thread, the MuzikMafia is an organized movement with a simple message: music without preference given to any particular music genre. But the MuzikMafia’s membership is not limited to musicians, especially in the case of Rachel, who is a graphic artist, and Two- Foot Fred, who is an entrepreneur. The fact that the MuzikMafia was a commercial entity almost from its inception is frequently overlooked by MuzikMafia members. I conflated the above responses with those of other cultural insiders to arrive at a composite definition. I understand the MuzikMafia as of 2007 to be self-defined as a distinct musical community that developed from a stylistically diverse Nashville scene into a social collective and commercial enterprise, both of which emphasize musical excellence and promote musical and artistic diversity. Most MuzikMafia musicians,

21 Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

65 including the community’s four founding members, have read the above definition, and they agree with my analysis. To my knowledge there has been no dissent. I describe the MuzikMafia as a musical “community” because of the term’s kinship connotation and because of the MuzikMafia’s presence as a distinct entity within the Nashville soundscape. I draw upon the work of culture theorist Will Straw who defines a music “community” as: A particular population group whose composition is relatively stable, and whose involvement in music takes on the form of an ongoing exploration of a particular musical idiom said to be rooted within a geographically specific historic heritage.22

In contrast, Straw defines a music scene as “That cultural space in which a range of musical practices coexist, interacting with each another within a variety processes of differentiation and according to widely varying trajectories of change and cross- fertilization.23 Straw implies that the difference between a scene and a community lies in the fact that a music community is smaller and distinctive and comprises members who explore a particular musical idiom within the larger soundscape. The fact that the MuzikMafia does not promote a single musical idiom might seem like a disqualifying factor here, but it is not. The MuzikMafia’s unifying trait is its diversity. The MuzikMafia’s roster includes artists who specialize in blues, rock, pop, rap, country, bluegrass, gospel, R&B, and soul that, collectively, are representative of Nashville’s rich history of musical diversity and the city’s current identification as “Music City, U.S.A.”24

22 Straw, Will, 1991, "Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music," Cultural Studies, 5(3) (October): 368-88.

23 Straw, Will, 1991, "Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music," Cultural Studies, 5(3) (October): 368-88; reprinted in 1997 as “Communities and Scenes in Popular Music,” in The Subcultures Reader, Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton, eds., London: Routledge: 494.

24 In 1950 WSM disc jockey David Cobb became the first public personality to describe Nashville as “Music City, U.S.A.” In Lomax, John, III, 1985, Nashville: Music City USA. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers: 7.

66 The MuzikMafia as an Imagined Community At the time of its emergence in fall 2001, the MuzikMafia belonged to a larger “imagined community” of Nashville musicians whose primary connection was their status as unsigned performing artists with a desire to succeed in the commercial music industry. Political theorist Benedict Anderson first used the phrase “imagined communities” in 1983 to describe the origin and spread of nationalism.25 Anderson envisioned an imagined community as “any social grouping so large that its members have no direct contact with one another, requiring a degree of imagination to conceive a sense of community.”26 Likewise, Scruggs emphasizes the role of popular music not as a passive indicator, but as a tool actively used to construct the imagined community of nationhood.27 Scruggs observed during his field research in Nicaragua that people felt alienated as a result of actions by a central government that had ignored their disparate conditions. According to him, the result was the creation of a new cultural self- awareness that informed a national consciousness through music.28 The MuzikMafia also uses music to create a collective awareness but on a much smaller scale that what Scruggs observed in Nicaragua. The MuzikMafia includes Nashville musicians who have marginalized or alienated by the music industry for reasons such as, among others, non-conformity to how commercial musicians should look and sound. I propose that the notion of the imagined community is relevant and applicable to the birth, growth, and development of the MuzikMafia within the hegemony of Nashville’s commercial music industry. Here, I draw upon Stuart Hall’s summation of hegemony based upon the term’s association with Antonio Gramsci:

25 Anderson, Benedict, 1991 [1983], Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed., London: Verso.

26 Anderson, Benedict, 1991 [1983], Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed., London: Verso.

27 Scruggs, T.M., 1999, “‘Let’s Enjoy as Nicaraguans’: The Use of Music in the Construction of a Nicaraguan National Consciousness,” in Ethnomusicology 43:2 (Spring Summer 1999): 298.

28 Scruggs, T.M., 1999, “‘Let’s Enjoy as Nicaraguans’: The Use of Music in the Construction of a Nicaraguan National Consciousness,” in Ethnomusicology 43:2 (Spring-Summer): 319.

67 ‘Hegemony’ [sic] refers to a situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert total authority over other subordinate groups, not simply by coercion or by the direct imposition of ruling ideas, but by winning and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both legitimate and natural.29

I would add that many social hegemonies exist without the explicit knowledge or intent of the ruling group. In the case of the Nashville music industry, the major labels on Music Row share a common goal of making money and do not necessarily aim to create subordinate musician-groups or classes. It is an unfortunate reality of the music business that industry executives seek out marketable musicians who can generate the most income for the label. It is both inevitable and a matter of historical fact that archetypes of recording superstars form. The degree to which an average Nashville musician compares with a profitable archetype determines where he/she falls on the continuum from an average street musician to platinum-selling star. At the time of the MuzikMafia’s inception, none of the community’s members had a recording contract with a major label. Within three years, five members, namely John and Kenny (a.k.a. Big & Rich), Gretchen, James, and Shannon, had secured six- figure contracts with Warner Bros, Sony, and Mercury, respectively.30 The result was a dramatic change in the MuzikMafia’s position of power within the hegemony of Nashville’s commercial music industry. Pino frequently compares the MuzikMafia to the Italian Mafia, especially in regards to empowerment. According to Pino: The [Italian] Mafia originally began as a roots movement that protected the individual from political corruption. The small communities formed their own organization for justice. The godfathers were locally respected people working for free to help the community.31

29 Hall, Stuart, 1979 [1977], “Culture, the Media, and the ‘Ideological Effect’,” in Mass Communication and Society, James Curran et al, eds. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage: 338-339.

30 Both James and Shannon signed recording contracts with Mercury Records.

31 Pino Squillace, 8 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

68 Here, Pino alludes to the empowering aspect of the Italian Mafia. He extends the metaphor to the Nashville scene because he and many other musicians feel that Music Row is, to a certain degree, corrupt in that major labels work in concert with radio conglomerates to make money and to create genre archetypes rather than promoting artistic creativity.32 Pino suggests that the MuzikMafia’s purpose is to empower the disenfranchised Nashville musician.

The MuzikMafia as a Voluntary Association Despite the many kinship references by cultural insiders of their MuzikMafia “family,” members associate with the MuzikMafia on a voluntary basis. Each member’s level of commitment and detachment to the MuzikMafia combined with the community’s function within American culture compare with other voluntary associations in the literature.33 I draw these comparisons to explore more deeply the structure and function of the MuzikMafia community. Broadly defined, voluntary associations are non-governmental social organizations that use group strategies to increase their control over their own lives.34 Much of the literature on voluntary associations centers on three primary aspects a) their oppositional relationship to government or other political institutions, b) their urban existence and social context particularly in the Unites States, and c) their frequent existence in rural contexts among non-industrial societies primarily in Africa and Asia. Most of the relevant modern research on voluntary associations appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, although Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to explore the topic in works entitled Democracy in America, Part I (1835) and Part II (1840). In the context of modern democratic societies, de Tocqueville writes, “Each citizen needs to learn to combine with his fellows to preserve his freedom when, individually, he is less able in

32 I should point out that Pino claims no ties to the Italian Mafia. However, his position as an Italian immigrant who had been a successful businessman in Florence has often fueled humorous discussions among MuzikMafia members.

33 See de Tocqueville 1964; Pennock and Chapman, eds, 1969; Schutz 1977; Knoke 1981; Brown 1973; Anderson 1971; Gordon and Babchuck 1959; Smith and Elkin 1980; and Johnson 1975.

34 I draw upon the work of several scholars (Graham 1975 and Smith and Elkin 1980) to arrive at the above composite definition.

69 isolation to defend it.”35 He also describes that voluntary associations surface out of a basic need for like-minded individuals to unite in order to become a conspicuous power.36 Voluntary associations surface in many cultural contexts around the globe and are certainly not limited exclusively to democratic or technologically advanced societies. Voluntary associations range in number from perhaps thousands of cabildos in post- colonial Latin America to dozens of gotong rojong throughout present-day Indonesia, most of which are mutual aid societies that involve village activities such as harvesting, planting, house building, or social welfare.37 In the context of modern industrial societies, Wayne Gordon and Nicholas Babchuck categorize voluntary associations according to several criteria, one of which is purpose. Their typology includes two basic classifications: instrumental associations and expressive associations.38 Voluntary associations are categorized as instrumental if they are created to influence some kind of social change.39 Examples include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) or any neighborhood improvement council, both of which want to bring about change that transcends its immediate membership. Expressive voluntary associations are groups that exist to furnish activities for members as an end in itself. Examples include the Boy Scouts of America or a local high school chess club. The MuzikMafia can be viewed as an expressive as well as an instrumental voluntary association. For many of its early performances at the Pub of Love, the MuzikMafia was an expressive voluntary association. Tuesday night performances were,

35 De Tocqueville, Alex, 1964, Democracy in America, J.P. Mayer and Max Lerner, eds., George Lawrence, transl., New York: Harper and Row: 485.

36 De Tocqueville, Alex, 1964, Democracy in America, J.P. Mayer and Max Lerner, eds., George Lawrence, transl., New York: Harper and Row: 488.

37 Smith, David Horton and Frederick Elkin, 1980, “Volunteers, Voluntary Associations, and Development: An Introduction,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 21(3) (Sept.-Dec.): 158.

38 Gordon, Wayne and Nicholas Babchuck, 1959, “Typology of Voluntary Associations,” American Sociological Review 24(1) (February): 22-39.

39 Gordon, Wayne and Nicholas Babchuck, 1959, “Typology of Voluntary Associations,” American Sociological Review 24(1) (February): 25.

70 in a sense, a simple jam session, open to anyone who wanted to consume music and other forms of artistic expression, including poetry recitation, art, or sideshow acts, without limitations. The first few sessions were an outlet for freedom of expression for the MuzikMafia and its audiences. However, with the MuzikMafia’s growth in popularity came a relative degree of power within Nashville’s commercial music industry. The MuzikMafia slowly became an expressive/instrumental hybrid whose members identified with the organization for fellowship, while together maintaining specific objectives for musical and social change, commercial success, and financial gain.

Structure and Polity of the MuzikMafia The political structure of the MuzikMafia community is multi-tiered and complex. In order to understand the community’s polity, one must first distinguish the MuzikMafia as a social collective from the MuzikMafia as a commercial enterprise. At the top of the MuzikMafia’s original social hierarchy were the four godfathers: John, Kenny, Jon, and Cory. Gretchen was later promoted to “godmother” in spring 2006. All decisions concerning the MuzikMafia’s social activities are the result of the godfathers’ collective input. Here, social activities comprise primarily the community’s weekly performances and the process of taking on new members. Most decisions are made by the godfathers after informal discussion and sometimes considerable debate. For example, I was privileged to a conversation between godfathers Cory and John backstage at a MuzikMafia performance in Johnson City, Tennessee. The show was one of thirteen on the Chevrolet American Revolution tour in November and December 2004. The topic under discussion was how to stage the national anthem for the sold-out crowd of approximately 8,000 fans that evening.40 Cory began with “And we [Jon, Kenny, and himself] talked about doing the national anthem…” before John interjected, “Ok, who’s gonna do it?” Cory responded, “Everyone…(pause)…the [Muzik]Mafia choir…and like[sic] Dean Hall or Adam [Shoenfeld] could take some licks…(Cory imitated with his version of air guitar) … and Max [on sax] could take a lick…” John interjected, “Well, if we’re in a key…” Cory interrupted, “That’s the thing.” John

40 John Rich and Cory Gierman, 20 November 2004, conversation recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

71 continued, “We have to start off in a key.” Cory took a sip from his plastic cup filled with Crown Royal and Coca Cola and mumbled, “hmmm.” John followed with, “I wouldn’t….you know, it’s really not cool, though, to be playing guitar licks while people are singing the national anthem.” After a brief pause, Cory defended his position with, “But if there’s a way we could feature kind [sic] of everyone.” John interrupted, “Well, if there’s a way, but you got to be able to have some order…(pause)…you don’t want to defile the national anthem by screwing crap up with it.” Cory agreed but added, “Well, what I’m thinking is that we’ll have everyone sing along and we’ll have you guys [John and Kenny] lead it, and we could get a pretty cool…(hesitates).” John responded, “I wouldn’t let people play during it unless we worked it out, because it could look completely not cool…(pause)…you got the whole audience singing along to the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and some of the guys are going ‘dah da da dah da da’ (he plays air guitar) off the top of it.” Cory defended his position with, “Well, I think, if we can do it tastefully, you know, like we’re…” John replied, “I think if we sing it, we should just sing it straight tonight…(pause)…that way we don’t need a key. Somebody just starts singing and we just go [with it].” Cory returned to his idea with, “Ok, but you know how like freakin’ [sic] Jimi Hendrix did his…” John interrupted, “Yeah, but nobody was singing; he just played it.” Cory shrugs his shoulders and says, “so what?” John defended his stance, “I’m just saying that you got to be real careful with that song. It can come across like you’re jacking with it…it’s not cool, I’m just saying.” Cory responded, “Well, it needs to be gone over, I’m sure.” John broke the seriousness of the conversation by lighting a cigarette and waving it around. “That’s redneck incense right there,” he said as both he and Cory laughed. The MuzikMafia did not play during the singing of the national anthem that evening.41 Decision-making among the four godfathers is sometimes a last-minute process as the above example indicates, and ambivalence has even become a marketing slogan for MuzikMafia performances. In describing MuzikMafia shows at the Pub of Love, Isaac Rich used the phrase “you never know who’s going to be there.” This sentiment has often

41 The fact that the MuzikMafia incorporated the singing of the national anthem into each performance on the Chevrolet American Revolution tour is significant. I address this topic later in Chapter Eleven.

72 appeared as “you never know who’s gonna show” in advertisements for MuzikMafia performances, at MuzikMafia’s autograph signing booth in Nashville at the CMA Fest 2005 (formerly known as Fan Fair), and in emails distributed to fans from the MuzikMafia website. The general public seldom knows which artists are going to appear at MuzikMafia shows, because, for much of the MuzikMafia’s brief history, the musicians themselves have not known who was going to be at any given performance. In an interview with Cory in August 2004, I asked how he organized each Tuesday night’s line-up. According to Cory, he did not usually think about the schedule of each show until the afternoon before an evening performance: It’s like, I call Jon [that afternoon] and ask ‘do we have a bass player?’ or ‘do we have a drummer?’ or say that ‘Otto is here,’ or ‘John and Kenny [Big & Rich] are in town so they might be coming by.’ It’s all pretty much a last-minute thing.42

One should keep in mind that in 2004 the MuzikMafia performed each Tuesday night in Nashville from 6 January until 31 August followed by sporadic performances thereafter. Shows were free and open to the public. There was little expectation of or demand for organization. Cory’s honest Monday phrase for a Tuesday show, “I don’t know who’s going to be there,” soon became a metaphor for unpredictability that developed into a lucrative marketing strategy for MuzikMafia appearances. I should point out that the above context relates primarily to MuzikMafia performances since January 2004. In the earlier days of MuzikMafia, namely fall 2001 through fall 2002, there was no need for a formalized schedule. Musicians simply made their presence known to the godfathers upon their arrival at each show and waited to be called upon to perform. Aside from the godfathers, there are several others who have relative power inside the MuzikMafia. Cory identifies James Otto as an “underboss” because of the length of time that James has performed with the community.43 Cory elaborates further, “He [James] is so close with the godfathers that he is almost a godfather [himself]. But he didn’t arrived until the first performance and wasn’t part of the [earlier] late-night

42 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

43 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

73 planning sessions.” John had met Gretchen in 1999 while she was bartending and singing at the Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar, part of Printer's Alley in downtown Nashville. Although her bar job, a steady boyfriend, and an infant child at home kept Gretchen from attending every Tuesday night show at the Pub of Love, she quickly became the most well-known MuzikMafia member in 2004 with her multi-platinum debut album Here for the Party.44 Max’s role in the MuzikMafia is two-fold. First, Max is the lead saxophone player, contributing that timbre to the texture of most songs at live MuzikMafia shows and many studio recordings. Secondly, Max monitors and directs, when necessary, the flow of each stage performance. His duties as stage manager involve regulating the order and sometimes the length of solos as well as deciding who performs and when with Cory’s assistance. Max has performed with the MuzikMafia since November 2001. His extensive knowledge of the artists and their respective repertories enables him to better control to the flow of songs at live performances. There are also regularly featured artists who have little to do with MuzikMafia’s internal decision-making process. These include John Anderson, Cowboy Troy, Shanna Crooks, Chance, and Damien Horne, and a host of auxiliary performers including percussionist Pino Squillace, bassist Jerry Navarro, graphic artist Rachel Kice, and entrepreneur Two-Foot Fred. In addition, the MuzikMafia maintains a list of musicians “on call” who frequently perform at shows but are not considered by the godfathers to be official members. MuzikMafia members exhibit varying levels of commitment and detachment the community. This is owing to each artist having varying degrees of contact with the godfathers and with other members. According to sociologist David Knoke, such levels of commitment and detachment among voluntary associations are “strongly affected by the degree to which the organizational polity facilitates social control by its members.”45 In other words, the political structure or power distribution of a voluntary association directly affects the degree to which its members align themselves with or separate

44 Wilson, Gretchen, 2004, Here for the Party, produced by Mark Wright and Joe Scaife, associate producer John Rich, Sony/Epic EK 90903, compact disc.

45 Knoke, David, 1981, “Commitment and Detachment in Voluntary Associations,” American Sociological Review 46(2) (April): 142.

74 themselves from the collective. Knoke’s research has shown that the less centralized the decision-making is, the higher the members’ commitment to the association.46 My research among the MuzikMafia confirms this. I have observed how several MuzikMafia members, namely Chance, Two-Foot Fred, Troy, Dean, Brian, and Rachel, engage their respective solo careers, independent of any MuzikMafia affiliation. This is owing to their relative isolation from major decisions that the godfathers make on behalf of the community. For example, in fall 2004 Chance started his own weekly variety show after regular Tuesday night MuzikMafia performances stopped. On 26 October 2004, almost three weeks after the last MuzikMafia show in Nashville in 2004, Chance organized the first performance of the Nashville Trailer Choir. Chance’s vision for the Trailer Choir was a weekly concert whose diverse format was similar to that of the MuzikMafia, highlighting talented local artists of varying music genres.47 The show’s regular acts included Chance, the Butter and Sugar Show, Shanna Crooks, and Shawna Pierce. In December 2004 the Tennessee Trailer Choir released a Christmas album entitled Mistletoe Belt Buckle Christmas underwritten by the MuzikMafia and whose proceeds were donated to Nashville’s Angel Tree program sponsored by the Salvation Army.48 MuzikMafia members have entered the community in a variety of ways, which has also affected their level of commitment and detachment. For example, there are musicians such as Troy, Gretchen, and Two-Foot Fred whose first association with the MuzikMafia came about through John Rich’s influence. John first met Troy in Dallas in 1993. John had discovered Gretchen at the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie bar in 1999, and John had met Fred in 1998 at a Nashville bar during Fan Fair. Musicians such as Jerry the bassist and drummer D.D. Holt entered the MuzikMafia community under the

46 Knoke, David, 1981, “Commitment and Detachment in Voluntary Associations,” American Sociological Review 46(2) (April): 143.

47 The Tennessee Trailer began on 26 October 2004 under the name Trashville Music Choir at Bluesboro Rhythm and Blues Co. located at 114 North Church Street in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The show’s first performance as the Tennessee Trailer Choir took place on 30 November 2004. On 2 December the Tennessee Trailer Choir moved its shows to On the Rocks located at 1530 Demonbreun Street in Nashville.

48 I provide further detail on the Nashville Trailer Choir and its significance in Chapter Twelve.

75 auspices of Jon Nicholson as members of his band. From observations since June 2004, I conclude that the above musicians maintain higher levels of commitment to the individual responsible for introducing them to the MuzikMafia than their commitment to the MuzikMafia itself. The social structure of the MuzikMafia community closely resembles that of a family with four parents instead of two. The relative decentralized power distribution among the four godfathers, James as an underboss, and Max as stage manager has contributed to considerably higher levels of commitment among MuzikMafia members than if the MuzikMafia had only one godfather. Several members have expressed their dissatisfaction with one godfather, in particular, but feel that they can openly express their grievances with at least one of the other three godfathers or with James or Max.49 The social structure of the MuzikMafia is complicated by the community’s various commercial endeavors. For example, in fall 2004 Warner Bros. and the MuzikMafia created a new record label, a co-venture known as Raybaw.50 In addition, three of the four founding members of the MuzikMafia owns and operates his own music publishing company. Furthermore, the MuzikMafia has its own publishing entity called MuzikMafia Publishing as well as MuzikMafia LLC, the corporate version of the MuzikMafia social collective. I examine the above commercial enterprises in further detail throughout Unit III and in the dissertation’s Conclusion. I should point out that each MuzikMafia member maintains a different relationship with the other members, to the whole, and to each of the MuzikMafia’s various commercial enterprises. I conclude that each member’s level of commitment and detachment to the above is based upon his/her degree of contact with the godfathers and with the other members, how long each has been a member, and the process through which member entered the community. In this chapter I have examined the MuzikMafia from several perspectives. I began with the community’s cultural insiders who described the origins of the

49 I do not name specific MuzikMafia artists or their respective grievances here due to the nature of their comments and how public disclosure of such could negatively impact their ongoing relationship with the MuzikMafia.

50 “Raybaw” is an acronym for “Red and Yellow; Black and White,” a line in “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” a Christian song that is popular particularly among Southern Baptists.

76 MuzikMafia as well as each member’s interpretation of what the MuzikMafia is. I conflated the responses and formed a composite definition. I then analyzed the MuzikMafia from a cultural perspective by describing the collective as an imagined community and as a voluntary association, revealing much about internal structure and polity that was absent from the members responses. Unfortunately, the above creates only a partial understanding of the MuzikMafia. In order to grasp the essence of the MuzikMafia, one must examine the context of its first public performances as a musical community: the Pub of Love.

77 CHAPTER THREE: THE PUB OF LOVE

Introduction The Pub of Love was where the MuzikMafia first performed as a social collective, and the locale has become a metaphor for the MuzikMafia itself. The Pub of Love represents what the MuzikMafia is, according to its members, in regards to the community’s intent, purpose, and meaning.1 In brief, the Pub of Love represents the essence of the MuzikMafia. At many MuzikMafia performances that I observed throughout 2004 and 2005, the stages were adorned with an array of candles, incense, lava lamps, couches, chairs, and coolers of beer.2 I asked numerous MuzikMafia musicians the reason behind the added props. Most responded with a nostalgic smile, informing me that such was the atmosphere at the Pub of Love. From follow-up interviews with each member, I conclude that the MuzikMafia maintains close ties to its origins at the Pub of Love through regular reflection and through active re-creation. I posit that an understanding of the Pub of Love experience contributes significantly to a more accurate understanding of the MuzikMafia. In this chapter I examine the significance of the Pub of Love for the MuzikMafia and its audiences. Because of the temporal distance between when the MuzikMafia performed at the Pub of Love and when I began this study, I describe the inherent difficulties in researching the ethnomusicological past and the strategies with which I overcame such obstacles. In a concluding section, I analyze and synthesize the above into an examination of the Pub of Love as a cultural construct, including its ritualized context and the inter-connectedness that its participants experienced among each other.

1 In interviews with musicians who performed at the Pub of Love, each respondent emphasized the locale’s importance to understanding the community. The MuzikMafia godfathers have attempted to recreate the Pub of Love atmosphere at subsequent locales in a variety of ways, including the use of regalia such as lava lamps and incense and through frequent interaction with audience members.

2 Between 15 June 2004 and May 2007, I attended approximately 100 MuzikMafia-related musical events, most of which contained one or more of the following props on stage: couch, chair, lava lamp, incense, coolers of beer, or candles.

78 The Pub of Love: Location and Atmosphere The Pub of Love is located at 123 12th Avenue North in an underdeveloped area on the fringe of downtown Nashville. At the time of MuzikMafia’s performances there, the club was in dire need of renovation, as seen in Figure 3.1. The upstairs performance area was small, barely 12’ X 20’, and the building was in disrepair, including an upstairs ceiling that was sagging in several places.3 There was no cover charge for entry, and seldom did the one bartender on staff check identification.

Figure 3.1. Photo of the Pub of Love and adjacent parking lot, July 2005. Photo taken by author.

The MuzikMafia’s first performance at the Pub of Love was on 23 October 2001 and included an audience of fewer than fifteen people. The atmosphere was relaxed. The smell of marijuana and incense filled an upstairs room that was illuminated by lava lamps, candles, several standing lamps, and the street lights from outside on 12th Avenue North.4 The non-matching couches in the upstairs performance area, a single mattress in

3 Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, computer video file, personal collection.

4 Isaac Rich reports that, at times, a thick cloud of marijuana smoke hovered above the heads of the twenty or so people at the first few shows. Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.; Isaac was present at many of his brother John’s performances at the Pub of Love.

79 the back corner, and an array folding chairs created an ambiance of being at home.5 The atmosphere was intimate and spontaneous, similar to that of a small gathering of close friends. News of the weekly free jam sessions disseminated throughout the Nashville music scene, and the size of the MuzikMafia’s audiences at the Pub of Love grew considerably. John Rich’s brother Isaac, who attended the first show, made the weekly drive down from Clarksville with his co-workers to see the MuzikMafia perform. By December 2001, Isaac’s regular caravan included several carloads of people who added to the already growing number of local Nashville regulars who attended each show. The MuzikMafia’s increase in popularity at the Pub of Love resulted in various changes that will I address in detail in Chapter Ten. I examined MuzikMafia’s tenure at the Pub of Love using several strategies. As with defining the MuzikMafia community, I began with input from cultural insiders. I focused on individual audience members and musicians who attended or participated in MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love. My second approach was the use of analogy. In brief, if two or more things agree with one another in some respects, they will probably agree in others. I observed from June 2004 through May 2007 striking similarities among MuzikMafia performances in regards to style and format. Since similarities existed during the period of my observation, I assumed that many aspects of MuzikMafia shows were similar to those that had taken place prior. According to Dale A. Olsen, “analogy is a common interpretative technique” among archaeologists, who examine past societies, and ethnomusicologists and anthropologists, who explore past and current traditions in their cultural context.6 Ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman has described how oral traditions, specifically, allow a community “to believe that some core of musical practices from the past—some

5 James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

6 Olsen, Dale A, 2002, Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South American Cultures, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 28.

80 essence of the past—remains intact in the present.”7 One must keep in mind that analogy is only a method of hypothesizing a possible past reality and does not necessarily represent truth. I discovered the limitations of analogy in the summer of 2005. How can one actually observe aspects of musical performance in the ethnographic past?8 I realized that one possible answer is through technology, namely video recordings. One benefit of conducting research in popular music is the widespread use of technology by the media and by the musicians and fans themselves. I serendipitously met an individual who had videotaped many MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love, and he allowed me to analyze his footage. The video footage substantiated some of my conclusions, while requiring me to amend others. Eyewitness accounts from individuals, both musicians and fans, who attended MuzikMafia’s performances at the Pub of Love comprised a third challenge of this research from both a practical and theoretical standpoint. Individual responses were often nebulous and inconsistent due to the fact that many attendees were under the influence of alcohol or recreational pharmaceuticals. However, those research participants, who were relatively sober at the weekly events, were in many cases able to confirm, counter, or add to other eyewitness accounts. Another challenge was the separation of individual memory from collective memory. All research participants had obviously discussed their experiences at the Pub of Love with others who were present, an act that frequently fills in gaps in individual memory or even creates memories where none had previously existed. For example, if a person was intoxicated at a particular performance, which was often the case, he or she would have a distorted recollection of the evening’s activities. After a subsequent discussion of the event with friends or colleagues who had also attended, I filled in the gaps in his/her individual memory with information from others’ experiences—a collaborative process that inevitably contributes to a collective memory of the event.

7 Bohlman, Philip, 1997, “The Fieldwork in the Ethnomusicological Past,” in Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, Gregory Barz and Timothy Colley, eds., New York: Oxford University Press: 151.

8 I discuss MuzikMafia’s weekly performances at the Pub of Love as ritual later in this chapter.

81 In order to distinguish between individual memory and collective memory, I asked my research participants to describe their first experience at the Pub of Love, providing as many details as possible. I then asked each interviewee to elaborate on general characteristics applicable to many of their Pub of Love experiences. I discovered that general descriptions among MuzikMafia fans and artists shared many of the same words or phrases. I concluded that this was the result of some form of collaboration on their part such as private dialogue, collective discussion, or descriptions of the Pub of Love that appeared in the media, all confirming the existence and significance of collective memory among the community’s members.

Eyewitness Testimony John’s brother Isaac, who attended the first MuzikMafia performance at the Pub of Love and many thereafter, provides insight. In fall 2001 Isaac was studying agriculture at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Beginning 23 October he drove fifty miles each Tuesday from Clarksville to Nashville to attend MuzikMafia shows. Isaac recalls that first performance on Tuesday, 23 October 2001: John [Rich] had asked me [Isaac] that afternoon to come down [from Clarksville] and check out the show. Nobody was at the door checking IDs around 9:30 p.m. when I got there. John came down to meet me. We walk upstairs. There was a tiny bar, some Goodwill couches in bad condition, and a full bed in the corner with pillows and blankets. About ten to fifteen people were there, including musicians. There were three barstools, some P.A. speakers, and the ceiling was sagging; it was a shit hole.9

James is the only current MuzikMafia member who performed at the first show and who is not a godfather. By 23 October 2001 James had known John only briefly. John had attended an afternoon performance by James at the Country Music Hall of Fame four days prior. John asked James to stop by the Pub of Love the following Tuesday.10 According to James:

9 Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, computer video file, personal collection.

10 James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

82 It [MuzikMafia at the Pub of Love] was a blast, man; it was crazy. We were passing around a joint around the room. There was a bed in the corner; there were lamps. It feels [sic] like you’re in somebody’s living room. Funny enough, we had [Nashville] Metro council members up there smoking weed, passing stuff around, and other interesting characters…It was such a strange thing that it became so big so fast, because it was such a weird conglomerate of people doing all kinds of different music.11

James refers above to some “interesting characters” who attended MuzikMafia shows. In addition to Rachel, who captured the atmosphere of many performances on canvas while dancing to the music, there were others who often performed for the crowd. Most MuzikMafia artists, whom I interviewed, remembered a juggler named Scott Nery who frequented Tuesday shows.12 There was also a man who promoted himself as Sideshow Benny. Troy elaborates: He [Sideshow Benny] was the most unique. He would like [sic] take a nail and hammer it into his nasal cavity. Yeah, it was really weird. He’d blow fire. I mean, you couldn’t blow fire in the Pub of Love, but he did at 12th and Porter across the street where there was more room. Sideshow Benny tripped me out. I’d sit there and watch him go dink, dink, dink, dink, dink, hammering the nail into his sinuses, and then he’d take that claw hammer and just pull it right out. When he was hammering, you’d hear this hollow sound coming from his sinuses….uggh, oh man!13

Fans’ reactions to early Pub of Love performances also provide insight. Ashley Worley began attending regularly with the third MuzikMafia show. Ashley had heard of the weekly event from a co-worker at Paul Worley Productions. Ashley was working for her father Paul at the time. She later introduced John and Kenny to her well-known father

11 James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.. James did not identify specific Nashville city council members who attended early MuzikMafia shows at the Pub of Love.

12 In interviews that I have conducted since June 2004, no MuzikMafia member has remembered the name of the juggler, although most remembered a juggler being present. Scott Nery emailed Cory on 14 June 2005 to reestablish contact with the MuzikMafia, and Cory forwarded the juggler’s name and contact information to the author.

13 Troy Coleman, 29 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

83 who immediately offered the duo a recording contract with Warner Bros. in August 2002.14 Ashley recalls her first experience at the Pub of Love: We were told that things would start around 10PM, but it didn’t actually begin until 11PM. That’s was the mystique about it… When I arrived you could hear bongo [conga] drums from the street. It was like being in somebody’s attic. The 2nd floor of this bar was not made for anything but storage, I guess. From the outside on the street there is this little bitty window, and I think they had Christmas lights hung around it….and you could here bongo [conga] drums; nobody else had started. I thought, “What am I getting ready to walk in to?” It was surreal.15

She continues: The downstairs was pretty empty, not a lot of people. Everybody was [upstairs] waiting for the music to start. There was [sic] about 20 people. It was real real [sic] low key. Not necessarily all young, but mostly 20- to 40-year olds. And they were all non-conformists. It was definitely a wear-what-you-want-to kind of thing. Everybody was drinking and having fun, and laughing. The whole dynamic was different. People were there because they loved music. John, Kenny and Jon were performing that night, and Joanna Janét. Pino was there; James was there. I don’t remember if Rachel was there. I remember walking in and everybody was talking about some circus freaks there that night, a juggler or something…weird.16

The above testimonies describe a distinct atmosphere in which MuzikMafia performances regularly took place. Kenny has often described Pub of Love performances as a “freak show” or “freak parade,” and phrases such as “love everybody” that he often emoted there became staple at most MuzikMafia performances thereafter.17

Ethnographic Analogy I combined eyewitness testimony from fans and artists at the Pub of Love with my own observations of later MuzikMafia performances. There were numerous consistencies

14 Following a brief stint at Sony Records in Nashville, Paul Worley became Chief Creative Officer at Warner Bros in July 2002.

15 Ashley Worley, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

16 Ashley Worley, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

17 Personal observations of author between June 2004 and June 2007

84 among MuzikMafia performances that took place from June 2004 through May 2007. I concluded that, since the community had maintained a relatively stable membership since 2001, a consistent format, a dedication to weekly performances, and a consistent message of artistic inclusivity, then past performances should compare with ones that I observed, at least in regards to style and format. Using analogy, one can understand theoretically what MuzikMafia performances might have been like at the Pub of Love. My methodology for analogizing Pub of Love performances was two-fold: a) to attend MuzikMafia shows at the Mercy Lounge and Bluesboro in downtown Nashville from June through October 2004 and b) to attend selected performances by the Mafia Mizfits at Bluesboro in October 2004. The Mafia Mizfits are a MuzikMafia-sanctioned subsidiary that began in spring 2004. Mafia Mizfits founder, Daniel Bird (a.k.a. Alaska Dan) intended to provide an outlet for creative expression for talented artists from diverse genres who might eventually become regular members of the MuzikMafia.18 This research includes a brief description of the Mafia Mizfits in this chapter for the sole purpose of comparing its performances with those of the MuzikMafia at the Pub of Love. My analysis is based on the above performances and venues rather than on national MuzikMafia tours.19 Performances at the Mercy Lounge and Bluesboro in 2004 were free, open to the public, and comparable in structure and format to Pub of Love shows, according to MuzikMafia members. I provide a more detailed description of the Mafia Mizfits’ origins, structure, and development in Chapter Eleven. One of many MuzikMafia’s performances from 2004 that compares with eyewitness accounts from the Pub of Love took place at the Mercy Lounge on Tuesday, July 6 2004.20 I include a brief narrative of this particular performance for two reasons.

18 I include a brief description of the Mafia Mizfits in this chapter for the sole purpose of comparing its performances with those of the MuzikMafia at the Pub of Love. Daniel Bird is known as “Alaska Dan” because he had lived in Alaska before making his living as a singer in the continental United States.

19 Here, I am referring to separate national tours by Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson in summer and fall 2004 as well as the Chevrolet American Revolution tour in November and December 2004. 20 Cannery Row earned its name when the Dale Food Company bought the building in 1957 and began processing food, eventually opening a restaurant called “The Cannery” in the early 1970's. During the 1970s the building housed a country music theater that eventually included other genres of music in the 1980s. “History,” Mercy Lounge official website, [http://www.mercylounge.com/history] accessed 28 July 2005.

85 First, Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson, who were already quite popular on the national scene by this time, were not there. Second, the atmosphere that evening compared with Pub of Love shows that had been described to me by MuzikMafia artists who were present at both. The Mercy Lounge is not a country bar. In fact, the club is housed in historic Cannery Row in downtown Nashville. The building is an older structure that had been erected as a flour mill in 1863. Separated from Nashville’s country music scene on lower Broadway by more than five blocks, the Mercy Lounge is surrounded by dimly-lit streets, aging buildings in need of repair, and a few locally owned businesses. The evening of 6 July, I arrived early.21 Admission was free, as usual. I did not want to miss the chance to get a seat on one of the three couches at the front of the room near the stage. The Mercy Lounge had standing room for about 400 people, but with the array of tables, chairs, and couches, I expected only half that number that night. The audience slowly migrated to the front area as the musicians leisurely made their way onto the stage around 9:15PM. Jon started the show with a slow, all-acoustic rock song accompanied by James and Shannon on guitars. The setting was informal: three musicians sitting on stools at the front of a relatively small and creaky wooden stage. James followed Jon with a rhythm and blues piece entitled, “Good Thing Gone Bad.” Shannon continued with an up-tempo version of Marvin Gaye’s hit song “Let’s Get it On.” The show continued with a blues piece entitled “Kicked by a Mule” by Dean Hall, a southern hip-hop song by Chance entitled “I Came to Drink,” and a version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” performed by singer/songwriter Monty Powell. Towards the latter half of the show, most performers, including Max on saxophone and Pino on congas, were on stage at the same time in a kind of jam session, participating collectively—obviously improvising at times—in songs by each featured musician. During the four hours I was there, I heard songs that I categorized by genre as rock, country, rap, blues, gospel, heavy metal, bluegrass, and rhythm and blues, including numerous combinations thereof.

21 The narrative below is derived from fieldnotes written one day after the performance as well as video footage shot that evening.

86 The crowd was equally diverse. I observed dedicated MuzikMafia fans and newcomers from different social strata and educational backgrounds. People from several generations blended into a melting pot of music enthusiasts that evening. The youngest was a fourteen-year-old fiddle player named Gary and his middle-aged mother. There were men in suits swaying to the music alongside twenty-somethings in Harley Davidson T-shirts. I watched as a young woman in a tank-top clogged barefoot next to an African- American youth. They were surrounded by people wearing shorts, others in jeans, and some displaying a visible assortment of body piercings and tattoos. Rachel Kice captured the evening’s atmosphere by painting it on a canvas that was set up on the dance floor near the stage. The above description is similar to that of many MuzikMafia performances that I observed in 2004. Striking consistencies in format, song choice, artists who were present, audience interaction, audience diversity, and flow among each of the ten regular MuzikMafia shows between 15 June and 31 August 2004 support the use of analogy.22 If MuzikMafia shows in 2004 in small venues maintained many similarities, one can assume that earlier shows, namely those in 2001-2003 were also consistent with each other and, to a certain degree, with those in 2004. However, conclusions based on the above data are not entirely reliable. Although I was doing ethnography on the same group, a performance experience that took place in 2004 was inherently different from one in 2001 or 2002. Beginning in fall 2002 the MuzikMafia underwent changes in personnel, image, and audience after several of its artists secured recording contracts with major labels. By summer 2004 the MuzikMafia was relatively well-known as a result of Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson’s commercial success. I assume that many audience members attended later MuzikMafia shows in the hopes of seeing a major country music personality. It is also plausible that many musicians performed with the MuzikMafia in 2004 to advance their own respective careers. Both of these possibilities remain inconsistent with the godfathers’ intentions for

22 Here, the term “regular” refers to consecutive Tuesday MuzikMafia performances between 15 June and 31 August. From September through October, selected MuzikMafia members performed advertised solo engagements in addition to two special MuzikMafia events, namely a concert with George Clinton and P-Funk on 28 September and a Warner Bros. showcase on 6 October, followed by the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour in November and December.

87 performances at the Pub of Love, according to corroborating eyewitness accounts of MuzikMafia artists who were present at both.23 In order to remove the MuzikMafia “success factor” from my analysis, I expanded my study to include two performances by the Mafia Mizfits, a MuzikMafia- sanctioned community of relatively lesser known Nashville musicians. Several MuzikMafia members, namely Max and Cory, intimated to me on numerous occasions in 2004 that the Mafia Mizfits closely resembled the MuzikMafia from fall 2001. Alaska Dan conceptualized the Mizfits in spring 2004. The community began as an offshoot of the MuzikMafia with the intention becoming the next generation of MuzikMafia artists. The Mizfits’ first performance took place on 30 April 2004 at the Star Café in White’s Creek, Tennessee, ten miles north of Nashville. Regulars included Alaska Dan, Bridgette Tatum, Jennifer Bain (a.k.a. Spoken Word Jen or SWJ), Damien Horne, Rick Daniel (a.k.a. Trick D), Chad Biggs, Keaton Allen, John Phillips, and an act known as the Merry Mother Moonshiners.24 The evening of Sunday, 3 October 2004, I arrived at Bluesboro at 7PM.25 Alaska Dan had told me several days before that the show would start around 8PM. When I arrived, approximately ten people, most of whom were musicians, were sitting at tables outside—the doors were locked and no one could enter the club. After the manager arrived and opened the doors, everyone entered. I realized that I was one of four people in the audience. Jennifer was busy adorning the stage with candles, lava lamps, and tie-dye wall hangings. Alaska Dan’s band was warming up on stage with a southern rock-funk tune. The show did not begin until 8:45 p.m. Following a brief interview outside with guitarist Paul Allen, I returned to my seat. There were approximately twenty people in attendance at Bluesboro, compared with at least 800 from the MuzikMafia performance

23 Members who were present at the above Mercy Lounge performance and those at the Pub of Love include, James, Pino, Max, Rachel, and Jon.

24 Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Whites Creek, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

25 This narrative derives from the author’s field jottings written on site during the performance as well as video footage from the event.

88 with George Clinton and P-Funk the week before. Guitarist Keaton Allen opened up the show with several rock/blues songs accompanied by Alaska Dan on harmonica. After switching to guitar, Alaska Dan followed with a series of light rock pieces. “John Phillips, come up here and save my ass,” Dan shouted after his last piece. The humorous segue elicited claps and laughs from the audience. Philips’s country and blues-influenced set included his song “Saved” that John and Kenny had recorded for their debut album Horse of a Different Color.26 Alaska Dan accompanied Phillips on congas. The next act consisted of two twenty-somethings Jill and Adrian who billed themselves as the Merry Mother Moonshiners.27 They sang several songs that combined the nasal singing style associated with old-time music with folk-rock guitar accompaniment and commercial country lyrics. Nashville singer/songwriter Bridget Tatum took the stage next with her own combination of hardcore country and rock music. The evening contained several unexpected surprises. Chance, who had been performing regularly with the MuzikMafia, showed up around 9:30 p.m. Alaska Dan immediately invited him to the stage to perform some southern hip-hop accompanied by Shawna Pierce, Chance’s funk/soul backup vocalist, and Pino on congas. Jennifer Bain complemented the show’s diversity with two, spoken word recitations. Damien performed several rock/pop duets with Alaska Dan before the stage became an open forum for all musicians to engage in simultaneous improvisation. The “open jam,” as I call it, was a defining factor of each MuzikMafia performance that I observed from June 2004 through April 2006. This evening’s open jam began around 10PM with Alaska Dan calling for a groove from the drumset player. “Ladies and gentlemennnaaaaaaa, for your listening pleasureaaaaaaa….” Alaska Dan yelled with the religious fervor of a revivalist preacher as he introduced the musicians on stage one by one. Nashville Star finalist and accomplished harmonic player Jamey Garner

26 I refer to John Philips using his last name to avoid possible confusion with John Rich whom I address by first name throughout the dissertation.

27 I use past tense when describing the Merry Mother Moonshiners consisting of Jill Kinsey and Adrian Hickey. The duo disbanded in summer 2005. Jill co-wrote and co-recorded the song “Do Your Thang” with Cowboy Troy for his 2005 debut album Loco Motive.

89 accompanied the Latin groove with a set of shakers.28 After approximately six minutes of introductions, Alaska Dan led the ensemble into an open jam on one of his songs. He called out chord changes throughout the ten-minute instrumental so that the bassist, violinist, guitarists, and harmonica player could participate. Damien accompanied the first half of the session on guitar before moving to congas with Pino. Each instrumentalist performed a solo before motioning for the next soloist to take over. During the open jam, I caught a glimpse of Max out of the corner of my eye. He had just entered Bluesboro to my left. I spoke with him briefly about MuzikMafia, asking him what he thought of the Mizfits that night. “David,” Max responded, “As I was outside waiting to come in, I got a chill. The [sounds of the] jam [coming from inside the club] reminded me of our old Pub of Love days.”29 Such confirmed my decision to incorporate the analogy in order to better understand MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love.

Dyer Video Footage I was able to prove or amend my analogy’s conclusions by examining the ethnographic past in person, namely through video recordings loaned to me by a cultural insider. Such footage enabled me to expand my understanding of the MuzikMafia at the Pub of Love by observing the community in fall 2001 from the ethnographic future of summer 2005. Approximately, one year after beginning my study on the MuzikMafia, I met Nashville media consultant Mathew Dyer who had videotaped many Pub of Love performances. Mathew had been following the progress of Kenny’s earlier band luvjOi and had recorded many of Kenny’s appearances, including those with the MuzikMafia at the Pub of Love. Mathew allowed me to view and analyze over eight hours of footage

28 Jamey Garner was one of twelve finalists for the first season of Nashville Star, a televised talent competition for country musicians that premiered on the USA network in spring 2003. Jamey made several appearances at MuzikMafia and Mafia Mizfits performances in 2004.

29 Max Abrams 3 October 2004, informal conversation recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

90 from nine separate performances, enabling me to gain a better understanding of the MuzikMafia community and its origins.30 Of particular significance is footage of a MuzikMafia performance that took place at the Pub of Love on 1 May 2002.31 There is a P.A. system consisting of a speaker on a stand on each side of the musicians’ area. Several candles are lit in each of the small room’s three windows. The area directly in front the musicians comprises two or three rows of people sitting in chairs, couches, or on the floor. Several rows of people are standing shoulder to shoulder in the back near the video camera. At forty-six minutes into the performance, John, Kenny, and Jon begin with a song entitled “Limo Larry” (see Figure 3.2). After several verses about living and loving for the rest of one’s life, Kenny shouts to the crowd, “Why, why? Do you know why I wanna smile?” Following a quick affirmation from the audience, John and Kenny sing the following chorus twice:

The crowd has obviously heard the song before. Many onlookers sing in unison with the musicians while swaying from side to side. After several verses, Kenny motions for the musicians to play more quietly, vamping on the chorus’ harmony. Again, Kenny begins to address the audience members directly: So most of you hopefully know Limo Larry by now. And if you don’t, I’d like to ask Limo Larry to raise his hand up. There he is standing over there by the steps. The one and only, Limo Larry, 6’3”of pure love right there. And, of course y’all all know that Limo Larry has a limousine service. We here at the MuzikMafia do not condone drinking and driving. We condone the use of Limo Larry when yo’

30 From Mathew’s total footage that I viewed, approximately three hours and twenty minutes of video was from three different MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love between 30 October 2001 and 1 May 2002. Other selections included footage from Kenny’s former band luvjOi, a MuzikMafia performance in Chicago, and a concert at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville.

31 Footage in possession of Mathew Dyer, catalogue number PM427, Nashville, Tennessee.

91 [sic] ass is drunk. You get Limo Larry to take you home. Matter of fact, you get Limo Larry to take you anywhere you need to go.

However, Kenny’s address to the crowd contains more than a brief introduction to Limo Larry and a locally owned limousine service. Kenny continues: ‘Cause [sic] you got a choice in life, by God. It’s like yes and no. It’s a simple answer. You can go anywhere you want. You can go to Hell, or you can go to Heaven (Kenny shouts). And I can promise you [that] until I wake up in the gardens of Heaven, no one will ever convince me that I cannot get just a little bit higher…no one. And I can promise you one other thing, and that is, if you walk far enough in life, you will never ever have to stand in line…(pauses for reflection)…to take a leak (Kenny laughs).32

Kenny’s brief, pseudo-philosophical interlude above occurs frequently in modified form in the Pub of Love video footage that I viewed. Suddenly, Limo Larry and personal choice both take on deeper meaning. Personal choice implies freedom in aspiring for greater things and, in the case of the MuzikMafia, from genre categorization or social mores. According to many who were present at Pub of Love performances, “Limo Larry” was the MuzikMafia’s anthem.33 Versions of the song would sometimes last more than fifteen minutes.34 A similar occurrence takes place during John and Kenny’s next song, “Under the Blue Sky.”35 Following several verses and a chorus, Kenny again brings the band down to a low volume level. His sermon-like delivery to the audience reveals an underlying sentiment that had not been described to me in interviews with members of the MuzikMafia or the Mafia Mizfits. Nor had I witnessed such at any performance in 2004 or 2005. During this particular mini-sermon, Kenny shares with the audience one of his many secrets to life, “You know, if you never want to have a problem with a cop, become

32 Dyer footage, # PM427 at approximately 50’12”.

33 Isaac Rich and author, 7 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, computer video file, personal collection.

34 I should point out that the MuzikMafia performed “Limo Larry” at several performances in early 2006 at the Mercy Lounge with Limo Larry present, confirming the significance of analogizing present and past MuzikMafia performances.

35 Dyer footage, # PM427 at approximately 56’19”.

92 the cop’s friend. If you never want a snake to bite you, get to know the snake.”36 The above takes on new meaning when considering the fact that John and Kenny were signed as Big & Rich to Warner Bros. three months later. The duo had made friends with the snake or cop, which in this case represented the commercial music industry vis-à-vis a major record label. Along with Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich and the MuzikMafia would also contribute to significant change in the Nashville commercial recording industry, selling over eleven million albums in less than five years from the date of the above performance.37 In this unit I have examined the MuzikMafia from several perspectives. In Chapter One I briefly introduced the MuzikMafia’s godfathers and other core members and the community’s creation in 2001. In Chapter Two I defined the MuzikMafia community by combining how members view their collectivity with cultural analysis based upon similarities with various imagined communities and voluntary associations. In Chapter Three I targeted what MuzikMafia members consider to be the defining aspect of their collectivity: the Pub of Love experience. Although still somewhat an introduction, the above provides a solid foundation on which to build a deeper understanding of the MuzikMafia. In Unit II, I explore the MuzikMafia further by examining several of its artists, revealing the interrelationship between selected core members and the broader MuzikMafia collective.

36 Dyer footage, # PM427 at approximately 58’02”.

37 The RIAA certified Gretchen Wilson’s album Here for the Party as quadruple platinum on 22 February 2005, “RIAA Certifications for February 2005,” Billboard Magazine [http://www.billboard.com/bb/riaa/archive/0502.jsp] accessed 31 August 2005. The RIAA certified Big & Rich’s album Horse of a Different Color as double platinum on 11 January 2005, “RIAA Certifications for January 2005,” Billboard Magazine [http://www.billboard.com/bb/riaa/archive/0501.jsp] accessed 31 August 2005.

93 CHAPTER FOUR: CASE STUDY: BIG & RICH AND COWBOY TROY

Preface I first met John and Kenny on 15 June 2004. The event was a regular Tuesday night MuzikMafia show at the Mercy Lounge. That evening I observed a wide-ranging, audience demographic, including blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, people of varying age groups, people dressed in tie-dye clothes, some with jeans and T-shirts, some with suits, some with baseball caps, some with cowboy hats, overweight people, and thin people. During the middle of Big & Rich’s set, Kenny addressed the crowd in a curiously serious tone of voice. He announced, “Well, you know, we here at the MuzikMafia love everybody. We don’t care if you’re black or white. We don’t care if you’re big or small.”1 Turning towards a girl in a wheelchair, Kenny continued, “We don’t care if you got no legs, and we don’t care if you’re rich or po’ [poor].”2 I realized then that Kenny was describing aspects of MuzikMafia that transcend a simple crossing of musical genres. MuzikMafia crosses social boundaries as well. In this chapter I examine how John, Kenny, and Troy use music to address social boundaries, specifically those associated with racial identity. Although their cultural identities comprise much more than racial awareness and, in Troy’s case, multiple racial identities, a recurring theme in their music and private conversations is race. Using the song, “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich),” I show that, by combining musical genres associated with specific cultural groups—for example, country among whites and rap among blacks—John, Kenny, and Troy confront racial boundaries in an effort to unify rather than to divide.

Background Brief Biography: Troy Coleman Commonly known by his stage name “Cowboy Troy” and by his close association with Big & Rich, Troy Coleman contributes his own combination of country and rap,

1 Kenny Alphin, 15 June 2005, performance recorded by author, Nashville, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

2 Ibid.

94 which he describes as “hick-hop,” to MuzikMafia’s musical diversity. At six feet five inches tall and weighing 250 pounds, Troy is a dominant figure on stage, complete with cowboy boots, a large belt buckle, a T-shirt, and a black cowboy hat. Although these images are common among commercial country artists, the fact that Troy is black, raises many questions about the role of race in commercial country music and MuzikMafia’s response to the Anglo-American dominance over the genre. Troy was born 18 December 1970 in Victoria, Texas.3 Although legally classified as black or African-American,4 Troy’s heritage includes Caucasian, African-American, Native American Choctaw, Chinese, and Mexican ethnicities.5 His family moved to Fort- Worth when he was five years old and to Dallas when he was thirteen, where he remained throughout high school. Troy’s musical interests are diverse He received much exposure to jazz and blues from his father who had studied music in college. Troy remembers listening as a child to artists such as Maynard Ferguson, Chuck Mangione, Branford Marsalis, Ray Charles, and Tom Browne. Troy’s mother exposed him to commercial country artists of the time such as Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Charlie Daniels, John Denver, and Jerry Reed. During the late 1970s and early 1980s Troy’s interests diversified to include music by Foreigner, Boston, Kansas, Steely Dan, the Eagles, Kiss, and Def Leppard. The first album that Troy purchased with his allowance was ZZ Top’s Eliminator released in 1983.6 After moving

3 Victoria is located approximately 125 miles southeast of Houston on Highway 59 and ninety- seven miles north of Corpus Christi.

4 Troy is considered black or African American by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that, in 1977, attempted to standardize race-related terms for use by all federal agencies. Other racial classifications included American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander; white, and categories for sorting ethnicity into “Hispanic origin,” and “not of Hispanic origin.” After two decades of examination and reexamination of racial classifications, the OMB released in 1997 a new list of categories that were to be implemented into the 2000 Census. The new classifications included white; black or African American; Asian; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and American Indian or Alaska Native. In order to target racial identity, “Hispanic or Latino” and “not Hispanic or Latino” were also included. Unfortunately, the above represents a gross underestimation of America’s racial composition by the mere exclusion of racial mixes.

5 Troy has not formally traced his family’s heritage. The above description is based upon information from family elders. In addition to being fluent in English and Spanish, Troy has taken courses in Chinese language. Interview with author, 29 November 2004.

6 ZZ Top, 1983, Eliminator, produced by Bill Ham, Warner Bros. 23774, LP.

95 to Dallas in 1984, Troy began listening to rap music by Run D.M.C., the Fat Boys, the Beastie Boys, and Whodini. Troy has the most formal education of all MuzikMafia members. He began his undergraduate studies in 1989 at the University of Texas-Austin where he graduated in 1993 with his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. Interested in furthering his education, Troy began a master’s degree in economics in 1998 at Texas A&M University- Commerce. Following an extended leave of absence in 1999 and a return to his studies in 2000, Troy left the graduate program in 2001 twelve credits shy of graduation. He explains his decision as the result of his growing interest in pursuing music professionally and his dissatisfaction with a future career in academia.7 Troy actively began to pursue his interest in performing rap music in 1989 while a freshman in college. In an attempt to emulate their favorite artists on MTV’s show Yo MTV Raps, Troy and his two roommates composed their own songs. Pleased with his performance, Troy’s friends encouraged him to perform his music publicly, which he did in the form of shows at various fraternity parties and local Austin clubs. John and Troy first met in 1993 at a Dallas music club called the Borrowed Money Saloon.8 John was performing with the group Lonestar of which he had been a member since 1993.9 The two became friends and remained in contact with one another for several years. At John’s request, Troy traveled Nashville for brief visits in 1998, 1999, and 2000 in search of employment.10 During his first trip, Troy met and befriended Kenny who, at the time, was performing regularly with the rock band luvjOi. John and Kenny invited Troy to make guest appearances at their respective venues when Troy was in town.11 Most shows took place at 12th & Porter in downtown Nashville.

7 Troy Coleman, 29 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

8 The Borrowed Money Saloon in Dallas closed in 1997. It reopened soon thereafter in nearby Fort Worth at 2413 Ellis Avenue.

9 Although Lonestar did not record with a major label until signing with BNA Records in 1995, the group tour constantly, having performed as many as 500 shows in 1993/94. Online artist biography, Country Music Television (CMT), [http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/lonestar/bio.jhtml] accessed 4 February 2005.

10 Troy worked for the Dallas City Government from June 2000 to October 2001.

96 Troy first performed with the MuzikMafia 10 December 2001.12 Thereafter he either drove or flew to Nashville once each month from Dallas for such appearances.13 In 2002 Troy independently released an album entitled Beginner’s Luck that includes contributions by godfathers John, Kenny, and Jon.14 Troy’s job at the Dallas branch of the national shoe chain Footlocker from April 2003 to June 2004 kept him from attending MuzikMafia performances more frequently. Troy moved to Nashville in summer 2004, enabling him to attend Tuesday night shows. John and Kenny signed a contract with Warner Bros. in August 2002 to record Horse of a Different Color. The duo included a rap interlude sung by Troy on “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich),” the album’s first track. In addition, Troy accompanied Big & Rich on their 2004 summer tour with Tim McGraw and performed at each show on the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour in fall 2004.15 Within a period of five months, Troy’s life had transformed from working at Footlocker in Dallas to performing on a national tour for crowds in excess of ten thousand fans with Big & Rich and Tim McGraw and regular appearances on national television. John humorously describes Troy as “Afro-Cauca-Choca-Nese,” a reference to Troy’s heritage that consists of African-American, Caucasian, Choctaw Indian, and Chinese influences.16 Here, John is satirizing the fact that most people possess complex

11 John Rich played bass and sang backup for Lonestar from 1992 to 1998, after which time he pursued a relatively unsuccessful solo career.

12 Neither Troy nor any other MuzikMafia member could remember or confirm the date of Troy’s first performance. The above Pub of Love performance was videotaped by Nashville media consultant Mathew Dyer; Troy states on camera that evening that 10 December 2001 was his first time at MuzikMafia.

13 The 665-mile drive from Dallas to Nashville takes approximately 10 hours by car; Troy often traveled by air to avoid the long drive.

14 Cowboy Troy, 2002, Beginner’s Luck, produced by Cowboy Troy, no catalog number available. Entitled “Jungle Luv,” the album’s fourth track was co-written by John, Kenny, and Troy. Jon Nicholson provides the backup tenor vocals and Kenny sings the bass accompaniment.

15 Troy, John, and Kenny accompanied Tim McGraw on tour from 10 June to 27 July 2004. The Chevrolet American Revolution Tour headlined by Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson highlighted the MuzikMafia from 5 November to 11 December 2004 in thirteen cities from Charleston, South Carolina, to Fresno, California.

16 Troy Coleman, 29 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

97 racial identities far beyond the limiting, conventional descriptors listed by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In brief, Troy is who he is: an individual with a diverse background. Troy discourages the use of socially accepted, racial identifiers in his case, describing himself first and foremost as an “American.”17 I include the various racial identifiers here because Troy continually renegotiates his identity based upon how others perceive him. Any discussion of race in regards to John, Kenny, or Troy should begin with the premise that race is a theoretical construct that is culturally created and socially maintained. The term race is relatively new, having developed its modern interpretation only during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.18 Resulting from a multitude of hypotheses attempting to explain observable differences among humans from various areas of the world, our modern understanding of race obscures more than it illuminates. This research adopts historian Bruce Dain’s description of race theory as “a hideous monster of the mind.”19 However, as a cultural construct, racial identity is germane to a discussion of John, Kenny, and Troy because each acknowledges and seems preoccupied with the existence of social distinctions based upon race. Each exerts considerable effort in breaking down these barriers. Kenny’s catch phrase “Love Everybody” has surfaced in most MuzikMafia performances, public interviews, and at least once in each conversation

17 Troy Coleman, 29 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

18 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, race theory was used to explain observable variations in human shape, skin color, and temperament and to unify peoples with similar features. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) explored the relationship between the inner self and the exterior physical self. German theologian Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) used like features among groups of humans to found his understanding of the Volk. In his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791), Herder combines physical and temperamental characteristics of humans with the notion of culture, introducing the idea that culture was key element in the organization of race. Prussian diplomat and historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) combined the above with his own views of the Volk to describe national identity as based upon race and blood rather than upon political or social unity, a much contested ideology that later fueled Hitler’s notion of the German master race. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) drew upon the philosophical work of René Descartes (1596-1650), Hobbes, and Locke, and set out to organize a logical classification system that explained observable differences among humans from various areas of the world.

19 Dain, Bruce, 2002, A Hideous Monster of the Mind: Race Theory in the Early American Republic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

98 that he and I have shared since June 2004. Although John also “loves everybody” without preference to race or creed, he openly exhibits a curiosity about race and its relationship to one’s identity. On numerous occasions his directness has surprised friends and acquaintances. One such example occurred in Atlanta on 28 October 2005. Big & Rich were scheduled to open for Brooks and Dunn that evening as the penultimate stop on the Deuces Wild tour. As he normally does, John had invited several people to join him on his bus before the show. 20 Among his guests were Cowboy Troy, a black country singer named Leslie Christian from Atlanta, and Leslie’s entourage, including her father. After a few minutes of polite but trivial conversation, John turned to Leslie and said, “It’s interesting that you’re very light-skinned.” Leslie replied with, “Yeah, and this is my father; he’s mixed-up, too.” John looked as Leslie’s father and asked, “Well, what are you? I mean, you gotta pardon me by my blunt way of saying things.” The father replied, “You mean my background, my heritage?” John continued with, “Yeah, your heritage; what’s your nationality and all that?” The father explained in a strong southern accent, “A little bit of everything, really. I’m black, but my father’s Jewish and my mother’s Cherokee Indian.” John repeated assertively as if to confirm, “Jewish and American Indian?, (pauses)…Well, where does the black come in? Which part/side does that come in?” The father explained, “My grandmother is black; my grandfather is white.” John nodded his head to show his understanding, after which he explained why he describes Troy as “Afro-Cauca-Choca-Nese.” Leslie interrupted to share that her grandmother is also of Chinese descent. Suddenly, John turned back to Leslie and said, “See, there you go. Yeah, I do see a little bit of Asian in you. Yeah, you can see it. You’re a beautiful girl.”21 Troy’s musical identity is equally complex. He identifies himself as a country artist who performs rap music, among other styles. At six feet four inches tall and weighing 250 pounds, Troy is a dominant figure on stage, complete with cowboy boots, a

20 The author was present on John’s tour bus during the above conversation and was given permission to videotape the conversation.

21 Leslie Christian, her father, and John Rich, 28 October 2005, conversation recorded by author, Atlanta, Georgia, computer video file, personal collection.

99 large belt buckle, a T-shirt, and a black cowboy hat. Although these images are common among commercial country artists, Troy’s dark skin color raises many questions about the role of African Americans in commercial country music, MuzikMafia’s response to the Anglo-American dominance over the genre, and the mixing of Texan culture with commercial rap music. Using “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)” I examine how John, Kenny, Troy demonstrate their own respective complex identities, including racial identity.

Song Analysis: “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)” “Rollin’” is the first track on the Horse of a Different Color album (2004), and John and Kenny consider “Rollin’” to be their signature tune.22 According to John, “The song is also the most radical on the album, and it tells everyone what our manifest is.”23 Written in early summer 2003, “Rollin’” embodies John and Kenny’s reasons for creating the MuzikMafia with Cory and Jon, including the breaking down of social barriers between people. The song contains references to race, religion, combining musical genres, and the hegemony of Music Row, all of which have played a significant role in the collective identity of the MuzikMafia as well as the respective identities of its individual members. John and Kenny also used “Rollin’” to close each of their forty performances on the Deuces Wild tour with Brooks and Dunn in fall 2005. The form of “Rollin’” is verse-chorus with several additional sections, including an opening prelude, an instrumental introduction, and a rap interlude. Like many rock and heavy metal songs, “Rollin’” is modal, specifically in the key of D aeolian. Kenny refers to the tuning of John’s guitar as a “drop D,” whereby the low E-string is tuned down a full step so that the D resonates throughout, “in order to get that bottom-end sound.”24 The opening, non-metered prelude contains Kenny’s sermon-like monologue accompanied by an organ sound played on keyboards. The organ recreates a liturgical

22 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

23 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

24 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

100 setting through the use of rapid vibrato and several glissandos added to the D-F-G-Bb- harmonies. Kenny’s textual delivery resembles that of a revivalist preacher, namely through the informal address of the audience as “brothers and sisters” as well as the added syllable on the end of the word “music” as transcribed in Table 4.1. Table 4.1. Text of the prelude to “Rollin’.” © 2004 by Big Love Music BMI and Warner Bros. Music Corp. Used with permission. Prelude 1 Brothers and sisters, 2 We are here for one reason, and one reason alone: 3 To share our love of musiccaaaah! 4 I present to you country music without prejudice

The prelude reflects Kenny’s religious background while introducing the audience to one of the MuzikMafia’s underlying mottos: “Music without Prejudice.”25 Kenny added the word “country” in line 4 because he and John, as a duo, appealed to primarily country audiences.26 Following the word “prejudice” above, the drummer strikes his hi-hat cymbals four times to set the tempo of the instrumental introduction that is approximately ninety- five beats per minute. John’s acoustic guitar then enters with an opening riff in D minor comprised of two emphasized eighth notes followed by a rapid succession of sixteenth notes in primary groupings of three as seen in Figure 4.1. The drummer accentuates the first two eighth-notes of each measure with bass drum, snare, and cymbals. John based the opening riff to “Rollin’” on Aerosmith’s 1975 song “Sweet Emotion.”27 John had learned the “Sweet Emotion” riff, originally scored for bass guitar,

25 Kenny’s childhood in Culpepper, Virginia, included his close association with local churches. Kenny’s mother Mary was the director of the church children’s choir at the New Salem Baptist and the Culpeper Baptist Churches where she was also the piano accompanist. Interview between Bill and Mary Alphin and Marc Oswald, videotaped by author, Freedom Hall Civic Center, Johnson City, Tennessee, 20 November, 2004. In the above interview, Mary Alphin sang excerpts from Protestant hymns such “Jesus Loves the Little Children” accompanied by her husband Bill Alphin and Kenny.

26 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

27 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. Written by Stephen Tyler and Tom Hamilton, “Sweet Emotion,” appears as track six on Aerosmith’s 1975 album entitled Toys in the Attic, Sony/Columbia Records CK 64401.

101 during his formative years in Texas.28 The source for melodic material in “Rollin” confirms Big & Rich’s musical hybridity as country artists who draw heavily upon non- country courses. Kenny describes the opening groove to “Rollin’” as “bone-ass driving.”29 An additional four measures of music follows the acoustic guitar introduction, adding banjo, steel guitar, electric guitar, and electric bass, supported by a steady, rock-style, eight-beat rhythm on drumset.

Figure 4.1. “Rollin’” two-measure guitar riff.30 Transcribed by author.

The text of the first three verses and the chorus of “Rollin’” is significant. Therein one can examine specific references to events in John and Kenny’s lives, the underlying message of the MuzikMafia, and John and Kenny’s views on the history of commercial country music. I have included in Table 4.2 the formal structure of “Rollin’” to the point of Troy’s rap-style interlude, including the text of the verses and choruses. Each verse contains eight measures of music, regardless of text. Table 4.2. Text to verses and chorus of “Rollin’.” © 2004 by Big Love Music BMI and Warner Bros. Music Corp. Used with permission.

Prelude Instrumental introduction

28 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. John began taking guitar lessons at age five from his father. John accompanied his father, who was a Baptist preacher, on guitar behind the pulpit during Sunday services but soon moved to bass guitar at the request of his father who wanted the lower instrumental voice for accompaniment.

29 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

30 The guitarist plays the above two-measure, guitar riff twice before the full ensemble enters.

102 Table 4.2 (cont.) Verse 1 1 Country boys don't rock ‘n’ roll 2 Yeah, the record man told me so 3 You'll never get it on the radio 4 Why they tryin’ to complicate 5 The simple music that we make 6 Oh, ‘cause if it moves my soul, 7 I'm gonna keep on rollin, rollin

Chorus Hey, just wanna hear everybody sing (rollin', rollin') At the top of your lungs till the windows break (rollin', rollin') Say hey, (hey), hey (hey)

Instrumental bridge Verse 2 8 Ain't gonna shut my mouth 9 Don't mind if I stand out in a crowd 10 Just want to live out loud 11 I know there's got to be 12 A few hundred million more like me 13 Just trying to keep it free

Chorus Instrumental bridge Verse 3 14 Charlie Pride was the man in black 15 Rock ‘n’ roll use to be about Johnny Cash 16 Hey, what you think about that 17 Well I'm a crazy son of a …bad word 18 But I know I'm gonna make it big and rich 19 Yeah, I’m gonna let it rip

Chorus Rap interlude (Troy) Chorus (2X) Instrumental outro

103 Lines 1-7 reference John reactions to specific events as well as John and Kenny’s views on the music industry, in general. The original first line of Verse 1 was “country boys don’t rock and roll; yeah, the little man from RCA told me so,” an explicit reference to John being dropped from RCA/BNA via email in June 2000.31 Also in the first verse is an emphasized “they.” Here, “they” refers to people within the general bureaucracy of the music industry. According to John, “We’re just making music and they want to put it in a box somewhere. They treat it like math [some sort of equation] instead of as an art.”32 Kenny elaborates: They [individuals in the music industry bureaucracy] look at it [the music] based on its numbers instead of its passion; and when music gets away from its passion and soul, it’s become a watered down drink. True listeners feel music when it’s real. Listeners don’t care about formulas; they just want something that moves their soul.33

He continues: There should be no bureaucracy in creativity. True creativity, you can’t put in a box. You just have to let it find its own way. We had finally come to a place in our career when we wrote that song [“Rollin’”] that we weren’t going to allow anyone to put us in a box. We were just going to be ourselves, be as great as we could be, and do everything as good as we could, write as good of songs as we could, play as good as we could, entertain as good as we could, and if it was good enough, we knew an audience would come. We believe that an audience can overpower the business.34

The above reinforces the sentiment of lines 11 and 12 as well as the gamble that the godfathers took in organizing the MuzikMafia in 2001. John, Kenny, Cory, and Jon

31 Joe Galante of RCA/BNA records canceled John’s contract prior to the scheduled release of his debut solo album Underneath the Same Moon. He received the news in June 2000 via an email that had been sent by Galante’s secretary to John’s manager. Sarah Vaughn. John was on his way to a local radio station to promote the album’s newly released single when he received a telephone call from Vaughn informing him of RCA/BNA’s decision. John said that he had felt “disrespected” and “bent” because his professional career and life, for all intents and purposes “had just stopped.” Interview with author, 3 March 2005.

32 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

33 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. The phrase “moves their soul” appears as “moves my soul” in line 6 of “Rollin’.”

34 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

104 understood that their respective musical identities were complex and diverse. The godfathers assumed that, because they had been influenced by diverse styles and that their musical tastes reflected such, there was also a commercial market for listeners who favored musical hybridity. Along these lines, John and Kenny emphasize in “Rollin’” the “We.” The text of the chorus contains references to any inclusive “everyone” while providing a call and response opportunity in the third line with the word “hey” and later following Troy’s interlude with the words, “go cowboy, go cowboy, go.” In live as well as in recorded versions of “Rollin’,” John and Kenny yell “hey” and “go cowboy, go cowboy, go,” at specific points in the song, prompting an immediate repetition from the audience. Gretchen Wilson uses as similar call and response device in her song “Redneck Woman” as does Chance in his song “I Came to Drink,” that I will examine later in Chapter Six. Such audience-inclusive devices shorten the musical and social distance between the performers and their fans—a significant element of the MuzikMafia experience. In Verse 2, John and Kenny state their understanding that many fans also believe that music and people should be without restraint. Kenny asserts that most people’s listening tastes are not homogeneous, as he describes as follows: What we know is that people don’t listen to just one format of music anymore. They just listen to whatever soothes or raises their soul, whatever they like. And we knew our [CD] collections and cd players had everything from heavy metal to bluegrass, and everybody else’s did who were friends of ours. … So we knew that people just liked music, and we knew that that’s what we did, and we just wanted to make that music, and we knew that there were millions of others out there that felt the same way. But the bureaucracy didn’t necessarily go along with that.35

John and Kenny are familiar with the bureaucracy of the commercial music industry. Both had had recorded albums that were either never released or at least not until several years later because their musical styles, respectively, did not conform to prescribed genre categories.36

35 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. Kenny modifies the above phrase “millions of others out there that felt the same way” into “a few hundred million more like me” in line 12 of “Rollin’.”

36 In 1998 Kenny signed a recording contract with Hollywood Records that resulted in his debut album Live a Little the following year. In 1999 Kenny experienced brief commercial success with the release of two singles from the album, “Candy Colored Glasses” and “Under the Sun.” The video from the

105 According to John, lines 14 and 15 in Verse 3 define the song.37 Here, he and Kenny refer to Charlie Pride and Johnny Cash and their respective roles in the history of popular music. As one of only a few well-known black commercial country musicians, Charlie Pride crossed the genre’s ethnic boundaries beginning in the 1960s. Between 1969 and 1984 Pride had thirty-six Number One singles on Billboard’s country charts.38 In line 15 John and Kenny refer to Johnny Cash and his rockabilly style of the late 1950s and early 1960s during which time Cash combined aspects of commercial country music with those of rock and roll.39 Kenny identifies with the above well-known musicians, “That’s the way it is with us: people tell us “we can’t do this and that,” but all of the people who we admire were told the exact same things.”40 Musical analysis of “Rollin’” exposes the song’s hard rock, country, and rap influences. In the instrumental introduction following the acoustic guitar’s opening riff (Figure 5.1), the full ensemble enters with drums, electric guitar, banjo, and steel guitar for an additional four measures. The latter two instruments, although mixed into the background, reveal the commercial country flavor of “Rollin’.” The banjo further reinforces the commercial country and bluegrass connections at the ends of specific phrases, e.g. between lines 3 and 4, lines 10 and 11, and between line 13 and the chorus, when the banjo emerges into to the foreground of the song’s mix. John and Kenny reveal the rock and roll roots of “Rollin’” in the melody and harmony of verse 1. As shown in Figure 4.2, the harmony is not driven by the tonality of Common Practice, e.g. I-IV-V chords as is the case with many country music songs. Instead, John and Kenny draw upon modality that forms the basis of much heavy metal

latter was featured on VH-1, and the single was included in the soundtrack for the film Gun Shy (1999), starring Sandra Bullock and Liam Neeson. Unfortunately, Hollywood Records did not release Live a Little following its completion in 1999 and subsequently dropped Big Kenny from the label.

37 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

38 Charlie Pride has sold over seventy million albums since 1969, making him second only to Elvis Presley in sales with RCA Records; [http://www.charleypride.com/] accessed 12 November 2005.

39 Cash, Johnny, 1975, The Man in Black, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

40 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

106 and rock music. “Rollin’” is in the key of D aeolian, featuring F and G major chords. The alternating F and G major chords contribute to a slow walking feel that returns the listener to D at the downbeat of every other measure in the verse. An additional hard rock-style flavor exists in the two vocal lines in the verses and chorus. Here, Kenny and John’s vocals often move in parallel fourths, providing a hollow duo sound that closely resembles the use of power chords in much heavy metal and rock music. The eight-beat drumset rhythm is also typical of harder, rock-style music. In the chorus and verses, the double eighth-notes on the bass drum on beat three combine with the snare drum’s heavy emphasis on the backbeat. However, the sixteenth-note rhythms that sometimes appear in the vocals and sometimes in the drumset fill measures hint at the influence of funk-style music in moderate tempo. In Figure 4.3 I provide a transcription of verse 1 and the chorus of “Rollin’,” respectively, including John and Kenny’s vocal lines. One should note that the main chord changes occur on every other beat, namely beats 1 and 3, emphasizing the forward, hard-driving motion of the song’s rhythm.

Figure 4.2. Text, melody, and harmony to verse 1 of “Rollin’.” Transcribed by author.

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Figure 4.3. Text, melody, and harmony to the chorus of “Rollin’.” Transcribed by author.

Troy’s rap interlude following the chorus after verse 3 is the most noticeable deviation from the song’s original rock-country flavor. Here, Troy’s vocal delivery is characteristic of “old school flow” that defined rap music during its birth in the late 1970s and its development throughout much of the 1980s. In brief, Troy’s interlude exemplifies old school flow by using rhyming couplets that comprise an antecedent and a consequence statement, end rhymes, and emphasis on the beat.41 I have included the text and a transcription of Troy’s rap interlude in Figure 4.4.

Figure 4.4. Troy’s rap interlude in “Rollin’.” Used with permission. Rhythm transcribed by author.

41 Rap music scholar Adam Krims provides a detailed examination of rap in regards to ‘old school flow’ and ‘new school flow’ in Chapter 2 of his 2000 book, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge University Press). Examples of old school flow include that of the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, the Beastie Boys, and Queen Latifah. I will examine flow and the differences between the old school and new school flow in greater detail in Chapter Six.

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Figure 4.4. (cont.)

In the above rap interlude, Troy draws upon several facets of his identity. From the first line, the listener is aware of his command of rap style. However, his text does not reference an urban environment that often is the subject of rap lyrics. Instead, Troy discusses foods such as barbecue and potato salad with which many rural Americans identify, especially those rap artists who became part of the “Dirty South” and Atlanta crunk movements that led to the national popularity of southern hip-hop. In the phrase that begins, “You’re looking at me crazy,” Troy acknowledges his own self awareness. He understands and has often experienced his uniqueness as a black, rapping cowboy while performing for crowds at local clubs in Austin and Nashville. The message of Troy’s rap is about his own cultural hybridity. While growing up in Dallas and later while continuing his studies in Austin, Troy received much exposure to Spanish language and Hispanic culture. To address this facet of his identity, Troy includes several lines of text in Spanish. The translation is as follows:

109 Table 4.3. Spanish text and translation of Troy’s rap interlude.42 Used with permission. Translation by author.

Todas las personas estan gritando arrive[ba] Everybody is cheering upward Esta canción es para toda la gente This song is for all of the people Es muy importante a usar su mente It’s very important to use their thoughts

Here, Troy draws upon the festive nature of Latino culture while emphasizing cultural inclusivity by rapping in Spanish to his own diverse audiences. He follows the above with an imperative statement, urging the listener to set aside preconceived notions of any music or culture. Troy then explains the multiplicity of his identity by presenting what appears to be cultural opposites. Examples include his affinity for dancing the two-step—an obvious reference to the Texas Two-Step—as well as dancing to trance music at rave parties. He also describes the twenty-inch tire rims on the trucks of his peers, not on cars on which such rims often appear among urban black youths. In addition, Troy describes himself as a Texas hick, a term that normally references an uneducated rural white individual. However, in the final line of his rap interlude, he uses the black vernacular “brothas” to identify his relationship with John and Kenny. In summary, Troy’s rap interlude is about his own cultural hybridity, while affirming the song’s underlying message of music without prejudice. It is no secret that music often carries extra-musical associations. In the case of heavy metal and Western art music, musicologist Rob Walser has pointed out, “The immense social and cultural distance that is normally assumed to separate classical music and heavy metal is not a gap of musicality; they are markers of social difference and enactments of social experience.”43 John and Kenny’s goal with “Rollin’” is to blur such markers of social indifference by acknowledging the cultural and musical diversity found in each person whom they have personally encountered.

42 In order to focus on the translation of the Spanish text above, I have omitted the English line “Now you heard it, now I know you’re a believer” that follows “Todas las personas estan gritando arrive[ba].”

43 Walser, Robert, 1993, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press: 102.

110 Kenny understands music as something that should be above ethnic connotations and social indifference. In a March 2005 interview, Kenny explained his view in a sermon-like fashion, almost pleading for music’s liberation from all racial connotations: To us there is still so much prejudice and segregation that exists in the world, you know, from religion to what used to be color and everything else. It got to the point to where, gosh, if there is one thing that that [prejudice] should not exist in, is music. Music gives us beautiful things like the biggest field of flowers in the world, so there shouldn’t be any segregation in that. People should play whatever kind of music they play, and if it’s good, they should all just play it together. It’s just music. There’s no need to draw those lines…for people to spend so much energy and time on things like John was saying, like numbers or just drawing lines in the sand. Hell, we don’t want to divide it [music, in general]; we want to bring everybody together. We want to have the biggest potpourri of soup or every kind of music you can make. It’s just good…like the Grammy’s, you know.44

In this chapter I have examined, in part, the identities of John, Kenny, and Troy, focusing on their views on southernness, religion, race, and music’s association therewith. By addressing racial identity as a theoretical construct that is culturally created and socially maintained, I have shown how John, Kenny, and Troy break down racial barriers by combining musical genres, specifically in their song “Rollin’.” As two of the MuzikMafia’s four godfathers, John and Kenny draw upon their southern religious backgrounds to spread the belief of musical and racial equality with mottos such as “Love Everybody,” and “Music without Prejudice.” Their song “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)” embodies the above messages. As three of the four most publicly visible members of the MuzikMafia, John, Kenny, and Troy have contributed much to the growth and development of the MuzikMafia community.45 However, as I show in this unit’s subsequent chapters, racial equality and multi-genre musical expression are not the only defining aspects of the MuzikMafia and the identities of its members.

44 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

45 With album sales in excess of seven million from June 2004 through May 2007, Gretchen Wilson is the most well-known member of the MuzikMafia.

111 CHAPTER FIVE: CASE STUDY: SHANNON LAWSON

Introduction Shannon’s stylistic diversity contributes much to the MuzikMafia community. A native of Kentucky, Shannon is the MuzikMafia member whose musical style contains the strongest ties to bluegrass. In addition, he incorporates other influences into his music such as blues, rhythm and blues, rock, funk, and commercial country, separating him stylistically from many bluegrass artists. In this chapter I examine several facets of Shannon’s identity, specifically his stylistic ties to traditional bluegrass combined with strong influences from blues and R&B. Shannon’s decision to return to bluegrass on two separate occasions as an adult reveals what Shannon considers to be his “roots music” and its profound impact on his professional development.1 Using an audience favorite entitled “Smokin’ Grass,” I look at how Shannon expresses himself through a single piece of music and through its various live performances.

Brief Biography Shannon was born into a musical family on 12 July 1970 in Taylorsville, Kentucky, thirty-three miles southeast of Louisville. His childhood comprised in large part working on the family tobacco farm and playing bluegrass music. Shannon’s father, who is proficient on the guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass, and Dobro, taught Shannon how to play guitar at age seven. Bob Lawson and Shannon’s uncle Glenn formed their own bluegrass band in the early 1970s known as the Lawson Brothers. Glenn was later invited to tour with J.D. Crowe & the New South.2 Glenn also performed for several years in

1 Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

2 Bluegrass historian Neil Rosenberg identifies J.D. Crowe and the New South (1975, Rounder Records) as one of the most influential bluegrass albums of the 1970s. The group comprised J.D. Crowe on banjo and lead vocals, guitarist Tony Rice, a young Ricky Skaggs on mandolin tenor vocals, and future Grammy Award-winning Dobro player Jerry Douglas. Crowe’s style combined traditional bluegrass with contemporary music from various genres. Rosenberg, Neil, 1993 [1985], Bluegrass: A History. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 350-351. 112

Spectrum, a bluegrass group that included Bela Fleck, Mark Schatz, and Jimmy Gaudreau.3 While in high school Shannon set aside his interest in bluegrass to pursue rock, blues, and rhythm and blues. His strongest musical influences from the time were Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lead Belly, and Richard “Kush” Griffin, a member of George Clinton’s band Parliament.4 Shannon’s first professional engagement came at the age of eighteen when Griffin invited Shannon to play with his Sunstroke Blues Band, which he did. At the same time, Shannon’s father was experimenting with more complex styles of guitar technique associated with Andres Segovia and Chet Atkins. Significant exposure to bluegrass, blues, and commercial country music contributed much to Shannon’s developing eclectic style.5 After graduating from high school in 1988, Shannon briefly attended the University of Kentucky in Louisville. He left the university at the request of Chicago blues musician Burt “Top Hat” Robinson who had invited him to perform regularly with his club act in Louisville.6 Shannon remained with Top Hat’s band for three years before returning to his bluegrass roots in 1993 with a band called the Galoots.7 Shannon moved to Nashville in 1998 with his wife Mandy, a Louisville disc jockey who had invited Shannon to appear on her radio show in May 1996. His first job in Nashville included regular performances at the Station Inn, a well-known venue for bluegrass and acoustic music.8 The exposure led to his publishing contract with Extreme

3 Spectrum recorded one live album, Opening Roll (1981, ROUN0136) and two studio albums: It's Too Hot For Words (1982, ROUN0161) and Live in Japan (1983, ROUN0184) for the Rounder label.

4 Kush Griffin had also performed regularly with James Brown’s band.

5 McCall, Michael, online biography for Shannon Lawson, William Morris Agency, [http://www.wma.com/shannon_lawson/bio/Shannon_Lawson.pdf ], accessed 14 February 2005.

6 According to Shannon, Top Hat returned to Chicago in the early 1990s. Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

7 In 1993 Shannon formed the Galoots, a Louisville-based bluegrass band that included Dennis Talley, upright bass; Todd Osborne, banjo; Mike Schroeder, mandolin; Shannon Lawson, lead guitar and vocals.

8 The Station Inn is located at 402 12th Avenue South in downtown Nashville.

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Writer’s Group and a future record deal with MCA. The move began a gradual shift in his musical style towards commercial country-style music. Shannon’s debut album, Chase the Sun, was released in spring 2002 by MCA and followed by several appearances at the Grand Ole Opry that year.9 Although he admits to liking his first album, Shannon felt that its commercial sound was not what he would have created without the influence of MCA producer Mark Wright.10 Following considerable artistic dispute with Mercury Records for a possible second album, he left the label to produce his own music.11 In 2004 he independently released a follow-up album entitled The Acoustic Livingroom Session.12 As an active performer within the Nashville music scene, Shannon was well aware of the birth, growth, and development of the MuzikMafia. However, it was not until January 2004 when he performed on stage for the first time with the community. Shannon had known godfathers John and Jon from their Nashville performances and through mutual connections to Extreme Writers Group. He frequented John’s shows at the Exit-In, where also Jon performed on occasion.13 In addition, Shannon had written many songs with Rodney Clawson, John’s former baseball coach from high school.14 Jon invited Shannon to attend a MuzikMafia show in January 2004 at Dan McGuinness Pub.15 He was inducted into the MuzikMafia in November that year.

9 Lawson, Shannon, 2002, Chase the Sun, produced by Mark Wright, MCA 088 170 233-2, compact disc.

10 Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

11 Another factor was the fact that Mercury had just acquired MCA, a merger that required Shannon to work with individuals who were unfamiliar with his eclectic style. Mercury Records and MCA currently belong to Universal Music Group.

12 Lawson, Shannon, 2004, The Acoustic Livingroom Session, produced by Shannon Lawson and Dan Friszell, Galoot Music.

13 The Exit-In is located at 2208 Elliston Place near Music Row in Nashville.

14 Clawson was also a songwriter on staff with Shannon’s publishing company called Galoot Music.

15 The Dan McGuinness Pub is located at 1538 Demonbreun Street in Nashville, where MuzikMafia held performances from January through March 2004.

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Song Analysis: “Smokin’ Grass” At his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2002 Shannon performed “Smokin’ Grass,” a song that he later included on his second album The Acoustic Livingroom Session (2004).16 Shannon had co-written “Smokin’ Grass” with friend Billy Yates in early 2002. Characterized by driving tempos, virtuosic musicianship, and a light-hearted metaphorical humor, “Smokin’ Grass” features numerous instruments, including amplified guitar, banjo, Dobro, fiddle, harmonica, and bass.17 According to Shannon, the Acoustic Livingroom Session as well as his first performance of “Smokin Grass” in 2002 on the Grand Ole Opry marked a second return to his bluegrass roots.18 The most significant aspect of “Smokin’ Grass” is the humorous double entendre that appears in the song’s title. The phrase “smokin’ grass” refers to both a fiery tempo for bluegrass music and the act of smoking marijuana. When asked if his Grand Ole Opry audience in 2002 understood the metaphor, Shannon replied, “I’m not sure; there was a lot of gray hair out there [in the audience].”19 Illegal drug use is a rare theme in bluegrass music, if such a theme has ever appeared at all. The double entendre represents Shannon’s own sense of humor and his unique lyrical style. When one takes into consideration that technical virtuosity and marijuana use are common among MuzikMafia members, one can understand why “Smokin’ Grass” is Shannon’s most requested song each time he performs on the MuzikMafia stage. “Smokin’ Grass” begins with a partially non-metered introduction that sets up the song in terms of its key, instrumentation, style, subject matter, and tempo. This

16 Lawson, Shannon, 2004, The Acoustic Livingroom Session, produced by Shannon Lawson and Dan Friszell, Galoot Music, compact disc. At his Grand Ole Opry debut in summer 2002, Shannon performed a total of three songs: “Good Bye on a Bad Day,” “Chase the Sun,” and “Smokin’ Grass.”

17 The above refers to the context of live performances and is dependent upon which instruments are available. In the version that appears on The Acoustic Livingroom Session, Shannon highlights only acoustic guitar, banjo, and string bass.

18 According to Shannon, his first return to his bluegrass roots occurred in 1993 with the formation of his band The Galoots. He slowly entered the musical sphere of commercial country after moving to Nashville in 1998. The result was a change in Shannon’s style from contemporary bluegrass to a more commercial country-oriented sound; Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

19 Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

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introductory device is common among bluegrass songs and derives from southern gospel- style singing and harmony.20 Examples of bluegrass tunes that incorporate the non- metered, vocal introduction include “Big Black Train” (1958) by Flatt and Scruggs, “Ruby, Are You Mad?” (1956) by the Osborne Brothers and Red Allen, and “White Trash Wedding” (2002) by the Dixie Chicks.21 If such an introduction does appear at the beginning of an up-tempo song, the section usually highlights multi-part vocal harmonies like those found in much white southern gospel music. In the case of “Smokin’ Grass,” vocal harmonies appear in the introduction during a live performance only if there are instrumentalists present who can sing them accurately and in a gospel style, which is rare.22 I have included in Table 5.1 Shannon’s introductory text and harmony of “Smokin’ Grass” for reference. Each line of text contains a single musical phrase.

1 Well, my cousin Joe had a five-string banjo G 2 And me, I had this ole flat-top guitar D G 3 We stayed up all night just a pickin’ and a grinnin’ G 4 We liked our music fast and hot G G D G

Lines 1 and 2 of the introduction are, melodically and harmonically, a non- metered statement and its response, respectively. Each line is followed immediately by a

20 Bluegrass retains strong ties to the rural southern cultural soundscape from which it derives. According to Rosenberg, “All styles of country music, including bluegrass, base much of their appeal on affirmation of rural values such as fundamentalist religion, a strong family life, and the other old-time aspects of the non-industrial South,” Rosenberg, Neil V, 1967, “From Sound to Style: The Emergence of Bluegrass,” in Journal of American Folklore 80 (April-June): 145.

21 Flatt, Lester, and Earl Scruggs, 1997, “Big Black Train” from The Essential Flatt and Scruggs, Columbia/Legacy C2K 64877, compact disc; Osborne Brothers and Red Allen, 1999, “Ruby, Are You Mad?,” from Appalachian Stomp: More Bluegrass Classics, Rhino Records R2 75720, compact disc; and the Dixie Chicks, 2002, “White Trash Wedding,” from Home, Columbia/Monument CK 87030, compact disc.

22 When John Rich is present at MuzikMafia performances in which Shannon plays “Smokin’ Grass,” e.g. 17 August 2004 at Bluesboro, he provides the vocal accompaniment in a gospel style. 116 brief instrumental cadenza. Shannon delivers the text of lines 1 through 3 using large melodic leaps that emphasize his higher vocal register in the song’s key of G major. Shannon’s timbre is slightly nasal, as is the case with many of his bluegrass-based songs, and rarely does he incorporate vibrato. The third line is similar in melodic contour and rhythmic flexibility to line 1. At the ends of the first two lines, Shannon allows for a solo cadenza that corresponds to the instrument mentioned in the text. For example, if a banjoist is present, he/she takes the cadenza at the end of line 1. Shannon takes a brief solo at the end of line 2 on his amplified guitar, an acoustic instrument to which he has added electric pickups. Shannon’s bassist often takes a solo at the end of line three. However, in the fifteen performances of “Smokin’ Grass” that I videotaped in 2004 and 2005, it was not uncommon for a guest artist, e.g. a fiddler, harmonica player, or Dobro player to improvise in the cadenza at the end of line 3. I should point out that if a guest artist such as Dobro player is prepared to play a cadenza at the end of line 1, Shannon alters the text accordingly, e.g. “Well, my cousin Joe had a six-string Dobro.” Like other MuzikMafia artists, Shannon makes many musical decisions based upon the context or instrument availability of any given performance. At the beginning of line 4, Shannon introduces a fast, steady pulse that sets the tempo for the rest of the song. His hard-driving tempo is approximately 150 beats per minute in duple meter with the words “liked,” “music,” and “fast” appearing on first and third beats of each four-beat measure. A brief guitar riff of rapid, descending then ascending sixteenth notes completes the line and serves as a transition into chorus 1. All accompanying instrumentation, e.g. drumset, guitar, bass, etc., reinforces the tempo- setting accents above in line 4 by emphasizing with the vocals the first and third beats of each measure. The sixteenth-note guitar riff at the end of the introduction and the fiery tempo of the rest of the song is typical of bluegrass style. The tempo of bluegrass tunes is generally faster than that of other rural styles. Mostly in duple meter, bluegrass music possesses a

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strong upbeat usually played by the banjo or mandolin.23 Alan Lomax describes to bluegrass in a 1959 article as “folk music with overdrive.”24 I have included in Table 5.2 the most common form, harmony, and text of “Smokin’ Grass” that follows the introduction. I should point out that Shannon varies the text somewhat during live performances. Each line comprises one musical phrase. Because the texts of chorus 1 and chorus 2 differ slightly from one another, I have numbered them as separate song parts. The melody and harmony of chorus 1 and chorus 2 are identical despite any textual inconsistencies. Table 5.2. “Smoking’ Grass”: text, form, and harmony. © 2002 by Shannon Lawson.25 Used with permission.

Chorus 1 5 We liked smokin’ grass any place they’d let us C 6 Smokin’ grass out behind the barn G D G 7 Smokin’ grass was our best habit C 8 Yeah, we got high playin’ smokin’ grass G D G

Verse 1 9 When mama said boys, it’s time to do your homework G 10 Said, mama you got that exactly right G D G 11 We played all night just a pickin’ and a grinnin’ G 12 Old Lester and Earl would be proud of us tonight G D G

Chorus 1 Instrumental solo

23 Smith, L. Mayne, 1965, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” Journal of American Folklore 78(309) (July/September), 247.

24 Lomax, Alan, 1959, “Bluegrass Background: Folk Music with Overdrive,” Esquire, 52(4) (October).

25 The above version of “Smokin’ Grass” appears on Lawson, Shannon, 2004, The Acoustic Livingroom Session, produced by Shannon Lawson and Dan Friszell, Galoot Music, compact disc. 118

Table 5.2 (cont)

Verse 2 13 One day we got a call, said boys you’ve made the big time 14 They want you to play on that Opry stage 15 We stood there and played and the crowd went crazy 16 Our home grown grass had become the rage

Chorus 2 17 We liked smokin’ grass down at the Grand Ole Opry 18 Smokin’ grass up at Carnegie Hall 19 Smokin’ grass was our best habit 20 Now the whole world gets high on smokin’ grass

Instrumental solo Chorus 1 Cadenza 21 Now we got high…playin’ smokin’…grass… G D G

Instrumental (a tempo) and outro

The chorus is a good example of bluegrass sound and style. First, bluegrass, like many old-time styles, is usually sung using a high-pitched, piercing, and nasal vocal tone which employs little or no vibrato.26 Scott Shipley, Shannon’s banjoist, provides the characteristic tenor line often described as the “high lonesome sound” of bluegrass music.27 Many of Bill Monroe’s well-known tunes such as “Muleskinner Blues” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and many of Ralph Stanley’s hits including “Little Maggie” emphasize the high vocal line of the tenor. According to southernist and bluegrass

26 Smith, L. Mayne, 1965, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” Journal of American Folklore 78(309) (July/September): 247.

27 Documentary filmmaker, photographer, and musician John Cohen was the first to popularize the phrase “the high lonesome sound” and its application to the music of the southern Appalachian highlands. Cohen used the descriptor as the title for his 1963 black-and-white film in which he documents the role of religion and music in the poorest areas of rural eastern Kentucky, focusing on the life of local banjo picker Roscoe Holcomb; Cohen, John, dir., 1962, The High Lonesome Sound, New York: Cinema Guild. 119

historian Robert Cantwell, this “shouting” style derives from southern, folk religious traditions.28 Second, Shannon incorporates into “Smokin’ Grass” two- and three-part vocal harmonies—a standard feature in bluegrass music.29 In addition to the tenor, the other vocal parts comprise Shannon’s lead melody and bassist Eddie Dunbar’s accompaniment.30 The tenor and bass vocal accompaniment appear in the chorus on the words, “smokin’ grass” in lines 5, 6, and 7 and on every word in line 4. Third, “Smokin’ Grass” also reflects bluegrass style through each instrument’s function. According to L. Mayne Smith, who conducted the first significant study on bluegrass music in the early 1960s, “The role of each instrument in the bluegrass ensemble is precise.”31 There is a lead part or central melody that is produced by an instrument or voice. The rest of the ensemble accompanies the lead part melodically or rhythmically, but according to Smith, “never threatening its domination.”32 The primary lead instruments are the fiddle, banjo, and the Dobro. The mandolin can also be a lead melodic instrument, but when it is not functioning as such, the mandolin often provides the strong rhythmic accompaniment, normally reinforcing the off beat. Shannon plays the primary accompaniment on guitar in “Smokin’ Grass.” If a mandolin is unavailable, Shannon incorporates the strong off-beat chordal harmony into his accompanying guitar part. The banjoist emphasizes his/her three-fingered, Scruggs- style of picking through frequent groupings of three in duple meter, incorporating at

28 Cantwell, Robert, 1992, Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound, New York: Da Capo Press: 129.

29 According to L. Mayne Smith, who conducted the first significant study on bluegrass music, a defining characteristic of the style is its vocal harmonization that includes as many as four parts expressed in duets, trios, or quartets; Smith, L. Mayne, 1964, “Bluegrass Music and Musicians: An Introductory Study of a Musical Style in Its Cultural Context,” master’s thesis, Department of Folklore, Indiana University: 36-40.

30 Banjoist Scott Shipley and bassist Eddie Dunbar left Shannon’s band in fall 2004. Throughout 2005 Shannon’s group underwent numerous changes in personnel.

31 Smith, L. Mayne, 1965, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” Journal of American Folklore 78(309) (July/September): 246.

32 Smith, L. Mayne, 1965, “An Introduction to Bluegrass,” Journal of American Folklore 78(309) (July/September): 246.

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times the song’s lead melody—all of which are definitive of bluegrass sound and style.33 Shannon’s bassist drives the rhythm by emphasizing chords and their respective changes on the beat. The driving rhythm of the bass, the syncopated banjo line, and the mandolin’s off-beat emphasis played on guitar provides for a dancing-conducive atmosphere in which MuzikMafia audience members often display their clogging or flatfoot skills.34 Fourth, it is common for bluegrass music to include numerous instrumental solos, and “Smokin’ Grass” is no exception. For example, in his 1947 version of “I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky,” Monroe includes instrumental solos after each appearance of the song’s chorus, alternating between fiddle, banjo, and mandolin, respectively.35 In “Smokin’ Grass” Shannon includes instrumental solos after the second appearance of chorus 1, after chorus 2, and after the final cadenza. Each instrumental solo closely resembles those of Monroe’s band members in regards to technical virtuosity and bluegrass style. In “Smokin’ Grass” the featured instruments in the solo sections vary according to which instrumentalists are available at any given performance. Shannon sometimes plays the first instrumental solo on guitar and delegates the second solo to a guest artist. The instrumental that follows the song’s final cadenza features all instruments. Each solo follows the verse in regards to length and harmonic accompaniment. However, it is not uncommon for Shannon to allow instrumentalists to extend their solos to the length of

33 According to Smith, the defining criterion of bluegrass music is the five-string banjo played in lead capacity, emphasizing melodic over rhythmic aspects, and the use of the three-fingered roll, or “Scruggs Style” named after Earl Scruggs, a native of western North Carolina; Smith, L. Mayne, 1964, “Bluegrass Music and Musicians: An Introductory Study of a Musical Style in Its Cultural Context,” master’s thesis, Department of Folklore, Indiana University: 36-40. Bill Monroe took offense at Smith’s emphasis on Earl Scruggs’s significance to bluegrass. Smith reports on how Monroe refused to speak with him after reading a draft of Smith’s 1965 article; personal conversation between Smith and author, 27 May 2005.

34 Shannon is the only MuzikMafia artist whose songs are regularly accompanied by dancing audience members. Flatfoot and clogging are southern Appalachian dance styles that often accompany bluegrass music. At fiddler conventions and folk music festivals, where bluegrass music is frequently heard, it is common for a makeshift dance floor to appear adjacent the stage for such purposes. For more information on festival culture and performance practice in the southern Appalachian highlands, see Pruett, David, 2000, “Preserving Cultural Identity: WPAQ Radio and the Dissemination of Bluegrass and Old- Time Music,” master’s thesis, Department of Musicology, Florida State University.

35 Monroe, Bill, 1992 [1947], “I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky,” on The Essential Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, 1945-1949, disc 2, Columbia/Legacy Records C2K 52478, compact disc. 121

two verses or longer, depending on either the soloist’s technical virtuosity, the audience’s positive reaction to the same, or both. Despite the drug-related double entendre of the song’s title, “Smokin’ Grass” contains several textual references to traditional bluegrass style and rural southern culture. In the introduction Shannon references the five-string banjo and the flat-top guitar—two core instruments of the Appalachian stringband. The presence of the word “cousin” in line 1 alludes to the closeness that rural southerners have historically had with extended family. The above derives from the close proximity of kin in communities of relative isolation in the southern Appalachians throughout much of the region’s history.36 The reference to “pickin’ and grinnin’” in line 3 describes the inexpensive, rural pastime of musicking through which one reinforces cultural traditions while cultivating social ties.37 Shannon continues to draw upon bluegrass and southern culture in the song’s choruses and verses. In line 6 Shannon describes a barn as a place of refuge where a rebellious youth can either smoke marijuana or play music. Another double metaphor appears in line 9 where the word “homework” can refer to either an educational pastime forced upon a youth by his parent or an instrumental rehearsal necessary for perfecting one’s technical skills. Lines 11 and 12 confirm the latter through Shannon’s description of an all-night jam session and a brief acknowledgement of bluegrass tradition by referencing Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.38 Shannon explains in verse 2 his experiences involving the Grand Ole Opry, the premiere venue for commercial country music in the world. Shannon acknowledges in line 16 that a performance on the Grand Ole Opry

36 For further reading on Appalachian culture and musical traditions, see Pruett, David B., 2000, “Preserving Cultural Identity: WPAQ Radio and the Dissemination of Bluegrass and Old-Time Music,” master’s thesis, Department of Musicology, Florida State University.

37 “Pickin’ and grinnin’” also refers to a sketch and song by the same name popularized by Buck Owens and Roy Clark on the popular television show Hee Haw that CBS aired from 1969 to 1971. The duo combined music and rural humor by alternating dueling guitar and banjo incipits with spoken, humorous one-liners.

38 Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe’s band in 1948 and formed their own bluegrass group, the Foggy Mountain Boys. They became members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1955 despite Monroe’s direct efforts to bar them from the Opry stage. After considerable success with their soundtrack to the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde and frequent appearances on the hit television show the Beverly Hillbillies, Flatt and Scruggs were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985.

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constitutes the success of his style of bluegrass music. He reinforces the significance of the Grand Ole Opry again through a second reference in chorus 2. Shannon’s version of “Smokin’ Grass” that appears on his album The Acoustic Livingroom Session is a clear example of bluegrass style. However, commercial recordings can be deceptive, especially in regards to a musician’s intent, overall style, and his/her musical identity. In the section below, I focus on Shannon’s live performances of “Smokin’ Grass,” revealing other significant influences in his music. Here, I draw upon fifteen separate live performances that took place in 2004 and 2005 at a variety of venues, ranging from regular Tuesday night MuzikMafia shows to national concert tours with Hank Williams Jr. The most common variable among live performances of “Smokin’ Grass” is instrumentation. At a show that took place at the Mercy Lounge on 13 July 2004, the song included Shannon on amplified guitar, Alaska Dan on harmonica, Eddie Dunbar on electric bass, Scott Shipley on electric mandolin, and Johnny Rabb on drumset. Dan’s harmonica added a blues feel to the opening cadenzas, and Eddie introduced a metered, rhythm and blues section into his bass solo after the third line of the introduction. Johnny accompanied the bass solo with a funk-based rhythm on drumset, periodically inserting a one-handed roll that had earned him the title of World’s Fastest Drummer in 2002 by the Guinness Book of World Records.39 At a MuzikMafia show at Bluesboro on 10 August 2004 Shannon invited Max Abrams to play a jazz-based saxophone solo during the first instrumental. On 28 September keyboardist Peter Keyes played the first cadenza on synthesizer before switching in mid-solo to Jon Nicholson’s electric piano. When not on tour with Kid Rock, Dobro player Smith Curry frequently attends MuzikMafia shows and joins Shannon on “Smokin’ Grass,” as was the case on 6 October 2004.40 Shannon

39 In 2002 representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records recorded Johnny play a total of 1,071 drum strokes in sixty seconds, earning him the title of World’s Fastest Drummer for that year; Anderson, Maggie, 1 December 2005, “More Than Just Rapid Rabb,” The Daily Iowan (“80 Hours” section) [http://www.dailyiowan.com/media/paper599/news/2005/12/01/80Hours/More- Than.Just.A.Rapid.Rabb-1117359.shtml ] accessed 4 February 2006.; Johnny is able to simultaneously play a one-handed roll with his left and right hands. Johnny performs regularly around Nashville with his band Super Action Heroes that includes Jon Nicholson’s bassist Jerry Navarro.

40 Smith Curry has performed with a variety of artists on the national scene, including Randy Travis and Kid Rock. Curry’s television experience includes appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman, Rosie O'Donnel, CMT's Prime Time Country and Most 123

replaced his amplified acoustic guitar with an electric guitar at a show on 23 August 2005; Pino provided rhythmic accompaniment on tambourine. At a performance on 23 August 2005, Shannon’s regular harmonica player Jimmie Taylor played the song’s first cadenza with strong influences from blues, including numerous pitch bends and long melodic slides.41 Shannon responded with a similar blues-based solo on electric guitar. The above reveals Shannon’s blues and R&B influences and demonstrates the wide range of Shannon’s instrumental possibilities for “Smokin’ Grass.” After all, Shannon’s first professional gig had come at the age of eighteen when Richard “Kush” Griffin invited Shannon to play with his Sunstroke Blues Band.42 In addition, Shannon had dropped out of the University of Kentucky in Louisville in 1988 at the request of Chicago blues musician Burt “Top Hat” Robinson who had invited Shannon to perform regularly with his club act in Louisville.43 However, Shannon often includes influences from musical styles other than bluegrass, blues, and R&B in the introductory cadenzas to “Smokin’ Grass.” For example, Shannon inserted incipits from Led Zeppelin’s 1971 song “Black Dog” into a performance of “Smokin’ Grass” that took place at the Cannery Row Ballroom on 10 May 2005.44 He was accompanied by D.D. Holt on drums, Austin Clarke on Dobro, and Jimmie Taylor on harmonica. John Rich had introduced Shannon, emphatically describing his style of music as “Ricky Skaggs meets fucking ACDC.”45 At a

Wanted Live, the Grand Ole Opry, CNN's Showbiz Today and The CMA Awards; “Artist Information: Smith Curry,” from Peavey’s official website, [http://www.peavey.com/artists/browse.cfm/action/info/artist/212/curry.cfm] accessed 4 February 2006.

41 Harmonica player Jimmie Taylor began performing regularly with Shannon in late summer 2005.

42 Richard “Kush” Griffin is a former member of George Clinton’s band Parliament. Kush had also performed regularly with James Brown. Interview between Shannon and the author, 23 February, 2005.

43 According to Shannon, Top Hat returned to Chicago in the early 1990s. Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

44 Led Zeppelin, 1971, “Black Dog” from Led Zeppelin IV, Atlantic 7208, LP record. The Cannery Row Ballroom is in the same building as the Mercy Lounge. Both venues are located at One Cannery Row in downtown Nashville.

45 Rich, John, 10 May 2005, performance recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. 124

performance on 21 September 2004, Eddie played on electric bass a metered, funk-based solo that included percussive effects such as slaps and grabs. Shannon’s proclivity to vary the instrumentation of “Smokin’ Grass” and the styles represented by the song’s opening cadenzas draw heavily upon Shannon’s diverse musical background. It is evident that earlier tours with Kush Griffin and Top Hat have contributed much to Shannon’s current style. Shannon later reported that he owes much of his musical and emotional development to the aforementioned bluesmen.46 Shannon’s high school interests in groups such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin are often present in his live performances, although less frequently than influences from blues or bluegrass.47 In this chapter I have examined several facets of Shannon’s identity, and I have shown how each is reflected in Shannon’s current musical style using an audience favorite, “Smokin’ Grass.” Interests in rock and heavy metal contributed to Shannon’s stylistic development throughout high school. Shannon’s exposure to blues and rhythm and blues during his post high school years drew him away from bluegrass but contributed much to his developing musical style and his goal to become a professional musician. A return to his bluegrass roots in 1993 and again in 2002 reveals Shannon’s close connection to the music and culture of his Kentucky upbringing. Shannon’s experiences within Nashville’s commercial country music scene beginning 1998 resulted in considerable frustration and his eventual departure from MCA in 2002. However, the reason behind Shannon’s dissatisfaction with Music Row is the same reason why he has become a significant member of the MuzikMafia. As numerous live performances of “Smokin’ Grass” indicate, Shannon has a virtuosic style that comprises diverse musical influences. As a result, Shannon contributes to each MuzikMafia performance his own version of “Music without Prejudice.”

46 Shannon Lawson, 23 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

47 While in high school Shannon set aside his childhood interest in bluegrass to pursue rock, blues, and rhythm and blues. His strongest musical influences from the time were Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lead Belly, and Richard “Kush” Griffin. 125

CHAPTER SIX: CASE STUDY: CHANCE

Introduction Timothy C. Smith, commonly known among friends and fans as “Chance,” has contributed much to the MuzikMafia.1 Although Chance is one of the MuzikMafia’s newest members—he began performing regularly with them only in spring 2004— Chance plays a significant role in the community as an example of musical excellence and stylistic diversity.2 He describes his own style of music as “southern hip-hop: a combination of country, rap, and southern rock.”3 However, unlike Cowboy Troy whose music has been marketed primarily to commercial country audiences, Chance appeals more to hip-hop enthusiasts. Chance’s “southernness” regularly appears at the fore among his hierarchy of identities, and his musical style is a uniquely southern form of expression. He combines his southern working class background with an affinity for hip-hop culture to which he was exposed from early childhood.4 He translates his life experiences into musical sound by combining the above musical genres in such a way that reflects his own identity. In this chapter I examine Chance and his musical identity. Because Chance’s southernness assumes a more dominant role is his daily life—more so than with any other MuzikMafia member with the exception of Gretchen Wilson, I include a brief

1 Chance received his future stage name while attending Haywood Elementary School in Nashville. In contrast to many rap artists who receive their aliases from peers or through self-proclamation, Chance was called such by his elementary school teachers who consistently mispronounced his middle name, “Cheth;” Chance, 9 September 2004, , interview recorded by author, Whites Creek, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

2 Chance left the MuzikMafia in February 2007. However, he was an influential member during the course of this research from 2004 through 2006 which warrants his inclusion in this unit.

3 Chance, 25 June 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. I will discuss several variations of southern hip-hop, e.g. Nashville scene versus that of Atlanta or Memphis, later in this chapter.

4 Chance was influenced musically by amateur rapper Rio Clemmons of the Large Brothers, the older brother of one of Chance’s close friends from elementary school. According to Chance, the Large Brothers were significant in the development of Nashville’s hip-hop scene in the 1980s. The presence of country and rap music in Chance’s early childhood explains the symbiosis between the two in his professional career in the form of southern hip-hop; Chance, 9 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Whites Creek, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

126 explanation of southern identity.5 In addition, I provide the reader with a detailed analysis of Chance’s song, “I Came to Drink,” an audience favorite that established Chance as a dominant presence in the Nashville music scene in 2003. I also describe an important facet of Chance’s southern identity, namely his “hell raiser” persona, and its relationship with Chance’s own hip-hop style. In conclusion, I briefly contextualize Chance as Nashville’s contribution to the “Dirty South,” a term that has been used collectively to identify the music of southern hip-hop artists.

Background Brief Biography Chance was born Timothy Cheth Smith on 4 September 1980 in Huntington, West Virginia. He spent his first five years on a bus touring with his parents, after which time the family settled in Nashville. Chance’s parents toured as a duet act known as Tim and Pauline that performed alternative commercial country music with such artists as Willie Nelson, David Allen Coe, and Tanya Tucker. Musical performance afforded the family with only a modest, working-class lifestyle, despite Tim and Pauline’s two relatively well-known hits in the early 1980s entitled “Dreamy Eyes” and “Cowboy Boots and Soft Blue Denim.”6 Chance was also influenced at an early age by amateur rapper Rio Clemmons, the older brother of one of Chance’s close friends from elementary school.7 The presence of country and rap music in Chance’s childhood explains the symbiosis between the two in his professional career in the form of southern hip-hop.

5 Southernness is a significant facet of many MuzikMafia members’ identities, but not all members are from the South, and not all members share the same affinity for southern culture. In Chance’s case, he frequently references his southern identity on and off stage, and he regularly emphasizes his southernness through dialect, attire, and disposition.

6 Between 1980 and 1985 Tim and Pauline recorded three albums with an independent label named Talent Power Records based in Huntington, West Virginia: 1) Straight On, 2) Keep the Music Flowing, and 3) Live Like Never Before. “Dreamy Eyes” and “Cowboy Boots and Soft Blue Denim” both appear on the 1982 album Straight On. According to Tim Smith, “Cowboy Boots and Soft Blue Denim” peaked in 1982 at Number Sixty-Eight on the Billboard country singles charts. The family settled in Nashville in 1985 at the end of the tour.

7According to Chance, the Large Brothers, including Rio Clemmons, was the best known among the few rap groups of Nashville’s hip-hop scene in the 1980s; Chance, 3 January 2006, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

127 In fall 1998 Chance enrolled at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.8 While in college, Chance became an active contributor to Nashville’s developing hip-hop scene. In addition to his studies, he organized and hosted battles and ciphers during weekly trips to Nashville.9 Chance left Austin Peay in 2003 twelve credits shy of graduation and returned to Nashville to pursue music professionally. Chance dedicated himself to developing Nashville’s relatively small hip-hop scene full-time after the move. His battles and ciphers provided an outlet for local artists such as 187 Blitz, Boom Bap, Kyhil, Father Abraham, AJA, and Afro Pic; turntablists United Crates, DJ Kutt, and DJ Chosen; and Chance’s own crew known as the Dragon Farm Project that included POW Shadows, Jelly Roll, and RPM.10 Numerous public performances by these and other local rap artists contributed to the establishment of a relatively stable hip-hop scene by early 2004. Identity and the South Southerners do not constitute a homogenous group by any means, but there are commonalities throughout the South that distinguish the region from others in the United States. According to well-known southern author Wilbur J. Cash, “Although there are many Souths, there is also one South.”11 Country music historian Bill Malone elaborates: This South is a product of the region’s special history, its ruralism, a racism born of slavery and the belief in white supremacy, and the defeat suffered in the Civil War. A broad cluster of traits, including both memories and bloodlines, once linked the people from Virginia and the eastern seaboard to the people of east Texas. These common traits bound southerners in many ways, while their diversity lent a rich and special flavor to their music.12

8 Clarksville, Tennessee, is located fifty miles northwest of Nashville on Interstate 24.

9 According to ethnomusicologist and hip-hop scholar Cheryl Keyes, a “cipher” is a term, popularized by the Five Percenters and adopted by emcees, that refers to a circle of three or more people who engage in public freestyling, or improvised rap; Keyes, Cheryl L., 2002, Rap Music and Street Consciousness, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 124-125.

10 Ciphers are known in the hip-hop community as public gatherings in which several MCs practice their art in front of each other in a non-competitive environment. Ciphers are a kind of practice session in preparation for public battles in which individual MCs compete with each one another. Interview with Chance, 3 January 2006.

11 Cash, Wilbur J., 1941, The Mind of the South, New York: Alfred A Knopf: viii.

12 Malone, Bill C., 2002, Don’t Get above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press: viii.

128 Embedded in southern identity is the burden of the region’s complex and controversial history as well as its many contradictions. Chance is a self-proclaimed “hell raiser,” an individual frequently described in the country music literature as an “outlaw” or “rambler.” Chance enjoys shooting guns, fighting when the occasion arises, four-wheeling, drinking, and smoking cigarettes of varying sorts. Although today the above are no longer exclusive to the American South, many southerners of a rural working-class background often identify with these and other activities. In his book, Don’t Get above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Malone discusses the notion of the “rambler.” Malone defines a rambler as a “metaphor for the man who defies or otherwise tries to live apart from the conventions of society.”13 Malone also describes how country musicians have been fascinated with the rambling man for most of commercial country’s existence.14 One only has to examine the role of drugs and alcohol in the lives of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, George Jones, Willie Nelson, and Hank Williams Jr. to understand that addiction has become staple among many country musicians and the southern working class.15 Culturally speaking, the notion of the rambler or “hell raiser” is closely associated with the term “hillbilly” that has undergone a series of transformations since its first appearance in print in the early twentieth century.16 Having begun as a largely pejorative description of the rural, low-class, white inhabitants of the southern Appalachian region, “hillbilly” has also personified America’s self-identification with the pioneer spirit, independence, family, and closeness to nature amidst a rapidly industrializing and

13 Malone, Bill C. 2002, Don’t Get above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 119.

14 Malone, Bill C. 2002, Don’t Get above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 119.

15 Harkins, Anthony, 2004, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, New York: Oxford University Press: 6.

16 The first known appearances of the term “hillbilly” in print appeared in the New York Journal on 23 April 1900, 2; cited in Mathews, Mitford M., 1951, Americanisms: A Dictionary of Selected Americanisms on Historical Principles, Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 47.

129 modernizing society.17 According to historian Anthony Harkins, “The dual nature of the term ‘hillbilly’ has allowed these images to gain popularity with not only the mainstream America, but also with many in southern mountain society who embraced the positive features of this identity while rejecting its negative aspects.”18 Beginning in the 1970s the term “redneck” became increasing popular replacement for “hillbilly,” with its humorous if not slightly condescending connotations, leading up to the lighthearted popularization of the term under the auspices of Jeff Foxworthy in the 1990s. Chance closely identifies with rural southern culture, especially that of rednecks whom he references in many of his songs. Chance’s redneck appearance on stage and off stage reveals his blue-collar background. He often wears a T-shirt underneath an untucked button-up shirt, loosely fitted jeans worn low around the waist, sometimes a three-day beard, worn sneakers, short hair, and either an outlaw-style cowboy hat folded down in front and in back or a weathered sports cap. Chance frequently keeps an open cooler of inexpensive beer such as Budweiser or Miller Lite by the stage during shows. He sometimes has a partially filled bottle of Jack Daniels in hand while on stage, distributing shot-size portions in plastic cups to the crowd before singing an audience favorite, “Four Shots of Jack.”19 Chance admits that drugs have played an unfortunate but significant role in his life.20 In a January 2005 interview, he revealed that he had left Austin Peay State University because of problems that had arisen from a felony drug conviction in 2000.21

17 Located in the eastern United States, the Appalachian region (approximate population 22,900,000 as of 2000) was defined in 1965 by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The area covers approximately 200,000 square miles (512,000 sq km), follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi, and comprises 410 counties in parts of thirteen states; Pruett, David B., “The Appalachian Region,” in Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume IV: North America, John Shepherd and David Horn, eds., London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005: 107.

18 Harkins, Anthony, 2004, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, New York: Oxford University Press: 6.

19 In September 2005 Chance received a partial-sponsorship from the Jack Daniels Corporation.

20 This information is included with Chance’s permission; interview with author, 30 January 2005.

21 Chance, 30 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

130 While in college, Chance had been involved in the sale and distribution of ecstasy. In addition, Chance frequently smoked marijuana and its more potent form known as “hydro.”22 References to hydro, also known as “dro,” appear in several of Chance’s songs. Examination of Chance’s music reveals an emotional source for his drug-related difficulties. In the song “Pauline” written in spring 2005, Chance describes a heartfelt connection to his mother who had died of cancer in 1993.23 He narrates the circumstances of her death in verse one (see Table 6.1). Table 6.1. “Pauline” verse one. © 2005 by Chance. Used with permission.

1 Now imagine the frustration and pain of patiently waitin[g]. 2 Experimental drugs determine her destination. 3 Medicare and Medicaid just add to the aggravation 4 of trying to raise a son for the future that he’s facin[g]. 5 It’s a tough life to live when you’re scared to close your eyes, 6 just like cancer eats you up inside 7 Declared dead on the spot and came back three times, 8 she said she’s done it before, so she ain’t scared to die. 9 She puts her arms to the sky and she prays for strength, 10 every night bartending to put some money in the bank. 11 She’s in no shape to work, but there’s no other choice. 12 Lives to sing but she’s too weak to raise her voice, so…

13 Though I try, not a day goes by 14 When I don’t pray to you Lord, “Please take me high,” 15 Give me wings, God, let me fly, 16 ‘cause I ain’t waitin[g] till the day that I die.24

22 The slang terms “hydro” and “dro” derive from “hydroponically” produced marijuana, or marijuana that is grown in water.

23 The version of “Pauline” described here derives from a compact disc compilation of Chance’s songs that Chance provided me on 25 June 2005 at his home in Antioch, Tennessee. Future commercial releases of the song may differ from this version.

24 The chorus of “Pauline” appears twice before the song continues with verse two.

131

In verse two (see Table 6.3), Chance reveals circumstances involving the use of marijuana that, in his and his mother’s view, transcended the laws of Tennessee at the time. Table 6.3. “Pauline” verse two. © 2005 by Chance. Used with permission.

17 She taught her boy to be a man by the age of ten, 18 Now little man’s not her son; little man’s her best friend. 19 He takes care of mommy, helps mommy get by, 20 but mommy can’t talk [un]less mommy gets high. 21 It ain’t about wrong or right; that joint’s a hero, 22 ‘Cause really what do we know about the evils of chemo[therapy]. 23 It’s a catch-22 when you die or live dead. 24 It’s a ticket outta here like takin[g] one [gunshot] to the head. 25 Now she’s confined to a bed; it’s just a matter of days. 26 The only thing left to do is accept it and pray. 27 There’s got to be a better way to say that last good bye. 28 Lord, give an angel her wings; just let her fly…

According to Warner Bros. Chief Creative Officer Paul Worley, Chance’s song “Pauline” was the one that secured his contract with Warner Bros./Raybaw Records.25 Written approximately one year after Chance’s first performance with the MuzikMafia, “Pauline” is an example of Chance’s mature hip-hop style.

Song Analysis: “I Came to Drink” Chance’s song “I Came to Drink” provides further insight into Chance’s identity and exemplifies his southern hip-hop style. Chance wrote the first two verses and the chorus to “I Came to Drink” in summer 2003 while in Pensacola, Florida.26 He and two friends had driven to Pensacola to sell sunglasses at the Blue Angels Air Show, an annual event sponsored by the nearby naval air station. Chance was making little money from

25 Chance, 26 March 2005., non-recorded conversation with author, Antioch, Tennessee.

26 At the time of the above interview, Chance was unsure about the exact year when he wrote “I Came to Drink.” He only remembered that he had written the song a few weeks after performing at the Budweiser-Maxim party at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Manager of Event Entertainment and Sales at the Country Music Hall of Fame, Debbie Parsley identified the above event as the "LaSalle Group" that took place on 12 June 2003. The Budweiser and Maxim corporations both sponsored the event. Email correspondence with author, 20 September 2005.

132 musical performance at the time, and he sold sunglasses as various air shows throughout the southeast as his primary source of income. Chance thought of the song’s title hook one afternoon while on the beach. He reflects: After all was said and done, we walked out onto the beach and we were drunk. It was a relaxing show. Everyone there was just laid back; it was beach mentality, laid back, drinking mudslides, drinking beer, and just hanging out. We walked out on the beach, and we’re out there swimming, you know, hanging out, whatever. I get out of the water and come up, and I was sitting down there and thought [to myself], “You know, what did I come down here [to Pensacola] to do?” I answered, “I came to drink.” I was sitting there on the beach drinking, smoking, and thinking “Yeah, that’s right, I came to drink (echoes “drink”); I came to smoke (echoes “smoke”), and raise a whole world of hell.”27

The lyrics to “I Came to Drink” include much biographical material on Chance as well as some personal reflections on his rural southern lifestyle. In Table 6.4, I provide the most common version of “I Came to Drink,” including the song’s lyrics and form. Here, I have ordered lines of text according to their musical phrase structure: each line comprises four beats of rhythm. Verse one comprises six rhyming couplets for a total of twelve bars; I have boldfaced the end rhymes in verse one as an example. The non- boldfaced words at the end of each line serve as pick-ups into the next line. Table 6.4. “I Came to Drink”: text. ©2003 by Chance. Used with permission.

Intro Verse one 1 (I’m the) rapper that rocked the Country Music Hall of Fame, from 2 Broadway to the barnyards, they all know my name, ask the 3 rednecks or the rappers, I’m the best around. And no, I 4 don’t discriminate, hell, I love to throw down, so bring your 5 deer hunting, beer wanting buddies on by. I’ll bring the 6 green stuff; we can all get high. I’m all 7 about living good, do what you wanna do. I ain’t 8 worried about the cops; most of them smoke, too. So 9 light up the trees, let’s enjoy the smell. Hold your 10 beer up high, say “I came to raise hell.” Here’s to the 11 hard working, underpaid, and proud, we 12 drink, smoke, and we love to get loud

27 Chance, 13 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

133 Table 6.4 (cont.) Chorus

(I came to) drink [echoes “drink”], smoke [echoes “smoke”], and raise a whole world o’ hell. It’s what we do where I come from, and brother we do it well. And if you don’t agree with me, go back to where you fell, ‘Cause I came to drink (drink), smoke (smoke), and raise a whole world o’ hell

Verse two 13 My label people are hippies and rednecks with 14 northern attitudes, type of people in the South urban 15 kids can talk to. The city slicker in the old west show, 16 with the coldest flow, and I drink cold beer, keep your 17 bottle of Mo’, [I] listen to Kid Rock, Yankee Grey, and 18 David Allen Coe. [I] grew up on a bus, what 19 else you need to know? I’m a Virgo, a laid back cat with 20 a straight phat rap. See Chance on a cut, gone [go on] and 21 play that track. Keep it spinning like the big wheels, that 22 just don’t stop. And, I’m a [going to] spin it like the big wheels, I’m 23 just gone [going to] chop the music game to pieces. 24 See, I’m a fun guy [fungi], go ahead and eat this, and 25 start your trip, somebody somewhere had to 26 launch a ship in search of fresh new grounds, we’ll 27 I’ll play Magellan here to test new sounds 28 Big Chance on the mic, yo, it’s time to get down.

Chorus Verse three 28 I’m farm raised, and I’m hip-hop bred. I’m a 29 beer drinking, hell raising, hip-hop head. I 30 love the city gals or the country bumpkins. Some 31 strawberry lips with some big ole pumpkins 32 Four by fours with fifteens in the back. E’er 33 seen a Cadillac with a shotgun rack? What 34 about the green? I got a big ole sack, and a 35 cold twelve pack and a bottle of Jack, So 36 crank up the band, throw a pig on the pit. It’s time to 37 all throw down and get drunk as shiii…….., 38 (masked older female voice) “boy, you better watch yo’ mouth.” Sorry, 39 ma’am, that’s how we do it in the South.

134

Table 6.4 (cont.) Chorus Outro

There are several drug references in “I Came to Drink.” Lines 6, 8, 9, 12, 24, and 34 all refer either explicitly or implicitly to recreational drug use. For example, the “green stuff” that Chance includes in lines 6 and 34 refers to marijuana that would be transported in a “big ole sack” in line 34. The marijuana smoking reference in line 8 comes from Chance’s observation of an actual event in summer 2003.28 In line 24, Chance uses the word “fun” as an abbreviation for “fungus,” implying the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms that would result in “tripping” that completes the line.29 Chance reveals his close association with rural southern culture as well as his “hell-raiser” persona in “I Came to Drink.” Lines 5, 10, 11, and 12 in verse one evoke images of his working-class pastimes of hunting, beer drinking, smoking marijuana. The chorus reiterates the above sentiment while soliciting audience participation through immediate repetition of the words “drink” and “smoke.” In lines 16 and 17 Chance expresses his preference for cold beer over a bottle of Mo’, his abbreviation for the expensive champagne Moen. He references cold beer again in line 35 accompanied by an additional mention of Jack Daniels sour mash whisky, which is distilled approximately ninety miles south of Nashville in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Lines 37 through 39 reveal much about a dichotomy of southern life: Christian values verses debauchery and hedonism. Here, Chance dialogues with an older female figure about the word “shit” that he begins to say but is interrupted. The female voice reminds him that foul language is inappropriate—a widespread maxim among southerners that is often followed by the consequence of having one’s mouth washed out with soap. Chance’s response is surprising. He acknowledges the existence of such social

28 Chance, 13 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. Chance did not mention the names of police officers whom he had observed smoking marijuana in summer 2003.

29 Chance, 13 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

135 mores by not completing his explicative, but he defends his profanity through subtle identification with a larger imagined community referred to as “we.” Here, Chance acknowledges the existence of other rowdy southerners like himself. Unlike many self-proclaimed ramblers or outlaws, Chance is a deeply spiritual individual who prays on a regular basis and respects his elders.30 However, Chance does not wish to be viewed as a Christian rapper or even as a role model.31 In a 2005 interview, he describes his reasoning behind interrupting the word “shit” in line 37 as follows: People in the past ten years have become almost immune to bad language. We, as a culture, have devalued values for the sake of entertainment. People see bad language, see the TV, and kids think that that’s how real life is. The farther that goes, the more the industry goes with it, the more extreme our culture goes. You become immune to that kind of language.32

He continues: Granted, I don’t tote my Bible around saying “take this; take this,” but I do want to be known for standing for morals, standing for rights. I know what’s right and wrong. I know what to say in front of my grandma, and what not to say in front of my grandma. I know my values. When I sang that line, [line 38] I pictured my grandma.33

The apparent contradiction in Chance’s ideology lies in the fact that most of his songs do contain varying degrees of profanity while addressing the pleasures of drinking, smoking, and “raising hell.” Chance addresses this contradiction with a song entitled “Muddy Waters,” co- written with Isaac Rich in early 2005. The chorus and first verse are as follows (see Table 6.5):

30 Personal observations by author in a variety of public and private contexts, 2004-2007.

31 Chance, 13 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

32 Chance, 13 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

33 Chance, 13 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Antioch, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

Chorus I been baptized in muddy waters Following[g] the footsteps of my father I try to live right, but I fall farther ‘cause I been baptized in muddy waters

Verse one 1 Every day’s another struggle, I’m just trying to get by, 2 Gotta be closer to the Father, so I try to stay high. 3 It seems life is just looking for a reason why, 4 why I can’t live like an angel when I know I can fly. 5 So now I’m reading the Bible with a beer in my hand, 6 Just praying that I’ll make it to the Promised Land. 7 Sometimes I don’t understand the point of being a man, 8 I feel like Jesus findin[g] Heaven at the bottom of a can.

Here, Chance describes man’s Biblical fall from grace in a modern context. Chance makes a concerted effort to read the Bible and incorporate its teachings into his own life. However, in the end, he is “just a man” with many human faults.34 Musical analysis of “I Came to Drink” reveals Chance’s unique version of southern hip-hop. In brief, the song’s verses employ rap style, especially in regards to rhythm and flow. The chorus of “I Came to Drink” stylistically compares with that of commercial country music. I have found such to be the case in much of Chance’s music written in 2003 and 2004.35 Chance has recorded several versions of “I Came to Drink,” and his live performances of the song often include variations in instrumentation, tempo, text, and form.36 In the analysis below, I will examine a composite standard version, before discussing the song’s numerous variants.

34 When performing “Muddy Waters” for a live audiences, Chance often speaks the sentence “I guess, I’m just a man,” during the guitar introduction before beginning the first chorus.

35 In much of Chance’s musical output before 2005, e.g. “Ridin’ on Chrome,” “I Came to Drink,” and “Keep on Rollin’,” one can make the above generalization. However, in songs such as “Muddy Waters,” “Pauline,” and “Through Her Eyes,” all composed in 2005, Chance draws heavily upon other styles, including soul, gospel, and R&B, all of which he combines with the rhythm and flow of rap.

36 Since June 2004, Chance has provided the author with various mix-cds of his studio work. Examples include Chance: The First and the Last (fall 2004), Chance: The First (spring 2005), and a

137 In the introduction to “I Came to Drink,” a guitarist sets the tempo and style beat of verse one. Using a harmonic progression that includes G, F, and C chords, the guitarist creates a funk groove at a moderate tempo. If present, a drummer will enter with a standard combination of hi-hat cymbals, snare drum, and bass drum that supports the underlying funk groove from the guitarist, as shown in Figure 6.1.37 The rhythm and harmony remain constant throughout each verse.

Figure 6.1. Drumset rhythm for verses to “I Came to Drink.” Transcribed by author.

In rap music, an MC maintains his/her own style of textual delivery, or flow; rap artists categorize their flow as belonging to one of two basic camps: old school and new school flow. Rap scholar Adam Krims describes old school flow as “an antecedent/consequent couplet and the matching-beat-class end-rhyme” that were stylistic features of rap music during the genre’s birth and development from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.38 Examples include the styles of the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, the Beastie Boys, and Queen Latifah. Since the early 1990s, the complexity of rap has increased dramatically, developing into new school flow. According to Krims, new school flow involves “internal rhymes, offbeat rhymes, multiple syncopations, and violations of meter and metrical subdivisions of the beat.”39 Examples include the music of the Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Ras Kass, and Eminem. Krims further delineates styles of flow into three different categories: sung, percussion-effusive, and speech-effusive. Krims describes “sung” style as rhythms and rhymes that often appear like those in sung popular music. Characteristics of sung style

private compilation of demos that Chance presented to Raybaw Records in spring 2005. The latter, alone, contained two different versions of “I Came to Drink.” A commercial version of the song appears on the compilation album entitled Brewed in Texas: Vol. 2, 2005, produced by Brad Turcotte and Logan Rogers, Compadre Records 6-16892-65402-5, compact disc.

37 If a drumset player is present, his/her entrance varies from performance to performance, depending on when and if Chance provides his non-verbal cue.

38 Krims, Adam, 2000, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 49.

39 Krims, Adam, 2000, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 49.

138 are rhythmic repetition, on-beat accents, melodic phrases, on-beat pauses, and strict couplet groupings.40 Krims’s two “effusive” styles are characterized by their tendency to exceed the rhythmic boundaries of the meter and couplet groupings. Effusive styles often involve insistent subdivision of the beat, off-beat accents, or polyrhythms—all characteristic of new school flow described above. “Speech-effusive” style contrasts with percussion-effusive style, also known as “beat boxing,” in that, in the latter, the MC uses his/her mouth as a percussion instrument exemplified by the music of Cypress Hill. As Krims clarifies, “Speech-effusive styles tend to feature enunciation and delivery closer to that of spoken language, with little sense often projected of any underlying metric pulse.”41 In the verses of “I Came to Drink,” Chance demonstrates his command of new school and old school flow. In Figure 6.2, I provide a transcription of the rhythms in verse one with text underlay. Each measure comprises four beats and approximately one phrase of text. The single-note vocal line denotes Chance’s speech-effusive textual delivery in the verses. I have numbered each measure for future reference.

Figure 6.2. “I Came to Drink,” verse one rhythm with text underlay. Used with permission. Rhythm transcribed by author.

40 Krims, Adam, 2000, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 50.

41 Krims, Adam, 2000, Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 51.

139

Figure 6.2 (cont.)

The general style of measures 1 and 2 is typical of old school flow. Measures 1 and 2 contain rhyming couplets as do measures 3 and 4, 5 and 6, etc., to the end of the verse. Moreover, in the first two measures Chance emphases the beat, especially beats 1, 3, and 4, with accents that occur naturally on the words “rapping,” “Music,” and “Fame” in measure 1 and “Broadway,” “barnyards,” and “name” in measure 2. Strong emphasis on beats 1 and 2 appear in measure 5. Although Chance includes some aspects of old school flow in “I Came to Drink,” the song is generally characteristic new school flow. In measures 3 and 4, Chance anticipates the fourth beat, a device that he duplicates in measures 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. However, anticipated fourth beats are not the only examples of new school rhythmic complexity. A similar syncopated pattern appears on beat 1 in measures 9 and 10. In measure 7, the accent on the word “do” displaces rhythmic emphasis to the off-beat, creating an 8/8 feel that is subdivided into groupings of 3+3+2. In verse two Chance abandons all ties to old school flow.42 He extends his use of syncopation by combining speech-effusive rhythms with stronger emphasis on offbeats. Moreover, Chance changes the phrase structure drastically from that of verse one. Instead of having musical phrases correspond directly to linguistic phrases, i.e. one measure equaling one phrase or sentence, Chances crosses musical phrases by extended sentences into the next measure. One notices that in Table 6.5, the sentence that begins in line 13

42 I do not include a notated version of verse two due to the brevity of this section as well as observation of copyright.

140 carries over into the middle of line 14, where Chance immediately begins another sentence that carries over into the middle of line 15. The musical accompaniment continues as before, yet the text begins and ends in the middle of the musical phrases, creating what I refer to as phrase displacement.43 In most versions of “I Came to Drink,” Chance rapidly fires the text that follows in line 15, “The city slicker in the old west show with the coldest flow,” as a speech-effusive rhythm in order to condense all syllables into a span of four beats, from the middle of measure 15 to the middle of measure 16. Chance’s combination of the above results in verse 2 being four measures longer than verse one. In verse three, Chance returns to the length, phrase structure, and flow of verse one. In the chorus of “I Came to Drink,” Chance suddenly changes the song’s style, accompanying harmony, and vocal flow. The most notable difference is the replacement of the funk-style, sixteen-beat guitar rhythm with a country two-beat rhythm. The guitarist changes to G and D chords and allows them to resonate on the off-beats in the chorus. The new rhythm contrasts greatly with the dampened funk effect from the rhythm of verse one that emphasizes the downbeats.44 The drumset set follows suit with a country two-beat rhythm as shown in Figure 6.3. However, the tempo does not change. The sudden switch from a sixteen-beat funk rhythm to a country two-beat rhythm only changes the song’s feel. Because the snare drum is now playing on the off-beats, the overall rhythm appears to be twice as fast, despite the fact that the tempo remains constant in both the verse and the chorus.

Figure 6.3. “I Came to Drink,” chorus, 2-beat drumset rhythm. Used with permission. Transcribed by author.

43 Here, I expand upon what percussionists commonly refer to as “beat displacement,” a rhythmic device in which emphasis on particular rhythms is displaced from the beat to any number of beat subdivisions. This device creates instability but highlights the many complex rhythmic possibilities. In “I Came to Drink” a similar instability occurs when the listener follows the musical groove that is one measure in length while following the meaning of the text whose sentences are displaced exactly two beats from the middle of one measure to the middle of the next.

44 The chorus’ harmony contains only two chords, the tonic and the dominant, that are staple among much of commercial country music.

141 Chance’s vocal flow also changes considerably in the chorus. Here, Chance’s vocal contains a discernable melody supported by a simple harmonic progression of G and D chords as shown in Figure 6.4. Instead of emphasizing each beat at the sixteenth- note level, in the chorus Chance emphases with his textual delivery the eight-note pulse with exception to measures 1 and 7 in which the quarter-note is emphasized. The call- and-response passage in measures 1 and 7 of the chorus allow for audience interaction. Chance prompts his audience to repeat the words “drink” and “smoke” on beats 2 and 4, respectively. Such a device is common in commercial country music, especially in Gretchen Wilson’s hit song, “Redneck Woman,” in which the audience immediately repeats her shout, “hell yeah.”45

Figure 6.4. “I Came to Drink,” chorus melody, harmony, and text. Used with permission. Transcribed by author.

The final measure of the chorus serves as a transition into verse two. The sixteenth-note rhythm emphasizes the down beats as does a naturally occurring emphasis on the words “raise” and “world.” The final measure’s brevity of two beats rather than the song’s regular four-beat measures allows the chorus to segue immediately into verse two. The sudden change in meter prepares the listener for a return to the song’s initial funk groove and underlying sixteen-beat rhythm. Examination of multiple versions of “I Came to Drink” reveals much about Chance, his flexibility as an artist, and the role of live performance in his music. I analyzed seventeen different performances of “I Came to Drink.” I compared each in

45 Wilson, Gretchen, 2004, “Redneck Woman,” from Here for the Party, Produced by Mark Wright and Joe Scaife; associate producer John Rich, Sony/Epic EK 90903, compact disc, track 2.

142 terms of form, instrumentation, tempo, rhythm, and text. I selected performances that took place from August 2004 to September 2005, representing Chance’s rise in popularity as a MuzikMafia member and his growth and development as a solo artist. The most noticeable variations occurred in the form and instrumentation of “I Came to Drink.” In many cases, the introduction comprised a vamp of the opening theme on acoustic guitar. However, the length of the vamp varied from performance to performance. Chance often takes time during the guitar introduction to familiarize the audience with the call-and-response section of the chorus. The length of the introduction corresponds to how long the tutorial lasts. Chance usually signals the coming end of the introduction with speech-effusive calls such as “check it” on beat three before the sixteenth-note pick-ups in beat four, leading into verse one. It is not uncommon for Chance to add, repeat, remove, or extend sections of “I Came to Drink.” He most often repeats the final chorus twice. However, after the last repetition of the final chorus, Chance sometimes inserts a brief four-bar or eight-bar vocal improvisation using the text, “Raise a whole world o’ hell” that includes slight variations of melody. During the MuzikMafia’s first performance as the opening act for Hank Williams Jr.’s tour in summer 2005, Chance omitted the introduction altogether.46 He also repeated verse two before adding a fiddle solo. During a performance at the Cannery Row Ballroom in August 2005, Chance instructed the musicians to “bring it down” following the second chorus—a common verbal cue for the musicians to play quietly.47 Chance then began to dialogue with the audience about his music and that of the MuzikMafia. The conversation continued with an episode of vocal free-styling with friend and fellow Nashville rap artist POW Shadows. Rhythm in “I Came to Drink” also appears slightly varied among the seventeen performances that I examined. In several versions the musicians played throughout the

46 The above performance took place at the DTE Energy Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan, on 9 July 2005. Kid Rock made a special guest appearance towards the end of the show. Several of Chance’s backup musicians thought that Chance’s omission of the introduction and his repetition of verse two was a mistake due to nerves.

47 The above performance took place on 23 August 2005 at the Cannery Row Ballroom in Nashville. The event was a MuzikMafia fundraiser for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. The Cannery Row Ballroom is housed in the same building on Cannery Row in which the Mercy Lounge is located.

143 song; however, in other versions, it was not uncommon for Chance to cue an instrumental pause at the beginning of every fourth bar of each verse. I also discovered that Chance often swung his speech-effusive, sixteenth-note rhythms in the verses. The degree to which the sixteenth-notes were swung depended largely upon each performance’s respective tempo. The slower the tempo, the more swing the sixteenth-note rhythms possessed. The faster the tempo, the more even the sixteenth-note subdivisions appeared. The instrumentation of “I Came to Drink” depends on what is available at any given performance. The introduction often varies between acoustic and electric guitars, and on several occasions I observed two or more accompanying electric guitars. If a drummer is available, he/she usually enters on bar three or bar four of the introduction with the steady funk groove, although it is not uncommon for Chance to solicit a groove from the drummer before cueing the guitar’s entrance. When any one of Chance’s female backup singer is present, she often sings brief soul riffs to accompany the vocal and guitar parts in addition to singing the masked female voice that appears near the end of verse three. Alaska Dan or Jimmy Taylor provides harmonica accompaniment if either is at a particular performance.48 In the seventeen performances of “I Came to Drink” that I examined, Chance’s tempos ranged from ninety beats per minute to 111 beats per minute. The most common tempo was 105 beats per minute. Although I had hypothesized that crowd size might affect Chance’s anxiety, resulting in a faster tempo, I observed no direct correlation between the size of the crowd and the speed of the song. In fact, at most performances the tempo appeared to be the decision of the accompanying guitarist or drummer. On 28 September 2004, drummer Elijah “D.D.” Holt set the tempo at ninety-two beats per minute with his hi-hat cymbals. As the regular drummer for Jon Nicholson, D.D. specializes in funk, gospel, rock, and soul. The slower tempo allowed for more rhythmic complexity and an increased funk-influenced feel. D.D.’s decision was appropriate for that performance given the fact that George Clinton and P-Funk joined Chance and the rest of the MuzikMafia on stage soon thereafter.

48 Harmonica player Jimmy Taylor began performing regularly with the MuzikMafia in spring 2005 as a backup musician for Shannon Lawson. Taylor accompanied Chance throughout summer 2005 while on tour with the MuzikMafia and Hank Williams Jr.

144 A variation of considerable significance centers around the word “shit” (line 37) that Chance removes in all commercial versions of “I Came to Drink.” Of the seventeen live performances that I observed, Chance included the entire word “shit” five times. His inclusion of the word is significant, because such goes against his reasoning for its omission described earlier. In the versions of the song that are intended for commercial distribution, Chance recognizes the authority of the older female figure by allowing her to interrupt him. However, in many live versions of “I Came to Drink,” Chance often exhibits an intentional defiance of that authority by completing his explicative. Chance further alters the meaning of line 38 by often substituting the word “ma’am” with “gal,” “Bas,” “y’all,” or some other non-authority figure, revealing a slightly humorous or embarrassing tone rather than one of subordination.49 The many versions of “I Came to Drink” above reveal much about Chance and his ability as an artist. He adapts to varying situations, regardless of specific instrumentation or accompanist availability, and he is capable of making significant changes in form, tempo, text, and style in any given performance. I also observed Chance in constant communication with his accompanying musicians through the use of hand and facial gestures. Such versatility supports the hypothesis that live performance, the experience of musicking, and the underlying meaning of the text prevail over any single performance, especially that of a commercial recording.

Southern Hip-Hop and the Dirty South As previously mentioned, Chance describes his musical style as southern hip-hop; however, Chance’s music contrasts somewhat with others throughout the American southeast and parts of east Texas that have recently been referred to collectively to as the “Dirty South.” The phrase “Dirty South” derives from a song of the same name that Goodie Mob released in 1995.50 Used by artists, fans, and the media to describe southern

49 During a performance on 28 June 2005, Chance’s guitarist Matt “Bas” Basford provided the masked female voice in line 38 of “I Came to Drink.” Chance responded with “sorry, Bas, that’s how we do it in the South.”

50 Goodie Mob’s song appears on the band’s 1995 debut album entitled Soul Food. Produced by Organized Noize, the album was released by La Face Records, a major label based in Atlanta. Soul Food’s peak chart position came in November 1995 when the album reached Number Forty-Five on Billboard Magazine’s Top 200 album chart. Billboard Magazine online album pages,

145 hip-hop, in general, the Dirty South does not constitute a homogeneous body of music or style. Instead, many urban areas throughout the South celebrate their own distinct hip-hop scenes.51 The Dirty South identifies the varying combinations of southern culture with rap music. Although the sound of Dirty South artists may vary from city to city, there is a common thread among them: each constructs and negotiates hip-hop identity while including their own sense of southernness. For example, the “crunk” sound is most often associated with Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas. According to ethnomusicologist Michael Burns, the term “crunk”— a combination of “crazy” and “drunk”—refers to a feeling of letting oneself go, namely through the release of energy in the form of drinking, dancing, and singing.52 Crunk commonly exhibits rhythmic complexity and faster tempos and has associations with a particular style of dance associated with the Atlanta club scene.53 Crunk also includes the use of drum machines and synthesizers, is minimalistic, and rarely uses sampled musical material. Examples of crunk artists include Lil’ Jon and Goodie Mob. Ethnomusicologist Ray Briggs has pointed out how the current rap style in Memphis, Tennessee, contains significant influences from blues and R&B. This is owing to the fact that many current Memphis rap artists are related to musicians who played in bands at Sun Records and Stax Records, respectively, in the 1960s and 1970s.54 Briggs has stated that the Memphis style of southern hip-hop did not emerge until the early 1990s, the same time that the Atlanta scene was developing. As with Atlanta rap,

[http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?aid=178297&cr=album&or=ASCENDING&sf=l ength&pid=141745&kw=Soul+Food], accessed 19 December 2005.

51 There are currently two helpful sources on DVD that examine various hip scenes throughout the South according to city: Dirty States of America: The Untold Story of Southern Hip-Hop (Lyricist Lounge Productions 2004) and Hip-Hop Story 2: Dirty South (RapRock Records/Films 2004).

52 Barnes, Michael, 2005, “The Land where “Crunk” is King: Constructing and Negotiating Hip- Hop in Atlanta,” unpublished paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting, November 2005.

53 Barnes, Michael, 2005, “The Land where “Crunk” is King: Constructing and Negotiating Hip- Hop in Atlanta,” unpublished paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting, November 2005.

54 Briggs, Ray, 2005, “From East to West to the Ol’ Dirty South: Locating the Memphis Rap Tradition,” unpublished paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting, November 2005.

146 Memphis rap commonly accompanies dance, specifically the “gangsta walk” that originated in Memphis dance clubs in the early 1990s. Examples of Memphis-style 55 southern hip-hop artists include Three-6 Mafia, Eightball & MJG, and Al Capone. Although still somewhat marginalized in the commercial hip-hop industry, southern hip-hop artists have been gaining national attention since the early 1990s. Outkast, an Atlanta-based duo consisting André “André 3000” Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, entered the commercial mainstream in 1994 with their debut album entitled Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.56 The album went platinum, reaching Number 20 on Billboard’s Top 200 album charts in May 1994.57 From 1994 to 2003 Outkast recorded five studio albums with combined sales of over fifteen million units.58 According to music critic John Bush, Outkast’s style blends “gritty Southern soul, fluid raps, and the rolling G-funk of their Organized Noize production crew.”59 But Chance has little or no connection to Atlanta, Memphis, or Houston; he grew up in Nashville. As a result, his rap style includes significant contributions from commercial country, soul, southern rock, funk, blues, and R&B. The styles that have helped to define Nashville’s as “Music City, U.S.A.” have also contributed to developing a unique hip-hop sound that, under the auspices of Chance and others, has defined the Nashville wing of the Dirty South. In this chapter I have examined Chance’s identity by addressing the relationship between his life experiences and his music. Using Chance’s song “I Came to Drink” and

55 Briggs, Ray, 2005, “From East to West to the Ol’ Dirty South: Locating the Memphis Rap Tradition,” unpublished paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting, November 2005. Three-6 Mafia received an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Original Song for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from the film Hustle & Flow.

56 Outkast, 1994, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, produced by Organized Noize, La Face Records 26010-2, compact disc.

57 “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik,” Billboard Magazine online discography and chart history, [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?pid=92368&aid=151510], accessed 18 December 2005.

58 The above number does not include sales from Outkast’s greatest hits compilation album that was released in 2001 and entitled Big Boi and Dre Present...OutKast which also went platinum.

59 Bush, John, (no date given), “Biography: Outkast,” Billboard Magazine online artist pages, [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=92368&cr=artist&or=ASCENDING&sf=length&kw= outkast ], accessed 19 December 2005.

147 excerpts from “Pauline” and “Muddy Waters,” I have shown how Chance’s hip-hop style reflects his cultural identity as a working-class southerner. My analysis has also shown that variation is a significant facet of Chance’s identity through his numerous performances of “I Came to Drink.” By contextualizing Chance amidst the growing popularity of southern hip-hop, also known as the Dirty South, I have emphasized the significance of the Nashville scene. Chance’s combination multiple genres is not unique but rather signifies an ongoing phenomenon: the negotiation of southern identity vis-à-vis the cultural materials available to him, namely exposure to a variety of life-experiences and musical styles in Nashville.

148 CHAPTER SEVEN: CASE STUDY: DEAN HALL

Introduction Dean Hall began performing with the MuzikMafia in spring 2004 at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville.1 A synthesis of country, rock, and blues, the virtuosic guitar style that had distanced him from the attention of major labels on Music Row was attractive to the MuzikMafia from his first appearance on stage. Dean’s position as the lead guitarist for the MuzikMafia 2004-2005 spotlighted his musical talent and provided him with a creative outlet for individual musical expression.2 In this chapter I examine several facets of Dean’s musical identity. I address his bluegrass upbringing in Kentucky, his association with commercial country through his well-known father Tom T. Hall, and rock and blues from an early fascination with electric guitar. In addition, I examine Dean’s technical virtuosity and distinctive stage presence by examining a specific performance that took place at a MuzikMafia show in July 2004. In a concluding section, I discuss Dean’s compositional processes using an audience favorite entitled “Kicked by a Mule.” The above reveals much about Dean’s overall identity and that of the MuzikMafia community to which he belongs.

Background Brief Biography Born on 11 June 1961 in Grayson, Kentucky, the son of well-known commercial country entertainer Tom T. Hall, Dean was involved in music from early childhood.3

1 Dean underwent formal induction into the MuzikMafia on 23 June 2004 while in New York City where the community performed at CBGB’s and The Cutting Room. The purpose for the trip was to promote Big & Rich’s album Horse of a Different Color that had been released the previous month.

2 In February 2005 Dean Hall began distancing himself from the MuzikMafia and became Gretchen Wilson’s lead guitarist, a position that he held until spring 2007. He officially left the MuzikMafia in January 2006. I include him in this unit because of his many contributions to the MuzikMafia’s growth and development 2004-2005 during the community’s emergence onto the national scene. He performed at most if not all of the MuzikMafia’s Tuesday night shows in Nashville from March 2004 through February 2005 as well as with the Chevrolet American Revolution tour each year.

3 Grayson, Kentucky, is located approximately ninety-seven miles east of Lexington on Interstate 64. Tom T. Hall was elected into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978 and inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1980. Between 1967 and 1987, Tom T. Hall charted twenty Top Ten hit songs. His wife 149

Dean began his musical training on drumset at age three but had changed to guitar by age five. Throughout his childhood he cultivated interests in the music of Johnny Cash, B.B. King, and Jimi Hendrix. In fall 1979 Dean began his studies the University of Kentucky-Lexington on a football scholarship. At 6’3”, 215 pounds, and with a muscular build, Dean adjusted well to college athletics. After his freshman year, though, Dean transferred to Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1980 where he had planned to study medicine at the well- known university hospital. In addition, Dean wanted to get to know his father who was residing in Nashville at the time. Dean had had relatively little contact with Hall since his parents’ divorce in 1962. It was not until Dean was ten years old when he formally met his father, at which time Hall gave Dean his first guitar. Dean’s reunion with his father in 1980 fueled a desire to study music. In 1981 Dean transferred to Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, thirty miles southeast of Nashville on Interstate 24. Dean was aware of the national reputation of the university’s Department of Recording Industry and wanted to pursue a career in the music business. While attending MTSU, Dean took courses in music theory, music history, music copyright, and music publishing. Dean left MTSU in 1983 to tour with his father’s band. According to Dean, he learned the music business “from the ground up” on such tours by selling T-shirts, carrying equipment, repairing the bus, and by performing guitar from time to time.4 However, Hall advised his son against being a sideman in someone else’s band, urging Dean to learn how to write his own songs and to perfect his guitar skills.5 Dean spent the next few years between school and the road. After a brief, two- month stint touring with Marie Osmond’s band in 1983, Dean returned to MTSU only to leave the university the same year to fill a sudden vacancy in his father’s band. Dean

Dixie Hall—Dean’s stepmother—was named Songwriter of the Year in 2004 by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBMA).

4 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

5 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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toured with his father until 1989. Dean views his experiences on the road with his father as a training period for his future career in music.6 In 1989 country singer Bobby Bare invited Dean to tour with him which he did for approximately one year.7 Dean returned to the Tom T. Hall Band briefly in 1990 before embarking on his own solo career. By 1993 Dean was well-known in the Nashville area. Regular performances at Rivalry’s Sports Bar in Nashville, where Dean performed each Tuesday between 1994 and 2004, and 3rd and Lindsley led to significant career opportunities.8 While performing at Rivalry’s in 1997, Dean caught the attention of several NASCAR executives who had been invited to attend the show by Benny Quinn of Masterfonics, the Nashville studio that had mastered Dean’s second album, The Ghost of James Bell.9 The NASCAR executives presented Dean with an offer to headline his own show, and he accepted. Shortly after resuming regular performances at Rivalry’s Sports Bar in 2000, Dean caught the attention of a production crew in town for the filming of The Last Castle, starring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini.10 Dean’s large stature and shaved head made him well-suited for a movie being filmed at the former Tennessee State

6 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

7 Since winning his first Grammy Award in 1963 for the song “Detroit City,” Bobby Bare (b. 1935) has recorded over fifty albums. His television show Bobby Bare and Friends was named the Nashville Network’s Best Show of the Year in 1984 by People Magazine. Bobby Bare’s band at the time of Dean’s participation was called Pully Bone.

8 Rivalry’s Sports Bar was located at 1038 Murfreesboro Pike between Interstate 24 and Interstate 40 due east of downtown Nashville. The establishment closed down in early 2004 because of the owner’s declining health. The club 3rd and Lindsley is located on 3rd Avenue South near downtown Nashville.

9 Hall, Dean, 1997, The Ghost of James Bell, produced by Dean Hall, Python Records DH 073197, compact disc. The album was recorded and mixed at Middle Tennessee State University by Chris Haseleu and mastered by Benny Quinn at Masterfonics in Nashville. Dean had independently produced and released his debut album entitled Shed My Skin in 1994.

10 The Last Castle, 2001, Directed by Rod Lurie; written by David Scarpa and Graham Yost, Released by DreamWorks Pictures.

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Prison. While on set, Dean composed a blues song entitled “Chiseled in Stone” that eventually appeared in the film’s soundtrack.11 It was not until March 2004 when Dean first performed with the MuzikMafia. Dean had been recently fired for playing too loud at his regular Tuesday gig at a club called the Box Seat in the Green Hills area of Nashville.12 With an unexpected opening in his schedule, Dean decided to attend a MuzikMafia show at the Mercy Lounge.13 Godfathers Jon, Kenny, and John already knew of Dean’s musical abilities, having heard him perform at Rivalry’s. Although Dean did not actually perform until his second visit to the Mercy Lounge, he was an integral part of each MuzikMafia show for the rest of the year.

Identity and Style Despite his widespread success as a solo artist and as a recognizable member of the MuzikMafia, Dean maintains strong ties to his roots.14 He often reflects on his own identity and how such can easily change when one is in the public spotlight. He explains: I’m just so afraid of losing my identity. People tried to get me to wear cowboy boots, jeans, and rhinestones. I would rather not be in music, than have to live like that. I know that riding around in vans, playing clubs on weekends, writing a few songs, playing some sessions, doing what you love, and hanging out with great

11 Carol Hall, 5 February 2005, non-recorded conversation with author, Brentwood. Tennessee. “Chiseled in Stone” is included on the film’s soundtrack, The Last Castle, 2001, Jerry Goldsmith and various artists, Decca Records 440 016 193-2, compact disc.

12 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

13 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

14 In September 2004 Dean received three nominations for the 5th Annual Music City Blues Awards: Blues Guitarist of the Year, Entertainer of the Year, and Electric Act of the Year. The Annual Music City Blues Awards are presented in Nashville each year to the best blues artists of varying categories. In October 2004 Dean performed with Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich on the Radio Music Awards that was televised live on NBC from in Las Vegas, Nevada. In February 2005 Dean performed with Gretchen Wilson as part of the pre-game concert for Superbowl XXIX broadcast live on FOX. Dean’s invitation to join Gretchen’s band was highlighted in “Episode 4” of MuzikMafia TV that aired on Country Music Television (CMT) on 5 February 2005.

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people is still a great existence. That’s success to me. I never chased the money, although I always tried to pay the rent. I was always doing what I wanted to do.15

Mindful of how the commercial music industry works, Dean continues: [Record] labels work so hard at creating an image, people sometimes think that the person on the records not the same as the one they met in a store, i.e. this is a totally different person. That’s why I feel so lucky. This is me: a pair of jeans and a beat-up shirt, and this is how I talk, and my head is shaved, and I didn’t go to a meeting to get all of these clothes on. So there is nothing to lose.16

As I will explain later in this chapter, Dean’s stage comportment supports his non- commercial disposition and his close identification with working-class people. Dean was exposed to much country and bluegrass music during his formative years in Grayson, Kentucky, a small town located in the northeastern part of the state. He fondly remembers attending many bluegrass concerts in nearby Radio Hill.17 One of Dean’s first record purchase was a Johnny Cash 45 rpm disc with the songs “A Boy Named Sue” and “Folsom Prison Blues” both of which he quickly learned to play by ear.18 Dean confirms that his musical style is deeply rooted in blues, but he was not exposed to traditional blues music until after he left Kentucky for Nashville in 1980. Dean learned blues chords by listening to the music of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, and Eric Clapton, which explains the considerable rock and southern rock influences in Dean’s music.19 After becoming an accomplished guitarist, Dean

15 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

16 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

17 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

18 The 45 rpm disc to which Dean is referring is: Cash, Johnny, 1969, “A Boy Named Sue” and “San Quentin,” Columbia 33177, 45 rpm vinyl disc. In my interview with Dean on 30 August 2004, Dean said that the song on the reverse of the above disc was “Folsom Prison Blues,” which is incorrect. Columbia Records never released a 45 rpm disc with both “A Boy Named Sue” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

19 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

153 sought out recordings by Robert Johnson, Freddie King, Elmore James, and Muddy Waters, and eventually incorporated their sounds into his own style.20 Dean developed a proficiency in performing country music while on various tours with his father and during a brief stint with Marie Osmond’s band in the mid- to late 1980s. From 1985 through 1989, Dean frequently opened for his father’s band on tour. Dean’s set included cover versions of songs by Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. as well as some original material. After leaving his father’s band, Dean performed very little country music. In fact, Dean included at several MuzikMafia shows in 2004 an original song entitled, “If You Play Another Country Song (I’m Gonna Have to Kick Your Ass).”21

Stage Comportment A significant factor of Dean’s identity is his comportment onstage. Normally Dean is quite reserved among friends and family, but he transforms into a domineering figure when in front of an audience. In the section below, I examine Dean’s contribution to a MuzikMafia show that took place on 13 July 2004 at the Mercy Lounge. By critically analyzing a live performance, I highlight the dichotomy between Dean’s closeness to the audience through dress and speech and his relative distance from musicians and fans as a result of his virtuosic guitar technique. On the evening of 13 July, the MuzikMafia show began later than the normal late start. A tornado had touched down near downtown Nashville, and all musicians and audiences members were required to spend the better part of an hour in the pitch dark basement of the building. The owners generously provided flashlights and free beer during the delay. After the tornado warning was lifted, the crowd returned to the main floor where the show began around 10 p.m. John, James, and Jon started the show, alternating songs among each other for the first half-hour. Gretchen followed with a few songs from Here for the Party (2004) and some from her upcoming second album, All

20 Dean Hall, 30 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

21 “If You Play Another Country Song (I’m Gonna Have to Kick Your Ass)” appears on Dean’s first album Shed My Skin (Dean Hall Music 1994). 154

Jacked Up (2005). After repeat performances by John, James, and Jon with an occasional rap accompaniment by Chance, Dean came to the stage. James provided a brief introduction for Dean, who was setting up his stool and an assortment of effects pedals for his electric guitar. Dean had become an official MuzikMafia member only one month prior, and James deemed it fitting to introduce Dean during each show. James explained: And I said this last week, but I have to say it again, because I heard everybody in here say, “well, he [Dean] kind of looks like Mr. Clean a little bit.” Well, He’s strong like Mr. Clean, too. He will come and clean your house like nobody’s business.22

The reference to Mr. Clean was appropriate. Dean’s bald head and muscular build closely resembles that of Mr. Clean, the trademark of the popular household cleaning product with the same name.23 Dean complemented his natural features with a pitch black T-shirt, blue jeans, and black motorcycle boots.24 His Fender Stratocaster showed much wear and tear from years of use. The shellac on the guitar’s body above the pickups was completely worn down to the natural wood underneath. Dean’s technical virtuosity and distinct blues style were apparent from his first selection, a cover of an Elmore James blues tune entitled “The Sky is Crying.”25 Dean began the song with a slow, two-beat count-off for Brian Barnett, who was the drummer that evening, and Paul Allen, an electric guitarist who occasionally accompanied MuzikMafia artists in 2004. “The Sky is Crying” is a slow blues song in 6/8 time. Dean’s lead-in consisted of an ascending slide extending the full range of the instrument’s third string. Dean continued with a rapid succession of thirty-second notes with which explored the song’s tonal center throughout the opening measures of the introduction.

22 James Otto, 13 July 2004, performance recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

23 Mr. Clean is marketed and distributed by the Proctor & Gamble Company. The product and its muscular mascot have been on the market since 1958.

24 Dean’s large stature, bald head, and muscular build earned him a part as an extra in the film The Last Castle (2001), starring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. Much of the filming took place at the former Tennessee State Prison just outside of Nashville. While on set, Dean composed a blues tune entitled “Chiseled in Stone,” that later appeared in the movie and is included on the film’s soundtrack.

25 “The Sky is Crying” was written by Elmore James, Clarence Lewis, Bobby Robinson, Morris Levy and was recorded by James in 1959 for Bobby Robinson's Fire label (Fire 1016 [1960], 45 rpm disc). 155

Dean’s body language contributed much to the excitement of the performance. In the above introduction to “The Sky is Crying,” Dean’s muscular forearms became tense, and a vein appeared alongside his right temple. His bald head slowly reddened, and the tension of his facial gestures increased with each return to the instrument’s higher register. The intermittent bends in Dean’s torso accompanied large melodic leaps and, on occasion, emphasized rhythmic fills. A sudden change to a lower dynamic and thinner texture marked the entrance of verse one. The song’s melancholic theme is common among blues tunes, and the form and harmony are standard in twelve-bar blues as shown in Table 7.1. Each line comprises four bars of 6/8 in a slow tempo. I have placed three dots in the middle of lines one and two to illustrate a vocal pause of more than one beat between musical phrases. Table 7.1. Text and harmony of “The Sky is Crying,” verse one, as performed by Dean Hall at the Mercy Lounge on 13 July 2004.26

The sky is crying… look at the tears roll down the street. I I said, the sky is crying… look at the tears roll down the street. IV I I been trying to find my baby, Lord, I wonder where can she be? V IV I

Dean’s vocal delivery in verse one demonstrates his command of blues-style music. Dean delivered the above text with much use of rubato, adding virtuosic guitar fill-ins after each textual phrase. Between the words “crying” and “look” in the first two lines, Dean interjected his signature falsetto howl that extended, first, to the octave above the tonic and, then, to a minor third beyond the octave over a course of three beats. According to Dean, he borrowed the above vocal device from Freddie King, a well- known bluesman whom he admires.27 Following a second verse, Dean took an extended guitar solo. The sweat that was covering Dean’s entire head flew to the left and right of the stage as he moved

26 Dean’s version of “The Sky is Crying” differs somewhat from the song’s original version. James’s original instrumentation comprises electric guitar, electric bass, piano, drumset, muted trumpets, and assorted saxophones. Dean’s version contained slight variations in text, no saxophones, no piano, and no trumpets.

27 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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passionately from side to side. The tension in his arms was to the point of being grotesque as veins and muscles began to protrude much more than before. Dean’s solo contained numerous musical additions such as rapid fingerboard tapping, dissonant borrowed chords, accented tones from a windmill effect with his right arm, frequent slides up and down the neck of the guitar, pitch bends, and more pedal distortion. John acknowledged his satisfaction with the solo by waving his right thumb, index, and pinky fingers in the air. Gretchen added a few cat calls to the already screaming crowd of approximately 200 fans in the club that evening. Dean’s musicianship and his stage presence were powerful and exciting. Dean’s working-class attire and demeanor enabled him to connect well with his audience socially, but his virtuosic guitar style created considerable cultural distance. I have observed many similarities between Dean’s performance in the above show and his sixteen others that I observed in 2004 and 2005.

Song Analysis: “Kicked By a Mule” In addition to his skills as a performer, Dean’s songwriting abilities reveal much about his identity. In the following section, I observe Dean’s compositional style using an audience favorite, “Kicked by a Mule,” that Dean performed at most MuzikMafia shows in 2004. Here, I highlight the process in which he composes music and how, in Dean’s case, the same formula can result in stylistically different songs each time. Dean composes each new song by beginning with a title. According to Dean, “Twenty-five percent of my brain is not paying attention to anything but scanning for songs. Sometimes I’ll just zone out on a particular thought such as a specific phrase that might be a song.”28 In regards to “Kicked by a Mule,” Dean was either listening to a television program or reading the newspaper in 2003 when he became aware of the title phrase.29 He remembered that, as a child in Kentucky, many people equated the burden of hardships with having been “kicked by a mule.”30

28 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

29 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

30 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. 157

The fact that Dean writes songs, beginning with the lyrics, is a practice that he adopted from his father. Known to many country music fans as “The Storyteller,” Tom T. Hall spent much of his career emphasizing his music’s lyrical content. Hall’s penchant for descriptive and meaningful narratives in songs such as “The Day Clayton Delaney Died,” “A Week In A County Jail,” “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine,” “Margie’s at the Lincoln Park Inn” and “I Flew Over Our House Last Night” has contributed to Hall’s widespread popularity.31 According to Dean and his father, a song’s text takes precedence over any musical accompaniment. He elaborates: I never write with a guitar or piano, I write with a pen, preferably with a computer so I can read the lyrics back. I will write from top to bottom… I don’t choose the chord, and I don’t choose the melody. The riff or lick just comes. I never think about the music, because the music is right there. Eighty percent of the time, the idea of the music is already there, that’s how it goes. The music is just a place for the emotion to ride. You’re just trying to convey a message of the lyric. The message of the lyric is the most important thing to me. I use music as if it were subtext.32

The subordinate role of the song’s musical elements explains the unorthodox harmonic plan of “Kicked by a Mule” and the chorus’ short length, both of which I will address later in this chapter. Once he has a title, Dean writes text for a song’s verses and choruses; he saves the musical elements for last. Dean’s well-known father had described the above process as “finding something to hang it [the title or main idea] on.”33 According to Dean: So, I have the title “Kicked by a Mule.” Now, I need a place to hang it on that has to mean something. There has to be a metaphor for something or have some sort of irony to it. If you just write it flat, then there is no depth to it… So, I’ll start with the title at the top of the page. And from what my dad taught me, I would

31 “Opry Member: Tom T. Hall,” From the Grand Ole Opry official website; [http://www.opry.com/MeetTheOpry/Members.aspx?id=72] accessed 26 January 2006. Hall signed with Mercury Records in 1966 and has since charted over fifty hit singles, twenty of which have reached Billboard’s Top Ten.

32 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

33 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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just write what comes to mind: anything, any thoughts, any color, etc. I’ll just let it fly, and don’t edit it, to see what real thoughts or emotions come up…34

The purpose of Dean’s brainstorming session above produces lyrics that deal with real life situations. He justifies his reasoning as follows: So I started thinking about what hurts in life. I thought that the best thing to do is not make up anything and just write about true life experiences…The beauty I think in that is sometimes there’s [sic] things in the lyrics that maybe I don’t identify with but maybe someone else will. So if you just stick to the truth, it’s pretty powerful.35

As the above indicates, Dean’s lyrics do not always refer to events in his own life. However, the events that he does write about are usually factual. Moreover, Dean’s music often deals with raw emotion and the concrete or metaphorical hardships of daily life rather than with abstract representations of the same. “Kicked by a Mule” is in a simple verse-chorus form. The chorus follows a brief introduction and appears between each of the song’s five verses. The text and harmony of the chorus appears in Table 7.2. Table 7.2. “Kicked by a Mule”: chorus’ text and harmony; © 2003 by Dean Hall. Used with permission.

I been kicked by mule Dm7(#9) I been kicked by mule G That day is gone, I’ll be moving on, I been kicked by a mule. Dm7(#9) C G Dm7 (#9)

I should point out that the chorus deceptively follows a twelve-bar blues form. Although the chorus does contain three lines of text, the first two of which are identical, each of the chorus’ first two lines comprises only one bar of 4/4 time, not four as is normally the case in twelve-bar form. The last line of the chorus contains two bars of 4/4 time. The entire chorus comprises only four measures, not twelve.

34 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

35 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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In addition, the harmony of the chorus differs somewhat from that found in standard twelve-bar blues. In the chorus’ third line, Dean descends from the D minor 7(#9) chord to a C major and then to a G major chord before returning to the D minor 7(#9) chord for the second half of the line. In a standard twelve-bar blues tune in the key of D, one would normally expect the final line of the chorus to begin on an A chord and followed by a G chord before a return to the D minor 7(#9) chord. The D minor 7(#9) chord supports the existence of rock influences in Dean’s music. The chord is featured in many compositions by electric guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix. Dean reinforces the D minor tonality in some of his songs by tuning his six guitar strings from lowest to highest as D-A-D-A-C-E, respectively, often referred to by guitarists as an open tuning.36 Once Dean has a title and chorus, he adds a song’s subsequent verses. In the case of “Kicked by a Mule,” Dean explains: So after the chorus opens, I’ve set it up like a story song, so now I have to tie in events that have come and gone. Sometimes, I like to start chronologically or I may start in the morning. I always see a movie; I tried to have a vivid picture in my mind of an entire song.37

Dean’s movie metaphor contains numerous scenes, i.e. verses that may or may not reflect a single series of events. He takes real life situations, even though they may not be directly related to one another, and assembles them into a workable order.38 In verse one Dean describes the working man’s blues, in this case, that of a close friend named Tommy who builds busses for a living.39 According to Dean’s general observations, an average worker’s day includes getting up at sunrise and punching in at the factory’s time clock with the possibility of eventually losing one’s job to a machine. The text to verse one appears in Table 7.3. Again, I have placed three dots in the middle

36 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

37 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

38 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

39 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. 160 of the first and third lines, respectively, to illustrate a vocal rest between musical phrases within the same line. Table 7.3. “Kicked by a Mule”: verse one text. © 2003 by Dean Hall. Used with permission.

Well, I’m up and ready … at the break of day I keep punchin’ that clock every morning just to earn my pay. But the day done come … they gonna let me go They got a machine done doing what I did on the killing floor

The last line of verse one reveals the hardships associated with factory life. Not only does Dean describe factory employment as a “killing floor,” but he also acknowledges that one can easily lose his/her job to modernization through automation. Dean is disheartened by a factory worker’s lifestyle, “There you are and after forty years of working in the same spot; you retire; and then you die.”40 Dean continues to describe the tribulations of the common man in verses two, three, and four as shown in Table 7.4. Table 7.4. “Kicked by a Mule,” verses two, three and four. © 2003 by Dean Hall. Used with permission. Verse 2 I had a good woman…she was short and sweet. She had good loving and that’s all I ever need But the day she left… she must have cast a spell I think I got me a witch’s brew in a wishing well.

Verse 3 I put my trust… in my best friend; Said he’d walk that narrow road to the very end Well, he turned his back …in my time of need, You can’t see that scar where it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t bleed.

Verse 4 I don’t want to get even… ‘cause I heard them say A man that seeks revenge better dig two graves I don’t want to die…at least not today, They don’t put no headstone marker on a shallow grave.

40 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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Although containing an untrue fact in Tommy’s case, verse two includes a common blues sentiment: the loss of a woman.41 In first line of verse two, Dean alludes to the wife of his friend Tommy who really is “short and sweet.”42 Dean finishes the verse with the unfortunate departure of main character’s woman. In verse three, Dean describes the betrayal of a fictitious friend compounded by the urge to seek revenge in verse four. The poetics of verse four reveal Dean’s propensity for including what he describes as “free lines.”43 Dean clarifies: I’m not for sure what that [verse four] means, but—I mean, I know what it means to me—but that line just came out and I just had to use it. That’s the beauty of songwriting: if it’s [the song] not so out there, I can have a line that is free…44

Here, Dean departs from the concreteness of standard blues lyrics. Although he describes actual melancholic objects such as graves and headstones, Dean is offering advice to the song’s downtrodden main character through an extended metaphor: a pauper’s burial as a punishment for seeking revenge. But Dean sometimes includes lyrics that are personally meaningful, as he does in verse five. I have included its text in Table 7.5. Table 7.5. “Kicked by a Mule,” verse five. ©2003 by Dean Hall. Used with permission.

The sun’s gonna shine… on my life someday I’ll never let up ‘til I find me a better way I been down… but I’m gonna be alright Sometimes you walk through the darkest valleys just to see the light.

Here, Dean departs from the distressing theme of many blues songs. He concludes “Kicked by a Mule” with a verse that offers a positive, if not Biblical, message of hope. Dean provides his reasoning:

41 The “witch’s brew” metaphor in verse two derives from the text of a song entitled “Strange Brew” from Cream’s 1967 album Disraeli Gears. Dean is a fan of Eric Clapton.

42 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

43 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

44 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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Sometimes I put just little songwriting “gifts” in there—stuff that comes and you just put it in without touching it, because you don’t know what’s in there. It could be something that may touch someone else.45

The last line of verse four reflects Dean’s Christian upbringing as well as his own optimistic twist on blues-style music. Dean transitions from each verse into the chorus of “Kicked by a Mule” by interjecting a falsetto howl similar to the one that appears in his version of “The Sky is Cryin” described earlier. Dean often expresses his fondness for how blues artist Freddie King used a similar vocal device in songs such as “Me and My Guitar” and “Tore Down.” Dean believes that his own falsetto howl emphasizes the song’s lyrics. He explains, “It’s just when you get to one place and you can’t sing high enough to get your point across, you got to go somewhere else.”46 The falsetto howl is present in much of Dean’s repertoire and is staple in his performances with the MuzikMafia. The melody of the vocal line in “Kicked by a Mule” is primarily static, almost speech-like. Such supports Dean’s emphasis on the song’s lyrical content. He elaborates: It just came out. The melody was already intertwined with the lyric. The melody is not challenging or anything. I don’t even know if there is a melody per se. It’s just a riff that already been done a thousand times.47

Dean follows a similar thought with the rhythm and tempo of “Kicked by a Mule.” According to Dean: The lyrics dictate the rhythm. Obviously, the rhythm had to be something strong because the lyrics are strong. After I had everything down, I had to decide on a tempo, because every song has a magic tempo. There’s a certain genius in finding that tempo. The first tempo for “Kicked by a Mule” is just where it is now.48

45 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

46 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

47 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

48 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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The strong rhythm to which Dean refers is a steady shuffle that emphasizes the downbeat rather than offbeats of each measure. The average tempo of “Kicked by a Mule” was approximately eighty-four beats per minute in the seventeen performances that I observed in 2004 and 2005. This examination of Dean’s formula for composing “Kicked by a Mule” reveals much about his identity. First, the content of the song’s lyric demonstrates Dean’s interest in the lives of others, especially those of the working class. Second, Dean omits any specific personal references like the names of Tommy and his wife. Such explains Dean’s wish for his music to be applicable to a broad range of listeners. Third, the song’s harmony and form reflect Dean’s combined interests in rock- and blues-style music. Fourth, “Kicked by a Mule” concludes with Dean’s own optimistic view of life. Finally, by writing the title and the lyrics first, Dean reinforces his belief that the message of “Kicked by a Mule” and his other songs is more significant than the musical accompaniment. Dean’s approach to song composition is consistent throughout his repertoire, but his songs are decidedly different from one another in regards to rhythm, dynamics, melody, form, instrumentation, and harmony. For example, on his 1997 album The Ghost of James Bell, the album’s title track is a slow rock ballad in strophic form.49 A selection entitled “Waitin’ by the Railroad” is a hard-driving blues tune with standard twelve-bar blues form and harmony. In his “Everybody’s Got the Blues,” Dean combines electric bass, organ, and harmonica in an up-tempo swing piece that is end-weighted.50 The diversity found among Dean’s compositions is a possible factor that has kept him from securing a contract with a major publisher or record label on Music Row. Dean often reflects upon and consistently disagrees with how others use specific song formulas to create similar sounding songs. He explains: Record labels find a formula, and they’re under pressure to crank out hit songs… In order for them to keep their job, they’re going to find something that works and at least try and do that over and over, especially in country music and rock in the 1980s. It’s a safe marketing thing. The marketing people don’t know what to do

49 Hall, Dean, 1997, The Ghost of James Bell, produced and arranged by Dean Hall, Python Records DH73197, compact disc.

50 In this case, the song’s title appears in the last line of each verse.

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with something that’s different. They don’t even know what to call it. If anybody tells you that they know, then they’re full of shit.51

Dean’s straightforward rhetoric above reveals an obvious dissatisfaction with the lack of diversity found in commercially produced music. It is significant that he attributes the homogeneity of Nashville’s commercially produced music to the record labels and their respective marketing departments and not to the musicians themselves. Such confirms the existence of Music Row’s hegemony over the Nashville music scene as described in Unit I. Although Dean uses the same formula to compose music each time, he justifies his efforts by the musical diversity of his compositional output. In this chapter I have examined several facets of Dean’s identity. Dean’s close association to commercial country music vis-à-vis his father’s influence and a personal interest in rock and blues music have contributed much to Dean’s own eclectic style. Perhaps most important, however, is Dean’s methodology for composing music. He first creates the text and allows it to dictate all other aspects of the song. The high technicality of his music, his stylistic diversity, his compositional method, and his views on the music industry are significant components of Dean’s identity and that of other MuzikMafia members.

51 Dean Hall, 9 February 2005, interview recorded by author, Brentwood, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: CASE STUDY: RACHEL KICE

Introduction Rachel Kice is one of two MuzikMafia members who does not regularly perform music while on stage.1 Her role as the MuzikMafia’s only visual artist contributes much to the diverse atmosphere of each performance. Her invitation to translate musical sound into a visual medium confirms the MuzikMafia’s fundamental belief of artistic inclusivity. Rachel’s unique style complements an underlying tenet among MuzikMafia’s membership: artistic expression begins with the individual. In this chapter I explore Rachel’s creative process and her views on art and musical experience. Following a brief description of how Rachel became affiliated with the MuzikMafia, I discuss Rachel’s artistic style, focusing on general expressionistic characteristics of her artwork as well as her personal approach to envisioning sound on canvas. In order to observe Rachel’s creative process in action, I take the reader through a step-by-step examination of Rachel while she paints at an actual musical event. Such reveals in Rachel’s own words the significance of specific shapes, colors, textures, and admitted mistakes that appear in her paintings. In conclusion, I combine the above to explain the purpose behind Rachel’s artwork: the visual representation of musical experience. Her regular participation in MuzikMafia performances reinforces the community’s fundamental belief of stylistic inclusivity. Rachel’s rejection of the mainstream in both music and the visual arts complements an underlying tenet among the MuzikMafia’s members: artistic expression begins with the individual.

Brief Biography Rachel was born 29 April 1977 in Wichita, Kansas. She was exposed to the arts at an early age through her mother, who is a graphic designer, and her younger twin sisters

1 Two-Foot Fred is the other MuzikMafia member who does not regularly sing or play an instrument on stage. I observed Rachel sing publicly only once from 2004 to 2007. The occasion was a showcase for Johnny Raab’s drum and bass ensemble The Super Action Heroes. The show took place on 26 May 2005 at a club called 3rd & Lindsley located in the SoBro district of downtown Nashville. Rachel contributed one selection in a punk style.

166 who are also artists.2 Rachel remembers many art projects that occupied her time prior to entering elementary school.3 While attending Wichita Southeast High School from 1993 to 1996 she took lessons in classical piano and voice while cultivating a strong interest in opera. Rachel was disinterested in the formality of art music by her senior year of high school, and she decided to apply to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, to cultivate her enthusiasm for contemporary music. In fall 1996 she left Wichita for Boston where Berklee had offered her a merit scholarship to study voice, although she continued taking piano lessons. Towards the end of her first semester, Rachel returned to Kansas to give birth to her daughter.4 Rachel did not take final exams that year at Berklee and subsequently withdrew from the school. After returning to Wichita from Boston, Rachel found employment in numerous fields such as theater, television, and modeling. Her jobs included actress and set designer with the Wichita Children’s Theater and Dance Center, performer with the Wichita production company Stage One, a television commercial actress, moderator for a television show on respiratory ailments entitled A Breath of Fresh Air, and poster woman for the portrait photography studio Glamour Shots Inc.5 In August 2001 Rachel moved to Nashville at the suggestion of mentor and Berklee professor Pat Pattison.6 One of Rachel’s first jobs was at music publisher Warner/Chappell Music located at 20 Music Square East where her tasks included,

2 Rachel’s younger siblings include conceptual artist Karen Kice and fiber artist Lesley Nishigawara who is the wife of sculptor Nobu Nishigawara.

3 Much content from this section derives from a recorded interview between Rachel and the author on 20 November, 2003, in Johnson City, Tennessee.

4 According to Rachel, the Berklee College of Music closed earlier than scheduled in fall 1996 due to a snow storm. She moved to Wichita to have her child and did not return to Boston to take her exams the following semester; Rachel Kice, 14 October, 2005, email correspondence with author.

5 The Wichita Children’s Theater and Dance Center is located at 201 Lulu St in Wichita, Kansas. Stage One is a professional theater group that specializes in the performance of contemporary works; its productions often take place at Century II located at 225 West Douglas Street in Wichita. A Breath of Fresh Air was a program broadcast locally on the Family Health Channel; Rachel moderated the program from 1997 to 2000.

6 C. Pat Pattison is Professor of General Education at the Berklee College of Music and specializes in commercial songwriting.

167 among others, hanging and positioning award plaques in the lobby. As menial as her job appeared, Rachel had the opportunity to meet each songwriter as they entered the building, including John Rich who introduced himself to Rachel in October 2001. She did not meet Kenny until the Warner/Chappell Christmas party that year during which John and Kenny invited Rachel to attend MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love.7 Rachel and the MuzikMafia Rachel’s early experiences with the MuzikMafia were in December 2001. She attended performances at the Pub of Love whenever should could afford a babysitter for her five-year-old daughter.8 Rachel reports that she was deeply moved by the environment at the Pub of Love, and her experiences there “touched her heart.”9 Although Rachel did paint at early MuzikMafia performances, she did not paint on stage in an official capacity until several years later. Rachel’s active involvement with MuzikMafia began serendipitously through Max Abrams whom she formally met in January 2003.10 Rachel and Max were introduced to each other by mutual friend and Nashville song writer Doug Levitt who had arranged for Max to baby-sit the Rachel’s daughter. At the time, Max was in the process of organizing his “Circvs Maximvs,” a series of performances that combined live music, poetry, dance, painting, spoken word, and film in an unrehearsed setting.11 Max had organized the show to include well-known cubist painter Marvin Posey who had shown an interest in Max’s ideas.

7 In January 2002 Kenny purchased Rachel’s first painting that she had done in Nashville for $90. Rachel had finished the work several months prior. Dissatisfied with its quality, she was about to paint over it when Kenny offered to buy the painting for the cost of materials. Rachel Kice, 20 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

8 Rachel Kice, 20 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

9 Rachel Kice, 20 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

10 Both Max and Rachel regularly attended MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love. However, they were unaware of each other’s association with the MuzikMafia community until January 2003.

11 Max intentionally spelled “Circvs Maximvs” as such, replacing the letter “u” with a “v” in an attempt to connote ancient Roman usage of Latin. Performances began in January 2003.

168 While discussing Rachel’s participation in Circvs Maximvs, Max received a phone call from Kenny. Surprised by the fact that they were both acquaintances of Kenny, Rachel and Max conversed about their mutual connection to the MuzikMafia and their common interest in musical and artistic experimentation.12 Rachel participated in Circvs Maximvs in February 2003, playing the role of the “lovely assistant” to Max who was the “ringmaster” of the event.13 Two weeks after the death of artist Marvin Posey, Max asked Rachel to fill the position; she agreed.14 Rachel began capturing the event’s atmosphere on canvas the following week.15 John and Kenny, who often performed spoken word for Circvs Maximvs, frequented the event, and they admired Rachel’s talent as an artist and performer.16 After John and Kenny signed their recording contract with Warner-Bros. in August 2002, they invited Rachel to paint during several of their performances that fall.17 She has since remained a regular fixture at MuzikMafia shows. Rachel’s presence and artistic performance at MuzikMafia events makes a significant contribution to the presentation and reception of the music. According to Max, “Rachel builds a visual bridge between the musicians and the audience.”18 Rachel usually positions her canvas in the audience at either stage right or stage left, and she attempts to capture the atmosphere of a given musical performance through painting, using her own

12 Max Abrams, 7 February 2005, unrecorded telephone conversation with author.

13 Circus Maximus performed with Marvin Posey only once before the artist’s death. Rachel was Max’s assistant during that first performance. Email correspondence with author, 14 October 2005. 14 Marvin Posey died 26 February 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of thirty-eight.

15 The above performances took place at a bar known as the Saffire at The Factory at 230 Franklin Road in Franklin, Tennessee. Circus Maximus later moved to several Nashville venues including the Mercy Lounge located at One Cannery Row and The Castle Door at 115 16th Avenue South.

16 Rachel Kice, 20 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. Rachel is referencing her conversations with John and Kenny from the time of Circvs Maximvs.

17 In fall 2002 and for much of 2003, MuzikMafia ceased regular Tuesday night performances. Many of its core members, namely John, Kenny, James, and Gretchen were either in the studio or performing outside of the Nashville area.

18 Rachel Kice, 20 November, 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. Rachel is referencing her earlier conversations with Max.

169 expressionistic style. In 2005 Rachel’s paintings sold for as much as $10,000 for a single work.

Expressionism Rachel views her style as “expressionistic” with an emphasis on the process of creation.19 Expressionism as an international art movement began in the early twentieth century among several groups of German and Austrian painters. Exemplified by the works of Richard Gerstl and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the expressionists strived to represent real objects or people in distorted ways. According to musicologist Barbara Hanning, the expressionists “aspired to represent inner experience, to explore the hidden world of the psyche and to render visible the stressful emotional life of the modern person.”20 The movement soon surfaced among the musical community under the auspices of Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, Anton Webern and Alban Berg— collectively known as the Second Viennese School—and later to literature and theater.21 Although Rachel’s artistic style and motivations compare somewhat with those of early expressionists, she does not confine herself to defining her artwork solely as such. Rachel’s motivation derives from an emphasis on subjective experience like many early expressionist painters. However, unlike Gerstl and Kirchner, Rachel emphasizes processes of creation and experience in a specific temporal space, namely during the course of a MuzikMafia musical event. She examines the relationship between music, space, and time and the symbiosis between the musicians and audience members. An examination of Rachel’s creative process reveals many facets of her identity as an artist and as a core member of the MuzikMafia.

19 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

20 Hanning, Barbara Russano, 2005, “Expressionism” in A History of Western Music, 7th ed., edited by Peter Burkholder, Donald Grout, and Claude Palisca, New York: W.W. Norton and Company: 808-809.

21 For further reading on expressionism in art, literature, and theater during the first half of the twentieth century, see Willett, John, 1970, Expressionism, New York: McGraw-Hill. For an analysis of Schoenberg’s expressionist compositional techniques and those of the Second Viennese School, see Burkholder, Peter, et. al., 2005, A History of Western Music, 7th ed., New York: W.W. Norton and Company: 801-819.

170 Rachel’s Creative Process Rachel’s creative process is one of synesthesia, or the multi-sensory experience caused by one or more stimuli. In Rachel’s case, when she hears music, she visualizes a variety of colors, shapes, and textures. Alan Merriam stresses the significance of such intersensory experiences by dedicating an entire chapter to synesthesia in The Anthropology of Music.22 Merriam distinguishes among various types of synesthesia, including “intersense transfer,’ under which Rachel’s creative process falls. According to Merriam, intersense transfer occurs when, “the presentation of a stimulus from one sense can be represented in a second sense area with the relationship acknowledged.”23 In Rachel’s case, she hears musical sound and deliberately attempts to represent it on her canvas. Rachel’s close association with music and art is the result of her artistic influences during childhood and her later musical studies at the Berklee College of Music.24 When asked how her musical background affects her artistic style, Rachel responded: It’s what I’m wanting to learn sometimes in music, particularly because I’ve been around the music so much with the MuzikMafia. I’ve been inspired so much by Jon, John and Kenny, and the songs they were making. As it [their performances] goes on, I’ll watch their fingers on the guitars, and when I hear something I like, I want to catch that part of it, and see how they’re doing it, and I learn a lot that way by watching and listening. Usually, [at home] it’s just quiet and I’ll have a song going through my head. . Sometimes I’ll stop and play the piano [at home] so I can figure out what to do with it [the painting].25

Rachel’s associations between music and art are observable while she paints during shows. During fast musical passages, Rachel often makes smaller, faster brushstrokes;

22 Merriam, Alan, 1964, “Synesthesia and Intersense Modalities,” The Anthropology of Music, Evanston: Northwestern University Press: 85-91.

23 Merriam, Alan, 1964, “Synesthesia and Intersense Modalities,” The Anthropology of Music, Evanston: Northwestern University Press: 87.

24 Rachel was exposed to the arts at an early age through her mother, who is a graphic designer, and her younger twin sisters who are also artists. Rachel’s siblings include conceptual artist Karen Kice and fiber artist Lesley Nishigawara who is the wife of sculptor Nobu Nishigawara. Rachel studied voice and piano for one semester in fall 1996 at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

25 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

171 during slower, legato passages, she often makes longer, slower brushstrokes that reflect corresponding melodies and tempos. Rachel’s art reflects more than the music generated at any given performance; with her artwork Rachel also attempts to capture an evening’s entire performance experience. Her paintings differ from one another due to varying performance contexts. Rachel elaborates: The energy of every show, especially the really good shows, is different. I’m pretty sensitive to that. There’s a different dynamic for each show, depending on the shape of the venue, the sound travels differently, the vibrations from the instruments travel differently; I can feel that, [as well as] the attitude of the crowd, the attitude of the musicians, the attitude of me.26

The physical space in which a performance takes place affects which colors that Rachel uses, the shapes of musicians and instruments, the balance of each figure with the others, and the positioning of abstract images on the canvas. As a result, each of Rachel’s paintings represents a process of creating an entire evening’s experience rather than a specific moment. Abstract images in Rachel’s art represent her vision of a particular musician over time, namely during the course of an evening’s performance or perhaps over several years of practice. The above stems from Rachel’s personal philosophy in regards to experience and musical performance. She explains: An experience is a process of creation. The songs that the audience is there hearing, and the show that they are seeing, it’s actually part of a process that been going on a long time, actually the whole life of the performer; and the instrument and the instrument maker, and the crew and their family and how they ending up doing what ever they do—the fruit of a lot of processes. And making something on stage that’s visual from the ground up, to me, represents all of those processes. The show is really a lot more that a show. It’s entertaining and all, but I like how you get to the show, which is a bit more interesting. A show will make you feel a lot, but the process of getting there is pretty exciting.27

Rachel brings awareness to the fact that the audience members are an integral part of an evening’s musical experience by involving them in her creative process. Rachel

26 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

27 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

172 often converses with audience members while painting. It is common for Rachel to leave her canvas and to paint the clothes of anyone standing around her. She often adorns the shirts and pants of any unsuspecting onlooker with an array of colors and shapes that might be pertinent to the evening’s atmosphere followed by a handshake or a hug. Rachel’s rapport with the audience is surprisingly intimate. It is also common for her to venture out into the audience, targeting those who are in “need” of having their clothes painted.28 She precedes her advancements with a simple, polite, but often shocking question, “May I paint your paints?” Responses usually fall into three categories: positive, negative, or profound bewilderment. In all cases, however, Rachel establishes a personal connection with those who come into contact with her.

Feedback Interview Throughout this research I have emphasized how MuzikMafia members view themselves, each other, and their artistic creativity.29 In order to examine Rachel’s artistic process in action, I asked for her assistance in a step-by-step explanation of a painting that she created at Jon Nicholson’s show on 25 July 2005. Our feedback interview took place on 27 July 2005. I showed Rachel a videotape that I had made of her during Jon’s show two days prior, and I recorded her comments. As Rachel viewed the videotape, I asked open-ended and guiding questions about what she was thinking at the time of the recording and during our feedback interview. My goal was to solicit her reasoning behind specific use of color, shapes, and lines and their relationship to Jon’s music. In brief, I wanted to encourage Rachel’s active participation in my interpretative process. By highlighting the artist’s intent, one can better understand how Rachel visualizes musical sound and how she translates that vision onto a canvas. The concert was Jon’s showcase and was taking place on 25 July at the Nashville club known as 12th and Porter. Damien opened the performance with a twenty-five- minute set followed by guest artist Jake Shimabukuro, a Japanese ukulele player who had

28 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

29 I have intentionally saved an analysis of fans’ interpretations of the MuzikMafia for the dissertation’s Conclusion. Interpretations by fans and other secondary sources are significant and would easily engulf one or more dissertation-length manuscripts.

173 just finished performing several dates on tour with Jimmy Buffet.30 Rachel painted only during Jon’s set, which lasted approximately one hour. Jon’s portion of the program was broadcast live over Jimmy Buffet’s satellite radio station Radio Margaritaville.31 At the concert I positioned my video camera three feet from Rachel who was positioned along the wall to my right; we were both standing on her elevated platform about four feet off the floor. I was able to record Rachel at close distance while panning intermittently to the musicians on stage below and to my left. Rachel was aware of my presence on her platform, but she did not know that the evening’s footage would concentrate on her until minutes after the show when we scheduled the feedback interview.32 I did not want to compromise the reliability of the footage by having the Rachel act differently than she would have at any other MuzikMafia event. She was well-receptive to the idea of the feedback interview which took place two days later in her studio apartment near downtown Nashville. Ethnomusicologist Harris Berger describes feedback interviews as collaborations between the researcher and the subject and between the present and the past.33 He clarifies: Because both perceptual experiences and their interpretations are situational and historical, the participant’s experience is never the same twice, and its [the experience] richness always exceeds even the participant’s best description. Further, the ethnographer constantly influences both the descriptions and the experiences themselves.34

30 Jake Shimabukuro is not an official member of the MuzikMafia, although he has performed at some MuzikMafia events, namely Dan McGuiness Pub on 28 June 2005 and the above performance at 12th and Porter on 25 July 2005. That night Jake performed for approximately twenty-five minutes leading up to Jon’s showcase.

31 Radio Margaritaville can be found on Sirius Satellite channel 31 and at [http://www.radiomargaritaville.com].

32 Rachel was conscious of role as a field researcher, and she knew that I used my video footage for critical analysis. I frequently positioned my recording equipment near her at MuzikMafia shows 2004- 2007. I had verbal authorization from godfather Cory Gierman to videotape any and all MuzikMafia events.

33 Berger, Harris M., 1999, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press: 175.

34 Berger, Harris M., 1999, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press: 175.

174 During the feedback interview, Rachel admitted to me that she had never consciously analyzed her style of painting while observing herself on video.35 The feedback interview allowed for a partial sharing of her experience at 12th and Porter and provided me with a tool with which to engage the event in similar ways in which Rachel had done. The interview also enabled me to compare Rachel’s synesthesia from the evening of Jon’s concert with hers that I had observed at over thirty MuzikMafia events prior. I was able to point out aspects of Rachel’s experience that had been present at this and other MuzikMafia events but which she had never thematized. Rachel decided two days after the 25 July concert to entitle the painting Grass River, pictured in Figure 8.1. She had considered other titles such as Grass River 12th and Porter and Jon’s Butterfly. The latter is in response to an experience with Jon that had occurred just a few days prior. After exiting a Nashville restaurant with Jon, Rachel found a small, green caterpillar on the street. Rachel admits that she had teased Jon about the caterpillar by associating the creature with Jon and his propensity for wearing green leisure suits.36

35 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

36 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

175

Rachel began Grass River by painting the words “Jon’s Butterfly” in a combination of red and blue letters before the beginning of Jon’s set, as seen in Figure 8.2. Rachel often begins a new piece by inscribing meaningful text such as “Jon’s Butterfly,” “fly,” or “love.” According to Rachel: Sometimes I would just write what was on my mind. Or I’ll get stuff out of my mind. It’s just kind of scary to mess up a blank canvas. It’s a little frightening. And so if I just write something, then I’ve gotten it started. I should probably do more writing than painting anyway, so it could just get at least me going.37

The green area that appears to the right of center canvas represents Jon who has just taken his seat behind the keyboard located between center stage and stage left.38 Jon is wearing dark pants and a green button-down shirt over a white T-shirt.

Figure 8.2. Opening text “Jon’s Butterfly” and positioning of Jon in Grass River. Used with permission.

37 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

38 Stage left refers to Jon’s position according to the musician’s field of view. From the audience’s vantage point, Jon is seating to the right of center, as depicted in Figure 8.1 on Rachel’s canvas.

176

Rachel’s attention to the musical space that evening is visible from Jon’s first song, “Seven Days.” I noticed how Rachel’s brush strokes often corresponded to specific musical elements. For example, when musical passages contained an emphasis on harmony, I sometimes observed Rachel making vertical brushstrokes; when passages emphasized melody, many of her brush strokes were horizontal. When I shared my observations with Rachel during the feedback back interview, her reply was “I’ve never thought of things like that; I guess that is how it just happens. It just goes with the music.”39 In Figure 8.3, Rachel has added underneath Jon’s green image a black horizontal line which will eventually become his electric piano. The darker colors on the canvas’ borders reflect Rachel’s field of view. 12th and Porter’s performance room has black walls and a black floor. The stage is the primary illuminated feature of the room with exception to the single flood light to the right of Rachel’s canvas. Rachel admits to having mistaken her black paint for dark blue. The result is a mixture between the two— her later attempt at correcting the mistake.

Figure 8.3. Grass River during Jon’s song “Seven Days.” Used with permission.

39 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

177

During Jon’s second song, “Stereo,” Rachel begins to add images of other band members. “Stereo” opens with a repeated riff on electric bass, emphasized off-beats on electric guitar, and D.D. on drumset playing a reggae-style rhythm. Max’s saxophone solo later in the piece contains a combination of eighth- and sixteenth-notes. Rachel’s rapid succession of short brush strokes appears to imitate Max’s rhythms while she creates his image on the canvas. Max often stands center stage facing Jon on stage left. Max’s profile with saxophone in hand reminds Rachel of a moon, explaining the beginnings of his yellow, crescent shape in Grass River pictured in Figure 8.4.40 Rachel included few if any facial details. According to Rachel, “I didn’t put anything like a face or arms in it [Grass River]. It [the painting] is what it sounds like rather than what it looks like.”41

Figure 8.4. Grass River during Jon’s song “Stereo.” Used with permission.

40 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

41 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

178

At this point in the concert, Rachel is focusing on the bottom half of painting. D.D. has moved to organ to play an opening improvisatory introduction to an audience favorite known as “Grandma.” It appears as though the organ’s lower register prompted Rachel’s shift to the lower half of Grass River. Following the organ introduction, the band enters with a slow, country two-beat rhythm. The simple I-V harmonic progression has a “left foot-right foot” walking feel. Rachel turns her attention to adding legs in the form of music notes to Jon’s figure in Grass River as pictured in Figure 8.5. According to Rachel: They [the music notes] were going to be his feet, and then they looked like music notes, and I went, “whoah….ooooh,” and I felt like I was four years old. I remember music notes!” [from my music studies at Berklee]… (laughs). That doesn’t happen every time on the paintings, but I felt that about this one like I was four years old.42

Figure 8.5. Grass River during “Grandma.” Used with permission.

42 Rachel Kice, 27 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

179

During Jon’s next selection, a MuzikMafia favorite known as “Hero,” Rachel begins adding additional keyboards in the lower left and top right of the painting. The song begins with D.D. on organ, providing an introductory passage comprised of a progression of non-metered gospel chords.43 Jon takes over on his electric piano with a rubato section with subtle harmony and a melody of eighth and quarter notes. Jerry provides some light cymbal work from behind the drumset.44 Rachel knows the song well; she enjoys the flowing, ascending-then-descending contour of the melodic line. She had begun to insert a light olive image of a river into Grass River approximately ten minutes earlier when Jon was performing a song entitled “Grass River.” Rachel’s river had flowed from Jon’s keyboard near the canvas’s center downward to the bottom border before extending to the left and then up the left border of the canvas. However, what began as an actual river during the song “Grass River” later developed into floating keyboards throughout the painting, especially during “Hero” as shown in Figure 8.6. Rachel also completes her crescent-shaped depiction of Max during his featured sax solo towards the end of “Hero.”

Figure 8.6. Grass River by the end of Jon’s song “Hero.” Used with permission.

43 I examine the musical elements of “Hero” in further detail in Chapter Nine.

44 Although Jerry is Jon’s bassist, he regularly provides light cymbal work on drumset for “Hero,” replacing D.D. who has moved to the organ.

180

During Jon’s final song of the evening, “Nothing,” Rachel adds darker colors to the bottom border of the canvas. “Nothing” is a melancholy tune in a slow tempo. The song opens with a lightly syncopated vocal line sung by Jon as he accompanies himself on electric piano. The text is about loss, lies, and rejection. Here, Rachel darkens the fictitious river along the bottom border of the canvas as pictured in Figure 8.7. She touches up selected spots among the musicians’ abstract images in the center, and she signs the canvas at the bottom right.

Figure 8.7. Grass River during “Nothing.” Used with permission.

Given Rachel’s views on experience, Grass River takes on new meaning. No longer does this artwork represent a single occurrence but rather a temporal palimpsest. With a canvas, brushes, and paint, Rachel places individual moments in time on top of one another, combining the past, present, and future—much the way individuals order experience into memory—into a visible, tangible medium. In this chapter I have examined Rachel’s identity from her experiential point of view. Rachel’s particular form of synesthesia links music with art, the result of her childhood artistic influences and formal musical training. Insight into Rachel’s creative

181 process has revealed the message and meaning of her paintings: the belief that experience comprises numerous individual processes that have crossed paths and are interacting with each other on various levels simultaneously. Finally, examination of Rachel while painting during a specific event, i.e. during a MuzikMafia show, leads one to a better understanding of how Rachel layers multiple processes of experience onto a single canvas. Rachel’s vision for synthesizing music and art combined with her own subjective interpretation of experience are integral to her identity and to her membership in the MuzikMafia.

182 CHAPTER NINE: CASE STUDY: JON NICHOLSON

Introduction Jon Nicholson’s diverse musical background combined with his position as one of the four founding godfathers makes him a significant contributor to the birth, growth, and development of the MuzikMafia. Jon describes himself as the “soul branch” of the MuzikMafia, but his musical style comprises numerous additional influences, including country, blues, gospel, funk, and rock and roll.1 His music is comparably the most challenging to categorize among all MuzikMafia musicians. In 2004 Jon opened by himself many of the MuzikMafia’s regular Tuesday performances in Nashville. John and Kenny were frequently out of town promoting their album Horse of a Different Color, scheduled for release in mid-May, and by early summer the duo was already touring heavily with Tim McGraw. Likewise, Gretchen’s busy tour schedule resulted in her absence from most weekly MuzikMafia shows. Cory regularly attended Tuesday shows, but because he did not perform on stage, Jon became the MuzikMafia’s most visible senior member at weekly performances from January through October 2004.2 In this chapter I engage Jon’s identity from several perspectives. First, I describe Jon’s image, including his relaxed demeanor onstage, his nostalgic style of dress, and the high degree of musicality with which he performs. Second, I examine Jon’s song “Hero,” a sentimental ballad that he composed during the first half of 2002. In 2004 “Hero” became MuzikMafia’s informal anthem and was given special attention at shows throughout the year, including performances on the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour in November and December. Finally, I address the role of variation in Jon’s numerous live performances of “Hero.” Using the song’s lyrics, musical style, and various

1 Nicholson, Jon, 2005, “Electronic Press Kit (EPK),” produced by Live Animals Productions; from MuzikMafia’s official website, “Jon Nicholson” [http://www.muzikmafia.com/?action=artist&artist_id=12&PHPSESSID=62b80d5f5555bba320a3e7012d5 a9ba5] accessed 10 January 2005.

2 John and Kenny performed sporadically at Tuesday MuzikMafia shows in 2004. From 15 June to 6 October, John and Kenny appeared only five times with the MuzikMafia.

183 performance practices, I draw connections between Jon’s own musical identity and that of other MuzikMafia artists.

Image and Personality Jon is the most informal of all MuzikMafia artists both on and off stage. In his twenty-four performances that I observed from summer 2004 through December 2005, Jon often dialogued with audience members while playing the opening chords to any given song. He gradually entered the first verse only after a conversation had ended. Between songs he frequently conversed with his band and audience members. In addition, Jon often added additional fermatas to the ends of songs, acknowledging such to his accompanists only with a subtle glance or an upward head motion. I began to understand Jon’s relaxed stage presence while attending my second MuzikMafia show on 29 June 2004 at the Mercy Lounge. Jon was the only musician on stage when the show started around 10 p.m. Following his opening number, a cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” Jon addressed the small crowd: Thank you, thank you. An Uncle Bob song, you guys all know who Uncle Bob is, right? Uncle Bob is the shit [takes a drink of water] except for…he had this terrible habit of smoking herb which I’m all against [smiles sarcastically]. That was his only downfall: to smoke herb…and grass, and things like that. It’s terrible [smiles sarcastically]; it’s a terrible thing. Alright, well, I’m gonna play another one [song], then, and then I’m gone start jammin’ on something that everybody can come up and jam on since, you know, everybody else is slow getting here, I’ll play a couple more songs…3

The fact that the other MuzikMafia musicians had not shown up yet did not deter Jon from starting the opening set. Max showed up approximately ten minutes later and joined Jon on stage in mid-song. The rest of Jon’s band and other MuzikMafia musicians followed suit piecemeal over the next half hour. The above episode is significant for several reasons. First, only a few audience members realized that the show had begun. The ambient noise from numerous conversations was still present by the time I noticed what was happening and turned on

3 Jon Nicholson, 29 June 2004, performance recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

184 my video camera. Jon’s gradual emersion as the evening’s first act is testament to his informality and that of many MuzikMafia performances. Second, Jon’s choice of song material reflected his affinity for Bob Marley’s music and Jon’s own penchant for smoking marijuana.4 Moreover, the text to “Redemption Song” contains references to oppression by and emancipation from mental slavery, both of which can be used symbolically to describe MuzikMafia’s views on the hegemony of Music Row.5 In addition, the rise of Rastafarianism amidst the drive for a Jamaican national identity in the 1950s and 1960s and the MuzikMafia’s birth, growth, and development in Nashville since 2001 can be compared as once, subaltern entities that have reached national and international popularity. Third, Jon’s visual presence on stage was intimate and humorous. He was seated on a single stool located at the front of a slightly elevated wooden stage and relatively close to the first row of audience members. Several people were leaning against the front of the stage throughout the opening song. Jon was wearing one of his many characteristic 1970s-style leisure suits. This particular one was olive green with a repeating pattern of dark and light green rectangles covering the jacket and pants. Jon jokingly mentioned during the show that he had bought the suit for five dollars at Goodwill.6 Underneath his leisure suit jacket, Jon wore a T-shirt with the image of a large green frog on the front. Jon’s attire complemented his bald head and thin, low-cut beard, creating a humorous, cartoon-like image on stage. Finally, and arguably the most significant aspect of the performance, was Jon’s musical treatment of “Redemption Song.” He played the song’s harmony with an ostinato of broken chords supported by a backbeat that he created by stopping his right hand on all six strings of his guitar. Jon kept his eyes closed throughout much of “Redemption Song.” He often squinted during large melodic leaps, occasionally opening his eyes to gaze around the room. The power of expression in his facial gestures overshadowed the

4 Personal observation by author on numerous occasions, June 2004 through May 2007.

5 A detailed textual analysis of Marley’s “Redemption Song” would reveal numerous connections between the song’s message and that of MuzikMafia artists and others from the Nashville music scene. Because the focus of this chapter is Jon’s song “Hero,” I will save such an analysis for a future publication.

6 Jon Nicholson, 29 June 2004, performance recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

185 humor of his costume. Jon’s rhythmic delivery of the melody’s intermittent two-beat triplets was precise yet relaxed, and he frequently added his own soul-style phrase endings. Although the above description is from a single performance, Jon’s comportment onstage that evening was similar to that of most if not all MuzikMafia performances that I observed 2004-2006. Jon’s nostalgic dress, his sarcastic sense of humor, his intimacy with the audience, and his musicality contribute much to the MuzikMafia experience.

Song Analysis: “Hero” Jon’s song “Hero” provides further insight into his identity while reinforcing several of the MuzikMafia’s core messages. Jon composed “Hero” sometime during the first six months of 2002. He does not recall the exact date but only that he wrote it during the middle of the MuzikMafia’s tenure at the Pub of Love.7 At the time, Jon was renting a room at the renovated home of a former Civil War doctor near Clarksville, Tennessee.8 “Hero” is about the struggle of being a musician, individual power, and living as a social outsider following one’s dreams. I have included in Table 9.1 the form, text, and harmony of “Hero.” I have ordered lines of text according to their linguistic phrase structure. I have divided the verses in half with a blank line to highlight the end of an entire melodic statement and the beginning of its repetition. In most versions of “Hero,” there is no meter, so each line below does not contain a particular number of beats.9 I will discuss instrumentation, harmony, rhythm, and melody later in the chapter. Because I reference material from the chorus’ text, I have numbered each line of “Hero” through the end of the chorus’ first appearance. Each subsequent occurrence of the chorus will remain unnumbered while verse two and the interlude continue the numerical sequence.

7 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

8 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

9 One exception is the metered version of “Hero” that appears on Jon’s album A Lil’ Sump’m Sump’m released by Warner Bros. in September 2005.

186 Table 9.1. Form and text of “Hero” ©2002 by Jon Nicholson. Used with permission. Keyboard intro Verse one 1 Maybe I’ll go down to the county fair, C maj. A min. 2 I hear that there’s a lot of freaks like me down there. F maj. G maj. 3 They swallow swords while the people stare C maj. A min. 4 and make fun of their dreams. F maj. G maj.

5 They make a living at their own expense C maj. A min. 6 Well, heh, that’s just like me, I guess. F maj. G maj. 7 I just walk through the fire and pray I won’t get burned. C maj. A min. F maj. G. maj

Bridge 8 Now I’ll never be the one they expected me to be A/C power chords G/C power chords 9 But I keep holdin’ on to what’s left of this crazy dream A/C power chords G/C power chords

Chorus 10 I’m a little bit shy of the big time, honey, C maj. G maj. 11 sinkin’ in but, Lord, I’m standin’ my ground A min. Bb maj. F maj. 12 I ain’t goin’ any further down. G maj.

13 And if the good Lord’s a willing and the time is right, C maj. G maj. 14 I’m taking back over, oh, ‘cause this is my life, A min. Bb maj. F maj. 15 and I won’t lose it without a fight. G maj. 16 I’m gonna make myself a hero tonight A min. G maj. F maj. G maj. C maj.

187 Table 9.1 (cont.)

Verse two 17 Maybe I’ll drive myself into to town 18 And see if any of my old friends are still hangin’ around, 19 and talk a little bullshit and shoot some Crown [Royal], 20 and make fun of our dreams, you know we’ll be singin’

21 La da, la da, la…I don’t know 22 I can’t remember the rest, heh, that’s how it goes. 23 It’s a endless circle of to’s and fro’s, 24 ups and downs, and slides, yeah.

Bridge Chorus Interlude 25 And this world keeps turnin’ ‘round. 26 Sometimes it turns me upside down. 27 Sometime it’s all I can do to find my feet again. 28 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ‘eh.

Saxophone solo Chorus (with a brief extension) Outro

In verse one Jon compares his profession as a musician to that of a sideshow attraction at a county fair. In line two he identifies with the “freaks” at the fair—an obvious reference to the words “Freakshow” or “Freak Parade” that Kenny often uses to describe the MuzikMafia, e.g. in his spoken word interlude in the Big & Rich hit song “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).”10 During the MuzikMafia’s Pub of Love shows in 2001 and 2002, the performance roster included juggler Scott Nery, variety act Sideshow Benny, driver Limo Larry, visual artist Rachel Kice, and musicians of varying genres. When asked if he was referencing in verse one a particular county fair, Jon replied: Not really. I was just sitting around, kind a talkin’ about what we [MuzikMafia] do, being kind of a freakshow, you know. In some way we are standin’ up singin’ for people, singin’ our own songs, which is a little weird to begin with… That’s

10 Big & Rich, 2004, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” from Horse of a Different Color, produced by Paul Worley and John Rich, Warner Bros. 48520-02, compact disc.

188 what we do everyday: we get up; we attempt to play some songs that hopefully everybody is gonna dig. It’s kind of like walkin’ a tightrope. You could fall off and crash and burn, and mess up the song in the middle, and blow the whole thing at any point. It’s kind of what makes it interesting.11

Here, Jon alludes to the spontaneity of performance—a significant aspect his musical style and stage comportment. “Hero” contains numerous references to wishes or dreams. In this context, Jon uses the word “dream” to describe one’s fond hopes or aspirations. In lines 4, 9, and 20, Jon portrays dreams as something that the common person, e.g. a sideshow act or a musician, makes fun of or considers “crazy” because such contradicts the reality of being part of a lower social class. However, the main character of “Hero” is different from others who make fun of their dreams. Although the main character identifies with many hopeless dreamers, he/she is willing to fight to make their dreams come true as Jon describes in the chorus’s text. Jon makes several religious references in “Hero.” In line 2 the main character prays for safety as he/she walks through metaphorical fire. In lines 11 and 13, the Lord is a source for strength. In both cases, the singer acknowledges the presence of a higher spirit. The singer confirms that he/she will either stand their ground as in line 11, or will ask the Lord for help as in lines 13 and 14. Although line 14 hints at the notion of freewill, one can take control over his/her life if the “good Lord’s a willing” as stated in the preceding line. The song’s religious overtones are significant and meaningful. As a teenager Jon was exposed to gospel style while working as a church musician.12 Moreover, Jon’s background reinforces his deep religious conviction which is also shared by many MuzikMafia members, including John, Kenny, and Chance. In fact, it was in a church where Jon first performed “Hero” for someone other than himself. Jon and Kenny were

11 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

12 During his high school years in Madison, Wisconsin, Jon worked as pianist for the Lake City Church. Although non-denominational, religious services at the Lake City Church closely resembled those of the Pentecostals that, according to Jon, exposed him to much gospel-style music; Jon Nicholson, 3 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

189 walking late at night across the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville when they came upon Benton Chapel. Jon describes the incident as follows: Were walking about Vanderbilt campus at about three or four o-clock in the morning, and we saw the church or the chapel there—the big tall cathedral-type ceiling—and it happened to be unlocked so we walked in, and we were getting up on the pulpit and preachin’, and singin’ songs and stuff. It sounded great in there, and we were just having some fun, and we ended up walking around the back of the pulpit, and there is like this giant door, and all the air from the whole place was going under this door, and it [the sound] was like this whoosshhhh…We pulled on it [the door], and it was like opening up a vault or something. We pulled the door open and went back in there to something like a convent, I’m not sure what it is…But there was a piano sittin’ in this room back there, and it was open, and I just got on it and started playing that song. I got done with it, and Kenny said “Man, that’s about the best song I’ve ever heard—that I’ve heard you play.”13

The above event is similar to one experienced by John and Gretchen almost two years later. One evening in August 2003, the two entered the Ryman Auditorium, known by fans as the “Mother Church of Country Music,” through a door that had accidentally been left unlocked. John and Gretchen proceeded to the Ryman stage where Gretchen sang a song by Patsy Cline.14 Both incidents reveal the child-like rebelliousness of their participants to experience music in unauthorized locales. Lines 21 through 24 of “Hero” represent Jon’s improvisatory, free-flowing musical style as well as that of other MuzikMafia artists. By the time Jon played “Hero” for Kenny at Benton Chapel, he had not yet completed the text for verse two. Jon explains: And at that time, I didn’t have any words for that section in the middle of the song: “we’ll be singing la, la, la, la…” [line 21]. I didn’t have an idea for that line

13 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. The above incident took place shortly after Jon composed “Hero” in 2002. The structure to which Jon refers is known as Benton Chapel that serves Vanderbilt University’s students and faculty, including those associated with the Vanderbilt Divinity School.

14 Gretchen’s experience at the Ryman took place on the night that Gretchen signed her record deal with Sony/Epic. She and Jon were walking with some friends by the Ryman Auditorium’s 5th Avenue entrance when John pulled on the door which had mistakenly been left unlocked. The group entered the building and went to the stage. There Gretchen pretended that she was singing at the Grand Ole Opry while John accompanied her on guitar. The incident is portrayed in Gretchen’s video for the hit song “When I Think about Cheatin’” that received frequent airplay in late 2004 and early 2005 on CMT and GAC. Journalist Jeremy Brown examines the video’s various elements in an article entitled “Phantoms of the Opry” in Country Music Today Magazine, Jan/Feb 2005: 28-29.

190 yet, so I just made something up… And I was trying to finish it up and he [Kenny] was like, “No, that middle part it real cool like that.” And so, I just kind of left it like that, and never put anything in there. That’s when I just started making stuff up.15

Jon also reflects on applicability of verse two to the MuzikMafia in general: And after we [MuzikMafia] started playing it, that’s when it started making sense. It’s what we do: we just get up and sing whatever, and you know, and let it flow, and have fun with it. That’s how the song was staged; it’s kind of weird.16

Both quotations explain the impromptu flow of MuzikMafia performances that I experienced in 2004 and 2005 as well as those from 2001 through 2003 described to me by MuzikMafia artists and fans. The bridge’s text reveals one of the song’s core messages: existing on society’s margins. In line 8, the main character acknowledges his place as an outsider unable to live up to the expectations of others. However, the strength required to go against social mores is fueled by the singer’s dream of success. The “they” referred to in line 8 represents friends, relatives, or anyone who expects a musician to fall into specific genre categories such as country, rock, blues, etc. As I mention in Chapter One, Jon and the other godfathers created the MuzikMafia to assemble those marginalized individuals who combined genres rather than those who conformed to audience or industry expectations. In the chorus Jon states another core message: individual power. In line 10, the main character acknowledges that he has not yet achieved commercial success, much like Jon and the MuzikMafia in spring 2002. However, the main character asserts his/her own power to make themselves into a hero, thereby taking control of their life and a hopeful destiny. Here, Jon alludes to the MuzikMafia’s goal to “empower the individual” that Pino referenced in Chapter Four.17 The text of “Hero” focuses on Jon’s message rather than on his autobiography. According to Jon, the song is a “ramble on life” that describes the thoughts of a

15 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

16 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

17 Jon Nicholson, 15 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

191 struggling musician.18 When asked if “Hero” represents the efforts and beliefs of the entire MuzikMafia, Jon replied: It totally does… I wasn’t trying to do that, but that’s kind of the whole idea of what it [MuzikMafia] is… I think about everything that’s happened [with Mafia], and it [“Hero”] is a reflection.19

Because the underlying message of “Hero” is similar to that of the MuzikMafia, it is understandable why the song later became an anthem for the community. Jon stresses that “Hero” is “all about the lyric,” but the song’s instrumentation, melody, harmony, and rhythm are significant.20 In the following section, I examine the above musical elements in order to underscore Jon’s songwriting prowess. I draw attention to the role that variation plays in Jon’s numerous interpretations of “Hero” by comparing seven live versions of the song with the commercial one that appears on the album A Lil’ Sump’m Sump’m.21 I have omitted a transcription of the melody due to its rhythmic complexity. The liberties that Jon takes with rhythm would require complex notation, e.g. frequent use of quintuplets, two-beat triplets and 2-beat septuplets that would detract from the song’s simple, blues-like character. Instead, I reference melodic and harmonic structures according to their appearance in the lines of text in Table 9.1. I identify specific octaves using the standard Heimholtz system of notation whereby Middle C is c1; a minor seventh below is d, and a minor ninth below c1 is B.22 “Hero” is a slow, sentimental ballad. Jon originally scored the song for voice and acoustic piano. He later changed the accompanying instrument to a Rhodes electric piano in January 2004 when he began playin “Hero” at weekly MuzikMafia shows. Jon’s grand

18 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

19 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

20 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

21 These seven performances took place on 6 July 2004, 20 July 2004, 17 August 2004, 17 September 2004, 6 October 2004, 25 July 2005, and 27 September 2005, respectively. It is probable that Jon performed “Hero” at other MuzikMafia shows that I attended, but I often did not stay until the end of each show. I discovered later that MuzikMafia performances had often continued until 2AM or 3AM.

22 In addition, I have italicized each pitch name to prevent the reader from misinterpreting the pitch a, a minor third below c1, with the indefinite article, “a.”

192 piano at home was too large to transport to weekly gigs, and his electric piano gave the song a soulful feel.23 Jon added the saxophone solo during the first public performance of “Hero” at Dan McGuiness Pub. Max had been a regular fixture on the MuzikMafia stage since the Pub of Love, and his saxophone solo added much to the song’s intimate character.24 Jon begins “Hero” with a brief keyboard introduction that establishes the song’s key of C major through the use of broken chords. In some versions of “Hero,” including the one that appears on his solo album, Jon creates a subtle rhythmic pulse by adding the third and fifth of the C major chord with the right hand after beat two and on beat four of each four-beat measure. The soft, slow-moving, rubato-like introduction creates a calming effect for its listener. Suddenly, the voice enters at the beginning of verse one with a dynamic level that is relatively louder than the keyboard accompaniment. The contour of the vocal melody gradually descends from the beginning of each verse half to its end, departing the octave from g1 to g only once.25 The often step-wise descending melodic line accentuates the songs solemn character and reflects the disheartening content of the verses’ text. The harmony of the verses follows a similar descending pattern. Beginning on c1, open fifths in the left hand descend to fifths on a and then to f before finishing with a half cadence on a G major chord at the end of line 2. The harmonic pattern for lines 1 and 2 repeats for lines 3 and 4, respectively. In the second half of verse one, the listener is deceived into expecting the same, because lines 5 and 6 are identical in harmony and melody to lines 1 and 2. However, in line 7 Jon ends verse one with only seven lines of text instead of eight. The empty space, in which an additional line of text would normally appear, contains the same harmony as its counterpart in line 4. Here, Jon gives the

23 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

24 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

25 The vocal line descends to the pitch f on “burned,” the last word in verse one. The f precedes an octave leap up to f1 that immediately begins the song’s bridge.

193 listener time to reflect on the lyrical content of the verses before a change of mood with the song’s bridge. Jon transitions into the chorus using a bridge that, melodically and harmonically, sets up the optimistic message of the chorus’ text. In the first half of line 8 the melody alternates between the notes f1 and e1; the line continues in similar fashion between d1 and c1. The wavering melodic line creates a sense of ambiguity which reinforces the bridge’s purpose as a transitional section. Line 9 contains the same contour as line 8 except for the last half in which the note d1 moves upward to e1, an anticipation of the C major chord’s return in the chorus. The bridge’s harmony contains open fifths in both hands, not allowing the listener to stabilize with major or minor chords.26 Instead, Jon allows the song’s melodic material to drive the listener’s attention directly into the chorus. The most noticeable difference between the chorus and other sections of “Hero” is the chorus’s melodic and harmonic contrasts. In the pickup to line 10, the listener is taken back by the leap of a fifth from c1 to g1 that anticipates the word “shy.”27 A similar device appears in the middle of line 11. However, instead using a fifth, Jon moves up a fourth from c1 to f1. Here, Jon also surprises the listener by inserting a Bb major chord in line 11 on the word “Lord.” In the harmony in verse one, Jon moves from the A minor chord directly into the F major chord. However, in line 11 Jon prolongs the listener’s expectation of the F major chord by inserting a sudden Bb major chord, what Jon refers to as the “cool sounding” chord of the song.28 Jon further builds anticipation in line 12 by pairing a melody that alternates between the notes c1 and b with a G major chord that soon resolves to a C major chord in the next line. Lines 13, 14, and 15 follow a similar melodic pattern as lines 10, 11, and 12. The listener is not able to relax until line 16 in which descending chords on A minor, G major, and F major return to G major, only resolving up to a C major chord after the word “tonight.” The appearance of the song’s title before the harmonic progression ends the

26 A power chord on a in the left hand moves down to one on g in the second half of the line. Jon plays a power chord on c1 in the right hand against the a and g power chords in the left hand.

27 In a pickup into line 10, the melody suddenly ascends from c1 to g1 via a chord tone on e1.

28 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

194 phrase further intensifies the listener’s need for resolution, which comes only at the end of line 16. A significant element of “Hero” is the song’s blues-like style with an emphasis on Jon’s bent notes, his raspy or distorted vocal timbre, and his rhythmic flexibility. In fact, when I heard first Jon perform “Hero” at the Mercy Lounge on 6 July 2004, I thought that the song was an improvised blues piece for electric piano and voice. I realized that my initial response was not an invalid one after witnessing a seventh performance of “Hero” on 27 September 2005. In the following section, I examine the above stylistic nuances of “Hero” and how variation and improvisation play a role in creating a unique performance each time. Jon uses many lowered or bent notes, also called “blue” notes, in “Hero” to create a blues effect. At the end of line 2, Jon sings the word “there” with a rapid descent on the notes b, a, and g. The ambiguity of the rhythm often produces a bending or sliding effect that Jon actually references in the text of line 24. Jon repeats the same three-note slide at the end of lines 4, 6, 18, and 20 and a similar pattern on the notes a, g, and f at the end of lines in lines 7 and 11. Moreover, three-note descending patterns on e1, d1, and c1 often appear in the middle of lines, e.g. on the words “one” and “on” in lines 8 and 9, respectively, and on the word “over” in line 14. Whether or not one hears the effect as a slide or as three individual pitches depends on the speed with which they are sung, which Jon varies in each performance. Jon’s vocal delivery in “Hero” is significant. He regularly emphasizes the first syllable of words while de-emphasizing word endings. The descending vocal pattern at the word-level of each linguistic phrase creates a bluesy effect and contributes to the song’s solemn character. In the second half of verse 2, Jon adds to the song’s blues-feel by changing his earlier, clear vocal timbre to one that is raspy and sometimes distorted. Jon alters his timbre in line 21 so much that the vowel sound ending the word “la” transforms into an “I” vowel sound that continues the line. The word “heh” in line 22 is raspy almost to the point of vocal distortion. Jon’s change in vocal timbre often accompanies a sharp dynamic contrast as on the word “I” in the second line in the bridge’s return and on the words “shy,” “Lord,” “right,” and “life” that surface in the second appearance of the

195 chorus. In each example, Jon delivers the text at a higher dynamic level and with varying degrees of vocal distortion. In the interlude, Jon uses repetition to augment the existing blues-feel of “Hero.” In the word “upside” that appears in line 26, Jon repeated the word “side” anywhere from two to five times in the seven performances that I observed in 2004 and 2005. He also repeated the effect on the word “yeah” in line 28. Such repetition is common in popular blues music as Janis Joplin demonstrates in her 1968 interpretation of “Summertime” that George Gershwin had composed for his African-American opera Porgy and Bess in 1935. Following the interlude, Max expands upon the above ideas in a saxophone solo. Although the notes and rhythms of his solo vary each time, Max consistently incorporates bends, slides, repeated notes, and much timbral distortion to imitate John’s use of the same on any given evening. In addition, Max often includes fast scalar runs, legato and staccato passages, large and small melodic leaps, and contrasts between soft, resonant tones and a fully distorted timbre created by overblowing air through the mouthpiece. Jon acknowledges the significance of the sax solo, “He [Max] has hit it on some nights where it just blows my mind. And it’s almost brought me to tears because it’s so powerful.”29 Max’s saxophone solo in “Hero” serves as an extension of Jon’s voice and all of its expressive abilities. In the seven performances of “Hero” that I recorded in 2004 and 2005, I observed significant variations in rhythm and instrumentation. The dominant role of variation supports Jon’s intention to preserve the improvisatory aspect of the song. Moreover, the subtle differences in “Hero” contribute to the uniqueness of each MuzikMafia show as a whole. Rarely does “Hero” contain a constant rhythmic pulse throughout. Jon usually begins “Hero” with an unmetered exploration of the song’s opening C major chord. The version that appears in Jon’s solo album is the only one that contains a metered introduction which, in this case, is in 4/4 time. Instead, Jon commonly allows the text and his own musicality to drive the song’s rhythm. For example, at a performance on 20 July

29 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

196 2004, Jon played eighth notes in a steady tempo during the first half of lines 4, 5, 6, 11, and 14, but he abandoned any sense of a rhythmic pulse towards the end of each line. Phrases such as “they make a living at their own expense” in line 5 follow a natural, linguistic, eighth-note pattern which Jon often retains in performance. On many occasions Jon performed “Hero” with extensive use of rubato.30 For example, on 17 August 2004, Jon played the song for a MuzikMafia show attended by a production crew from the popular television show 60 Minutes. The evening’s footage was to be used in an upcoming episode featuring Gretchen Wilson.31 Throughout the song, Jon avoided any sense of a strict tempo through the use of a free melodic line on top of intermittent chord changes. He also added various pauses or breaks after phrases to omit any possible implication of continuity that the intermittent chords might have suggested. The only exception occurred during Max’s sax solo in which Jon provided an underlying rhythm and beat using the chorus’ harmonic progression. Jon’s use of rubato provides a nice contrast to many MuzikMafia songs, many of which include a driving rhythmic pulse. I also witnessed several variations in instrumental accompaniment for “Hero.” In the above example from August 2004, a tambourine player tried unsuccessfully to play on the backbeat, finding brief consolation only during the afore-mentioned sax solo near the end of the song. In versions that I recorded on 25 July and 27 September 2005, Jon prompted his drummer D.D., who is also an accomplished keyboardist, to play the introduction with a gospel-style organ sound on synthesizer. D.D. achieved the gospel- style sound by altering the chord voicings, adding some ninths, and by inserting various transition chords.32 In a performance that took place at the Mercy Lounge on 6 July 2004,

30 Here, I use Robert Dunnington’s definition of rubato as implying “some distortion of the strict mathematical tempo applied to one or more notes within the bar, or entire phrases, without restoration; and also time added as pauses or breaks in the continuity of the tempo, to mark the separation of phrases more conspicuously that merely by a silence of articulation within the tempo.” In the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 16, edited by Stanley Sadie, 1980, New York: Macmillan: 292.

31 In the above episode of 60 Minutes that first aired on 19 December 2004 on CBS, Correspondent Ed Bradley moderates a fifteen-minute segment on Gretchen’s childhood and her later experiences with the MuzikMafia.

32 Elijah “D.D.” Holt, 1 September 2005, telephone conversation recorded by author with permission, computer audio file, personal collection.

197 Jon had Dean Hall insert a variety of electric guitar riffs at the end of the verses. At Jon’s album release party that took place at the Mercy Lounge on 27 September 2005, bassist Jerry Navarro moved to the drumset and provided cymbal rolls that paralleled Jon’s dynamic contrasts. As is the case with many MuzikMafia artists, Jon made the above musical decisions based upon the musicians at hand, reinforcing the improvisatory aspect of the song. The fact that “Hero” appears as track seven on the album A Lil’ Sump’m Sump’m is no coincidence. Jon consistently performs the song during second half of each MuzikMafia show. Jon justifies his decision as follows: I play it when everything gets out of control. It’s when everything seems like it’s on the edge of being lost. Maybe we’d just got done doing some jam that just went on for way too long. Whatever happened, it’s time to like grab onto it and pull it back down to somewhere. That song always silences everybody, focuses them on what’s going on, and brings it all back down to that. Then you build it from there.33

Jon remembers a show that took place on 7 March 2004, in which “Hero” was especially helpful: That’s always been a great tool in Mafia sets like our first big Mafia show in Memphis when we played after [Kid] Rock’s show. That show was getting’ so out of hand. The sound was going awry, and the sound man was losing it, and we didn’t have our guy. And there is so much going on, most soundmen don’t know what’s going to happen, and just lose their minds. People are unplugging this guitar and plug in a violin, and it’s like “What the heck is going on?” It was like feedback for 15 minutes or something. It was crazy; it was almost like ruining the whole thing, and it was so perfect, I was like, “Hey, turn everything down, okay, except for this keyboard. Bring this up. Bring this vocal up, and that’s all I need. Just give me those two things, and shut everything else down.” And everybody got like dead quiet, and we played that song, and we pulled it around.34

33 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

34 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. The above show took place in Memphis, Tennessee, on Saturday 6 March 2004. Kid Rock had performed a show earlier at The Pyramid. The after-party took place at a local club called Newby’s where the MuzikMafia and Kid Rock performed to an overflow crowd. A description of the above event appears on the MuzikMafia’s official website, [http://www.muzikmafia.com/data.php?action=artist_news&artist_id=17], accessed 16 January 2006. Video excerpts from the Memphis show appear on the MuzikMafia’s EPK that was released in summer 2004.

198 “Hero” is the only MuzikMafia song that is scored for keyboard and voice. As the community’s only sentimental ballad, the song creates a much needed contrast in style and mood in MuzikMafia performances. Jon’s solo album A Lil’ Sump’m Sump’m demonstrates his broad range of musical influences. For example, in an audience favorite entitled “Love is Alright,” Jon blends rock, reggae, rhythm and blues, and jazz to convey the message: It’s ok to put love in a song. Love is alright. It’s ok; it’s still cool. You don’t have to be all mushy and sing a cheesy song to sing about love, because love is alright.35

Jon uses an edgier rock sound in “Rock and Roll” that appears as track three on the album. With “Grass River,” Jon crafts a nostalgic, jazz-rock ballad with backup singer Sarah Buxton. In another audience favorite entitled “7 Days,” Jon combines gospel, rock, and soul to energize his fans during a show. Although Jon’s “Take Me Back” is primarily a slow, funk tune, the song contains intermittent dreamlike interludes in a soothing, pop- jazz style. Jon’s most requested song at live performances and the one with which he ends the album is entitled “Grandma,” a slow country ballad about smoking marijuana with one’s grandmother.36 I discuss the significance of Jon’s solo album later in Chapter Twelve. As one of the MuzikMafia’s four founding godfathers, Jon is significant contributor to many of the community’s core messages, especially that of musical diversity and self-empowerment. A detailed examination of Jon’s musical style would easily require a monograph-length manuscript. In this chapter, I have examined only two examples from Jon’s extensive repertoire: a cover version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” and Jon’s own composition “Hero.” The former, a popular reggae tune, and the latter, a bluesy sentimental ballad, are both message driven and were created by once, subaltern musicians. Independent of Jon’s authority as a godfather, the message and musical style of his song “Hero” have made him a defining member of the MuzikMafia.

35 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. The quotation does not appear in the text of the song except for the phrase, “love is alright.”

36 Although the subject of “Grandma” is unusual and humorous, the song contains a significant message: one should embrace life and take chances instead of growing old with regret.

199 CHAPTER TEN: OCTOBER 2001 TO MARCH 2004: GROWING POPULARITY IN NASHVILLE AND BEYOND

Preface The house lights go dark. In less than a second, the once ambient noise generated by the venue’s approximately eight thousand fans crescendos into the immediate foreground of my attention.1 The sudden wall of sound sends a chill down my spine. Cowboy Troy slowly announces through a backstage microphone “Ladies…and… Gentlemen…” in a style better suited to a professional wrestling match. The crowd responds with more sonic intensity. The many camera flashes appear amidst the now thunderous applause from the screaming fans. John is standing directly in front of me, and he gives his assistant road manager a slow “high five” in the darkness behind the stage’s backdrop. Troy, who is standing to my immediate right, concludes his introduction with the words, “And now…Big…& ....Rich,” drawing out each syllable as long as possible. The fans respond with more screams, whistles, and cat calls. The band hits and sustains a loud fermata as John and Kenny make their way from opposite ends of the sixty-foot, elevated stage. The fireworks display of camera flashes is enough to illuminate the entire venue, minus the two spotlights on John and Kenny, respectively. By now, the noise from the crowd has reached a deafening level, and I struggle with my video camera in an effort to cover my ears. The situation is ironic. Approximately one month prior, the MuzikMafia had performed for free at a small Nashville club for a few hundred local fans. Tonight’s MuzikMafia show is for a sold out crowd at the Freedom Hall Civic Center in Johnson City, Tennessee, one of thirteen stops on the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour. Most fans have paid between twenty-five and seventy-five dollars a ticket. Many had stood in line at the box office since early morning to insure getting a ticket and a good seat. Forty-five minutes later, Max and I were both standing on the audience level adjacent stage left. John and Kenny had just finished their set and were headed back to

1 The following narrative derives from a MuzikMafia performance that took place on 20 November 2004 in Johnson City, Tennessee. The show was part of Chevrolet American Revolution Tour that showcased the MuzikMafia in thirteen cities across the United States throughout November and December 2004.

200 the dressing rooms. The house lights went up, signaling the second of three intermissions for the evening’s performance. Gretchen’s crew was already setting the stage for her upcoming segment of the show. Somewhat numbed by the previous forty-five minutes of non-stop musical excitement, I turned to Max and asked him what he thought of the sold out event. “Wait ‘til 2006,” he replied; “In 2006 this is gonna be 30,000 people.”2 I was taken back by Max’s response. The MuzikMafia had undergone considerable change in the ten months leading up to this evening’s performance in November 2004. The community had moved beyond its local Nashville roots and onto the national music scene with platinum album successes by Gretchen and Big & Rich. MuzikMafia artists who had once defined their collectivity by a common marginalization from Music Row were now a significant part of the commercial mainstream. But Max’s response did not connote the MuzikMafia’s desire for mere acceptance by Music Row. Instead, he alluded to further growth and change in the MuzikMafia and its popularity. I pointed out to Max the stage’s backdrop that contained the single word “MUZIKMAFIA” in thick, white letters, each of which were approximately eight feet tall. The black background extended the entire length of the stage and was approximately twenty feet tall. I asked Max if he ever thought that the MuzikMafia would reach such a level of popularity. He replied: Oh yeah, I knew. I didn’t doubt that it would come this far. I think that if you look at what James Otto and Jon Nicholson are gonna do next year [2005], Big & Rich’s second record, Gretchen’s second record, you’ll see it all come back together in two years [2006]. It’s going to be a whole different playing field. I don’t think that the friendships are going to be less than they are now, but I do think that there’s going to be a much broader awareness of what Mafia really is and what it really means, especially when you’ve got Gretchen Wilson and Big Kenny and John Rich singing on Jon Nicholson’s record. Suddenly, you’ve got a pop audience listening to the best singer in country music on a pop single. That’s when things really get interesting. That’s when people are going to start to get it.3

Max’s statement reinforces the MuzikMafia members’ belief of themselves as a distinct musical community while embracing the MuzikMafia’s growth and development at the

2 Max Abrams, 20 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

3 Max Abrams, 20 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Johnson City, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

201 national level and beyond. Unfortunately, not even Max could foresee the stark changes in the MuzikMafia that would eventually comprise a complex, interconnected web of MuzikMafia-derived commercial enterprises and several members’ willful departure from the MuzikMafia. In this chapter I discuss the MuzikMafia’s development from October 2001 to March 2004 for several reasons. First, the community’s last performance at Dan McGuinness Pub on 2 March marks its departure from venues along the Demonbreun Street Roundabout adjacent to Music Row. Second, the Muzik Mafia’s did not resume weekly performances until 6 April at the Mercy Lounge. It was during this next stage of development when the community experience significant commercial success surrounding album releases by Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson. Third, following its move to the Mercy Lounge, the MuzikMafia underwent considerable changes in membership, popularity, and audience demographic, largely the result of the community’s national media exposure. In this current discussion of the MuzikMafia’s earliest period, I concentrate on the community’s birth, growth, and development while still part of the Nashville music scene.

The Pub of Love: An Attempt at Commercialization The MuzikMafia first performed on 23 October 2001 at the Pub of Love to a group of less than fifteen people. However, news of the weekly free jam session quickly disseminated throughout the Nashville music scene, and the size of the MuzikMafia’s audiences at the Pub of Love grew considerably. By December 2001 it was not uncommon for performances to attract a hundred people or more. In January 2002 the MuzikMafia made the first of several trips to cities outside the Nashville area. On 18 January the community drove to Chicago to perform at The Hideout, a small bar obscurely located near the sanitation headquarters. According to a description in the Chicago entertainment guide Centerstage, The Hideout is “home to great music, cheap beer and an “I don't care who you are or what you're wearing, come

202 on in and have a drink" attitude.”4 The locale’s clientele compared with that the Pub of Love. MuzikMafia artists who performed in Chicago included John, Kenny, Jon, Troy, Brian, James, and Joanna Janét.5 The show’s format was similar to that of the Pub of Love performances in regards to improvisatory flow, song choice, informality, and instrumentation.6 By spring 2002 the Pub of Love was a center of musical activity each Tuesday night. MuzikMafia shows were attracting hundreds of people, and the venue was often standing room only. At one point, the owners of the Pub of Love removed an upstairs wall to make room for the growing number of MuzikMafia fans.7 Those who could still not squeeze into the upstairs area crowded onto the staircase, waited patiently downstairs, or congregated outside on the street. According to Jon, “The show started getting super active: 150-200 people upstairs, downstairs, out the back—all of their [MuzikMafia’s] friends.”8 MuzikMafia performances also attracted well-known figures in the music industry. Isaac remembers from a show in spring 2002 a slovenly dressed male in the audience, “He was a homeless-looking fellow. The guy later performed; he’d written a few George Strait songs. John said that the guy was worth about $8 million.”9 The songwriter was Anthony Smith who, along with Tony Lane, had penned the tune “Run”

4 The Hideout is located at 1354 West Wabansia Ave in Chicago. The bar was named such because of its obscure location; “Hideout,” Centerstage: Chicago: The Original City Guide, [http://centerstage.net/music/clubs/hideout.html] accessed 24 February 2006.

5 Joanna Janét associated with the MuzikMafia primarily during its tenure at the Pub of Love. She only made occasional appearances with the community after July 2002.

6 Mathew Dyer videotaped segments of the above trip to Chicago in 2002. His footage includes the Friday night performance on 18 January 2002 as well as various shots of MuzikMafia artists around town. The above is catalogued as PM 331 and PM332 in Dyer’s inventory.

7 According to Isaac, the wall in question had led into a backroom storage area that many musicians and audience members had privately used to roll marijuana cigarettes; interview with author, 7 September 2005.

8 Jon Nicholson, 3 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

9 Isaac Rich, 7 September 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

203 that was a Billboard Number One country hit for George Strait in early 2002.10 Isaac noticed on a separate occasion someone who he described as “crazy-looking guy with black ratty hair,” whom he later identified as Josey Scott of the heavy metal band Saliva. Isaac pointed out how Josey played guitar left-handed later that night with John and Kenny.11 Jon Nicholson remembers seeing well-known singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale also perform at the Pub of Love on occasion.12 Greg Oswald, who was Senior Vice President of the William Morris Agency in Nashville, frequented shows with his younger brother Marc, who later managed Gretchen, Big & Rich, and Cowboy Troy.13 The appearance of well-known music industry personnel at MuzikMafia events confirms MuzikMafia’s growing significance in Nashville at the time. By summer 2002 it was evident that the MuzikMafia was a significant part of the Nashville music scene. The Pub of Love could no longer contain the large crowds that came each Tuesday night. Isaac recalls: People were trying to sneak in, but the whole place was packed; people were hanging off the fence in the back; the police often came to control the crowds…. That’s when Pub of Love starting checking i.d.’s: when the crowds started showing up.14

10 Anthony Smith was named Nashville’s Breakthrough Song Writer of the Year in 2002 by Music Row Magazine. His songs have been recorded by Trace Atkins, Montgomery Gentry, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Trisha Yearwood, and Rascal Flatts. Smith also won Songwriter Achievement Award in 2002 from the Nashville Songwriters Association International; “Anthony Smith” from BMI’s official website [http://www.bmi.com/musicworld/musicpeople/200302/asmith.asp] accessed 24 February 2006.

11 Saliva’s early credits include being a finalist in the 1997 Grammy Showcase sponsored by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Saliva’s song “Your Disease” appears on the soundtrack for the movie Dracula 2000 (Carfax Productions Ltd., Dimension Films 2000); “Saliva” from Billboard Magazine’s official website Billboard.biz, [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?&cr=artist&or=ASCENDING&sf=length&pid=196302&k w=saliva] accessed 24 February 2006.

12 Jim Lauderdale became well-known as a singer/songwriter in Nashville during the 1990s with hits recorded by George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, Patty Loveless, and Mark Chesnutt.

13 Max Abrams, 3 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

14 Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

204 The Pub of Love was incapable of accommodating the MuzikMafia and its rapidly growing fan base, and for several weeks in summer 2002, the MuzikMafia performed outside in the adjacent parking lot.15 The MuzikMafia’s popularity peaked in late summer 2002 when John and Kenny were selected to participate in the MasterCard Priceless Edge Sweepstakes. The nationwide contest received entries from over 15,000 college students who were interested in a career in the music business. The top fifty finalists were invited to Nashville for six weeks during June and July to work with significant individuals in the music industry. The program’s guest speakers included among others, recording artist Alanis Morisette, Clear Channel Entertainment CEO Brian O'Connell, Spring Communications CEO John Rubey, producer Jack Clements, and entertainment lawyer Henry Root. John and Kenny were invited to provide songwriting workshops and studio demonstrations for the finalists. The students included in their six-week program several excursions to Tuesday night MuzikMafia shows at the Pub of Love.16 The sweepstakes generated considerable media exposure for John, Kenny, and the rest of the MuzikMafia. The MuzikMafia’s popularity resulted in considerable tension between the community’s members and the owners of the Pub of Love. The godfathers insisted on not charging admission to its weekly shows but also did not receive any portion of the large profits generated from alcohol sales each Tuesday night. Cory reports that other Nashville bars wanted “in on the action” and that they offered the MuzikMafia money to relocate.17 Given MuzikMafia’s financial need and the fact that they had outgrown the Pub of Love, the MuzikMafia accepted an offer from Jason Sheer who owned The Tin Roof, a small restaurant/bar near the Demonbreun Street Roundabout, and began performances there each Tuesday night from August 2002 to March 2003.

15 Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

16 Further details of the MasterCard Priceless Edge Sweepstakes can be found at the contest’s official website: [http://www.pricelessedge2002.com/about.cfm], accessed 25 February 2006. The website contains a photo of some of the finalists with the MuzikMafia at the Pub of Love.

17 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

205 The move to The Tin Roof was intentional and marks one of the MuzikMafia’s first significant attempts at commercialization. The four godfathers took their payment from The Tin Roof and set up a website.18 In addition, the MuzikMafia made a trip to Los Angeles to promote the community and its message.

The Demonbreun Street Roundabout The Demonbreun Street Roundabout that includes The Tin Roof is located between Music Row and Interstate 40 southwest of downtown Nashville as shown in Figure 10.1. The roundabout area is a relatively recent addition to the Nashville cultural scene. Until 2000 the actual roundabout and adjacent street had been home to several kitschy shops that catered to tourists visiting the nearby Country Music Hall of Fame. However, the tourist industry along Music Row dissipated as a result of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s gradual move to its current facility in the SoBro district in 2001.19 Plans to develop the Demonbreun Street Roundabout had already begun in 1998 when Pino Squillace, the MuzikMafia’s future conga player, envisioned the roundabout’s commercial and cultural potential. The two photos in Figures 10.2 and 10.3 are of Demonbreun Street Roundabout area from the east and west, respectively.

Figure 10.1. Map of the Demonbreun Street Roundabout.

18 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

19 The Country Music Hall of Fame relocated to 222 Fifth Avenue South, near the historic Ryman Auditorium, on 17 May 2001; “Nashville / Davidson County Timeline,” Nashville Public Library official website, [http://www.library.nashville.org/Links/Nashville/historylinks/timeln.html] accessed 25 February 2006.

206

Figure 10.2. Photo of Demonbreun Street as viewed from the east near Interstate 40 towards the roundabout which lies to the west at the top of the hill, February 2006. Photo taken by author.

Figure 10.3. Photo of Demonbreun Street as viewed from the west atop the roundabout’s grass center. Nashville’s downtown skyline appears to the northeast in the background, February 2006. Photo taken by author.

By the late 1990s Pino was a well-known Nashville entrepreneur. He had founded in 1996 his Caffee Milano located at 174 3rd Ave North in The District off of lower Broadway. The restaurant/bar quickly became an integral part of the Nashville music scene, attracting well known acts such as Chet Atkins, who performed there every Monday night; Johnny Cash; June Carter Cash; Waylon Jennings; Branford Marsalis; Diana Krall; Olivia Newton John; Alison Krauss; and Spyro Gyra. According to Pino, he

207 organized Diana Krall’s first three performances in Nashville in 1997, and video footage for her electronic press kit (EPK), which included interviews with Sarah Jessica Parker and Tony Bennett, was also filmed at Caffee Milano.20 In June 1998 Pino and his partnership sold the establishment to the Gibson Guitar company, who subsequently changed the name of the venue to Gibson’s Caffee Milano.21 In November 1998 Pino approached Nashville businessman Jim Caden with the idea developing the roundabout area of Demonbreun Street into a dining and entertainment destination. Pino suggested that Caden lease the properties to a series of diverse, consumer-based enterprises rather than to those wanting to erect office buildings, recording studios, or more tourist shops. Pino referred to his idea as the “twenty hours plan,” comprising businesses that collectively operated twenty hours per day.22 For example, he proposed coffee shops would serve the public beginning at 7AM, lunch cafés to cater to mid-day crowds, retail stores for daytime operation, restaurants that catered to evening clientele, and night clubs that provided live entertainment until 3AM. According to Pino, he wanted to feature “numerous music venues that would showcase a variety of genres simply to reflect the history of Nashville’s diverse musical community….really to put music back on Music Row!”23 Pino and Caden modeled their plans to develop Demonbreun Street after Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, that the two had visited in late 1998. The first music venue on the quarter mile section between the roundabout and Interstate 40 was The Tin Roof located at 1516 Demonbreun Street and that housed the MuzikMafia from August 2002 to March 2003. Other music venues include the Dan McGuinness Pub that features a wide variety of music genres, including acoustic singer/songwriters, rock, country, blues, jazz, and Celtic. Two Doors Down and On the Rocks, two clubs that lie between Dan McGuinness

20 Pino Squillace, 15 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

21 Gibson sold Caffe Milano in October 2004 to Callisto Properties for $1 million, preceding the property’s name change to the Rhythm Kitchen.

22 Pino Squillace, 8 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

23 Pino Squillace, 8 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

208 Pub and The Tin Roof, attract college audiences that favor pop and rock music. Gravity is a small club adjacent to On the Rocks and features mostly singer-songwriters. Other Demonbreun establishments include Otter’s Chicken Tenders, Sushiyobi, Christopher Tennessee Pizza Company, a chic fashion store called Studio 15, Flavour Fashions, a trendy café named Caffeine, and Pino’s own pending Italian restaurant named Vivo. The bulk of the Demonbreun Street’s clientele comprises industry personnel from Music Row during lunchtime and early afternoon and college students from nearby Vanderbilt and Belmont universities during the evenings.

The Tin Roof The Tin Roof was the first restaurant/bar to open along the Demonbreun Street Roundabout. Owner Jason Sheer had modeled the establishment after its counterpart The Tin Roof Cantina, which he had opened six years prior in the trendy Buckhead section of Atlanta, Georgia. The Tin Roof in Nashville attracted large crowds from its opening day on 11 February 2002.24 The Tin Roof featured musics of varying kinds, little of which was country. The clientele that frequented The Tin Roof and other future restaurants/bars on Demonbreun Street comprised an eclectic mix of Music Row label people, interns, songwriters, artists, Vanderbilt students, Belmont students, and young professionals.25 The Tin Roof is relatively small as shown in Figure 10.4. The restaurant/bar is c. 3,300 ft2 and has an indoor, legal capacity of 200 people. During any given performance The Tin Roof can accommodate in excess of 500 people due to its sizable stage area outside the building’s rear entrance.

24 The Tin Roof grossed on its first day over $2,300 compared to $150 to $200 that Sheer had expected; Lawson, Richard, Sunday 17 February 2002, “400-seat Music Venue, Restaurant Highlight Demonbreun Project,” in the “Entertainment” section of The Tennessean newspaper.

25 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

209

Figure 10.4. Photo of The Tin Roof (frontal view), July 2005. Photo taken by author.

By the time that MuzikMafia started at The Tin Roof in August 2002, the restaurant/bar was already a center of musical activity. The club was popular among Nashville musicians because Sheer consistently paid more for musical talent than any other bar in town. The Tin Roof also became a trendy locale that attracted diverse audiences. Some patrons frequented the establishment to hear rock and pop music. Others came to be around the cultural elite of the music industry.26 Sheer had heard of the MuzikMafia through his bartender Regis. Following a meeting with Kenny that Regis had arranged, Sheer invited the MuzikMafia to take over the Tuesday night slot indefinitely. There was no contract other than the fact that the godfathers would receive $600 or twenty percent of the house gross for each evening.27 The MuzikMafia’s audience demographic changed drastically. Damien Horne, whose association with MuzikMafia began at The Tin Roof in August 2002, remembers the large number of college students who attended weekly shows.28 The new popularity of John and Kenny as major label recording artists combined with the new, weekly performance venue near Music Row and Vanderbilt and Belmont universities resulted in

26 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

27 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

28 Damien Horne, 25 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

210 a decidedly different audience demographic than that of the Pub of Love. According to Isaac, Tin Roof was a regular college crowd from Belmont and Vanderbilt; the [Muzik]Mafia show didn’t translate well; some listened to the show, some met other people, drank. It was more social; Gretchen is in the picture, record deals, popularity, and so on.29

Max hated The Tin Roof because “the sound was funky,” and as a result, he did not perform there as often as he had at the Pub of Love.30 James and Gretchen also performed infrequently at The Tin Roof. James had signed his record deal with Mercury in early 2002. Gretchen divided her time between working as a demo singer and bartender, raising her daughter, and auditioning for various Music Row labels for a record deal of her own. As a result, the MuzikMafia’s weekly performance included only John, Kenny, Jon, and Pino with numerous but inconsistent appearances by other MuzikMafia artists. The MuzikMafia’s tenure at The Tin Roof was problematic at best. According to Sheer, the friction was with John almost from the beginning: John Rich would take 25 shots of Petron tequila and just give them to the customers. John never got the concept that people who drank for free diminished the house gross. That’s when all the friction started. But he was often too drunk to discuss the matter at the end of the night. I remember having a few meetings with the guys to discuss the problem.31

John’s solution to the above was to host a series of “pre-parties” at his apartment each Tuesday evening. While there, MuzikMafia friends and fans would drink together before

29 Isaac Rich, 7 April 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

30 Max Abrams, 3 September 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. Max’s statement above is puzzling. Sheer’s sound system at The Tin Roof cost approximately $75,000 in 2002, much more in price and quality than sound systems at Dan McGuinness Pub or Two Doors Down, respectively, where the MuzikMafia briefly performed after leaving The Tin Roof in March 2002; Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. 31 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

211 heading over The Tin Roof.32 According to the bartender, the result would often be a full house of 400 patrons, most of whom ordered only glasses of water.33 John’s situation with the owner only worsened. Sheer reports that John was sometimes so drunk that he could not finish an evening’s set.34 In addition, John was well known for turning tables over and throwing chairs during his breaks. John’s drunkenness, extensive bar tab, and his belligerency resulted in Sheer having to deduct as much as $200 from the MuzikMafia’s payment to cover damages and profit loss. John maintains that Sheer still owes the MuzikMafia as much as $2,000 for disputed payment deductions.35 The MuzikMafia’s eventual departure from The Tin Roof was the result of months of problems, including two specific incidents that occurred in early 2003. Sheer describes the first as follows: John was so absolutely hammered and so pissed off about something …Bobby was the manager here at one time, and Chris was a bouncer, a big huge dude. And John Rich threatened that he was gonna kill them. He was threatening to go to his truck and that he was going to shoot them, and kill them. He then got in his truck and drove it around to the front of the building. They [Bobby and Chris] locked the doors. They were scared and hid under a table. They thought that John was a freaking nutbag, and he’s wasted, and he’s gonna kill them. John was pushing with his truck up against the front of the bar’s glass doors, pretending that he was going to bust through. Finally he just drove off.36

The second involves the pilot for a television reality show entitled Under The Tin Roof that was filmed in Sheer’s restaurant/bar. MuzikMafia members appear in the pilot’s first few episodes because they frequently patronized The Tin Roof during filming. John’s appearance in the pilot caused much tension. According to Sheer:

32 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

33 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

34 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

35 John Rich, 28 February 2006, unrecorded conversation with author, Nashville.

36 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection. Sheer was not present on the night in question. Here, Sheer is retelling the story as described to him by Bobby and Chris who witnessed the event.

212 John Rich is on there [the pilot] going nutty…. He always wanted to be the center of attention….He was inside one time when he pulled his pants down to his knees. A few minutes later, he went outside and was doing pretty rude things to a light pole. All of it was on tape. Marc Oswald later tried to keep the footage off the series, but I told him about all the signs and disclaimers stating that video cameras would be taping.37

The above incidents contributed to Sheer’s already growing dissatisfaction with the MuzikMafia and eventually led to Sheer’s decision to fire them in March 2003.

Two Doors Down The MuzikMafia performed single shows at various clubs around town in March 2003 before beginning a brief stint at Two Doors Down the following month.38 Located at 1524 Demonbreun Street near The Tin Roof (see Figure 10.5), Two Doors Down opened in early April 2003. The MuzikMafia was its first regular Tuesday act. The choice of venue is odd, considering the fact the Two Doors Down is a small sports bar, does not have a significant performance stage for musicians, and is smaller than The Tin Roof (see Figure 10.6). Sheer describes the performance atmosphere as “A total joke for musicians. The guys [MuzikMafia] had to compete with all the of television screens hanging over their heads.”39 The MuzikMafia performed at Two Doors Down for only four weeks. Sheer reports that the manager of Two Doors Down experienced similar difficulties with the MuzikMafia’s extensive bar tab.40

37 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

38 Sheer claims that the MuzikMafia performed at Dan McGuinness Pub in March 2003 before moving to Two Doors Down in early April. This is inaccurate because Dan McGuinness Pub did not open until December 2003.

39 I contacted the manager of Two Doors Down to solicit an interview regarding the MuzikMafia. Unfortunately, the restaurant’s ownership had already changed hands by summer 2005. Neither the original owner nor his/her original employees were available for comment. Sheer followed the movements of the MuzikMafia along Demonbreun Street via discussions with the other restaurant/bar owners who housed the community’s Tuesday night performances.

40 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

213

Figure 10.5. Map: Demonbreun Street Roundabout Area and Club Locations as of February 2006. A = The Tin Roof; B = Two Doors Down; C = Dan McGuinness Pub.

Figure 10.6. Photo of Two Doors Down, July 2005. Photo taken by author.

Cessation of Performances MuzikMafia stopped its regular Tuesday performances altogether in early May 2003 due to ongoing problems with the management at The Tin Roof and Two Doors

214 Down, respectively. In addition, John and Kenny were spending much of their time in the studio, recording songs for Horse of a Different Color. The two were also engulfed the album’s promotional campaign as well as a video production for “Wild West Show,” the album’s first single scheduled for release in December. Gretchen realized in June 2003 her dream of securing a record deal with a major label. She had been working closely with the godfathers throughout the summer preparing numerous promotional materials. The now historic phone call from John Grady, President of Sony Music in Nashville, came on Thursday, 12 June 2003. Grady offered Gretchen her record deal over the phone while she, Cory, John, and Kenny were on location shooting her EPK. Cory clearly remembers the date because Katie Darnell, a brain cancer patient that John and Kenny had befriended at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, had died in Princeton, Kentucky, the same day.41 In addition, other MuzikMafia members were advancing their careers through a variety of activities. Jon Nicholson was experiencing relative success with his band Stroller. He had written many of the songs that appeared on the group’s self-titled debut album in 2002, earning him a respectable place among Nashville’s singer/songwriters. Stroller’s second album Six Inches off the Ground contained the single “Six Inches” that entered the rotation of approximately 200 college rock radio stations across the country in 2003.42 As a result, Jon was frequently out of town and unable to attend MuzikMafia shows. Stroller disbanded in fall 2003, and Jon spent several months assembling a backup group for his future solo career. James Otto was also receiving significant exposure in and outside of Nashville. By late 2002 he had finished recording his debut album Days of Our Lives that Mercury scheduled for release in early 2004. James had been invited to appear on the Grand Ole

41 Cory Gierman, 15 March 2006, unrecorded telephone conversation with author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A brief announcement of Darnell’s death appeared on 20 June 2003 in an article entitled “VCH Ambassador Darnell Dies After Battle with Cancer,” in The Reporter, the official online journal for Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, [http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=2742], accessed 15 March 2006.

42 Havighurst, Craig, “Stroller Rollin' onto the Rock Scene,” The Tennessean newspaper online, Saturday 25 October, 2003, “Entertainment” section, [http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=ENTERTAINMENT&template=front], accessed 10 January 2006. Six Inches off the Ground was released in 2003 by the Houston-based rock and country label Compadre Records.

215 Opry several times in summer 2003. Most importantly, Mercury had arranged for James to open up for Shania Twain on each United States performance of her Up! 2003/2004 world tour. James’s first performance with Twain took place on 29 September 2003 in Pittsburgh. James’s career milestones were bittersweet despite the widespread exposure that they afforded him. The album’s first single “The Ball” that had actually been released in late 2002 went no higher that Number Forty-Five on the Billboard country music charts. The album’s second single “Days of Our Lives” peaked at Number Thirty-Three on the same charts in 2003.43 The album Days of Our Lives sold less than fifteen thousand copies, a flop by Music Row’s standards. As a result, James’s music received little radio airplay. James’s frustration was exacerbated by the fact that Mercury did not provide a full band to accompany him on Twain’s Up! tour.44 James paid for a drummer and an accompanying guitar player himself. According to James, “I think that it was Mercury’s ditch effort.”45 James was dropped by Mercury in January 2005 while he was recording his second album, an incident that I address later in Chapter Twelve. Max Abrams made inroads as a Nashville saxophonist and entertainer in 2003, preventing him from attending many MuzikMafia performances. Beginning in February Max coordinated his “Circvs Maximvs” that combined live music, poetry, dance, painting, spoken word, and film in an unrehearsed performance setting.46 The name derived from the use of three plastic cups, signifying a three-ring circus, in which pieces of paper were kept. Audience members were instructed to submit slips of paper that contained words associated with particular styles of music, a specific Circvs Maximvs

43 Mercury released “Days of Our Lives” along with a re-release of “The Ball” on 14 October 2003; Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?pid=485198&aid=603832], accessed 3 March 2006.

44 James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, computer video file, personal collection.

45 James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

46 Circvs Maximvs began in a club called Saffire at The Factory located at 230 Franklin Road in Franklin, Tennessee. The show relocated to several Nashville venues including the Mercy Lounge at 1 Cannery Row and The Castle Door at 115 16th Avenue South.

216 performer, a unique mood, tempo, tonalities, topics for poetry, subjects for artistic recreation, and dramatic scenes. Max coordinated each evening’s program as “ringmaster” by randomly selecting pieces of paper from each cup. He based his idea of structured improvisation on similar processes in the aleatoric music of composer John Cage.47 Max promoted with Circvs Maximvs the interrelationship between the audience and the artist, minimizing the cultural distance between the two. According to Max: When most people think of fine art — jazz, painting, poetry — they think of it as a medium that they can't be involved with. That's absurd. My real hope for the show is that by including people in the creative process they will find that these things are accessible and beautiful.48

Regular performers at Circvs Maximvs included visual artists Ellis Orrall, Marvin Posey, Rachel, and Paul McLean; composer, poet, and musician Marcus Hummon; MuzikMafia percussionist Pino; poet Dennis Ongkiko; drummer Johnny Rabb, Gypsy Hombres violinist Peter Hyrka; and spoken word poets Liszen and Pampata.49 Through stylistic diversity and interaction between the audience and performers at Circvs Maximvs, Max reinforced similar fundamental aspects of MuzikMafia performances. MuzikMafia’s eight-month break from May through December 2003 provided many members with time to develop as artists and as entertainers. John, Kenny and Gretchen were well on their way to becoming significant parts of the commercial country music industry. James and Jon learned much from their respective successes and failures as recording artists on the national music scene. Max, Rachel, and Pino cultivated through Circvs Maximvs their interests in combining music, dance, poetry, and the visual

47 Max Abrams, 7 February 2005, unrecorded telephone interview with author, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Max had first been exposed to the music of John Cage through music classes and concerts during his undergraduate studies at Princeton University.

48 Cited in Bostick, Alan, 2003, “Circus Maximus Throws Creativity into the Ring,” in The Tennessean.com, Friday 21 November 2003, [http://www.tennessean.com/entertainment/arts/archives/03/11/42800407.shtml] Accessed 6 February 2005.

49 Artist Marvin Posey died 26 February 2003 in Atlanta, Georgia, at age thirty-eight. Having begun as Max’s assistant before assuming the role of painter, Rachel began with Circvs Maximvs in March 2003, two weeks after Posey’s death. Max had formally met Rachel in fall 2002 through mutual friend Doug Levin. Neither Rachel nor Max remembers the other from MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love although both were present.

217 arts. The MuzikMafia returned to the Demonbreun Street Roundabout in January 2004, this time performing at Dan McGuinness Pub.

Dan McGuinness Pub Dan McGuinness Pub opened in Nashville on Christmas Eve 2003. Owner Quinn O’Sullivan had experienced considerable success with an Irish pub by the same name that he had founded in Memphis in 2001. The Nashville branch is located at 1538 Demonbreun Street directly across from the Roundabout at the top of the hill (see Figure 10.7). The MuzikMafia performed at Dan McGuinness Pub each Tuesday night from 6 January through 2 March 2004.

Figure 10.7. Photo of Dan McGuinness Pub, July 2005. Photo taken by author.

O’Sullivan had heard of the MuzikMafia through a mutual friend named Scotty, the MuzikMafia’s newly hired sound engineer. According to Dan McGuinness Pub manager Brad Taylor, “They [the MuzikMafia] approached us because we were new in town and this was a hot area to play in.”50 O’Sullivan paid the godfathers $200 total for each Tuesday performance. MuzikMafia performances at Dan McGuinness Pub contained significant changes from the community’s earlier shows at The Tin Roof and Two Doors Down.

50 Brad Taylor, 3 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

218 First, the growing popularity of John, Kenny, and Gretchen attracted even larger crowds than before. In addition to standing room only for the pub’s legal capacity of 200 people, there was sometimes a line outside that extended almost half way down the quarter-mile hill towards Interstate 40.51 Second, Jon Nicholson had returned with his new band that included D.D. Holt on drums and Jerry Navarro on bass. Shannon Lawson also started performing with the MuzikMafia during its tenure at Dan McGuinness Pub. Third, the godfathers had hired Scotty, their new sound engineer, who transported a professional- grade sound system each week to MuzikMafia performances.52 Fourth, MuzikMafia shows began attracting more well-known entertainers. A frequent guest artist was Peter Wolf who had fronted the popular rock group the J. Geils Band from 1967 to 1982.53 Kid Rock also frequented MuzikMafia shows at Dan McGuinness Pub.54 John had met Kid Rock at John’s thirtieth birthday party on 7 January 2004 that Martina McBride and DMC from Run DMC also attended.55 Although Kid Rock attended several MuzikMafia shows at Dan McGuinness Pub, Taylor recalls him performing only once.56 According to Kid Rock:

51 Brad Taylor, 3 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

52 Taylor estimates that the MuzikMafia’s sound system cost between $30,000 and $40,000, a stark contrast to that of the Dan McGuinness Pub at the time which cost less that $5,000.

53 According to Billboard Magazine, The J. Geils Band was among the most popular touring rock and roll bands of the 1970s. In the early 1980s the band combined their rock style with pop, creating hits such as “Centerfold” that spent six weeks at Number One on the Billboard pop chart in 1981 and “Freeze- Frame” that reached Number Four on the same chart in 1982; Billboard Magazine’s official website: [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=4699&cr=artist&or=ASCENDING&sf=length&kw=J .%20Geils%20Band] accessed 4 March 2006.

54 Born Robert James Ritchie, 17 January 1971, Kid Rock grew up near Detroit Michigan. His musical style includes elements of blues, southern rock, soul, rap, country, and heavy metal music. According to the RIAA, Kid Rock sold over eighteen million albums from 1990 to 2005; “Top Artists,” RIAA’s official website, [http://www.riaa.com/gp/bestsellers/topartists.asp], accessed 11 March 2006.

55 John’s thirtieth birthday party was held at the Fontanel Estate on 7 January 2004. The above artists attended the event at the request of Paul Worley, Chief Creative Officer at Warner Bros.

56 Interview with author, 3 March 2006. The above performance with Kid Rock took place at Dan McGuinness Pub on 17 February 2004. Other artists who were present included Jon, John, James, Gretchen, John Phillips, Jason White, James Slater, Anders Osborne, Angelo, Eric & Jared, Corinne Chapman, Damien, and Traci Samelson; “News: Tuesday 17 February 2004,” MuzikMafia’s official website, [http://www.muzikmafia.com/data.php?action=news] accessed 5 March 2006.

219 It's just so refreshing to see people who play music and write music and have a passion about it. And to want to form a clique -- a Mafia, if you will -- of other people who love music and love to play music. And that's the sole purpose of it. Not for anything else.57

Kid Rock invited the MuzikMafia to perform with him on several tour dates in February and March. The first took place on Thursday 12 February in Chattanooga, Tennessee. During the show Kid Rock encouraged Gretchen to join him on stage to sing a duet entitled “Pictures.”58 The rest of the MuzikMafia performed with Kid Rock after the show at a local club. Similar MuzikMafia performances with Kid Rock took place in Memphis on 6 March and in Detroit on 20 March that year. The MuzikMafia left Dan McGuinness Pub in early March 2004 for several reasons. The first was over a financial dispute. The godfathers requested that their sound engineer Scotty receive payment for his services independent of any monies that were paid to the MuzikMafia for performances.59 Taylor states that the requested amount for an additional $700-800 was unreasonable when weighed against the house gross for Tuesday shows.60 The dispute was never resolved. Second, the two performances with Kid Rock in Memphis and Detroit, respectively, also kept MuzikMafia away from performing regularly in Nashville. The MuzikMafia’s last show at Dan McGuinness Pub took place on 2 March 2004. In this chapter I have examined the MuzikMafia’s various changes from October 2001 through March 2004. The MuzikMafia’s popularity in Nashville was already apparent from the overflow crowds that gathered each Tuesday night at the Pub of Love. However, Music Row was still a distant entity in the physical and metaphorical sense. It

57 Kid Rock, 26 May 2004, following the 39th Academy of Country Music Awards show in Las Vegas. Kid Rock performed later that night with the MuzikMafia at the House of Blues; cited in Gilbert, Calvin, Thursday 27 May 2004, “Muzik Mafia Make Vegas an Offer It Couldn't Refuse,” CMT official website, [http://posting.cmt.com/artists/news/1487969/05272004/otto_james.jhtml], accessed 10 March 2006.

58 “News: Tuesday 17 February 2004,” MuzikMafia’s official website, [http://www.muzikmafia.com/data.php?action=news] accessed 5 March 2006.

59 Brad Taylor, 3 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

60 Brad Taylor, 3 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

220 was not until the MuzikMafia moved to the Demonbreun Street Roundabout that its members attracted serious attention from Music Row in the form of recording contracts, publishing deals, and inquiries from high-profile management agencies. In Chapter Eleven I explore how MuzikMafia artists went from performing weekly shows for crowds of 200 people at Dan McGuinness Pub to multi-platinum album sales, national media exposure, and concert tours for millions of fans by the year’s end.

221 CHAPTER ELEVEN: MARCH THROUGH DECEMBER 2004: EMERGENCE INTO THE POPULAR MAINSTREAM

Introduction Country Music Television (CMT) declared on 18 December 2004 that the MuzikMafia was the Number One hit of the year.1 The rapid growth in popularity of the MuzikMafia was the result of its two breakout acts, Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson, who celebrated combined record sales of approximately five million units from May through December 2004.2 Big & Rich and Gretchen toured throughout the summer, respectively, with some of commercial country’s best known acts. By year’s end Big & Rich and Gretchen were co-headlining their own national tour sponsored by Chevrolet. In this chapter I examine MuzikMafia’s emergence into the popular mainstream. Although the community had been experiencing considerable success at Dan McGuinness Pub, it was not until the move to the Mercy Lounge when the MuzikMafia gained significant national attention vis-à-vis hit singles by Gretchen and Big & Rich, respectively, and the release of their respective debut albums. The national media exposure that ensued was the result of the two acts’ novelty juxtaposed against current trends in commercial country music. Gretchen became the “redneck woman,” and Big & Rich rekindled the industry’s interest in combining genres, namely country and rock. This chapter examines the changes that occurred as a result of the MuzikMafia’s national popularity. I describe how the godfathers sanctioned the creation of a sub- community known as the Mafia Mizfits to insure the MuzikMafia’s longevity. In addition, I explain the MuzikMafia’s relocation to Bluesboro, a local blues club, and the MuzikMafia’s eventual cessation of Tuesday performances altogether.

1 20 Biggest Hits of 2004, produced by Terry Bumgarner, directed by Bill Bradshaw, narrated by Devon O’Day, first broadcast 18 December 2004 by CMT.

2 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified Wilson’s 2004 debut album Here for the Party as triple platinum on 4 November 2004, Big & Rich’s Horse of a Different Color as double platinum on 11 January 2005, and Big & Rich’s Super Galactic Fan Pack as platinum as platinum on 11 January 2005; “Gold and Platinum Certifications,” RIAA’s official website, searchable database, keywords: Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich [http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/], accessed 14 March 2006.

222 In a closing section I analyze the MuzikMafia’s popularity within the context of Nashville’s commercial music scene in 2004. Was the sudden increase in commercial country’s popularity a result of Big & Rich and Gretchen’s contributions or was Gretchen and Big & Rich’s celebrity made possible by the increasing popularity of commercial country music? In addition, what changes did the MuzikMafia undergo as a result of its widespread success? Finally, did the MuzikMafia during its national popularity retain or lose its previous local identity and fanbase?

The Move Back to Downtown Musical Geography of SoBro The MuzikMafia performed in 2004 and 2005 in “SoBro” which is Nashville’s downtown industrial area that extends “south of Broadway” to Interstate 40 and from the Cumberland River west to CSX railroad near the Union Station Hotel (see Figure 11.1). Until recent efforts to develop the area commercially, SoBro was an unattractive addition to downtown with its trash-burning Nashville Thermal Plant and numerous run-down buildings (See Figure 11.2). In the late 1990s the city began developing the area with the addition of the Gaylord Entertainment Center in 1997, the Hilton Nashville Downtown in 2001, and the new site for the Country Music Hall of Fame also in 2001. SoBro’s most recent projects include the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, plans for a future baseball stadium, and Encore, a thirty-three-story condominium complex.3

Figure 11.1. Map of SoBro.

3 Getahn, Ward, 2006, “Projects Begin to Sketch Future for 'SoBro' District: Convention Center Tints Images of Neighborhood's Possibilities,” The Tennessean, “Business Section,” Sunday 2 April, [http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060402/BUSINESS01/604020378] accessed 22 April 2006.

223

Music clubs in the SoBro area of downtown are stylistically more diverse than those in the nearby country-dominated scene in The District. The Station Inn located on Twelfth Avenue South promotes bluegrass, while 3rd & Lindsley Bar and Grill features a variety of acts including progressive rock, blues, R&B, rock & roll, Americana, and soul. Bluesboro on Second Avenue South was a popular destination for blues artists and the MuzikMafia until the club closed in late summer 2004. The Mercy Lounge and the Cannery Row Ballroom, both located at One Cannery Row, have attracted artists such as REM, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Cliff, Midnight Oil, Brett Michaels, George Clinton, Robert Cray, Yo La Tengo, Lenny Kravitz, KRS-One, and the MuzikMafia. RCKTWN on Sixth Avenue South caters to younger audiences with rock, punk, rap, and Top 40 music. One can find a variety of rock, classic jazz, blues, Americana, and singer-songwriter acts at The Basement located on Eighth Avenue South. Jazz enthusiasts flock to the Jazz 88 Bistro on Ninth Avenue South. Reflections is an upscale club on Eighth Avenue South that features a variety of dance music from swing to DJ-driven electronica. The Bar Car located on Tenth Avenue South is the city’s primary source for trance music, drum and bass, and rap, which I will discuss later in this chapter.

224

The Mercy Lounge In March 2004 the MuzikMafia’s fanbase grew considerably as a result of the community’s ties to Kid Rock and Music Row. The godfathers looked around Nashville for a venue that was large enough to accommodate audiences in excess of five hundred people, one small enough to recreate the intimacy of the Pub of Love, and one that contained sufficient sound equipment for the MuzikMafia’s needs. The community found such at the Mercy Lounge located at One Cannery Row in the SoBro area of downtown Nashville (see Figure 11.3).

Figure 11.3. Map: MuzikMafia Locales in Nashville. A = Pub of Love; B = Demonbreun Street Roundabout; C = Mercy Lounge/Cannery Row Ballroom; D = Bluesboro.

The Mercy Lounge is housed on historic Cannery Row in downtown Nashville. The building is an older structure that had been erected as a flour mill in 1863 (see Figures 11.4 and 11.5). Cannery Row earned its name when the Dale Food Company bought the building in 1957 and began processing food, eventually opening a restaurant called “The Cannery” in the early 1970's. During the 1970s the building housed a country music theater that eventually included other genres of music in the 1980s. Cannery Row

225 is surrounded by dimly-lit streets, aging buildings in need of repair, and a few locally owned businesses. Today the building houses the Mercy Lounge, where the MuzikMafia regularly performed for approximately four months in 2004, in addition to the Cannery Row Ballroom.

Figure 11.4. Photo of Cannery Row, downtown Nashville, July 2005. Photo by author.

Figure 11.5. Photo of The Mercy Lounge at Cannery Row, July 2005. Photo by author.

By 2004 the Mercy Lounge had not been considered a country bar for almost two decades. In fact, it is separated from Nashville’s country music scene in The District by more than five blocks. The Mercy Lounge’s musical history contains performances by numerous acts from diverse genres. Well-known bands that have performed there include

226 REM, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Cliff, Midnight Oil, Brett Michaels, George Clinton, Robert Cray, Yo La Tengo, and Lenny Kravitz. The MuzikMafia began Tuesday performances at the Mercy Lounge on 6 April 2004. One of the godfathers had contacted that afternoon the co-owner of the Mercy Lounge, Chark Kirsolving, who immediately invited the MuzikMafia to play. Tuesday was the least patronized day of the week for the Mercy Lounge. Kirsolving’s business partner Todd Ohlhauser, who was unfamiliar with the MuzikMafia, admits that he was surprised at how many people came, the size of the crowd, and how late the audience stayed, especially on a weeknight.4 The Mercy Lounge was an optimal location for the MuzikMafia. First and foremost, the bar was separate from the commercial country scene along lower Broadway. Second, the Mercy Lounge is also distant from the Demonbreun Street Roundabout area, resulting in fewer college students and industry personnel at shows. Third, the sound system was more adequate for the MuzikMafia’s needs. The Mercy Lounge’s owners had been renting a “fine but somewhat outdated” professional sound system from the Exit-In, a well-known club in the Rock Block area of Nashville near Vanderbilt University. In mid-summer the Mercy Lounge owners purchased a new, professional-grade system, complete with an Allen & Heath ML3000 console, a 2 Drive Rack 260 processor, and an array of professional monitors, speakers, and microphones.5 Fourth, The Mercy Lounge had its own sound engineer, Cory Hall, who did not have to be paid separately by the MuzikMafia. Fifth, Ohlhauser and Kirsolving had offered the MuzikMafia payment comparable to what they had received at The Tin Roof and Dan McGuinness Pub. Finally, the Mercy Lounge could accommodate over 550 people. The bar is also located in the same building as the much larger Cannery Row Ballroom which has a maximum capacity of 1,100 people, should the MuzikMafia decide to expand. The MuzikMafia’s popularity grew significantly during the community’s tenure at the Mercy Lounge. In May Warner Bros. and Sony released debut albums by Big & Rich and Gretchen, respectively. John, Kenny, and Gretchen’s national recognition trickled

4 Ohlhauser reports that the MuzikMafia frequently played as late as 1:30 a.m.; Todd Ohlhauser, 7 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

5 For more detailed technical information, see the Mercy Lounge’s official website at [http://www.mercylounge.com/main.php?content=technical].

227 down to the MuzikMafia. By July of that year, Tuesday night shows at the Mercy Lounge were regularly attracting the national media, including camera crews from CMT. However, Big & Rich and Gretchen’s success kept them from performing regularly at Tuesday shows. Faced with the realization that other MuzikMafia members might follow a similar path, the MuzikMafia sanctioned the creation of a sub-community known as the Mafia Mizfits intended to re-supply the MuzikMafia with local talent.

The Mafia Mizfits The community of Mafia Mizfits was the brainchild of Daniel Bird, also known as “Alaska Dan” by most of his friends.6 Dan received his nickname from Kenny whom he first met in January 2004. Dan had flown to Nashville from Alaska to visit a girlfriend. The two serendipitously met Kenny at Dan McGuinness Pub on a Thursday evening and entered into conversation. Dan was unaware of the MuzikMafia but was intrigued with Kenny who invited Dan back to Dan McGuinness Pub the next day to meet John, Cory, and Jon. Following an informal conversation about each other’s respective life philosophies, Dan asked the godfathers if he and his girlfriend could perform at MuzikMafia the following Tuesday. Kenny’s response was, “Come Tuesday night and be ready to play…and hey, Alaska, just don’t suck.”7 Dan and his girlfriend performed the following Tuesday as expected, and Dan returned to Alaska the following Wednesday, Dan was inspired by his experience with the MuzikMafia.8 He sold all of his possessions within a few weeks and returned to Nashville to set up permanent residence. Upon his arrival, Dan reconnected with Kenny who allowed Dan to set up a tent on his property in Whites Creek for a few weeks. Dan did various odd jobs to assist Kenny and the MuzikMafia such as loading equipment, hanging the title banner at

6 Dan was born 16 January 1978 in Litchfield, Connecticut. After dropping out of University Wisconsin at Green Bay in fall 1997, Dan resided for a brief time among friends in New Hampshire and later Wisconsin. He eventually relocated to Alaska to continue his studies. Dan plays drums, guitar, and harmonica in addition to being a singer and songwriter; Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

7 Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

8 Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

228 performances, hauling drums, and driving to gigs. According to Dan, “The [Muzik]Mafia put up with me because I wasn’t going away.”9 Dan eventually moved off of Kenny’s property into his own house near the Fontanel estate in Whites Creek and began working for Marc Oswald. Dan envisioned the Mafia Mizfits while driving away from the CMT 2004 Flame Worthy Video Music Awards on 21 April 2004.10 He and Christiev Carothers, Kenny’s future wife, were out purchasing beer for John and Kenny who had attended the live broadcast. Dan started brainstorming with Christiev about the possibility of starting a community of amateur musicians that would grow and develop under the MuzikMafia’s guidance. Dan wanted to provide an outlet for creative expression for talented artists from diverse genres who might eventually become regular members of the MuzikMafia. Christiev suggested that Dan call them the “Mafia Mizfits.” Dan shared his idea with the godfathers who subsequently agreed to oversee the new venture.11 The Mafia Mizfits first performed on Friday 30 April 2004 at the Star Café in Whites Creek. Dan modeled each show after those of the MuzikMafia from its Pub of Love days. Dan began each performance with a set of songs either on his guitar or harmonica, followed by a series of sets featuring Mafia Mizfits artists. Each evening comprised diverse artistic performances in an informal atmosphere. The Mafia Mizfits attracted artists of varying backgrounds but eventually settled into a core membership of what Dan refers to as the “Grape Eight.”12 Dan identifies mostly with rock music. Jennifer Bain, commonly known as “SWJ,” an acronym for “Spoken Word Jen,” performs spoken word. Damien Horne, also known as “Mr. D.,”

9 Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. 10 The CMT 2004 Flame Worthy Video Music Awards were broadcast live on CMT. While at the awards show John and Kenny sat next to Shannon Brown who discussed John’s possible involvement in her upcoming album with Warner Bros. John eventually produced the album, co-writing several of its songs with Brown. Entitled Corn Fed, Brown’s album was released by Warner Bros. in March 2006; Gilbert, Calvin, 1 March 2006, “Shannon Brown Finally Releases Her First Album,” CMT’s official website: [http://www.cmt.com/artists/news/1525184/03012006/big_rich.jhtml?_requestid=161329] accessed 2 March 2006.

11 Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

12 Daniel Bird, 9 October 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

229 specializes in rock and pop, and he eventually became a regular member of the MuzikMafia.13 Bridget Tatum is a singer/songwriter of commercial country music. John Philips is also a singer/songwriter; he is most well-known for his song entitled “Saved” that appears on Big & Rich’s album Horse of a Different Color. Other core members of the Mafia Mizfits include Rick Daniel, Chad Biggs, and Keaton Allen. The Mafia Mizfits are significant because of their close ties to the MuzikMafia and its earlier performances at the Pub of Love. Max, who frequently attended Mafia Mizfits shows, acknowledges that Mafia Mizfits jam sessions were similar to those of the MuzikMafia that he remembers from the Pub of Love.14 Accordingly, one is able to make ethnographic analogies about the early days of MuzikMafia based upon Mafia Mizfits performances. The Mafia Mizfits often performed twice a week: Friday evenings at the Star Café in Whites Creek and Sundays at a club called The Sutler near Belmont University in Nashville.15 In September 2004 the community moved its Sunday shows to Bluesboro on Second Avenue where the MuzikMafia was performing each Tuesday. Unfortunately, the Mafia Mizfits experienced only marginal success in the shadow of the MuzikMafia and ceased regular performances in October 2004. Several Mafia Mizfits members, namely Dan, John, and Damien, received publishing deals, respectively. The godfathers later invited Damien to become a core member of the MuzikMafia in January 2005. SWJ became Cory Gierman’s personal assistant, a position that regularly kept her out of town on tours with Big & Rich and Gretchen. In addition, SWJ was director of the Mafia Soldiers, a web-based MuzikMafia fan club.16 Dan accepted a job as one of Marc Oswald’s personal assistants; his duties included driving Marc’s personal tour bus and coordinating entertainment for tour participants. The MuzikMafia attributes its national popularity in 2004 to the success of Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich. Both acts celebrated platinum album sales, national

13 Damien was added to the MuzikMafia’s website roster of official members in January 2005. 14 Abrams, Max, 3 October 2004, unrecorded conversation with author, Nashville.

15 The Sutler is located in Nashville at 2608 Franklin Pike within walking distance from Belmont University.

16 Jennifer Bain, a.k.a. “SWJ,” became an official MuzikMafia member in spring 2007.

230 concert tours, and widespread media exposure. In the following sections, I examine the successes of these two acts, respectively, and I describe their influences on the growth and popularity of the MuzikMafia community.

Debut Album Releases by Gretchen and Big & Rich Gretchen’s performance of “Redneck Woman” at the Country Radio Seminar (CRS) in early March 2004 in Nashville marked the beginning of her many national successes that year.17 The response from radio programmers at the conference was overwhelmingly positive, prompting Sony to release the single “Redneck Woman” to radio on 5 March. The single reached Number One on Billboard’s Country Singles charts in late May, approximately twelve weeks after its release, faster than any other song since Billy Ray Cyrus’s 1992 hit “Achy Breaky Heart.” 18 “Redneck Woman” also became the first Number One hit for any female country artist in two years. The song remained at Number One for six weeks, longer than any other debut female country artist in forty years.19 Gretchen’s album Here for the Party was likewise successful. Gretchen’s debut at the Country Radio Seminar in March prompted Sony to move the album’s scheduled release date from mid-July to 11 June. The album debuted at Number One on Billboard’s Country Album charts and Number Two on the Top 200 album charts. According to Billboard Magazine, Here for the Party sold approximately 227,000 units during its first week, more than any other country artist in history.20 The RIAA certified Here for the Party as gold and platinum simultaneously on 21 June and as double platinum on 19

17 The Country Radio Seminar (CRS) is the annual meeting of Country Radio Broadcasters, Inc. Each year the organization’s members meet in Nashville to discuss the growth and development of the commercial country music industry and the country radio format. For more information, see its official website at: [http://www.crb.org/home/index.php].

18 “Gretchen Wilson: Biography,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 11 March 2006.

19 “Jeff Foxworthy to Host 2005 CMT Music Awards,” from CMT’s official website, [http://www.cmt.com/artists/news/1496386/01312005/foxworthy_jeff.jhtml], accessed 11 March 2006.

20 “Gretchen Wilson: Biography,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 11 March 2006.

231 July.21 The RIAA reports that, by 4 November, the album had sold over three million copies.22 Gretchen even surpassed pop artist Ashlee Simpson as the best selling, new female artist of any genre in 2004.23 Big & Rich’s recording success in 2004 was also substantial even though their musical style draws heavily upon rock, blues, soul, funk, Latin, and commercial country influences. Jules Wortman, Sr. Vice-President of Publicity & Artist Development at Warner Bros., remembers the first time she heard Big & Rich’s music: When I listened to their demo, I thought, “This is gonna be fun, great, but oh my word, what are we going to do?” Because it [the album] was just so out there. Was it going to get played on country radio? Where were we going to take it? After listening to the whole record I thought, I cannot pitch this any other way than a body of work to the media. I can’t pitch it one song at a time. I can’t send the single out and then try to follow up. I wrote my pitch letter and I was able to send the record out because they had been working on it, and everything was beginning to happen.24

Jules was in charge of Big & Rich’s publicity—not an easy task according to her. She remembers her efforts in pitching the album to a variety of “taste-makers”: I really threw this record out there. I really thought it through. I wrote pitch letter after pitch letter… I couldn’t pitch it one song at a time. I couldn’t send the single out and then try to follow up. [Instead] I wrote, “It’s a body of work. You need to get a cocktail, and crank it loud in your house…. But just don’t listen to it one track at a time and put it away. You have to listen to it and dial in, and it will tell you who these people are.” So I had to make that the focus in order to get people to figure out what Big & Rich was all about. And oh my word, did they get it.25

21 “Gold and Platinum Certifications,” RIAA’s official website, searchable database keywords: Gretchen Wilson, [http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/], accessed 11 March 2006.

22 “Gold and Platinum Certifications,” RIAA’s official website, searchable database keywords: Gretchen Wilson, [http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/], accessed 11 March 2006.

23 Press Release, “Country Music Has a Strong Year in 2004 with Double Digit Sales Increase over 2003,” 5 January 2005, Country Music Association–World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=393&year=2005] accessed 11 March 2006.

24 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

25 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

232 Jules sent her pitch letter to a variety of influential people, including Gavin Edwards at the Wall Street Journal, Joe Levy at Rolling Stone Magazine, and Craig Marks at Blender Magazine to Brain Mansfield at USA Today; Jules sent additional copies of the letter to the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Warner Bros. released Big & Rich’s first single “Wild West Show” in December 2003, but the song peaked at Number Twenty-One on Billboard’s Country Singles charts four months later. Big & Rich’s widespread popularity did not come until after the release of “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” in April 2004. The song reached Number Eleven on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles charts despite the fact that it received relatively little radio airplay.26 However, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” attracted national attention through other media than radio. The song received widespread exposure as the theme to ESPN's 2004 World Series of Poker.27 In addition, the song’s video entered the regular rotation on CMT and GAC, largely because it contained a variety of visual spectacles including horses, the Pearl-Cohn High School marching band, a dominatrix color guard, Two-Foot Fred, a convertible, Gretchen on a John Deere tractor, the Atlanta Falcons cheerleaders, John wearing hip-hop-style attire, and Cowboy Troy as drum major—all filmed on the Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge in downtown Nashville.28 Horse of a Different Color experienced considerable sales despite the relatively low radio airplay of its singles.29 The album debuted at Number Fourteen on Billboard’s Country Album chart in early May and peaked at Number Six on the Top 200 album

26 “Big & Rich: Artist Chart History,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 11 March 2006.

27 Press Release, “Country Music Has a Strong Year in 2004 with Double Digit Sales Increase over 2003,” 5 January 2005, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=393&year=2005] accessed 11 March 2006.

28 The above video was filmed on 15 April in Nashville. Big & Rich were fined approximately $23,000 by the city. There was damage done to the bridge allegedly caused by hoof marks from the numerous horses used in the video.

29 In addition to “Wild West Show” and “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” Warner Bros. released “Holy Water” and “Big Time” as singles that peaked at Number Fifteen and Number Twenty, respectively, on Billboard’s Country Singles charts; “Big & Rich: Artist Chart History,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 11 March 2006.

233 charts on 24 July.30 Horse of a Different Color replaced Gretchen’s Here for the Party at Number One on Billboard’s Country Album chart in late August. The RIAA certified Horse of a Different Color as gold on 7 July and as platinum on 18 August that year. In addition, the Country Music Association identified Big & Rich’s Horse of a Different Color as the Number Seven best selling country album of 2004 with sales in excess of 1,775,000 units.31

The Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards Gretchen and Big & Rich’s popularity resulted in an invitation to perform at the 39th Academy of Country Music Awards on 26 May in Las Vegas.32 Marc Oswald booked the two acts. According to Marc, “Gretchen was a shoe-in, but John and Kenny were a big sell.”33 Marc elaborates: Dick Clark’s son produced the ACMs and he wanted to bring something entirely new to the show. The ACM board members were really forward thinking. Rod [Rod Essig, the ACM President] really embraced the whole idea. They were blown away after the performance.34

Marc had negotiated a five-and-a-half-minute, self-produced segment—the longest in the show—for John, Kenny and Gretchen. Marc’s background as a television producer contributed to the success of negotiations with the ACM. Marc describes the performance as a “watershed” for both acts.35

30 “Big & Rich: Artist Chart History,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 11 March 2006.

31 Press Release, “Country Music Has a Strong Year in 2004 with Double Digit Sales Increase over 2003,” 5 January 2005, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=393&year=2005] accessed 11 March 2006.

32 39th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, executive producer Dick Clark and R. A. Clark, produced by Barry Adelman, directed by Jeff Margolis, first broadcast on 26 May 2004 by CBS.

33 Interview with author, 13 January 2005.

34 Marc Oswald, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

35 Marc Oswald, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

234 Big & Rich’s arrival at the ACM awards was a media spectacle. Jules Wortman wanted John and Kenny to make a grand entrance, so she rented two horses for the duo to ride down the red carpet. According to Jules: I got it cleared through the ACMs. They thought I was crazy. They tried to kill it. Then they said, “No, you’re right, we need to allow you to do this.” So we arrived on the red carpet with these horses, with a limo, the girls from the video, and several [Muzik]Mafia members. The fans went completely nuts. The fans were singing “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).”36

The stunt generated much press coverage during and after the event. Jules asserts that Big & Rich received more press in the weeks following the ACM awards than many of the nominees or award winners.37 Backstage after the show John emphasized the evening’s significance: The [ACM] awards show appearance was a major moment for the MuzikMafia. It felt rather galactic, actually. We got to stand there and watch Gretchen Wilson, a girl [who] Kenny and I saw in March of 1999 singing as a bartender getting up with the house band at a little bar in Nashville. She got up and just blew the speakers out at this bar. That was five years ago. To watch her finally get up there and get her shot was just awesome.38

Following the ACM broadcast, the MuzikMafia performed a late-night show that lasted until 3AM at the nearby House of Blues in Las Vegas. Guest artists included Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, Kid Rock, Terri Clark, Sherrie Austin.

Summer 2004 Tours Big & Rich and Gretchen reached millions of fans in summer 2004 by touring with major acts. In mid-summer Gretchen joined Kenny Chesney’s Tiki Bars and a Whole Lotta Love tour that had begun in March with opening acts Keith Urban and Dierks Bentley. The tour ended mid-September, having sold more than 1.1 million tickets

36 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

37 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

38 Gilbert, Calvin, Thursday 27 May 2004, “Muzik Mafia Make Vegas an Offer It Couldn't Refuse,” CMT official website, [http://posting.cmt.com/artists/news/1487969/05272004/otto_james.jhtml], accessed 10 March 2006.

235 and grossing over fifty million dollars.39 Big & Rich began in June their stint with Tim McGraw on his Out Loud tour that included thirty-three performances across the United States. Cowboy Troy accompanied Big & Rich, often singing a duet with McGraw entitled “My Kind of Rain.”40 McGraw’s tour sold over 750,000 tickets and grossed over forty million dollars. Tables 11.1 and 11.2 demonstrate the significance of such tours for Gretchen and Big & Rich. Chesney’s tour ranked Number Two in attendance for all concert tours in 2004, regardless of genre. McGraw’s tour ranked Number Six in attendance. Among tours specifically by country music artists, Chesney ranked Number One and McGraw was Number Three. Gretchen and Big & Rich received widespread exposure while on their respective tours, fueling their own popularity vis-à-vis increased album sales and numerous television appearances. Table 11.1. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2004: all genres.41

All Genre Top Ten Artists 2004 Tour Attendance 1. Prince 1,431,454 2. Kenny Chesney 1,143,909 3. Metallica 1,054,238 4. Dave Matthews Band 951,488 5.Toby Keith 913,520 6.Tim McGraw 764,100 7. Sting 749,988 8. Kid Rock 723,163 9. Van Halen 710,504 10. John Mayer 690,462

39 Chesney ended his tour on 13 September 2004 at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in downtown Nashville.

40 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

41 Press Release, “Country Music Has a Strong Year in 2004 with Double Digit Sales Increase over 2003,” 5 January 2005, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=393&year=2005] accessed 12 March 2006.

236 Table 11.2. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2004: country music.42

Country Top Ten Artists 2004 Tour Attendance 1. Kenny Chesney 1,143,909 2. Toby Keith 913,520 3. Tim McGraw 764,100 4. Alan Jackson/Martina McBride 660,040 5. Jimmy Buffett 580,829 6. Shania Twain 525,930 7. George Strait 391,167 8. Brooks & Dunn 366,121 9. Rascal Flatts 344,827 10. Alabama 304,311

Bluesboro The MuzikMafia decided in late July to move its weekly Tuesday night shows from the Mercy Lounge to Bluesboro, a blues club located in the Sobro area of Nashville at 217 2nd Avenue South (Figure 11.6). Cory describes how MuzikMafia musicians were growing weary of weekly shows at the Mercy Lounge: Our folks were looking to go somewhere else, too, just to do something different. Every week [at the Mercy Lounge] got old quickly. You need to do something to freshen it up in some ways. Sometimes a venue change is necessary.43

Having opened in early June 2004, Bluesboro was a new addition to the Nashville music scene. MuzikMafia acquaintance Mark Fortney, a.k.a. “Butter,” was a cousin to Rob Fortney, the club’s owner. Mark approached Rob and Cory about the possibility of changing venues.44 Rob negotiated a deal with the MuzikMafia that was more generous than what Ohlhauser was willing to match. After examining the venue and agreeing to an

42 Press Release, “Country Music Has a Strong Year in 2004 with Double Digit Sales Increase over 2003,” 5 January 2005, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=393&year=2005] accessed 12 March 2006.

43 Cory Gierman, 18 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

44 Butter is one half of the Butter and Sugar Show, a local act that played on occasion with the MuzikMafia at Dan McGuinness Pub. The act toured the college scene throughout the southeast for much of 2004, eventually forming the Nashville Trailer Choir with Chance that fall. Butter resumed performances at MuzikMafia shows, this time as a solo act, in February 2006.

237 undisclosed amount money for weekly shows, the godfathers agreed to change venues. The MuzikMafia began performances at Bluesboro on 27 July.45

Figure 11.6. Photo of Bluesboro-Nashville, July 2005. Photo taken by author.

The MuzikMafia experienced several changes as a result of its move to Bluesboro. First, the audience demographic changed significantly. In addition to the MuzikMafia’s regular following of working-class fans and industry personnel, Bluesboro audiences attracted many well-dressed young professionals. I attribute this to the club’s upscale interior that included glossy, hardwood floors; a large, wood-paneled, ellipse- shaped bar complete with nice, overhead lighting and brass fittings; a large projection screen adjacent the stage; an upstairs balcony with a mini-bar; a lower-level dance/eating area with a third bar; a full kitchen and food menu; a large stage area; a sizable outdoor patio with tables and chairs; and a maximum capacity of approximately 800 people. Second, the presence of the media became increasingly apparent with each Tuesday performance. On 17 August a crew from the television news show 60 Minutes

45 The owner of the Mercy Lounger, Todd Ohlhauser, reports that Rob Fortney offered the MuzikMafia over $1,000 per show to relocate to Bluesboro; Todd Ohlhauser, 7 March 2006, telephone interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer audio file, personal collection.. Cory is reluctant to discuss the exact amount of Fortney’s offer because of the uniqueness of performances. It is normally the case that Nashville artists receive a small portion of the house’s gross for an evening in addition to a small honorarium. Many musicians play for free at the city’s numerous clubs in order to get exposure as a musician and/or songwriter. However, by late summer 2004 the MuzikMafia was a significant part of the national music scene and regularly attracted well-known guest artists. The community’s payment for weekly shows was much more than most Nashville artists receive for performances for which no admission tickets are required.

238 was present with numerous cameras to film segments for an upcoming segment on Gretchen. I noticed upon my arrival on 28 September that a film crew from CMT had already set up several stationary cameras. They were shooting footage for MuzikMafia TV that was scheduled to air in January and February 2005. The CMT film crew returned on 6 October to film a Warner Bros. showcase for the MuzikMafia television series. Third, the MuzikMafia’s list of guest artists grew in both number and popularity. George Clinton and his band P-Funk accompanied the MuzikMafia on 28 September at Bluesboro. The MuzikMafia featured Shannon Brown and Angie Aparo in addition to James Otto and Jon Nicholson during a Warner Bros. showcase on 3 August.46 Nashville Star 2003 finalist Jamey Garner performed on several occasions at Bluesboro with the MuzikMafia and the Mafia Mizfits. Producer and publisher Jerry Phillips attended James’s solo show at Bluesboro on 14 September.47 Martina McBride attended a show at John’s request on 6 October.48 The presence of the above well-known personalities generated much press coverage for the MuzikMafia among the Nashville media. The result was a relatively substantial number of people who attended each week solely to meet and hear popular artists. The MuzikMafia’s last performance at Bluesboro took place on 6 October. The club had been experiencing financial difficulties due to low profits on weekends.49 In addition, the community’s members had little time for weekly performances. Preparations for the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour were well underway for its first performance on 5 November. John, Kenny, and Gretchen were busy preparing for their contributions to the CMA awards show scheduled for 9 November. Finally, the media

46 Angie Aparo is a singer/songwriter who performed on occasion with the MuzikMafia at The Tin Roof and Dan McGuinness Pub. He has recorded four albums since 1996. Aparo’s 2000 album entitled The American contained the single “Spaceship” that reached Number Thirty-Five on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart that year; “Angie Aparo: Artist Chart History,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 19 March 2006.

47 Jerry is the son of Sam Phillips who owned and operated legendary Sun Records in Memphis from January 1950. Like his father, Jerry is a music producer and publisher. He is preseident of Big River Broadcasting and currently runs a radio station and recording studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

48 McBride has won the CMA award for Female Vocalist of the Year four times: 1999, 2002, 2003, and 2004. She has sold over fifteen million albums since 1992 and has charted twenty top ten country hits.

49 Bluesboro eventually closed down in early 2005.

239 frenzy surrounding Big & Rich and Gretchen had generated larger audiences than Bluesboro could comfortably accommodate at weekly shows. The godfathers decided that it was time for a break. The MuzikMafia ceased weekly shows altogether on 6 October 2004 and did not resume until 24 January 2006.50

The Country Music Association (CMA) Awards Big & Rich and Gretchen shadowed their earlier performance at the ACM awards with an appearance at the 38th Annual Country Music Association Awards on 9 November.51 The event was broadcast live on CBS from the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. Marc negotiated the details with Robert Deaton and Larry Fitzgerald who were in charge of the television committee for the Country Music Association (CMA). Marc expected the CMA to request that Big & Rich sing “Holy Water,” the duo’s current single at the time. Much to Marc’s surprise, Deaton and Fitzgerald asked for “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)” featuring Cowboy Troy. Marc explains: They asked us to do “Rollin” which was amazing. We wanted to do “Rollin” to open an awards show, any awards show. We just wanted that song to be on TV. The CMA normally wants the single, whatever you have on the radio. They want familiarity; it just makes sense. Robert [Deaton] called me a said, “These guys [CMA producers] are ready to talk about Big & Rich now for the CMAs.” They [the producers] had already confirmed Gretchen…. I was expecting “Holy Water.” He [Deaton] said, “You’re not going to believe this but they want to the Ballad [of Big & Rich].” I said, “You’re shitting me.” He said, “I told them that it was going to either happen here [at the CMAs] or the next show they [Big & Rich] were on. It’s inevitable how big that’s going to be, how big Troy’s going to be.” They [the producers] wanted to make sure that that this new form of music got its birthplace at the CMAs and on the Grand Ole Opry stage and not in L.A., in Vegas, or New York City where Nashville couldn’t claim it[self] as being a real launch pad. If we had had “Holy Water” on there, we would have ended up doing the “Ballad of Big & Rich” on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve or on the ACM awards [next spring].52

50 I discuss the community’s sporadic performances together in Nashville throughout 2005 in Chapter Twelve.

51 38th Annual Country Music Association Awards, produced by Walter Miller, directed by Paul Miller, first broadcast on 9 November 2004 by CBS.

52 Marc Oswald, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

240 The CMA’s decision to have Big & Rich perform “Rollin’” is significant for several reasons. First, as I discuss in Chapter Four, the song features Troy’s rap interlude. Troy’s presence on the Grand Ole Opry stage is significant, not only because he is black, but also because he is a rapper. In addition, Troy is the second black musician ever to perform on the CMA Awards; the first was Charlie Pride some thirty-eight years prior.53 It is improbable that Troy would have impacted Nashville in this way had it not been for his association with the MuzikMafia. By November 2004 the MuzikMafia had become a metaphor for change in the institution of commercial country music, and artists who were associated with the MuzikMafia were likewise part of that change. Second, John and Kenny’s combination of rock and country in “Rollin’” was out- of-place at best amidst the line-up of well-known commercial country musicians who also performed that evening.54 Third, Big & Rich’s song “Holy Water” was the duo’s current single at the time, not “Rollin’.” The second logical choice would have been “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).” Instead, the show’s producers asked specifically for “Rollin’” and welcomed participation by Cowboy Troy and Two-Foot Fred. Marc was inspired by the decision: And they [the CMA] wanted to have a stake in introducing a black act to this format that’s going to be a superstar, and I think it’s awesome. I think it’s amazing that they were thinking that far ahead, because there’s a lot of risk in that for them…not only a black act, but also Big & Rich that are on the rockin’ side of country, and we still hadn’t had a hit on the radio…. They [the producers] wanted the whole thing with Fred, Troy, and everything, the whole freak parade. It was inspirational.55

The following day, the online edition of the local newspaper, The Tennessean, contained editorials from sixty-eight of the show’s viewers. Although Gretchen received much praise for her performance of “When I Think about Cheatin’,” comments about John, Kenny, and Troy were mostly negative. One person referred to Big & Rich as “a mess of

53 “Cowboy Troy: Biography” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/], accessed 18 March 2006.

54 The broadcast also included performances by Brooks & Dunn, Tim McGraw, Shania Twain, George Strait, Martina McBride, Terri Clark, Faith Hill, and Willie Nelson.

55 Marc Oswald, 13 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

241 mixed up music.”56 Another individual asked what a rap singer in a Superman T-shirt had to do with country music.57 One viewer provided an even stronger opinion: Big & Rich was absolutely abominable. Just awful—the worst performance in the history of the show. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to country music, but event the most wide-ranging fans would have to agree that what Big & Rich played last night could not possibly be considered country music.58

Despite the backlash of many country music fans following the show, Big & Rich’s performance of “Rollin’” gave the MuzikMafia considerable exposure. The performance also introduced Cowboy Troy and “hick-hop” to country music fans while setting the stage, if you will, for Troy’s upcoming album scheduled for release in summer 2005. In addition, the controversial performance only contributed to the MuzikMafia’s popularity, resulting in increased ticket sales for the community’s fall tour sponsored by Chevrolet. Ticket sales for the fall tour also increased because Big & Rich and Gretchen had been nominated for a total of eight CMA awards. Big & Rich were nominated for awards in two categories: the Horizon Award and Vocal Duo of the Year. John received an individual nomination for Song of the Year for co-writing “Redneck Woman.” Gretchen was nominated for awards in five categories: the Horizon Award, Single of the Year, Album of the Year, Music Video of the Year, and Song of the Year for “Redneck Woman” that she had co-written with John. Gretchen won the Horizon Award as the year’s best new country artist.59

56 The above respondent identified themselves as Dawg324; in “What Did You Think of Last Nights CMA Awards,” The Tennessean newspaper online [http://www.thetennessean.com], posted at 07:25AM Nov 10, 2004 CST, catalogued as #13 of 68 total responses.

57 Huffman, Donna R., online respondent, “What Did You Think of Last Nights CMA Awards,” The Tennessean newspaper online [http://www.thetennessean.com] posted at 08:12AM Nov 10, 2004 CST , cataloged as #17 of 68 total responses.

58 The above respondent identified themselves as Mikedfitz, “What Did You Think of Last Nights CMA Awards,” The Tennessean newspaper online [http://www.thetennessean.com], posted at 09:43AM Nov 10, 2004 CST, cataloged as #25 of 68 total responses.

59 Gretchen and Big & Rich were also recognized at the American Music Awards that were broadcast live on 22 November 2004 on ABC. Big & Rich were nominated for Best Country Band, Duo, or Group but lost the award to Brooks & Dunn. Gretchen was nominated for and won the award for Best Country Female Artist; ABC’s official website, [http://abc.go.com/primetime/ama05/nominees2.html] accessed 12 March 2006.

242 The Chevrolet American Revolution Tour By the time of Gretchen and Big & Rich’s appearance at the CMA awards, the two acts were already co-headlining the Chevrolet American Revolution Tour. The MuzikMafia had received a sponsorship from Chevrolet for thirteen performances in nine states between 5 November and 15 December 2004. The tour’s convoy comprised at any given time six tour busses and four tractor trailers. The show featured most MuzikMafia members. Jon and James collectively opened each show for thirty minutes after which there was a brief intermission and a set change. Big & Rich performed for fifty minutes preceding a set change to Gretchen’s fifty-minute portion. Each concert’s finale comprised the entire MuzikMafia on stage with individual artists performing songs in rotation. The artists contributed much to the development of their own staging for the tour. John admits that neither he nor Gretchen had ever been involved in the staging process prior to this tour.60 Gretchen acknowledges that such was a daunting task: It was definitely a wake-up call for me. I just sat down at home as quickly as I could and started scratching out some ideas and figuring out exactly how much of that stage I was gonna use and whether or not I had the balls to do it.61

Jon and James’s opening set consisted of them seated next to each other at center stage. There was no organized staging for the show’s finale. Instead, the MuzikMafia attempted to recreate the impromptu atmosphere of its earlier Pub of Love shows. The stage props included several couches occupied by friends and family, numerous candles, incense, assorted percussion instruments, bar stools, lamps, and Rachel’s easel. The finale’s musical content comprised extended jams, solos and duets, and variations on hits by Gretchen and Big & Rich. Kenny often took advantage of the opportunity to include a sermon or two, in addition to prompting the audience to sing the national anthem. At one point during a show that I observed on 20 November in Johnson City, all MuzikMafia members were either singing or playing an

60 Rich, John, 2005, “Episode 1” of MuzikMafia TV, Live Animals Productions, executive producer: Audrey Morrissey; produced by Ivan Dudynsky, Gary Chapman, Marc Oswald; directed by Ivan Dudynsky first broadcast on 15 January 2005 by CMT.

61 Wilson, Gretchen, 2005, “Episode 1” of MuzikMafia TV, Live Animals Productions, executive producer: Audrey Morrissey; produced by Ivan Dudynsky, Gary Chapman, Marc Oswald; directed by Ivan Dudynsky first broadcast on 15 January 2005 by CMT.

243 instrument simultaneously. The result was a cacophony of organized chaos. Kenny described the finale of the show as “the galactic Pub of Love…or the Pub of Love Superbowl.”62 A music critic for the New York Times described the finale as a “radical, anticlimactic way to end an arena show.”63

Other Televised Appearances MuzikMafia members made numerous televised appearances in 2004 in addition to the ACM and CMA awards shows.64 Big & Rich appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 21 July. CMT documented the history and growing popularity of the MuzikMafia in a three-part series from 23 July to 6 August as part of the weekly show CMT Insider. Big & Rich performed on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on 26 July. Big & Rich appeared on Good Morning America on 25 August, the same week that Horse of a Different Color reached Number One on Billboard’s Country Album charts.65 On 25 October the MuzikMafia performed with Big & Rich and Gretchen in a five-minute segment at the Radio Music Awards broadcast live by NBC from Las Vegas. CMT dedicated an hour documentary to Gretchen entitled In the Moment: Gretchen Wilson that premiered on 24 September. CMT aired a similar one-hour feature the same day on Big & Rich entitled Total Access: Big and Rich. CMT included Big & Rich and Gretchen in a televised concert on 29 October entitled the CMT Outlaws that included performances by Hank Williams Jr., Kid Rock, Montgomery Gentry, Tanya Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jessi Colter, and James Hetfield. On 8 December Big & Rich and Gretchen appeared on FOX’s Billboard Music Awards where Big & Rich received the award for New Country

62 Alphin, Kenny, 2005, “Episode 1” of MuzikMafia TV, Live Animals Productions, executive producer: Audrey Morrissey; produced by Ivan Dudynsky, Gary Chapman, Marc Oswald; directed by Ivan Dudynsky first broadcast on 15 January 2005 by CMT.

63 Sanneh, Kelefa, 8 November 2004, “Mixing Rednecks and Blue States,” New York Times, “Music Review” section, the New York Times’ official website: [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/arts/music/08coun.html?ex=1142312400&en=6f3335813f5942c1&ei =5070] , accessed 12 March 2006. Sanneh’s review is based on the tour’s first performance that took place in Dekalb, Illinois, on 5 November 2004.

64 The following is an abridged description of Big & Rich and Gretchen’s televised appearances.

65 Billboard Magazine identified Horse of a Different Color as Number One on the Country Album chart in the issue released on 4 September 2004. Warner Bros. received notification of the chart placement the week before when Big & Rich were appearing on Good Morning America; interview between Jules Wortman and author, 26 August 2005.

244 Duo/Group Artist of the Year and Gretchen received awards for best Female Country Artist of the Year and New Country Female Artist of the Year. CBS’ award-winning news program 60 Minutes dedicated a ten-minute segment to Gretchen and the MuzikMafia that Ed Bradley moderated on 19 December. Big & Rich closed out the year with a four-minute performance on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast live on ABC from New York City on 31 December. MuzikMafia also received much public exposure in 2004 via the print media. Articles on Gretchen, Big & Rich, or the MuzikMafia appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, The Tennessean, Country Music Today, Billboard Magazine, The Washington Post, Blender Magazine, and The New York Times. In this chapter I have traced the MuzikMafia’s emergence into the popular mainstream from March through December 2004. By the year’s end, the MuzikMafia had created a significant niche for itself in commercial country music and American popular culture. However, the MuzikMafia’s successes in 2004 represent only a portion of the community’s potential. In Chapter Twleve I examine the next wave of the MuzikMafia’s popularity, including the MuzikMafia TV series on CMT, the launch of its own recording label, debut albums by Cowboy Troy and Jon Nicholson, platinum sophomore albums by Big & Rich and Gretchen, summer tours, more industry awards, and a second run of the Chevrolet American Revolution tour.

245 CHAPTER TWELVE: 2005: THE SECOND WAVE

Introduction For many MuzikMafia members, fans, and critics, 2005 was a year that would prove whether the MuzikMafia would be a temporary fad or a semi-permanent fixture of the popular mainstream. Gretchen and Big & Rich had made a significant impact on the commercial music industry in 2004. However, by 2005 much of the general public, including the MuzikMafia’s fan base, was still unclear as to what the MuzikMafia actually was.1 In this chapter I examine the next phase of MuzikMafia, namely its growth and development throughout 2005. I highlight the MuzikMafia’s various successes, including the launch of its own television series on CMT, the MuzikMafia co-venture with Warner Bros., the label’s first three artists, numerous televised appearances and awards by Gretchen and Big & Rich, summer and fall tours, and the release of additional albums by five MuzikMafia acts. By December 2005 the MuzikMafia was no longer an emerging phenomenon but rather a significant part of the commercial music industry.

MuzikMafia TV MuzikMafia TV was both a television documentary and a reality show.2 The six- episode series included behind-the-scenes footage of life on the road with the MuzikMafia while periodically providing information on its history. Ivan Dudynsky of Live Animals Productions approached the godfathers in late summer 2004 with the idea of producing something on the MuzikMafia for CMT. He had already been slated to produce the CMT Outlaws, featuring Gretchen and Big & Rich and scheduled for taping on 7 September.3 Live Animals Productions created MuzikMafia TV to document the

1 In summer 2006 I repeated my survey from the previous year. I have included results of both surveys in Appendix A and Appendix B, respectively.

2 MuzikMafia TV, a six-part television series broadcast weekly from 15 January through 19 February 2005 on CMT, executive producer Audrey Morrissey, produced by Ivan Dudynsky, Gary Chapman, and Marc Oswald; directed by Ivan Dudynsky, Live Animals Productions.

3 The CMT Outlaws was taped on 7 September 2004 at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in downtown Nashville. CMT broadcast a two-hour edited version of the show on 29 October.

246 community’s rise to national prominence. The first episode of MuzikMafia TV premiered on 15 January 2005 on CMT. A significant portion of the show’s content focuses on the Chevrolet American Revolution tour in fall 2004. Although the series clearly emphasizes the tour’s headliners Gretchen and Big & Rich, many episodes also contain segments featuring other artists, namely Jon, James, Troy, Dean, Max, Rachel, and Chance. “Episode One” provides a general overview of the MuzikMafia and the meaning behind its motto “Music without Prejudice.” “Episode Two” documents the community’s invitation to visit and perform with Willie Nelson in Austin, a discussion about bringing Chance on tour, and the drama that followed Gretchen’s winning the Top New Artist award over Kanye West at the American Music Awards.4 “Episode Three” features Gretchen and her return home to sing the national anthem for a Cardinals baseball game; Big & Rich recuperating in Deadwood, South Dakota; and Jon and his band recording his debut album in Woodstock, New York.5 The producers include an even greater variety of themes in “Episode Four.”6 There are brief segments on James, Max, and Dean. In addition, the episode highlights the MuzikMafia’s excursion to Fort Benning Army Base in Columbus, Georgia, to experience the ranger training course.7 MuzikMafia members acknowledge the toughness of the course and pay their respects to the armed services. The patriotic aspect of “Episode Four” resurfaces when Kenny leads a concert audience in the singing of the national anthem. The episode also includes the sentimental story of a sixteen-year-old cancer patient whom Big & Rich had invited on stage at a show on 16 November in

4 “Episode Two” premiered on 22 January 2005 on CMT. After losing the Top New Artist award to Gretchen at the 2004 American Music Awards, Kanye West openly disputed the outcome to reporters backstage; Harrington, Richard, Sunday February 5, 2006, “Kanye West, Singing His Own Praises,” Washington Post, Page Y05. Episode One of MuzikMafia TV includes clips from West’s inflammatory comments as well as reactions to them by Gretchen and John.

5 “Episode Three” premiered on 29 January 2005 on CMT. I will discuss the significance of Jon’s debut album later in this chapter.

6 “Episode Four” premiered on 5 February 2005 on CMT.

7 The MuzikMafia attempted the ranger training course at Fort Benning the morning of 19 November. The community was scheduled to perform that evening at the Columbus Civic Center.

247 Hidalgo, Texas. “Episode Four” concludes with Gretchen firing her lead guitarist and Dean’s preparations to fill the vacancy. “Episode Five” is more light-hearted than the others.8 Here, the viewer observes Jon preparing a new dressing room with tie-die blankets and lava lamps, the trials and tribulations of living on a tour bus, James’s problems with his hair, Kenny’s parents joining the tour with homemade baked goods, and James’s marriage proposal to his girlfriend on stage in Las Vegas. The series concludes with “Episode Six” that features Troy and Gretchen.9 A brief discussion of Troy’s background as a shoe salesman for Footlocker prepares the viewer for the significance of a later scene in which Troy receives news of his record deal with Raybaw. The episode closes with a feature on Gretchen and her winning the Horizon Award at the CMA Awards. In many ways, MuzikMafia TV was a double-edged sword for the community. On the one hand, the show introduced the next wave of artists, namely Jon, James, Troy, and Chance whose careers would benefit from the national television exposure. The series also confirmed Gretchen and Big & Rich’s significance to commercial country music. In addition, Max, Rachel, and Pino’s segments reinforced the idea of MuzikMafia as an artistic collective rather than just a few, platinum-selling musicians. On the other hand, several members were displeased with the series’ shortcomings. For example, drummer Brian Barnett and lead guitarist Adam Shoenfeld appear only infrequently and always in the context of their association with Big & Rich. Both Brian and Adam had played integral roles in the MuzikMafia since the Pub of Love. In addition, the series emphasized the more sensationalist aspects of the MuzikMafia in 2004, including attendance at awards shows, the tension with Kanye West, thousands of screaming fans, visits with Willie Nelson, the trip to Fort Benning Army Base, and James’s wedding engagement. One member expressed their dissatisfaction with MuzikMafia TV because the series included little or no discussion of the actual music.10

8 “Episode Five” premiered on 12 February 2005 on CMT.

9 “Episode Six” premiered on 19 February 2005 on CMT.

10 Out of professional courtesy, I have kept the identity of the above MuzikMafia member anonymous.

248

Raybaw Records In January 2005 the MuzikMafia founded its own record label, Raybaw Records, a co-venture with Warner Bros. “R.A.Y.B.A.W.” is an acronym for “Red and Yellow, Black and White” and comes from the text of “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” a Christian hymn particularly popular among Southern Baptists. The hymn’s chorus is as follows: Jesus loves the little children, All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, All are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.11

John thought that the text would appropriately reflect the record label and the MuzikMafia’s motto “Music without Prejudice.”12 Raybaw Records’ relationship with Warner Bros. is imprint-like. In the music industry, an imprint is usually started or purchased by a larger label. Raybaw is a joint business venture between Warner Bros. and the MuzikMafia. Raybaw does not cultivate a fully subordinate relationship to Warner Bros. that many imprints do with their parent companies. Plans for Raybaw had begun in mid-2004. Paul Worley contacted the godfathers in late summer about starting a MuzikMafia-led record label associated with Warner Bros. John, Kenny, Jon, and Cory liked the idea.13 However, the godfathers insisted that “MuzikMafia” not appear in the label’s official title. According to Cory: We wanted to stay untouched by the music industry. We wanted to keep a bubble around it [the MuzikMafia]…. We went back to Warner [Bros.] and told

11 The text to “Jesus Loves the Little Children” was written by a Chicago preacher named Clare Herbert Woolston (1856-1927) and set to a Cival War folk tune entitled “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp” composed by George F. Root (1820-1895). The above text appears in part in Troy’s song “Wrap around the World,” co-written by John Rich, that appears on Troy’s debut album, Loco Motive, 2005, produced by John Rich, Big Kenny, and Paul Worley, Warner Bros/Raybaw Records 49316-2.

12 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

13 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

249 them that Raybaw was the name. It was obvious that they [Warner Bros.] were shocked by us not wanting to call it MuzikMafia Records.14

Unfortunately, the MuzikMafia did not remain “untouched by the music industry” in regards to Raybaw. Later in this chapter I will describe how Raybaw as a commercial venture caused significant changes in the MuzikMafia’s social structure. Another hurdle included who Raybaw’s principle owners would be. The four godfathers were the obvious choices. However, none of them had had experience in running a record label or knew about the logistics of signing and promoting artists. The godfathers asked Dale Morris and Marc Oswald to join in as principle owners because of their many years of experience in the music industry. Dale owned the artist management company Dale Morris and Associates whose clients included Alabama, Kenny Chesney and Louise Mandrell. Dale’s business associate Marc managed Gretchen, Big & Rich, and Cowboy Troy. Both Dale and Marc were friends of the MuzikMafia and were enthusiastic about Raybaw’s potential.15 The John, Kenny, Cory, Jon, Marc, and Dale spent fall 2004 working out the details of Raybaw’s incorporation. By December, Raybaw had begun to take form. Warner Bros.’ roles included financing recording projects, marketing, and publicity. Raybaw would be responsible for artist research and development. At the time, MuzikMafia had a reputation for attracting and showcasing some of the best talent in Nashville. Warner Bros. wanted the MuzikMafia to retain authority over the creative aspect of the label to insure a continuous flow of talented artists.16 The first visible presence of the MuzikMafia at Warner Bros. occurred in fall 2004 when Cory moved into his new office in the Warner Bros. building located at 20 Music Square East. Cory’s third floor, corner office was slightly larger than Paul’s and overlooked both Music Row and the Demonbreun Street Roundabout. Warner Bros. had

14 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

15 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

16 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

250 hired Cory in September as an independent consultant to handle all MuzikMafia-related matters, a position that eventually led to the creation of Raybaw. Raybaw was created with its first signed artist already in mind: Cowboy Troy. Cory explains: We knew we had something with him [Troy]. We new what type of record could be recorded: one that had never been done before. We knew that we could [with Troy] knock one out of the park. And he was already out on the road touring, and it was a great story, and with a label called “red and yellow, black and white,” a black rapping cowboy was a great choice to start it off with. Our whole thing has been going against the industry and Music Row. By putting a black rapping cowboy in there we were making a statement. We had no hesitation in that decision.17

Troy signed his contract in January and began work on his debut album scheduled for release in early summer. James was the second artist to sign with Raybaw. As I describe in Chapter Ten, James’s relationship with Mercury Records had been problematic at best. His first album did not sell well, and his second one that was currently underway was not what Mercury had envisioned. James had asked John Rich to produce the album. John allowed James to be himself, including James’s numerous influences from the “Muscle Shoals Sound” that James had demonstrated at MuzikMafia shows since the Pub of Love.18 James submitted five completed tracks to Mercury in mid-January 2005. He was dropped from the label later that month. James’s move from Mercury to Raybaw was not immediate. After his departure from Mercury, James received offers from Sony, Warner Bros., and Raybaw to take over

17 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

18 The “Muscle Shoals Sound” is centered in the Muscle Shoals area of northern Alabama and combines, in varying degrees, elements from soul, rock and roll, commercial country, gospel, and rhythm and blues. Historically, the sound was popularized by the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1969 when the former rhythm section of Fame Studios left to start their own enterprise. Artists who have been associated with Muscle Shoals include Otis Redding, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Arthur Alexander, and James Carr. In fact, approximately 1,000 recordings that are mostly commonly associated with the Stax Sound in Memphis were actually recorded in Muscle Shoals by local backup musicians; Bowman, Rob, 1995, “The Stax Sound: A Musicological Analysis,” Popular Music 14(3) (Oct.): 286. Recent artists associated with the Muscle Shoals Sound include James Otto and Angela and Zac Hacker. Both Angela and Zac were finalist in the 2007 season of Nashville Star. Angela eventually won the competition during the show’s finale on 1 March 2007 on the USA network.

251 his contract. Cory describes the situation as “weird conflict of interest, with Warner Bros. and Raybaw bidding for James’s contract, but that kind of got worked out.”19 James decided in May 2005 to sign with Raybaw which subsequently purchased James’s completed song tracks from Mercury. The album’s release date was scheduled for summer 2006. In November 2005 Chance became the third artist to sign with Raybaw. Contract negotiations had already been underway since early spring. Chance’s song “Pauline” was the one that convinced John, Paul, and the rest of the decision-makers at Raybaw to offer Chance his record deal.20 Paul Worley describes Chance’s success at Raybaw as follows: You ask me if Chance is going to be successful, and the answer’s “yes.” How it unfolds will be like everything else that unfolds from the MuzikMafia, because every one of the artists in the [Muzik]Mafia is unique. Chance’s hip-hop music falls outside that genre and certainly falls outside anything that has to do with country. The bottom line is that it shouldn’t matter. In the old days, record labels found geniuses and supported them and figured out how to carry their music forward. And that’s what we want to do. That’s what MuzikMafia is all about and that’s what Raybaw is all about. That’s what we’re going to do for Chance. “Ridin’ on Chrome” and “I Came to Drink” were what got me interested in Chance, but when I heard “Pauline” I realized that here’s an artist with depth and one who is able to express everything about life.21

Chance’s album was tentatively scheduled for release in late 2006 or early 2007.22 Raybaw’s first significant public exposure came with the release of Troy’s album Loco Motive in May 2005. John produced the album and also co-wrote most of its songs

19 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

20 Paul Worley, 26 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

21 Worley, Paul, 26 March 2005, on-camera commentary provided during the shooting of Chance’s EPK at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. Paul has worked in numerous capacities on Music Row since 1973. He has worked with artists such as Mickey Gilley, Hank Williams Jr., Little Richard, George Jones, George Strait, Glen Campbell, Martina McBride, Sara Evans, and the Dixie Chicks; Naujeck, Jeanne Anne, Sunday 5 September 2004, “Executive Q & A: Paul Worley, Chief Creative Officer for Warner Bros. Nashville, Talks about Signing Big & Rich and What's Ahead for the Label,” The Tennessean official website, [http://vh10317.moc.gbahn.net/business/qanda/archives/05/03/56952072.shtml?Element_ID=56952072] accessed 25 March 2006.

22 Chance recorded much of his debut album under Raybaw’s authority. However, for various reasons Chance left Raybaw in early 2007 before the album was completed.

252 with Troy. Troy’s goal with Loco Motive was to include “instrumentation from classic rock, a timeless sound comparable to Steely Dan and the Eagles, the flow of rap …and traditional country themes presented in a vastly different way.”23 The album’s first single “I Play Chicken with the Train” is a metaphor for a rapper going against the norms of commercial country music. Loco Motive had a relatively successful debut when one considers the fact that Troy’s self-titled version of rap known as “hick-hop” fit nowhere in radio’s prescribed format categories. The album debuted at Number Two on Billboard’s Country Album chart, Number Thirteen on the Rap Album chart, and Number Fifteen on Billboard’s Top 200, all of which were the album’s peak positions.24 Loco Motive contained the single “I Play Chicken with the Train” that peaked at Number Eighteen on Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot Singles chart the week of the album’s release.25 “I Play Chicken with the Train” did not fare well on the country music charts primarily because the single received relatively little radio airplay. Troy success in 2005 had little to do with radio or chart positions. Because of Troy’s widespread exposure touring with Big & Rich and Tim McGraw in 2004, Raybaw shipped 400,000 units of Loco Motive prior to the album’s release. Marc Oswald reported in October that plans were already in the works to do a second shipment.26 On 15 April “I Play Chicken with the Train” reached the Number One Download spot from the online digital music store iTunes.27 Troy’s television appearances in 2005 included a performance and an interview on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 19 May, on ABC’s Good Morning America on 30 May, and on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning on 1

23 Troy Coleman, 29 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

24 “Album Chart Archive: Cowboy Troy,” Billboard.biz online magazine, official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/index.jsp], accessed 23 March 2006.

25 “Singles Chart Archive: Cowboy Troy,” Billboard.biz online magazine, official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/index.jsp], accessed 23 March 2006.

26 Oswald, Marc, 4 October 2005, International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA) annual meeting, presentation recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. By spring 2007 Troy’s album had sold approximately 450,000 copies; Cory Gierman, conversation with author, 1 May 2007.

27 “MuzikMafia News: 15 April 2005,” from the MuzikMafia’s official website, [http://www.muzikmafia.com], accessed 21 January 2006.

253 June. Troy also performed with Big & Rich in the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular broadcast live on CBS on 4 July, the CMA Music Festival that CBS aired on 2 August, the premiere of ESPN’s College Game Day on 3 September, and the 39th Annual Country Music Awards broadcast live on 15 November on CBS. In addition, articles on Troy appeared in the print and online media throughout 2005, including features in the Arizona Daily Star, AOL Entertainment News, The Tennessean, Country Weekly, New York Daily News, The Arizona Republic, Rolling Stone Magazine, Time Magazine, and USA Today. In October 2004 Troy accepted an offer from the USA network to co-host with Wynonna the fourth season of Nashville Star scheduled to air in spring 2006.28 Raybaw underwent considerable change in fall 2005. First, Cory decided to move out of his office at Warner Bros. The decision was based mainly upon his displeasure with corporate life. As I describe in Chapter One, Cory entered the music business as a song plugger and music publisher who worked closely with the artists. Cory’s job duties at Warner Bros and Raybaw concentrated on budget meetings and marketing strategies, none of which he was trained for. Second, Cory’s role as godfather required that he tend to many MuzikMafia-related matters that were often beyond the scope of his duties at Raybaw. The result was minor tension between Raybaw, Warner Bros., and the MuzikMafia.29 Raybaw’s creation also resulted in tension among MuzikMafia artists, specifically those who were not in the running to receive record deals in the immediate future. A staff member of MuzikMafia, LLC, the MuzikMafia’s own commercial entity, stated, “They [MuzikMafia] members need to understand that everyone won’t get a record deal with Raybaw. That’s not how things work around here.”30 This statement is particularly meaningful when one takes into consideration that the “here,” to which the staff member

28 Nashville Star is country music’s equivalent to American Idol. Each week contestants perform live on television. Selected judges provide comments and criticisms, and the show’s viewers eliminate a contestant based upon call-in voting.

29 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

30 Interview with author, 1 December 2006; the name of the above staff member will remain anonymous due to the fact that disclosure of such could affect his/her ongoing relationship with MuzikMafia, LLC and many MuzikMafia artists.

254 is referring, connotes the commercial music industry and Raybaw’s productive involvement in such. I provide further detail concerning the tension between MuzikMafia artists, Raybaw, and the MuzikMafia’s various other commercial enterprises in the dissertation’s Conclusion. Finally, the MuzikMafia had become a significant component of something that it had originally protested against: Nashville’s commercial music culture. According to Cory, “It [MuzikMafia] wasn’t about the music anymore. [Muzik]Mafia needed to exist outside the walls of corporate Nashville.”31 Raybaw’s principle owners solved the dilemma by hiring an independent publicist named Virginia Hunt-Davis to take over as Director of Operations of Raybaw. Virginia’s job was to oversee Raybaw’s daily functions and to report to the godfathers, Marc, and Dale on a regular basis. Cory and the godfathers moved their offices across town to 1305 Clinton Street in December 2005 and began operations there the following January.

CMA Music Festival 2005 The Country Music Association (CMA) acknowledged the significance of the MuzikMafia in summer 2005 by inviting the community to participate in the annual CMA Music Festival, also known as “Country Music’s Biggest Party.”32 The CMA Music Festival took place in downtown Nashville 9-12 June 2005. Over 145,000 fans attended the four-day event that comprised nightly concerts at the Coliseum, hourly concerts at the Riverfront Stage, and numerous exhibits at the convention center.33 The

31 Cory Gierman, 18 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

32 The above description appears on all CMA promotional material for the 2005 festival.

33 The Coliseum is a large football stadium on the east bank of the Cumberland River in downtown Nashville. The stadium is home to the Tennessee Titans NFL team and is used for a variety of music and sporting events. According to the CMA, 145,355 people attended the music festival in 2005; CMA Press Release, “Country Music Wraps Up 2005 on a Strong Note,” 9 January 2006, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=498&year=2006], accessed 28 March 2006.

255 program included performances by over 200 well-known country music artists. ABC broadcast a two-hour compilation of the festival’s highlights on 2 August 2005.34 The MuzikMafia was present in the exhibit hall and on each of the festival’s stages. The exhibit hall contained approximately 220 booths. The MuzikMafia’s booth was among the largest, containing a merchandise counter in the front and a large lounge area in the back for signing autographs. Each morning hundreds of fans congregated around the MuzikMafia booth, sometimes standing in line for as many as four hours at a time to get an autograph. Both Troy and James performed at the Riverfront Stage. Big & Rich, Gretchen, Troy, and Rachel performed for approximately 30,000 fans during the festival’s finale at the Coliseum. Finally, the MuzikMafia performed a late-night show at the Mercy Lounge immediately following the festival’s last official concert.

National Tours 2005 included touring opportunities for all MuzikMafia artists. Gretchen rejoined Kenny Chesney for his Somewhere in the Sun tour. Big & Rich, Troy, and Fred accompanied Brooks & Dunn on their Deuces Wild tour. Jon, James, Damien, Chance, Rachel, Shannon, and the rest of the MuzikMafia opened up four shows for Hank Williams Jr. from July through September. Finally, the entire MuzikMafia reconvened in November and December for a second run of the Chevrolet American Revolution tour. Gretchen’s success touring with Kenny Chesney in 2005 almost equaled that of the Tiki Bars and a Whole Lotta Love tour from 2004. Chesney’s Somewhere in the Sun Tour contained two parts: 11 March through 14 May and 26 May through 28 August. Gretchen opened twenty-four performances for Chesney during the first half of the tour and thirty-five performances during the second half. Total ticket sales for Chesney’s 2005 tour numbered 1,131,326 which compares closely with his 1,143,909 tickets sold in 2004. As shown in Tables 12.1 and 12.2, Chesney’s Somewhere in the Sun tour ranked Number Four in concert attendance among all music genres in 2005 and Number One among tours by country music artists.

34 CMA Music Festival, produced by Robert Deaton for Deaton Flanigan Productions, directed by Gary Halvorson, first broadcast on 2 August 2005 on ABC.

256 Table 12.1. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2005: all genres.35

All Genre Top Ten Artists 2005 Tour Attendance 1. U2 1,432,890 2. Dave Matthews Band 1,211,430 3. The Rolling Stones 1,209,429 4. Kenny Chesney 1,131,326 5. Green Day 912,843 6. Rascal Flatts 807,899 7. Mötley Crüe 791,591 8. Neil Diamond 750,210 9. Eagles 725,598 10. Vans Warped Tour 717,736

Table 12.2. Top ten artists for cumulative tour attendance in 2005: country music.36

Country Top Ten Artists 2005 Tour Attendance 1. Kenny Chesney 1,131,326 2. Rascal Flatts 807,899 3. Toby Keith 684,968 4. Jimmy Buffet 536,391 5. Keith Urban 515,596 6. Brooks & Dunn 489,239 7. Brad Paisley 362,341 8. Alison Krauss and Union Station 292,217 9. George Strait 261,322 10. Alan Jackson 247,202

Big & Rich made career inroads in 2005 by touring with Brooks & Dunn, country music’s most popular duo act since 1991.37 Brooks & Dunn’s Deuces Wild tour

35 CMA Press Release, “Country Music Wraps Up 2005 on a Strong Note,” 9 January 2006, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=498&year=2006], accessed 24 March 2006.

36 CMA Press Release, “Country Music Wraps Up 2005 on a Strong Note,” 9 January 2006, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=498&year=2006], accessed 24 March 2006.

37 Brooks & Dunn received the Country Vocal Duo of the Year award twelve times by the Country Music Association from 1992 to 2005; The duo received the Country Top Vocal Duet award eight times by the Academy of Country Music from 1991 to 2005; “Brooks & Dunn: Awards” from CMT’s official website, [http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/brooks_and_dunn/awards.jhtml], accessed 24 March 2006.

257 comprised thirty-two performances from 6 August through 30 October and featured the Warren Brothers, Big & Rich, and Brooks & Dunn. Reviews of tour concerts were mixed, but most critics preferred Big & Rich to the tour’s headliners. Werner Trieschmann of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette writes about a performance in Little Rock on 7 August, “There was a spark missing from Brooks & Dunn’s show, and perhaps it was the overemphasis on guitars. Big & Rich, however, were on fire.”38 The fire reference is appropriate given the fact that Big & Rich’s fifty- minute set contained various pyrotechnics, including numerous controlled explosions and nine-foot-high columns of flame.39 The Deuces Wild tour sold 489,239 tickets, making it the Number Six best selling tour by a country music act in 2005.40 The rest of the MuzikMafia opened four concerts for Hank Williams Jr. from July through September 2005. The MuzikMafia’s one-hour set featured James, Jon, Shannon, Damien, Rachel, and Chance. Each act performed two or three songs with the exception of Rachel who painted at stage right during the entire set. Touring with Hank Williams Jr. was a learning experience for the MuzikMafia. The tour was the first time that the MuzikMafia had regularly opened for a major act other than Big & Rich or Gretchen. The crowds were smaller at first, and Hank Williams Jr.’s fans were quite different than those of Big & Rich, Gretchen, or even the MuzikMafia. I observed numerous Dixie flags and heard various racial slurs while speaking with fans before and after the MuzikMafia’s set.41 The MuzikMafia’s first concert with Hank Williams Jr. took place at the DTE Energy Music Theater on 9 July in Clarkston, Michigan. The venue was at approximately

38 Trieschmann, Werner, Tuesday 9 August 2005, “Big & Rich Outrides Brooks & Dunn,” in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette – Northwest Arkansas Edition, “Entertainment” section, official website: [http://nwarktimes.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=Style&storyid=124493] accessed 24 March 2006.

39 Personal observation by author. I videotaped two shows on the Deuces Wild tour: 25 August in Pelham, Alabama, and 28 October in Atlanta, Georgia, computer video file, personal collection.

40 CMA Press Release, “Country Music Wraps Up 2005 on a Strong Note,” 9 January 2006, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=498&year=2006], accessed 24 March 2006.

41 I accompanied the MuzikMafia on two of its four performances with Hank Williams Jr.: 9 July 2005 in Clarkston, Michigan, and 23 September in Pelham, Alabama.

258 twenty-five percent capacity when the Jon and James took the stage around 7PM.42 The flow between artists during the MuzikMafia’s opening set was unsteady and awkward, and the crowd’s response was unenthusiastic to moderate. As the ranking performing member of the MuzikMafia, James offered some constructive advice to the other artists backstage after the show: We need to get the band to do some interludes while people are coming up to play. Like when Chance gets up there, we need to get that beat going right away. We only have an hour, and we need to keep everybody moving. Make sure that we rev that show up, instead of up and down, up and down. By the last song, everyone needs to be going crazy. We still got some learning to do. It [the show] can be good, but we have to make sure that the placement is all right: a steady build-up to hysteria at the end.43

The above demonstrates the MuzikMafia’s conscious efforts to improve their show for public consumption. Audience members offered varying comments following the Clarkston performance.44 Some enjoyed the show and mentioned the names of specific artists, especially Chance. Others described the music as “different” or “weird.” One man expressed his displeasure with the MuzikMafia because he had come to hear an act similar to Hank Williams Jr. A bald man with several tattoos and wearing no shirt made several derogatory racial comments about Damien and D.D. who were the only black artists on stage and, possibly, at the entire venue. The MuzikMafia’s final performance with Hank Williams Jr. took place on 23 September in Pelham, Alabama. By this time, the MuzikMafia had refined its show considerably.45 The artists exhibited much more enthusiasm on stage, which I attributed to the positive crowd response from the nearly sold out venue.46 Stage lighting

42 Personal observation by author. The DTE Energy Music Theater where the concert was held has a maximum capacity of approximately 10,000 people.

43 Otto, James, 9 July 2005, conversation recorded by author, Clarkston, Michigan, computer video file, personal collection.

44 During intermission I ventured into the crowd and solicited concert reviews from approximately twenty people seated in different areas of the venue.

45 I videotaped the MuzikMafia’s first and final performance with Hank Williams Jr. I compared the two with a show in Cincinnati that a MuzikMafia associate had recorded on 27 August.

259 accompanied the MuzikMafia set and lighting changes often corresponded to musical cues. The flow from artist to artist had also improved. The one-hour set contained few if any musical gaps between artists. Another crowd pleaser was Shannon’s addition of the “Star Spangled Banner” modeled after the version that Jimi Hendrix had played at Woodstock on 18 August 1969.47 All comments from fans, with whom I spoke following the MuzikMafia’s set, were positive if not enthusiastic.

The Chevrolet American Revolution Tour The MuzikMafia reconvened with Big & Rich and Gretchen in November for second run of the Chevrolet American Revolution tour. The 2005 version of the tour began on 4 November in Woodlands, Texas, and comprised fourteen performances throughout the eastern half of the United States, namely east Texas, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama. Jon and James opened each show as they had done in the previous year followed by 50-minute sets by Big & Rich and Gretchen, respectively. Each show’s finale included all MuzikMafia artists on stage in an effort to recreate the community’s earlier performances at the Pub of Love. While on tour, the MuzikMafia contributed to several charitable causes. The community donated 100% of the proceeds from its performance on 1 December in Jackson, Mississippi, to CMT's “One Country” campaign. CMT then divided the funds among the American Red Cross, America's Second Harvest, Habitat for Humanity, the USO, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Hands On America. The $75,000 that the MuzikMafia

46 I should point out that a) Big & Rich had opened for Brooks & Dunn at the same venue one month prior and b) Pelham is only about 200 miles from Nashville. It is likely that the crowd was more familiar with the MuzikMafia than those who had attended the concert on 9 July in Clarkston, Michigan. The venue’s maximum seating capacity is approximately 8,000.

47 Shannon’s version of the “Star Spangled Banner” compares with that of Jimi Hendrix’s version only in that Shannon incorporates a variety of virtuosic techniques during and between musical phrases. Shannon omits any of Hendrix’s possible musical representations of war or politics such as bombs dropping or the military song “Taps.” Cory authorized Shannon to play the national anthem. In Chapter Two I describe how John Rich discouraged the playing of the national anthem while the audience sang along, especially with the interjection of electric guitar solos. John was not present during the above show on 23 September.

260 show generated was distributed among the above charities towards their intended goal of assisting the Hurricane Katrina victims.48 Proceeds from a MuzikMafia show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.49 Included in the 2005 “All for the Hall” fundraising series, the show was originally planned to take place on 30 November but was rescheduled for 19 February 2006. Aside from ticket sales, additional funds were generated through V.I.P. packages that included airfare to and lodging in Nashville, a private dinner with Gretchen and Big & Rich at the Plowboy Mansion, an autographed Epiphone guitar, admission to a pre-concert reception, front row seating, a signed print by Rachel, and a post-concert party with the artists at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.50 Some V.I.P. packages sold for as much as $10,000. According to Marc Oswald, who booked the event: I had been approached by several [record]labels to do some charity stuff with the [Muzik]Mafia. Many suggested that we release a single whose proceeds would go to the Hall [of Fame]. I said, “no;” a concert would be better. We made some calls and made it happen.51

The event generated approximately $180,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. In addition to the above, the MuzikMafia took part in several other fundraisers in 2005. On 10 March the MuzikMafia provided the entertainment for “Ringside: A Fight for Kids,” the annual fundraiser for the Charley Foundation.52 Event guests included Joe

48 Hanrahan, Kathy, 2 December 2005 , “MuzikMafia Rocks for Hurricane Relief,” The Clarion Ledger, “Entertainment Section,” [http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051202/NEWS/51202003/1263] accessed 25 March 2006.

49 The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is owned and operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit organization.

50 The owners of the Fontanel estate renamed the premises “The Plowboy Mansion” in spring 2005.

51 Marc Oswald, 21 February 2006, unrecorded conversation with author, Nashville.

52 According to its website, the Charley Foundation is “a non-profit organization that provides support to charitable agencies addressing the critical needs of children.” The above event took place at The Factory at the Franklin Liberty Hall in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville; Charley Foundation official website, [http://www.charleyfoundation.org/home.html] accessed 25 March 2006.

261 Frazier, Darrin Humphrey, Barbara Mandrell, Shannon Brown, Big & Rich, Troy, James, Chance, Damien, Fred, and Dean. “Ringside” generated over $100,000 to help children in need. On 10 May the community held a benefit concert at the Cannery Row Ballroom for the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI).53 The concert’s list of performers included the entire MuzikMafia, Kid Rock, Shooter Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Ty Stone. The event raised more than $25,000 to assist Nashville songwriters with copyright protection.54 On 23 August the MuzikMafia returned to the Cannery Row Ballroom for its second annual benefit concert for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. The three-hour show included all MuzikMafia members except for Gretchen and raised a total of $30,000.

Televised Appearances MuzikMafia members made numerous televised appearances in 2005. On 15 January CMT launched the first of six weekly episodes of MuzikMafia TV. Each episode re-aired numerous times following its premiere, and by the series’ sixth week, several episodes of MuzikMafia appeared daily on CMT. On 6 February Gretchen performed with Charlie Daniels for national and international audiences during the Superbowl XXIX pre-game concert entitled “Bridging the Generations” broadcast live on FOX. By this time Dean Hall was a permanent fixture of Gretchen’s band, and he accompanied her at the performance. CNN aired on 1 April an eleven-minute segment on Gretchen for the show People in the News. Big & Rich gave Katie Couric a tour of downtown Nashville for a segment on The Today Show that NBC broadcast on 28 April. Big & Rich joined Jessica Simpson in Rammstein, Germany, for Nick and Jessica’s Tour of Duty that ABC aired on 23 May. Cowboy Troy joined the talk show circuit with appearances on ABC’s Good Morning America on 30 May and MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning on 31 May. Big & Rich, Gretchen, and Troy met to sing an arrangement of the national anthem for the

53 The above event was the first time that the MuzikMafia had officially performed together in Nashville since the community ceased Tuesday night shows on 6 October 2004.

54 Cooper, Peter, Thursday 12 June 2005, “Brad about You: Paris, Nicole Check Out Unique Tattoos,” The Tennessean, “Entertainment” section, official website [http://vh10317.moc.gbahn.net/backissues/05/05/12/celebrities/] accessed 25 March 2006.

262 Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular 2005 that CBS broadcast live on 4 July. Big & Rich and Troy performed a special version of their newly released single “Comin’ to Your City” at the premiere of ESPN’s College Gameday on 1 August. Fred, Troy, and Big & Rich made a five-minute appearance with dialogue in the premiere episode of NBC’s popular mini-series Las Vegas on 19 September. CMT dedicated a one-hour primetime slot on 24 September for documentary entitled Gretchen: Undressed in which Gretchen performed acoustic versions of songs from her upcoming sophomore album All Jacked Up. The above television appearances fueled the MuzikMafia’s ever-growing popularity and increased record sales for Gretchen, Big & Rich, and Troy.55 The RIAA certified Big & Rich’s Horse of a Different Color as double platinum on 11 January. Gretchen’s album Here for the Party was certified as quadruple platinum on 22 February.

Awards/Nominations In 2005 Big & Rich and Gretchen shadowed their previous year’s list of awards and nominations. Their first awards show appearance took place at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards on 13 February in Los Angeles.56 John and Gretchen received a joint nomination for Best Country Song for “Redneck Woman” but lost the Grammy to “Live Like You Were Dying” that Tim Nichols & Craig Wiseman had written for Tim McGraw. Gretchen received three additional nominations: Best New Artist, Best Country Album, and Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She won the award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, the first award of its kind for Gretchen. Big & Rich, Gretchen, and Troy all appeared on the 40th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards that CBS broadcast on 17 May. Gretchen opened the live show with her song “Here for the Party.” Later in the broadcast Troy introduced Big & Rich

55 “Gold and Platinum Certifications,” RIAA’s official website, searchable database, keywords: “All Jacked Up,” [http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/], accessed 29 March 2006.

56 47th Annual Grammy Awards that CBS broadcast on 13 February 2005 was for music recorded from 1 October 2003 through 30 September 2004; the Grammy Awards official website, [http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/Annual_Show/48_nominees.aspx] accessed 26 March 2006.

263 who performed their latest single, “Big Time.”57 Gretchen was nominated for awards in five categories: Top Female Vocalist, Top New Artist, Single Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Video of the Year. Big & Rich were nominated for Video of the Year for “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” Top New Artist, and Top Vocal Duo. John received additional nominations for Single Record of the Year for co-producing Gretchen’s song “Redneck Woman” and Album of the Year for Gretchen’s Here for the Party. Gretchen amazed the audience with her wins for both Top Female Vocalist and Top New Artist. Gretchen, Troy, Big & Rich’s success continued at the 39th Annual Country Music Association Awards that CBS broadcast live from Madison Square Gardens in New York City on 15 November. The CMA’s decision to move the show from Nashville to New York City met with considerable controversy among country audiences. However, the CMA wished to expand the genre’s marketability and subsequently launched its “Country Takes NYC” campaign to retain current country listeners while attracting new ones.58 Gretchen was nominated for three awards: Female Vocalist of the year, Song of the Year for “Redneck Woman,” and Music Video of the Year for “When I think about Cheatin’.” She won for Best Female Vocalist of the Year. Troy joined Wynonna to present the award for Album of the Year. Big & Rich won no awards although the duo received nominations in two categories: Horizon Award and Vocal Duo of the Year. John received an additional nomination for Song of the Year for “Redneck Woman.” In addition, Big & Rich performed “Comin’ to Your City,” the title track from their sophomore album. On 8 December 2005 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced nominations for the 48th Annual Grammy Awards.59 Sony/Epic had released Gretchen’s album All Jacked Up on 27 September, three days before the deadline for

57 “Big Time” appears as track three on Big & Rich’s album Horse of a Different Color. The single debuted at Number 52 on the Billboard’s Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart. “Big Time” reached its peak position at Number Twenty on the same chart on 14 May, three days before the ACM broadcast.

58 Schmitt, Brad, and Peter Cooper, Wednesday 16 November 2005, “Country Goes Urban,” in The Tennessean, “Entertainment” section, [http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051116/ENTERTAINMENT0105/511160427] accessed 26 March 2006.

59 The 48th Annual Grammy Awards that aired on 8 February 2006 was for music recorded from 1 October, 2004 through 30 September, 2005.

264 eligibility. Gretchen received nominations in four categories: Best Female Country Vocal Performance for the album’s title track, Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for her duet entitled “Politically Uncorrect” with Merle Haggard, Best Country Song for “All Jacked Up,” and Best Country Album. John received a nomination for Best Country Song for co-writing “All Jacked Up” with Gretchen and Vicky McGehee.

Album Releases Five MuzikMafia acts released albums in 2005: Big Kenny, Troy, Big & Rich, Gretchen, and Jon. Each experienced its own level of relative success. Hollywood Records released Kenny’s 1999 solo project entitled Live a Little.60 Gretchen’s album All Jacked Up celebrated high chart placement as did Big & Rich’s Comin to Your City.61 Both generated considerably high sales. Troy’s Loco Motive epitomized the newly formed Raybaw Records.62 Warner Bros. released Jon’s debut album A Lil Sump’m Sump’m which experienced low sales and relatively little radio airplay.63 The fact that five MuzikMafia members released albums the same year reflects the growing popularity of MuzikMafia and its member artists.64 In March 2005 Hollywood Records released an album entitled Live a Little recorded by Big Kenny.65 I describe in Chapter One how Kenny had recorded the album in 1999. Unfortunately, Hollywood dropped Kenny from the label prior to the album’s scheduled 2000 release date. Hollywood eventually released the album on 1 March 2005

60 Big Kenny, 2005 [1999], Live a Little, produced by Big Kenny and Gary Burnette, Holly Wood Records 2061-62236-2, compact disc.

61 Wilson, Gretchen, 2005, All Jacked Up, produced by Gretchen Wilson, John Rich and Mark Wright, Sony/Epic EK 94169, compact disc. Big & Rich, 2005, Comin’ to Your City, produced by Big Kenny, John Rich, and Paul Worley, Warner Bros. 49470-2, compact disc.

62 Cowboy Troy, 2005, Loco Motive, produced by John Rich, Big Kenny, and Paul Worley, Warner Bros./Raybaw 49316-2, compact disc.

63 Nicholson, Jon, 2005, A Lil Sump’m Sump’m, produced by Angelo and Jon Nicholson, Warner Bros. 48969-2, compact disc.

64 In addition, five MuzikMafia artists released albums in 2007: Big & Rich, Gretchen, Troy, James, and Damien.

65 Shortly after moving to Nashville in 1994, Kenny formed his own band called Big Kenny. In 1998 Kenny signed a recording contract with Hollywood Records as the solo artist Big Kenny.

265 with an added sticker that read, “Big & Rich’s Big Kenny: The legendary solo album by Mr. Universal Minister of Love.” The decision to release the album and its “stickered” cover was the obvious result of Big & Rich’s ongoing success since 2004.66 It is not difficult to understand Hollywood Records’ hesitation about releasing Live a Little in 2000. The album is an experiment in creativity, and few labels are willing to take such chances on a relatively unknown artist. Billboard Magazine describes the album as follows: It’s too damn weird to market, particularly to an audience that has no idea who Big Kenny is. It's [Live a Little] a swirling, pastel-colored collage of psychedelia, bombastic album rock, swinging British Invasion harmonies, and post-alternative pop, all packaged in an ultra-slick, cavernous production.67

Kenny was disheartened when Hollywood canceled his contract and even more so after the album was finally released. He elaborates: Yeah, they [Hollywood] dropped me, and never released the record. Now John and I hook up and are making music which is rock and roll, country, and other influences just slammed together. Then we [Big & Rich] come out, and they [Hollywood] finally release that record [Live a Little] based upon our success. We’re still doing the same thing now as we were back then.68

Kenny seldom promotes the album in public and has performed none of its songs at MuzikMafia shows. Sony/Epic released Gretchen’s album All Jacked Up on 27 September as her follow-up to Here for the Party. The album was an instant success on the Billboard charts. All Jacked Up debuted at Number One on Billboard’s Top 200, Top Country Album, and its Top Comprehensive Album charts. Gretchen’s musical style and working-class social messages in All Jacked Up compare closely with those in Here for the Party. Gretchen retains her rough, edgy vocals

66 In the music business, to “sticker” an album means to place a sticker on the jewel case or wrapping that indicates some kind of relevant information. Such is common practice when albums have been re-released, have won numerous awards after an initial printing, or, as in Kenny’s case, have had a first release after an artist has become well-known.

67 “Big Kenny: Discography: Live A Little,” from Billboard Magazine’s official website, keyword search: Artist: Big Kenny, [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/index.jsp] accessed 27 March 2006.

68 Kenny Alphin, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

266 in hardcore country songs such as “Skoal Ring,” “Rebel Child,” and “Not Bad for a Bartender.” Stylus Magazine’s Scott Inskeep describes the album’s title track as a “rowdy, beer drinking song.”69 The video for “All Jacked Up” features Charlie Daniels, Kid Rock, Larry the Cable Guy, and Hank Williams Jr. The single peaked at Number Eight on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on 1 October.70 Many reviewers were unimpressed with All Jacked Up. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone Magazine describes the album as “a mediocre follow-up with nothing as great as “Redneck Woman” or “Here for the Party.”71 A reviewer for the New York Post (online edition) remarks: After her inspired debut last year, it seemed like Wilson would be the redneck woman who was going to shake up Nashville. But on her sophomore disc she proves herself to be a pretty ordinary twanger.72

Most reviewers based their critiques of All Jacked Up on the sound and success of Here for the Party. One should keep in mind that Gretchen and Here for the Party emerged during a specific cultural context that had changed somewhat by 2005. In addition, Gretchen had undergone several changes as a musician by the time she recorded All Jacked Up. All Jacked Up continued to sell well in 2005 despite its many mediocre reviews. The RIAA certified All Jacked Up as gold and platinum on 27 October, one month after the album’s release.73 According to Nielsen Soundscan, All Jacked Up was sixth best in

69 Inskeep, Scott, 20 October 2005, “Gretchen Wilson: All Jacked Up,” album review, Stylus Magazine, official website, [http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=3477] accessed 27 March 2006.

70 Billboard Magazine, 1 October 2005, “Hot Country Singles and Tracks,” from Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/archivesearch/album_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001052963] accessed 3 April 2006.

71 Sheffield Rob, 26 September 2005, “New CDs: Crow Young,: Reviews of ‘Wildflower,’ ‘Prairie Wind’ and More,” Rolling Stone Magazine, official website [http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7669394/new_cds_crow_young/?rnd=1143488860171&has- player=true&version=6.0.12.872] accessed 27 March 2006.

72 New York Post, online edition, 25 September 2005, “Music Review: All Jacked Up, [http://www.nypost.com/music/54021.htm] accessed 27 March 2006.

73 “Gold and Platinum Certifications,” RIAA’s official website, searchable database, keywords: “All Jacked Up,” [http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/], accessed 27 March 2006.

267 country album sales in 2005 as shown in Table 12.3. I should point out that Nielsen Soundscan only measures over-the-counter sales from retail locations. The RIAA includes data from retail stores, internet sales, non-retail record clubs, specialty stores, etc. I have limited the data in Table 12.3 to commercial country’s best selling albums that were released in 2005.74 Table 12.3. Top country albums, artists, and sales in 2005.75

Best Selling Country Albums of 2005, Artists Nielsen Soundscan 2005 Sales 1. Road & the Radio, Kenny Chesney 1,817,196 2. Some Hearts, Carrie Underwood 1,636,689 3. Fireflies, Faith Hill 1,531,656 4. Honkytonk University, Toby Keith 1,446,821 5. Be as You Are, Kenny Chesney 1,078,559 6. All Jacked Up, Gretchen Wilson 947,388 7. Timeless, Martina McBride 929,512 8. Songs about Me, Trace Adkins 882,850 9. Legend of Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash 847,645 10. Modern Day Drifter, Dierks Bentley 745,924 11. Time Well Wasted, Brad Paisley 744,893 12. Somewhere Down in Texas, George Strait 722,059 13. Comin to Your City, Big & Rich 663,156

Warner Bros. released Jon Nicholson’s debut album A Lil Sump’m Sump’m on 27 September, the same day that Sony/Epic released Gretchen’s All Jacked Up. Unfortunately, Jon’s album did not meet with the same success as Gretchen’s. In fact, by industry standards, A Lil Sump’m Sump’m was a commercial flop, having sold as little as 3,700 units by 21 February 2006.76

74 The CMA published on 9 January 2006 a chart entitled “The Top Ten Country Albums of 2005” that includes continued sales from albums released in 2004 and before. I have limited my data in Table 12.3 to albums released in 2005 to emphasize the significance of Gretchen’s All Jacked Up and Big & Rich’s Comin to Your City among other newly released albums of the year.

75 Compiled by author using Soundscan data for the week ending on 1 January 2006. Nielsen Soundscan rarely grants universities or individual academics access to its data base. The above data derives from complete, unmodified Soundscan charts forwarded to the author from the MuzikMafia.

76 Kat Chandler of Scott Welch Management, 21 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

268 Jon’s low record sales resulted in considerable tension between him, Warner Bros., and the MuzikMafia. Warner Bros. did not release a single nor did the record label promote the album with the same intensity as it had done with Big & Rich’s Horse of a Different Color. According to Warner Bros. Senior Vice President of Publicity Jules Wortman: He [Jon] is one of those who has done great touring and is out there getting exposure, but there’s not a real target where we can play it on the radio. We don’t know which format he’s going to gravitate to. So we’re just exposing him through major touring….We all know it’s [A Lil Sump’m Sump’m] a brilliant piece of work, but those are sometimes the hardest ones to market. Honestly, we’re doing everything we can to give it the right opportunities; it’s just where it’s gonna fall where masses can hear it, that’s still a big question mark.77

Jon’s touring schedule in 2005 included a lengthy stint with jazz/funk innovators Karl Denson's Tiny Universe and numerous solo concerts. On 27 February Jon performed at a Nashville club called 3rd & Lindsley that the local progressive rock radio station Lightening 100 broadcast live.78 Jon appeared with Karl Denson at the nationally recognized Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on 11 June.79 On 25 July Jon’s concert at Nashville’s 12th & Porter was broadcast live on Jimmy Buffet’s satellite station, Radio Margaritaville.80 Jon’s release party for A Lil Sump’m Sump’m took place at the Mercy Lounge on 27 September. A Lil Sump’m Sump’m is significant despite the album’s low sales. Jon insisted that his own band accompany him on the album, a request that is rarely granted by a major record label, especially for a relatively unknown solo artist. In addition, Jon recorded the album with little or no input from Warner Bros. Instead, the label hired

77 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

78 Lightening 100 is the promotional name for WRLT that appears at 100.1 FM.

79 The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is one of the largest of its kind in the United States. The four-day event has been held each summer since 2002 in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles southeast of Nashville. Bonnaroo’s eleven stages provide musical entertainment by bands such as The Dead, Dave Matthews Band, Trey Anastasio, Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, the Black Crowes, Jack Johnson, Joss Stone, Alison Krauss and Widespread Panic. 75,000 people attended the first Bonnaroo in 2002. By 2005 ticket sales were over 80,000.

80 Radio Margaritaville appears on Sirius satellite channel 31 and is streamed from the internet at [http://www.radiomargaritaville.com/]

269 Jon’s band and a well-known independent producer named Angelo to accompany him to Allaire Studios near Woodstock, New York, from early November to mid-December 2004.81 Jon elaborates: I didn’t give them [Warner Bros.] a choice in the matter. I said that we were going to go cut a record, and we’re not going to take any input from anybody. We just went and did it. Paul [Worley] is on our team. He always has been. I didn’t even talk to the label about it. Paul knew what I was going to do. I just went up [to Allaire] and did it without any label representation, without any A&R. Cory [Gierman] was the A&R. He was up there with us, but he was just up there for support and to hang out, you know. We just went up and made music however we wanted to make it without worrying about what anybody thought, and trying to make the best record that we could.82

By August 2004 when Jon signed his contract with Warner Bros., the MuzikMafia had considerable influence over Music Row. Jon’s request to be in charge of his own recording project was supported by John, Kenny, Cory and the rest of the MuzikMafia; Warner Bros. acquiesced. Warner Bros. released Big & Rich’s sophomore album entitled Comin’ to Your City on 15 November. The album debuted at Number Seven on Billboard’s Top 200 chart and at Number Three on the Country Album chart, both of which were the album’s peak positions. The album’s title track debuted on 10 September at Number Fifty-Two on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart.83 The song peaked at Number Twenty-One on the same chart on 17 December 2005. Comin’ to Your City generated considerable press several months before the album’s release. Big & Rich opened each performance of the Deuces Wild tour with the

81 Warner Bros. spent a considerable amount of money on Jon’s recording sessions. Allaire Studios is a state-of-the-art recording facility remotely located in the Catskill Mountains near Woodstock, New York. Artists who have recorded there include Norah Jones, Tim McGraw, Dave Mathews Band, and David Bowie. Angelo Petraglia, a.k.a. “Angelo,” has produced artists such as Warren Zanes, Patti Griffin, Kim Richey, The Remains, and Kings of Leon. Angelo’s songwriting credits include “Sleep Tonight” for Tim McGraw, “Unchanged” for Martina McBride, “Believe Me Baby (I Lied),” for Trisha Yearwood, and Little Misunderstood for Latoya Jackson.

82 Jon Nicholson, 23 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

83 Billboard Magazine, 10 September 2005, “Hot Country Singles and Tracks,” from Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/archivesearch/album_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001052963] accessed 27 March 2006.

270 album’s title track. As previously mentioned, the duo performed “Comin’ to Your City” at the premiere of ESPN’s College Gameday on 1 August. In addition, CMT broadcast a one-hour concert special entitled Wanted: Big & Rich—Alive in Deadwood on 22 October. The show featured many songs from Comin’ to Your City and several audience favorites from Horse of a Different Color. Comin’ to Your City contains more stylistic diversity that the duo’s first album. The various styles present on the album include soul/funk rock with “Soul Shaker” and “Jalapeño,” country with “20 Margaritas,” Dixieland jazz with “Filthy Rich,” easy listening with John’s ballad “Never Mind Me,” a slow waltz entitled “8th of November” that tells the story of a Vietnam veteran’s experiences, and rock exemplified by Kenny’s feature tunes “Leap of Faith, “Slow Motion,” and “Blow My Mind” that compare stylistically with songs from his solo album Live a Little. Comin’ to Your City begins with a brief, child-like prelude entitled “The Freak Parade.” The album ends with a bonus track entitled “Our America” that Big & Rich, Gretchen, and Troy performed on CBS’s Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular on 4 July. The RIAA certified the album as both gold and platinum on 17 January 2006, approximately two months after its release.84

John Rich as a Songwriter/Producer John’s reputation as a Nashville songwriter and producer grew considerably in 2005 independent of his association with Big & Rich or the MuzikMafia. John boasted in October 2005 at an ASCAP reception in his honor that he had written over 900 songs since age 20.85 In 2005, alone, ninety-six of John’s songs were recorded, seven of which appeared in the Top Ten of Billboard’s Country Singles chart. ASCAP named John as the Country Songwriter-Artist of the Year.86 His credits include three songs for Faith Hill’s 2005 album Fireflies.87 Hill comments on John’s abilities:

84 “Gold and Platinum Certifications,” RIAA’s official website, searchable database, keywords: Big & Rich [http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/], accessed 27 March 2006.

85 Morris, Edward, 4 October 2005, “Faith Hill, John Rich Showered With Honors: ASCAP Party Raises the Roof for ‘Mississippi Girl’,” CMT official website, “Artists News,” [http://www.cmt.com/artists/news/1510892/10042005/hill_faith.jhtml] accessed 28 March 2006.

86 ASCAP Press Release, 17 October 2005, “2005 Awards Show Celebrates ASCAP at the Ryman,” [http://www.ascap.com/press/2005/101705_ascapcma.html].

271 John’s contribution to this album is huge. I believe he is an extremely talented writer, producer, and musician. There are no limitations to the measurement of his abilities. He is surprising, and that reflects in his music.88

Table 12.4 contains twelve songs either written or co-written by John and that peaked high on Billboard’s Country Singles chart in 2005. Table 12.4. Selected songs written or co-written by John Rich that peaked on Billboard’s Country Singles charts in 2005. Compiled by author.89

Title of Single Recording Artist Peak Position “Mississippi Girl” Faith Hill #1 “Here for the Party” Gretchen Wilson #3 “When I Think about Cheatin’” Gretchen Wilson #4 “Like We Never Loved At All” Faith Hill #5 “Pickin’ Wildflowers” Keith Anderson #8 “All Jacked Up” Gretchen Wilson #8 “Hicktown” Jason Aldean #10 “Why” Jason Aldean #14 “Holy Water” Big & Rich #15 “Big Time” Big & Rich #20 “Comin to Your City” Big & Rich #21 “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today” Gretchen Wilson #22

John also established himself as a competent producer in 2005. In addition to producing or co-producing Gretchen’s Here for the Party and Big & Rich’s Horse of a Different Color in 2004, John returned in 2005 to produce numerous albums as shown in Table 12.5.

87 Hill, Faith, 2005, Fireflies, Warner Bros. 48794-2, produced by Byron Gallimore and Faith Hill, compact disc. John wrote or co-wrote the album’s following songs: “Mississippi Girl,” “Like We Never Loved at All,” and “Sunshine and Summertime.” John co-wrote “Mississippi Girl” with MuzikMafia guitarist Adam Schoenfeld who subsequently won the award for Best Song of the Year by SESAC.

88 Keel, Beverly, 2005, “Faith Hill: Soul Set Free,” in Country Music Today Magazine (Fall): 36.

89 Compiled by author using data from Billboard.biz’s official website http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/index.jsp] accessed 28 March 2006.

272 Table 12.5. Albums that John Rich produced or co-produced in 2005. Compiled by author.

2005 Album Artist Loco Motive Cowboy Troy Corn Fed Shannon Brown Three Chord Country and American Keith Anderson Rock & Roll Sunset Man90 James Otto The Real Deal Billy Joe Shaver Comin to Your City Big & Rich All Jacked Up Gretchen Wilson

International Entertainment Buyers Association Annual Meeting 2005 The MuzikMafia’s presence at the International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA) annual meeting in October 2005 was a milestone in the community’s gradual transformation from a group of once marginalized artists into a single, marketable commodity. The IEBA meeting took place 2-4 October 2005 at the Nashville Hilton. Most of the IEBA’s events were held in the hotel’s lavish ballroom. The conference attracts each year a variety of entertainment industry personnel including booking agents, record company executives, arena owners, managers, tour promoters, radio conglomerate executives, producers, and talent agents. Many well-known artists were on hand to perform including Martina McBride, Dierks Bentley, Buddy Jewell, and selected MuzikMafia members. The MuzikMafia’s contribution to the conference was a panel entitled “Music without Prejudice” organized and moderated by Greg Oswald, Senior Vice President of the William Morris Agency-Nashville. Greg is also Marc’s older brother. By October 2005 most MuzikMafia members were receiving their booking engagements through the William Morris Agency, one of the largest talent and literary agencies in the world. The panelists were Kenny, John, Cory, Jon, Troy, Shannon, Rachel, Greg, Marc, and Bill Moore and lasted approximately one hour thirty minutes.91

90 John produced James’s album from fall 2004 through its completion in spring 2006. The album is scheduled for release in summer 2007.

91 Bill Moore began working for the MuzikMafia in fall 2005 and is in charge of brand development. Bill’s previous employer was the William Morris Agency in Nashville, where he became closely acquainted with the MuzikMafia and its artists, most of whom were clients of the William Morris Agency.

273 The panel included a variety of topics that Greg had briefly rehearsed with the artists in the green room approximately thirty minutes prior.92 Each artist received a six- page list of themes that Greg intended to discuss during the presentation. Greg also assigned specific topics to several people. For example, Marc and Kenny were to discuss the history of the MuzikMafia; John and Kenny would introduce all artists and discuss how each had become a member. Shannon and Jon were scheduled to perform one or two musical selections, and Marc was to address the topic of the MuzikMafia and the media. Greg instructed Cory to discuss the community’s notable business relationships, the story of Raybaw Records, and the MuzikMafia’s incorporation of various media technologies. Greg asked Bill to describe the activities of the Mafia Soldiers, the MuzikMafia’s official fan club. The most significant element of the panel was Greg and Bill’s contribution entitled, “Can You Buy the MuzikMafia?” Greg divided the presentation into two parts: a) “What is the Hidden Value of Buying a Mafia Artist,” and b) “What Makes a MuzikMafia Artist Valuable?” According to Greg, the hidden value of a MuzikMafia event arises from the Mafia Soldiers, a web-based community whose members are on hand at various performances to distribute promotional materials such as free recordings, stickers, and wearable gear. Bill confirmed that the fan club’s membership comprised approximately 3,000 fans across the United States.93 Mafia Soldiers are notified when the community will be performing in a specific area, and nearby fan club members are invited to attend. The Mafia soldiers work for and with the MuzikMafia at each event. Greg and Bill described the high value of MuzikMafia as the result of its team of managers and the quantity of total albums sold. As previously mentioned, MuzikMafia managers include Dale Morris and Greg who have worked with artists such as Alabama, Kenny Chesney, Luther Vandross, Michael Bolton, Gretchen, Big & Rich, and Cowboy Troy and have been involved in the sales of hundreds of millions of records. Warner Bros, Sony/Epic, and Raybaw, together, shipped approximately eleven million albums by

92 Personal observation by the author who was present during the meeting, 4 October 2005.

93 Bill Moore, 4 October 2005, IEBA annual meeting, presentation recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

274 MuzikMafia artists in 2004 and 2005. Greg emphasized to IEBA attendees the direct correlation between album sales and concert ticket sales. Greg ended his presentation by reiterating, “The MuzikMafia can be bought.”94 If a venue owner or booking manager cannot afford Big & Rich, Gretchen, or Troy, Greg suggested the following: If the event is right, and it’s going to be a fun, tasteful thing, you [IEBA members] can talk to William Morris [Agency] and they’ll try to help you sort out a MuzikMafia that you can have for an hour or so with Shannon, Chance, Jon... . You can book Otto and Nicholson alone or as a duo, or you can add Chance to the bill… . For once we’re avoiding the homogenized packaging of artists. There is an alternative. We’ll create something, a package, that fits what you’re trying to do….It’s not about making money for us; It’s usually a “break-even” proposition for us. It’s all about spreading the word. We like to do it, because it exposes the public through you [IEBA members] to what we hope is the next stuff [upcoming MuzikMafia artists].95

Greg also announced that Troy would be touring with Big & Rich in 2006 and that Troy’s album was approaching gold certification.96 Greg’s statement is significant. The fact that MuzikMafia “can be bought” expresses a sentiment that contradicts the reasons for the community’s founding in 2001. By October 2005 when the IEBA took place, several MuzikMafia members were on stage embracing Greg’s comments and the panel’s original purpose: to present the MuzikMafia as a marketable, highly valued commodity for public consumption. In this unit I have examined various changes that the MuzikMafia has undergone from 2001 through 2005. I have documented the various stages of the MuzikMafia’s development and have offered explanations for the MuzikMafia’s gradual rise to national popularity. Targeting the MuzikMafia’s social and musical aspects of change has led to a deeper understanding of the MuzikMafia itself. In fact, a fundamental characteristic of the MuzikMafia has been its numerous social transformations since the community’s first

94 Oswald, Greg, 4 October 2005, IEBA annual meeting, presentation recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

95 Oswald, Greg, 4 October 2005, IEBA annual meeting, presentation recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

96 Oswald, Greg, 4 October 2005, IEBA annual meeting, presentation recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

275 performances at the Pub of Love. In brief, change is an integral part of the MuzikMafia’s community and identity.

276 CONCLUSION

Ethnomusicologists examine the role of music in the context of human life, closely observing numerous levels of interrelationship between individuals or groups and their larger socio-cultural contexts. Drawing upon previous work by Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Williams, Adorno and many others, recent ethnomusicological scholarship has emphasized in the domain of expressive culture the role of musicians within a late capitalist framework that includes the creation, dissemination, and consumption of popular music. Unfortunately, due to the limited accessibility of major artists, much of the ethnomusicological literature on popular music has been largely limited to musical analysis using secondary sources or to studies of local scenes.1 I have shown that that not only is fieldwork in the popular mainstream possible, but such research contributes much to the ongoing development of ethnomusicology. In this dissertation I have examined the MuzikMafia and three of its defining constructs, “community,” “identity,” and “change.” Each has provided insight into what the MuzikMafia actually is, the role of music in the lives of its members, and the reasons behind the MuzikMafia’s period of commercial growth and development from 2001 through 2005. More specifically, I have addressed how a shared musical and social ideology created a bond between several marginalized Nashville artists and how that bond, or rather its commodification, transformed the MuzikMafia into a significant component of the commercial music industry. In addition, I have attempted to address in this study numerous formative processes at work in the MuzikMafia from 2001 through 2005, using the work of Clifford Geertz as a model. In his Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz claims that “symbolic systems…are historically constructed, socially maintained and individually applied.”2 Like Tim Rice and his formulation of a new model for ethnomusicology in 1987, I balanced in this study according to specific individual, social, and historical forces that guided the MuzikMafia’s birth, growth, and development during a five-year period.

1 Examples include Berger 1999, Brackett 2000 [1995], Bradby and Torodo 2000, Leppert and Lipsitz 2000, Keyes 2002, Samuels 2004, and Fox 2004.

2 Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. N.Y.: Basic Books: 363-364.

277 Community In Unit I, “Community,” I briefly introduced the MuzikMafia and its four founding members. Each godfather contributed much to the growth and development of the MuzikMafia through their own version of “music without prejudice,” implying music without preference given to any particular genre archetype. I then examined the MuzikMafia from several perspectives. I began with the community’s cultural insiders who described the origins of the MuzikMafia as well as each member’s interpretation of what the MuzikMafia is. I conflated the responses and formed a composite definition. I also analyzed the MuzikMafia from a cultural perspective by describing the collective as an imagined community and as a voluntary association, revealing much about internal structure and polity that was absent from the members responses. Furthermore, I targeted what MuzikMafia members consider to be the defining aspect of their collectivity: the Pub of Love experience. The MuzikMafia’s community is defined by its shared members’ belief in musical diversity and social inclusivity. Although MuzikMafia artists define their collectivity in different ways, there are similarities in meaning and connotation, especially in regards to familial relationships among MuzikMafia’s members. There is also a purpose involved in coming together. The MuzikMafia is a kind of mutual-aid society or empowering entity that provides benefits to its members. The MuzikMafia is also a group of talented individuals, forming an elite class among Nashville musicians. In a separate but related thread, the MuzikMafia is an organized movement with a simple message: music without preference given to any particular music genre. The MuzikMafia expanded its community of artists and fans through ritual, namely its weekly free performances at the Pub of Love in downtown Nashville. The MuzikMafia’s primary motto, “Music without Prejudice,” describes the c basic aesthetic strategy of blurring genre categories. Kenny includes this motto in the introduction to “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich)” and at least once during most MuzikMafia shows that I observed from summer 2004 through summer 2007. Most significant is the fact that MuzikMafia artists blur genre categories casually, rather than as a formal exercise of protest. Their musical hybridity appears natural and unrehearsed.

278 The naturalness of such musical eclecticism reveals one of the reasons behind the MuzikMafia’s rapid growth in popularity: a basic assumption that most music consumers have diverse rather than homogenous musical identities. In brief, most people listen to and are influenced by various musical styles, rather than a single one. The MuzikMafia’s godfathers took a gamble when they began performances at the Pub of Love on 23 October 2001. By creating a show for public consumption, the godfathers assumed that there was a commercial market for music that combined genres and styles. News of the MuzikMafia’s weekly performances, where artists and listeners could “be themselves,” spread quickly throughout the Nashville scene, and the MuzikMafia’s audiences grew considerably as a result. Gramsci identifies “organic intellectuals” who go against traditional norms of thought and who identify with or are from subordinate classes, as is the case with the MuzikMafia’s godfathers. The four godfathers served as organic intellectuals who led an alleged revolution of local Nashville musicians to overthrow the commercial music industry and its control over music’s creation, dissemination, and consumption. However, because Nashville’s hegemony incorporates and even expects relatively frequent change in commercial country’s sound and image, the MuzikMafia loses its novelty when placed in a socio-historical context. In fact, the current lifestyles of many MuzikMafia members, including John Rich, Kenny Alphin, Gretchen Wilson, and Cowboy Troy compare closely with those of most if not all of Nashville’s previous and current musical successes vis-à-vis national concert tours, frequent media appearances, annual multi-million dollar incomes, expensive materialistic possessions, high-profile fundraisers, and their affinity for the subaltern—a group to which they no longer belong. In brief, the MuzikMafia’s relatively swift path to commercial success has confirmed if not embraced the hegemony of Nashville’s commercial music industry. MuzikMafia’s early performances at the Pub of Love are significant in many ways. First, the location symbolizes the supposed marginality of MuzikMafia members. The Pub of Love is figuratively quite distant from the commercial country scene on Lower Broadway, despite the Pub of Love’s geographic proximity to downtown Nashville.

279 Second, the time, day, and diversity of Pub of Love performances reveal the MuzikMafia’s intent to attract specific audiences. MuzikMafia performances there were intentionally held late each Tuesday evening because Tuesdays were, according to the godfathers, “the worst night of the week.”3 The godfathers wished to avoid the club crowd that frequented weekend Nashville locales, focusing instead on those individuals who were dedicated to an intensely intimate and social musical experience at an inconvenient time and day of the week. Each performance was free-of-charge and featured acts such as musicians from diverse genres, spoken-word artists, a juggler, a fire- breather, and a painter. Everything was acoustic and usually performed on guitar accompanied by a percussionist who played a set of older conga drums with drumsticks. Third, it was at the Pub of Love where the godfathers first collectively promoted their version of artistic diversity. The various musical genres at MuzikMafia performances, the message of inclusivity, and the inter-connectedness among artists and fans resonate throughout the MuzikMafia’s social construct, representing an homology that sociologist Paul Willis described in a socio-cultural context as “the symbolic fit between the values and lifestyles of a group, its subjective experiences, and the musical forms it uses to express or reinforce its focal concerns.”4 The MuzikMafia’s numerous mottos include “Music without Prejudice,” “Love Everybody,” and “Freak Parade”—all pillars of the Pub of Love experience. Fourth, MuzikMafia’s performances at the Pub of Love rapidly developed into a weekly ritual that the MuzikMafia used to expand its community of artists and fans. The atmosphere was generally consistent from week to week with minor variations, comprising similar songs by regular musicians for devoted audience members. Furthermore, MuzikMafia musicians and audience members rarely remember dates or times of specific Pub of Love performances, but rather describe their experiences in terms of feelings or emotions associated with the locale.

3 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

4 Willis, Paul, 1978, Profane Culture, London: Routledge; cited in Hebdige, Dick, 2003 [1979], Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Routledge: 113.

280 This is the result of attendees often ordering their memories of the Pub of Love synchronically in time rather than diachronically. In other words, memories of a recurring event are layered on top of one another rather than placed in sequential order. The result was a weekly ritual at the Pub of Love that removed its participants from their respective daily lives, creating an “extra-normal” experience.5 Fifth, Pub of Love audience members engaged the musicians and each another on numerous levels. Regardless of age, ethnicity, sex, gender, financial status, social ranking, or belief system, the MuzikMafia welcomed everyone at performances, promoting an atmosphere of acceptance. Tuesday shows were an opportunity for MuzikMafia musicians and audience members to be themselves, rather than representations of socially accepted norms. MuzikMafia performances at the Pub of Love also created an atmosphere that included numerous instances of profound inter-connectedness among attendees. Victor Turner describes similar episodes of comradeship as communitas, or A moment both in and out of time and in and out of secular social structure which reveals…some recognition…of a generalized social bond that has ceased to be and has simultaneously yet to be fragmented into a multiplicity of structural ties.6

The godfathers wanted to create a non-territorial and non-competitive environment in which people of various backgrounds could assemble to celebrate their commonality and diversity.7 In the process, the musicians and attendees ironically formed a deep social bond that contributed to the communitas experience. MuzikMafia artists and audience members have repeatedly described to me their intense feelings of inter-connectedness at Tuesday performances. While observing video footage of early Pub of Love shows, I noticed how audience members often sat shoulder- to-shoulder, swaying from side to side, not unlike musical events among 1960s counter- culture groups in San Francisco or Andy Warhol’s artistic experiments at The Factory in

5 Here I borrow the term ‘extra-normal’ from Charles Boilès, which he uses to describe a wide range of phenomena that transcend daily experience. Boilès, Charles Lafayette, 1978, Man, Magic, and Musical Occasions, Columbus, OH: Collegiate Publishing: 4.

6 Turner, Victor, 1969, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine: 96.

7 Cory Gierman, 6 August 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

281 New York City during the same time period. Each of the above examples demonstrates a certain unity among artists and fans, especially when they exist on the margins of the mainstream. I discovered from my observations of video footage and from interviews with attendees that their unifying experience at the Pub of Love intensified through the use of drugs and alcohol. Finally, the MuzikMafia facilitated an intimate personal connection that its musicians and audience members could share through the act of musicking. In other words, they promoted the intensely social aspect of music-making. Audience members at the Pub of Love interacted with the musicians in the form of sing-alongs, and musicians often adapted song texts to include any given current context. The result was a Pub of Love experience that was communal and ritualistic and an integral part of the MuzikMafia’s collective identity.

Identity In Unit II, “Identity,” I selected eight MuzikMafia members and discussed several facets of their respective identities. Although MuzikMafia artists are individually diverse, through analysis of their diversity, one discovers a similarity that formed and has continually redefined their identity as a collective. The time period in which one grows and develops includes the numerous life experiences that contribute to one’s identity. Scholars have described such experiences as “generational markers,” because first-hand knowledge of specific cultural events contributes to the collective memory of any given generation.8 Here, the concept of “generation” implies (1) “the experience of the same event or sequence of events by a particular cohort of individuals, and (2) the emergence of a distinctive ideological orientation or “historical-social” consciousness among the members of such a cohort.”9 For example, children growing up in the United States during the post-9/11 era view the

8 Sociologist Karl Mannheim was one of the first to seriously examine generational effects and their social implications. For further reading, see Mannheim, Karl, [1928] 1952, “The Problems of Generations,” in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, Karl Mannheim, ed. London: Routledge, 276-322.

9 Schuman, Howard and Jacqueline Scott, 1989. “Generations and Collective Memories.” American Sociological Review 54(3): 359-60.

282 world differently than those who experienced the era of relative security and economic prosperity during the 1990s. It is significant that fourteen of the MuzikMafia’s nineteen core members as of 2004 were born during the 1970s. I have included in Table 13.1 a list of selected MuzikMafia members and the year of their respective births. Table 13.1. MuzikMafia members born in the 1970s.

1. Shannon Lawson (1970) 8. John Rich (1974) 2. Troy Coleman (1970) 9. Fred Gill (1974) 3. Jon Nicholson (1973) 10. Cory Gierman (1975) 4. James Otto (1973) 11. Jerry Navarro (1976) 5. Gretchen Wilson (1973) 12. Max Abrams (1977) 6. D.D. Holt (1973) 13. Rachel Kice (1977) 7. Adam Shoenfeld (1974) 14. Damien Horne (1978)

A common misconception is that identity forms during adolescence; however, as Erikson has emphasized, identity formation is an “evolving configuration,” meaning that identity emerges in childhood and undergoes a series of transformations as one enters adolescence and young adulthood.10 Erikson identifies the struggle to find oneself during adolescence as “identity crisis.” He elaborates: It [the identity crisis] occurs in that period of the life cycle when each youth must forge for himself some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of his childhood and the hopes of his anticipated adulthood.11

Although an overwhelming majority of MuzikMafia members entered adolescence and young adulthood in the 1980s and beyond, many of their respective childhood experiences took place within a 1970s socio-cultural framework, thus reflecting to varying degrees the era’s Zeitgeist. The 1970s marks a significant decade in the development of individualism. According to sociologist Irene Thomson, “By the 1970s, society had lost its constraining power, and individualism became a matter of self-absorption and the quest for self

10 Erikson, Erik H, 1980 [1959], Identity and the Life Cycle, New York: W.W. Norton & Company: 125.

11 Cited in Goss, Francis L. Jr., 1987, Introducing Erikson: An Invitation to his Thinking, Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 39.

283 development.”12 Tom Wolfe describes the 1970s as the “Me Decade.”13 The fourth best seller of the 1970s, Looking Out for Number One, emphasizes that each person should do as he/she wishes, regardless of the circumstances.14 According to the book’s author, Robert J. Ringer, “You must be the same individual—the real you—at all times, no matter what the atmosphere.”15 Core MuzikMafia beliefs such as individualism and self- expression are fueled by its members whose cultural identity is informed, in part, by such beliefs that dominated 1970’s popular culture. The 1970s also contained a wide variety of popular music. Many independent labels began to emerge towards the end of the 1970s despite the presence of only six major corporations that produced over eighty percent of all records sold during the first half of the decade.16 The result was the presence of many subcultural musics that collectively contributed to a more diverse popular music repertoire. According to Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman: The record industry was increasingly impelled to present more choices (or at least to create the impression of choice) for its customers. This imperative led to the emergence of dozens of specialized types of popular music.17

The prominent popular music styles of the decade included easy listening, singer- songwriter, adult contemporary, soft soul, country pop, southern rock, country rock, urban contemporary, reggae, funk, disco, punk, folk rock, soft rock, hard rock, pop rock, jazz rock, heavy metal, blues rock, Latin rock, glam rock, art rock, blues rock, and corporate rock. Starr and Waterman point out how record store owners during the 1970s began organizing their stock in more complex patterns using dozens of distinct

12 Thomson, Irene Taviss, “The Transformation of the Social Bond: Images of Individualism in the 1920s versus the 1970s,” Social Forces 67(4): 851.

13 Wolfe, Tom, 1976, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 126-167.

14 Ringer, Robert J., 1977, Looking Out for Number One, New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

15 Ringer, Robert J., 1977, Looking Out for Number One, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 235.

16 The six largest record companies of the 1970s included CBS, RCA, EMI, Polygram, ABC, and WEA.

17 Starr, Larry, and Christopher Waterman, 2003, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV, New York: Oxford University Press, 306.

284 categories.18 As a result, listeners of the era were exposed to numerous styles of popular music, incorporating musical eclecticism into their respective identities. I should point out that musical identity and social identity are not synonymous. There have been numerous studies on the development of musical identity, e.g. Fox and Williams 1974, Fox and Wince 1975, Skipper 1975, Dixon 1981, and Hargreaves 1986, that describe the process in which children learn music and their musical tastes as adults, frequently identified as “taste public” or “taste cultures.” In brief, one’s adult musical tastes are influenced by a myriad of factors, including education, school commitment, race, age, sex, size of hometown, religious preference, parents’ education, household income, social class, ages of siblings, and one’s penchant for conforming to social norms. Ironically, many MuzikMafia artists express an affinity for music from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s even though they came of age in the mid- to late 1980s. John enjoys listening to artists ranging from Ricky Skaggs and Johnny Cash to Aerosmith, Frank Sinatra, and Boston. Likewise, Troy grew up listening to diverse musicians such as Maynard Ferguson, Tom Brown, Kenny Rogers, John Denver, Kansas, the Eagles, and Kiss. Dean developed a fascination with guitar through much exposure to records by Johnny Cash, B.B. King, and Jimi Hendrix. Jon sang at his first public performance two selections by Elvis Presley: “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Hound Dog” both of which were staple at Elvis’s live shows in the years following his 1969 comeback.19 Jon later developed interests in country, reggae, hard rock, punk, and heavy metal. Shannon boasts considerable interest in heavy metal music from the 1970s such as ACDC and Led Zeppelin in addition to his affinity for bluegrass, blues, and funk. An underlying contributing factor that led to the MuzikMafia members’ imagined community is an aversion to many musical styles that were popular in the 1980s when many MuzikMafia artists were either in or nearing adolescence. This is an exception among taste cultures in the literature, demonstrating that many MuzikMafia artists’ were already experiencing in

18 Starr, Larry, and Christopher Waterman, 2003, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV, New York: Oxford University Press, 307.

19 Elvis’s return to the popular music mainstream was in November 1969 when his recording of “Suspicious Minds” reached Number One on the Billboard music charts. Elvis sang “Blue Suede Shoes” among other songs at the famed Aloha from Hawaii concert that NBC broadcast in 1973, the first performance ever to air live via satellite.

285 middle school and high school a marginalized status among their teenage peers nationwide in regards to listening preferences. Another common trait among MuzikMafia members is their respective identification with the American South either through birth or by migration. In Table 13.2, I list the names of MuzikMafia members who were born in the South and the state in which they were born. Although John was born in Texas, I include him here because he moved to Tennessee during his adolescence years.20 Table 13.2. MuzikMafia members born in American South or in Texas.

1. Max Abrams (Virginia) 5. Kenny Alphin (Virginia) 2. Damien Horne (North Carolina) 6. Dean Hall (Kentucky) 3. Shannon Lawson (Kentucky) 7. Chance (West Virginia) 4. D.D. Holt (Tennessee) 8. John Rich (Texas)

The MuzikMafia members listed in Table 13.2 identify to varying degrees with numerous facets of southernness. Several grew up in small, southern townships such as Kenny who is from Culpepper, Virginia, and Shannon who is from Taylorsville, Kentucky. Some have taken active roles in the African-derived musics from the region such as D.D. who became a gospel organist, Max who specializes in jazz, and Shannon who toured with various blues bands after high school. From early childhood Chance admired Nashville’s commercial music scene as well as the city’s hip-hop culture. Both Chance and Shannon embrace the hillbilly or redneck culture that derives from rural, working-class southerners. Dean’s music contains strong influences from blues, country, and southern rock. Damien’s musical interests throughout his childhood and adolescent years centered on southern gospel and rhythm and blues. In addition to the above, there are several MuzikMafia artists who identify closely with southern culture although they were born in the Midwest. This is owing to a large- scale southern migration that occurred throughout the twentieth century whereby over

20 In August 1989 John’s family moved to Chapmansboro, Tennessee, which is located in Cheatham County, approximately thirty miles northwest of Nashville.

286 twenty million southerners left the region.21 Popular destinations included rural Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana where Gretchen, Cory, and Fred, respectively, grew up. MuzikMafia members closely identify with their audiences, primarily because many MuzikMafia artists come from a rural, working-class background. Cory spent half of each of his childhood years working on the family hay farm in northern Michigan. Shannon worked each year on his family’s tobacco farm in Kentucky. Kenny grew up in a working class family seven miles from the nearest town, Culpepper, Virginia, with a population of less than 10,000.22 Damien was raised in Hickory, a small town in western North Carolina that is well-known for its furniture industry. Pino was born in the village of Savelli in the province of Catanzaro in the Calabria region of southern Italy. Gretchen was born into a poor, working-class family in Pocahontas, Illinois, with its population of just over 700.23 Jerry grew up in a small, Hispanic farming community in Oxnard, California. Dean was born in eastern Kentucky in the small town of Grayson which is between Lexington and the West Virginia state line. Max resided in several small towns in the Lexington area of Virginia, namely Sweetbriar, Monroe, and Amherst before later moving to Lynchburg. The informality of life in a small town, including the frequent occasions for musicking, surfaces in MuzikMafia performances. Shannon regularly converses with the audience, often encouraging fans to dance in the front area in front of the stage. Gretchen and Dean usually wear torn jeans and T-shirts to performances. Pino’s attire often comprises a lightly soiled, sleeveless undershirt and dress pants. MuzikMafia performances are also informal in regards to flow. There is no set schedule other than beginning each show with a godfather. Several MuzikMafia members exhibit deep religious conviction or come from a religious background. John’s father is a preacher whose style is, according to John,

21 The above migration occurred primarily between 1900 and 1970. For further information, see Gregory, James, 2005, Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

22 According to the 2000 Census, Culpepper’s population was 9,664.

23 According to the 2000 Census, Pocahontas’ population was 727.

287 “somewhere between Baptist and Pentecostal.”24 Kenny’s father served as deacon for the New Salem Baptist and the Culpeper Baptist Churches, and Kenny’s mother was active in the church choir. Kenny’s wife Christiev is the daughter of minister Chico Holliday. Chance is often says a brief prayer before meals in public restaurants or at home, and he often acknowledges God as his Lord and Savior on stage at MuzikMafia shows. Moreover, Chance attempts to omit foul language in his lyrics as do John and Kenny. Damien’s mother was active in their local church, and she was also a significant factor in Damien’s decision to enter the seminary program at Freewill Baptist College in Nashville. The religious backgrounds of many MuzikMafia members surface regularly during shows. During a performance of “Muddy Waters” on 23 November 2005, Chance added a concluding, up-tempo section that compared with that of southern gospel or revivalist-style music. The section was accompanied by audience members who clapped on the beat along with vigorous dance moves that resembled those found in many southern black churches.25 D.D. has performed organ with the well-known Born Again Church in Nashville since age fourteen, and he contributes the gospel sound and style to many of Jon’s compositions. John sometimes performs an a capella version of the white gospel spiritual “I’ll Fly Away” while on stage, encouraging audience members to sing along in the song’s choruses.26 Kenny is well-known for his spoken sermons that accompany songs such as “Limo Larry” and “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich).” It is not uncommon for Kenny to address the audience regularly as “brothers and sisters.” His scripture-based maxim “Love Everybody” has become one of several that the MuzikMafia uses in promotional material. In the case of the MuzikMafia, the deep, religious conviction of its members contributes to a collective religiosity. The result is a

24 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

25 The above show took place at a club called Mystic which is located at 166 2nd Avenue North in downtown Nashville.

26 John sang “I’ll Fly Away” at two consecutive MuzikMafia shows, namely ones that took place at the Mercy Lounge on 24 and 31 January 2005, respectively.

288 MuzikMafia performance experience that transcends the mundane and is frequently spiritual in nature. Many MuzikMafia members moved to Nashville during the 1990s when commercial country music was undergoing drastic changes in style and image. The “New Country” genre designation of commercial country from the 1990s and beyond includes male artists such as Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Tim McGraw, Trace Adkins, Tracy Byrd, and Alan Jackson and female acts such as Shania Twain, Terri Clark, Faith Hill, the Dixie Chicks, and Martina McBride. Bill C. Malone describes the above male artists as “hat acts,” implying that they hat no real distinctiveness about them but rather exhibited only a superficial cowboy image.27 As Malone points out, the above entertainers—both male and female—fueled a rapid growth in the popularity of commercial country music, resulting in album sales that comprised seventeen percent of all music consumed in the United States by 1991.28 The sound of commercial country music underwent drastic change during the 1990s. Garth Brooks and Clint Black celebrated unprecedented crossover success into the pop charts by combining commercial country with rock and pop styles. Although many artists retained their country-style attire, their music and live performances were decidedly different from that of commercial country from any prior era. Between 1989 and 1996 Garth Brooks sold over sixty million albums, a feat unmatched in the history of recorded music. Brooks’s live performances included his use of a cordless microphone worn around the head, cables that allowed him to fly about the stage, and extravagant concert endings in which he frequently smashed his guitar on the stage. In 1997 he performed a live concert in New York City’s Central Park that attracted an estimated 250,000 fans.29 New Country in the 1990s also comprised more than a simple combination of rock and commercial country. Between 1991 and 1999 Vince Gill won the Grammy

27 Malone, Bill C., 2002 [1968], Country Music, U.S.A., 2nd revised ed., Austin: University Press of Texas, 420.

28 Malone, Bill C., 2002 [1968], Country Music, U.S.A., 2nd revised ed., Austin: University Press of Texas: 420.

29 Malone, Bill C., 2002 [1968], Country Music, U.S.A., 2nd revised ed., Austin: University Press of Texas: 428.

289 award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance seven times for his unique combination of bluegrass, commercial country, and rock. Billy Ray Cyrus’s 1992 recording and accompanying video of “Achy Breaky Heart” fueled a nationwide awareness of line dancing. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 1990 hit song “Down at the Twist and Shout” combined commercial country and Cajun music, eventually winning her a Grammy award in 1992 for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Shania Twain added a rock- and pop-influenced style to commercial country. Her risqué bare midriff shocked country audiences while her modern attitude empowered many women world-wide. Twain’s 1997 album Come On Over reached sales of over twenty million units by 2004, making Come On Over the sixth best-selling album of all time, regardless of genre.30 The Dixie Chicks combined bluegrass and commercial country with their own modern woman image in a 1998 album entitled Wide Open Spaces that had eventually sold over ten million copies by 2000. Nashville’s new, energized commercial image attracted many future MuzikMafia musicians during the 1990s. The city supported a thriving music scene that comprised musicians of diverse genres and a growing community of songwriters who pitched material to the new megastars of Music Row. In Table 13.3 I include a list of MuzikMafia members who relocated to Nashville during the 1990s and the year of their respective moves. In addition to the ten artists mentioned below, one should include three names: Chance and D.D., both of whom grew up in or near Nashville, and John who moved to the Nashville area in 1989. Table 13.3. MuzikMafia musicians who moved to Nashville in the 1990s.

1. Adam Shoenfeld (1992) 6. Jon Nicholson (1996) 2. Pino Squillace (1993) 7. Shannon Lawson (1998) 3. Kenny Alphin (1994) 8. Cory Gierman (1998) 4. Jerry Navarro (1996) 9. James Otto (1998) 5. Gretchen Wilson (1996) 10. Max Abrams (1999)

30 Jeckell, Barry A., and Troy Carpenter, 2004, “Twain's 'Come On Over' Nets Double Diamond,” Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000732978], accessed 8 February 2006.

290 The artists in Table 13.3 experienced in Nashville different levels of success, respectively, but each was able nonetheless to obtain work in the Nashville music scene. After graduating from Belmont University, Cory worked for several music publishing companies on Music Row such as Famous Music, Broadvision, and Universal Music Publishing Group. Kenny founded a rock band in 1995 that featured Adam on electric guitar. Kenny supplemented his income by writing songs for Famous Music. James moved to Nashville in 1998 where he spent his days driving an oil truck and his nights performing country and rhythm and blues music in local clubs. Jerry began his music studies at Belmont University in 1993, and he supplemented his income by playing bass in numerous local bands. Gretchen supplemented her income from bartending at Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar by singing demos for commercials artists on Music Row. Max’s various jobs included a stint as saxophonist in Infinity, a Top 40 cover band, and two annual performances of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Jon supported himself by performing rock-, pop-, and soul-influenced music at well-known Nashville clubs such as the Courtyard Café, the Boardwalk, and the Bluebird Café, eventually securing a publishing deal at Famous Music. A common theme among many MuzikMafia artists is their considerably negative experiences with institutions, e.g. Music Row, corporations, or universities. In John and Kenny’s case, both were dropped from their respective record labels after their solo albums had been recorded. John had also experienced significant artistic disagreement with Lonestar that resulted in him leaving the group in 1998. NASCAR cancelled Dean’s contract because of financial difficulties that had arisen from legal restrictions on tobacco advertising. Gretchen had been turned downed by numerous record labels on Music Row because of her working-class image and lifestyle. As a young, inexperienced tape copyist, Cory experienced many closed doors during his efforts to become a music publisher. James’s first album with Mercury was, by industry standards, relatively unsuccessful, and he was later dropped from the label while recording a second album.31 Shannon

31 Entitled Days of Our Lives (Mercury 2004), James’s first album with Mercury sold less than fifteen thousand units; James Otto, 29 July 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. Mercury dropped James from the label on 26 January 2005 during the recording of his second album. He was subsequently offered a contract by Raybaw Records to continue the project; Cory Gierman, 27 January 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

291 experienced a similar situation with his debut album with MCA. Rachel eventually dropped out of the Berklee College of Music and worked numerous odd jobs to support her and her young daughter. Jerry and D.D. both dropped out of college largely dissatisfied with formal musical training. Brian dropped out of high school for numerous reasons to pursue music full-time. Pino underwent drug rehabilitation in Asti, Italy, and eventually immigrated with his wife and daughter to the United States with only two suitcases and two hundred dollars to their name. By Max’s final year at Princeton, he had realized that he did not want to live the life of a jazz musician. He became depressed, discontinuing his rigorous practice schedule. Max graduated in 1999 with his Bachelor of Arts in Music despite not having played saxophone for over a year. By the time MuzikMafia began in 2001, its godfathers and many future members “had been through the industry wringer.”32 As I describe in Chapter One, the MuzikMafia began as a weekly jam session for dispossessed artists. MuzikMafia members assembled each Tuesday night at the Pub of Love in order to musick without restrictions or rules. The musicians who I describe in this and the previous unit were drawn to weekly MuzikMafia performances by their “imagined community.” Their individual difficulties with formal institutions—be it Music Row or otherwise—enabled MuzikMafia artists to identify with one another at the group level. The result was a community of musicians whose collectivity empowered its individual members.

Change Unit III “Change” is most significant to this research because I explore the MuzikMafia’s numerous changes vis-à-vis the commercial context in which the MuzikMafia was born, grew, and developed from 2001 through 2005. I note the physical changes in the MuzikMafia, including its performance locales, public exposure, membership, and the growth of its fan base. I also interpolate discussions of the non-

32 The phrase “had been through the industry wringer” comes from a 2004 Warner Bros. press release that was used in promotional materials to describe John and Kenny’s early careers. However, the phrase accurately describes also the pre-MuzikMafia careers of Jon, Cory, and several other MuzikMafia artists.

292 physical changes such as those pertaining to identity. Finally, I juxtapose the MuzikMafia against the hegemony of Nashville commercial music industry. October 2001 to March 2004 The Pub of Love was where the MuzikMafia created its self-described “freakshow,” a packaged spectacle that highlighted the community’s social and musical diversity within a controlled environment. The Pub of Love’s commercial significance has not been acknowledged by any MuzikMafia member as of 2007, largely because the community’s performers received no remuneration for weekly performances there. However, the MuzikMafia godfathers did organize a show for public consumption at the Pub of Love. It was only towards the end of the MuzikMafia’s tenure there, amidst a rapidly growing Nashville fanbase, that the godfathers exploited their celebrity by planning a move to the Demonbreun Street Roundabout. Viewing the MuzikMafia as a spectacle reveals considerable doubt to the MuzikMafia’s validity as a revolutionary entity within Nashville commercial music industry. Debord elaborates: The unreal unity that the spectacle proclaims masks the class division on which the real unity of the capitalist mode of production is based. What obliges the producers to participate in the construction of the world is also what separates them from it. What brings men together is also what separates them from it. What brings together men liberated from local and national limitations is also what keeps them apart. What pushes for greater rationality is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchical exploitation and repression. What creates society’s abstract power also creates its concrete un-freedom.33

Debord’s attention to opposites, here, supports the notion that MuzikMafia’s mere appearance as an anti-commercial musical collective actually substantiates the MuzikMafia’s subordination to and willful inclusion in Nashville’s commercial music industry. The MuzikMafia was in a nebulous state during the latter half of its tenure at the Pub of Love. No longer was the collective purely dispossessed because it had already acquired some degree of power in Nashville through a growing fanbase. However, the MuzikMafia had not yet acquired any significant power because of its then marginalized

33 Debord, Guy, 1994 [1967], The Society of the Spectacle, Donald Nicholson-Smith, transl., New York: Zone Books: 46 (thesis 72).

293 status from Music Row. Instead, the MuzikMafia experienced a vague period of transformation that many dispossessed groups experience in their respective trajectories within a commercial hegemony. Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, which I have applied in this research to Nashville’s commercial music industry, emphasizes the role of marginalized social groups or individuals. Gramsci posits that the biggest obstacle to change is “contradictory consensus.” In Gramscian terms, “The active man of the masses works practically, but has no clear theoretical consciousness of his work that also knows the world in order to transform it.”34 In brief, the jedermann functions within an hegemony according to prescribed rules that appear natural and logical. At the center of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is power, and both Marx and Gramsci would agree that power is a luxury of the ruling class that maintains its control over the sub-classes unconscious consent in a capitalist society. However, there are ways in which subordinate groups can alter social power structures. According to Gramsci, in order to overthrow the socio-culture power institutions of society, an oppressed group must a) follow the same leftist party, b) challenge existing political powers, and c) “come to a new common sense which understands work and politics in a socialist, rather than capitalist terms.”35 In the case of the MuzikMafia, I observed such ideas at work. Godfathers John, Kenny, Cory, and Jon created the MuzikMafia to empower themselves as oppressed artists within the hegemony of Nashville’s commercial music industry. First, they set out to challenge the industry’s marginalization of artists who freely combine musical styles. Second, they realized their progressive if not leftist agenda of inclusivity and non- discrimination with mottos such as “Love Everybody” and “Music without Prejudice.” Finally, the godfathers emphasized the socialist notion of “the folk” through group solidarity and action.

34 Gramsci, Antonio, 1985, “Intruduzione allo studio della filosofia,” Quaderni del Carcere, vol. 2, ed. Valentino Gerratana, pg. 1385; translated and cited in Landy, Marcia, 1986, “Cultural Politics in the Work of Antonio Gramsci, in Boundary 2 14(3) (Spring): 58.

35 Gottlieb, Roger, 1992, Marxism, 1844-1990: Origins, Betrayal, Rebirth, New York and London: Routledge: 120.

294 Donna Buchanan’s idea of the profound interconnectedness between the identity of individuals, expressive culture, and the hegemony in which they exist is also relevant. She elaborates: That both human identity and the forces resulting from the alliances creating hegemony at any given moment are heterogeneous, fluid, and dynamic, and that these two social phenomena are often variously shaped and experienced in a dialectical relationship to each other is one of the seminal contributions of Gramscian scholarship to our understanding of how individuals, power, and expressive culture intersect in the construction of social identity at any level.36

I have applied this notion to the MuzikMafia by examining the community at the individual and group level, and by addressing the MuzikMafia’s numerous changes within a late capitalist context. An often overlooked element of popular music scholarship is the importance of subordinate groups to the stability of the commercial hegemony. In fact, the commercial music industry expects and eventually welcomes change brought by musical revolutions of varying sorts. Stuart Hall describes this phenomenon as a vital component of any hegemony: “‘Popular’ indicates the displaced relationship of class and cultures; popular culture and performance are organized around the opposition and consent to the dominant society.37

Veit Erlmann supports this sentiment in his study of South African ingoma dancing and its gradual transformation from an oppositional, almost militant form of expression in 1929 to a form of national tourism in 1939.38 Jacques Attali goes so far as to stress the importance of the subaltern musician in causing significant widespread social change. Examples of once-dispossessed musics that eventually caused significant change within the commercial music industry include the outlaw country of the mid-1970s, grunge in the late 1980s, and gangsta rap in the early 1990s, all of which derive from

36 Buchanan, Donna A., 1995, “Metaphors of Power, Metaphors of Truth: The Politics of Music Professionalism in Bulgarian Folk Orchestras,” Ethnomusicology 39(3) (Autumn): 384.

37 Hall, Stuart, 1981, “Notes on deconstructing ‘The Popular’,” People’s History and Socialist Theory, ed. R. Samuel, London: Routledge: 238

38 Erlmann, Veit, 1989, “Horses in the Race Course: The Domestication of Ingoma Dancing in South Africa, 1929-39.”Popular Music 8(3): African Music (Oct.): 260.

295 once dispossessed groups of artists. Their respective capitalistic journeys from local to national popularity confirm for other artists an assumed natural process of commercial development. The MuzikMafia’s first significant access to Music Row’s commercial power structures on came only a few weeks after relocating to the Tin Roof in early August 2002. Ashley Worley, who frequented MuzikMafia shows at the Pub of Love, set up a meeting between John and Kenny and her father Paul at Warner Bros. in mid-August 2002. The meeting eventually resulted in Paul signing Big & Rich to the label. Paul admits that he had known John from Lonestar as well as John’s brief solo career after leaving the band in 1998.39 Paul had known Kenny only from reputation in connection with Kenny’s former band luvjOi. According to Paul, his interests at the August 2002 meeting lied solely with Big & Rich; Paul did not attend a MuzikMafia Tuesday night show until mid-2004 at Mercy Lounge.40 The move to the Demonbreun Street Roundabout contributed more to the ongoing development of the MuzikMafia than to any temporary successes. For the first time, the MuzikMafia was a commercial venture, e.g. they received payment for Tuesday performances. However, the manager of The Tin Roof states that MuzikMafia performances were not much different from other songwriter nights at Nashville clubs: MuzikMafia always thinks that they are on the cutting edge, like “hey, look at us.” But actually, people had been doing that for years in Nashville. It’s all marketing. They’re great marketing guys. They’re great business guys, and they’re very talented.41

The defining feature of performances at The Tin Roof was the fact that the MuzikMafia had become a commodity in the form of a clearly defined show, complete with a beginning, middle, and end. The godfathers had transformed a once disorganized group

39 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

40 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

41 Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

296 of Pub of Love entertainers into a structured show for public consumption, influential exposure, and economic gain. The MuzikMafia’s transformation into a calculated commercial venture was evident by the time the community began performances at Dan McGuinness Pub in January 2004. The MuzikMafia had hired its own professional sound engineer, and the community had established its reputation as a distinctive musical movement around the Nashville scene and beyond. According to the manager at Dan McGuinness Pub, “They [the MuzikMafia] pretty much ran their own show. They were doing it as showcases for promotions and stuff. They really didn’t care about the money.”42 He continues: It became more of a packaged show. There was a production, and they kind of went through the same thing every week and tried and improve on that. You know, they’re professionals. They came in and had everything planned out. It could have been Bedlam, because sometimes they had eight people playing on stage at one time. It was organized chaos.43

Taylor’s phrase “organized chaos” is significant. The MuzikMafia’s performances at the Pub of Love could easily be described as chaotic. However, the community’s performances at The Tin Roof, Two Doors Down, and Dan McGuinness Pub, respectively, contained numerous elements of organization. Here, “organized chaos” reflects the inherent dichotomy of the MuzikMafia’s calculated inroads into the commercial mainstream and the community’s close ties to its earlier, free-spirited performances at the Pub of Love. The fact that the MuzikMafia organized and staged its shows became even more evident while performing outside of Nashville. The MuzikMafia first incorporated the theme to the movie trilogy The Godfather while on stage with Kid Rock in Memphis on 6

42 Brad Taylor, 3 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. I seriously doubt that money of was no concern to the MuzikMafia, especially given the fact that money was a contributing factor for the community’s departure from the Pub of Love, The Tin Roof, and Dan McGuinness Pub. On the other hand, Dan McGuinness Pub was optimal for artist exposure, especially given the club’s location adjacent to Music Row.

43 Brad Taylor, 3 March 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

297 March.44 Max played the movie’s theme song on saxophone in order to create suspense before the MuzikMafia began its show. Max elaborates: That [the playing of the theme song] first came across as a joke. It was part of the evolution of the staging of the MuzikMafia. I had a wireless mic. You want to build drama for that kind of entrance. There were these three godfathers on stage. How do you make these guys more something? How do you make it, not just three guys walking on stage and playing? So the house music came down, and this sax player [me] starts playing The Godfather theme, which immediately creates contrast, suspense, and tension. It rewires people’s brains a little bit. People loved it. I did that in Detroit, too.45

The above marks a significant milestone in how the MuzikMafia became the creature of its own image. What once had been a metaphor loosely applied to a community of disenfranchised musicians had evolved into a core component of the MuzikMafia’s collective identity. One cannot discount the significant role that Warner Bros. played in the growth and development of the MuzikMafia. Paul Worley offered John and Kenny their joint record deal with Warner Bros. in August 2002. That event marked the beginning of the MuzikMafia’s successful relationship with Music Row, which eventually led to Gretchen’s record deal with Sony/Epic, Troy’s record deal with Raybaw, and so on. However, it was no coincidence that Warner Bros. was the first major label on Music Row to take a chance on the MuzikMafia. In order to understand the MuzikMafia’s commercial success and change via the mass media, one must be familiar with the two people at Warner Bros. behind much of that success: Paul Worley and Jules Wortman. Paul’s official position at Warner Bros. is Chief Creative Officer. He is in charge of finding talented artists and developing them and their sound into a commercially viable product. Paul graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1972 with a degree in philosophy. His early experiences on Music Row were that of a studio guitarist, and he recorded with artists such as George Jones, George Strait, Reba McEntire, Conway Twitty, and Hank Williams Jr. Paul later became a music producer and song publisher.

44 The movie trilogy based upon Mario Puzo’s 1969 book by the same name includes The Godfather (1972), The Godfather, Part II (1974), and The Godfather Part III (1990), all of which were directed by Francis Ford Coppola and released by Paramount Pictures.

45 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

298 He was involved in the development of artists and repertoire (A&R) for Sony Music Publishing, Sony Music-Nashville, and his own publishing company. He signed and produced acts for Sony such as Montgomery Gentry, Martina, McBride, Sara Evans, the Dixie Chicks, BR549, and Cyndi Thomson.46 He arrived at Warner Bros. in August 2002. Paul identifies first and foremost with the artists with whom he works. His background as a studio musician has contributed much to his understanding of the music business and his success as an executive on Music Row. He describes his enthusiasm for Big & Rich, who emerged during a transitional period for commercial country: Country music was in the doldrums and dying. There was no passion anywhere for any music anywhere. Those of us who hadn’t fled were really the ones who never came here [Music Row] in the first place and had nowhere to go.47

Max describes Paul and his attitude as being similar to that of many MuzikMafia members: He [Paul] understood enough about the system to change it to the way he wants it. He’s a musician himself. He was bored; and he sincerely wanted to make music that was innovative and popular. And he found it in Big & Rich and the rest of the MuzikMafia. Paul really loves MuzikMafia. He shows up at stuff that’s really not that important. He is genuinely appreciative and grateful which is rare for someone in his position. He is actually part of it [MuzikMafia] rather than is someone trying to sell it.48

As a result, the godfathers consider Paul an honorary member of the MuzikMafia. Jules Wortman is Senior Vice-President of Publicity and Artist Development at Warner Bros. She received her B.A. in Mass Communications from East Tennessee State University in 1989. She spent her undergraduate summers interning in Nashville for a promotion company called Sound 70, artist management firm Network Inc., and local

46 Naujeck, Jeanne, 5 September 2004, “Paul Worley, Chief creative Officer for Warner Bros. Nashville, Talks about Signing Big & Rich and What's Ahead for the Label,” The Tennessean, [http://vh10317.moc.gbahn.net/business/qanda/archives/05/03/56952072.shtml?Element_ID=56952072] accessed 12 April 2006.

47 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

48 Max Abrams, 8 may 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

299 performance venue Starwood Amphitheater. Since the early 1990s Jules has served as Vice-President of Publicity at several Music Row labels, including Atlantic, Sony, and MCA. She arrived at Warner Bros. on the same day as Paul in August 2002. Warner Bros. hired Jules and Paul to “change the dynamic of the company.”49 Jules’s penchant for going against the mainstream was an asset for Warner Bros. According to Jules: I love to think outside the lines. I’m a total out-of-bounds thinker. That’s my personality. I have always been an active, involved person. I’ve always been a free spirit. I have never really followed the rules, but I was a rule-maker. I was always a gregarious person. I was the one in school that would make up a lot of outfits and wear funky clothes. I always told it like it was. I had my own way of thinking. If you sit there in a box and try to follow the world’s rules, you’re never going to see what the world’s all about.50

Jules was immediately attracted to Big & Rich’s potential, primarily because the duo’s music contrasted greatly with material being produced at the time by the commercial music industry. She describes the responses from other, more conservative labels on Music Row: Other arenas on Music Row were trying to kill it [Big & Rich’s music], because they were jealous, and wondering “Why can we make that happen for our label?” But then there were people saying, “Go, go go! This is awesome! Wow! Outside the box is working again.” And this is way outside the box.51

Both Paul and Jules are partially responsible for Big & Rich’s initial success within the commercial mainstream. It is unlikely that the duo would have attracted the attention of the more conservative labels on Music Row such as Mercury, Sony, or Atlantic. Paul and Jules allowed Big & Rich to be themselves, for the most part, while marketing the duo’s uniqueness to the general public as the new breath of commercial country music.

49 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

50 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

51 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

300 March through December 2004 The MuzikMafia’s widespread, quantifiable successes from March through December 2004 raise several questions. First, was the sudden increase in commercial country’s popularity a result of Big & Rich and Gretchen’s contributions or was Gretchen and Big & Rich’s celebrity made possible by the increasing popularity of commercial country music? I posit that a combination of both of these contributed to the relatively quick and widespread commercial successes of MuzikMafia artists. Second, what was the media’s role in constructing the MuzikMafia’s “outlaw” image in 2004, and what was the media’s influence on MuzikMafia fans? Third, what changes did the MuzikMafia undergo as a result of its widespread media success? And fourth, did the MuzikMafia experience identity retention or loss while part of the national scene? There is no doubt that commercial country changed significantly in 2004, but was that change the direct result of the MuzikMafia or vice versa? The answer is both because, according to Gramsci, Williams, and Hall, the various structures within an hegemony are interconnected and interdependent.52 The MuzikMafia’s entrance into the popular mainstream in 2004 occurred during a time in which commercial country was already experiencing its own surge in popularity.53 Album sales by country musicians went from 69,311,000 units in 2003 to 77,912,000 units in 2004, an increase of twelve percent.54 Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Shania Twain, Toby Keith, George Strait, Jimmy Buffett, and Brad Paisley each sold a minimum of one million albums that year. Combined with platinum sales by Big & Rich and Gretchen, the above artists sold approximately 20.8 million albums, comprising twenty-eight percent of all country album sales. It is evident that commercial country’s increase in popularity allowed for safe

52 See Gramsci 1985, Williams 1977, and Hall 1979 and 1986.

53 Commercial country was experiencing in 2004 significant sales increases for the first time since 1995; “Consumer Profile” data compiled by Peter Hart Research and the Taylor Research and Consulting Group for the RIAA, from the RIAA’s official website at [http://www.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/pdf/2004consumerprofile.pdf], accessed 14 March 2006.

54 The above figures were released by Nielsen Sound Scan on 5 January 2005. Cited in a press release entitled “Country Music Has a Strong Year in 2004 with Double Digit Sales Increase over 2003,” 5 January 2005, Country Music Association –World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=393&year=2005] accessed 13 March 2006.

301 inclusion of acts such as Gretchen and Big & Rich who had been marginalized or excluded in years prior by the commercial music industry. CMT’s acknowledgement of the MuzikMafia as the Number One hit of 2004 had more to do with the changing image of commercial country than albums sales or concert tours by MuzikMafia artists.55 Both Gretchen and Big & Rich added a much needed flavor to the apparent standardization of Nashville commercial artists. Gretchen’s redneck woman persona provided an alternative to the sex symbol image cultivated by Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and Sara Evans. Big & Rich’s flamboyant costumes and “Love Everybody” motto gave the growing number of Nashville’s “hat acts” more diversity while adding a sense of self-deprecating humor. The MuzikMafia also contributed much to the sound of commercially produced music in Nashville. Gretchen’s hardcore lyrics and rough, edgy timbre compared more with that of Hank Williams Jr., Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Tanya Tucker rather than that of current artists atop the country charts. Big & Rich’s combination of various genres, namely rock and country, compares somewhat with what Johnny Cash was doing musically in the 1960s and what Garth Brooks was attempting in the early 1990s. Many fans described MuzikMafia in 2004 as new, innovative, and forward thinking, but in reality MuzikMafia artists were externalizing their affinity for musicians from earlier eras. Those who are affiliated MuzikMafia have their own views on the MuzikMafia’s success. Max attributes the sudden popularity of Big & Rich and Gretchen in 2004 to “all of the planets being in alignment.”56 Paul Worley takes a different approach: “Country music was in the doldrums and dying. There was no passion anywhere for any music anywhere.”57 When asked why the MuzikMafia emerged from the Nashville scene instead of from some other musical center, Paul replied:

55 20 Biggest Hits of 2004, produced by Terry Bumgarner, directed by Bill Bradshaw, narrated by Devon O’Day, first broadcast 18 December 2004 by CMT.

56 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

57 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

302 Why not New York or L.A.? The music scenes up there are too big and too far flung. This is more like L.A. in the 1960s where everybody lived in Hollywood and Laurel Canyon where everybody hung out and played on each other’s albums, creating a lot of great music. It started to die when everybody moved out to Encino, the Valley, etc.58

The RIAA reports that album sales by commercial country artists had been on the decline since 1995, confirming Paul’s first statement above.59 MuzikMafia’s identity as a collective of like-minded musicians performing on each other’s albums confirms the second statement. A second underlying question concerns certain the MuzikMafia’s “outlaw” image as portrayed by the media during the second half of 2004. The first significant example took place on 9 September 2004. CMT sponsored a concert entitled the CMT Outlaws at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in downtown Nashville. The event was edited into a two-hour television show of the same name that premiered on 29 October on CMT.60 The concert’s roster included performances by Montgomery Gentry, Kid Rock, Hank Williams Jr., Jessi Colter, Tanya Tucker, Shooter Jennings, Lynyrd Skynyrd, James Hetfield, Big & Rich, and Gretchen. The concert was an obvious acknowledgement of hardcore country music’s significance and the style’s apparent revival since the release of Gretchen’s album Here for the Party. Participation in the concert by MuzikMafia artists was puzzling. No MuzikMafia member had ever characterized themselves as outlaws.61 In fact, at the after-party held at the Fontanel estate following the above performance, I did not hear the term “outlaw” at

58 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

59 According to the RIAA, commercial country’s percentage of the total albums sold from 1995 through 2004 was as follows: 1995: 16.7%; 1996: 14.7%; 1997: 14.4%; 1998: 14.1%; 1999: 10.9%; 2000: 10.7%; 2001: 10.5%; 2002: 10.7%; 2003: 10.4%; 2004: 13%; “Consumer Profile” data compiled by Peter Hart Research and the Taylor Research and Consulting Group for the RIAA. The above data can be found on the RIAA’s official website at [http://www.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/pdf/2004consumerprofile.pdf], accessed 13 March 2006.

60 CMT Outlaws, 2004, produced by Audrey Morrissey, directed by Ivan Dudynsky, first on 29 October 2004 broadcast by CMT.

61 During my three-year study on the MuzikMafia, no members described themselves individually or collectively as outlaws in personal conversations, live stage performances, quotes in published articles, televised interviews, or televised awards show appearances.

303 all when discussing the evening’s music with the artists themselves. In spite of this, both CMT and Chevrolet described the MuzikMafia as “country’s newest outlaws,” specifically in television promotions of the American Revolution tour in fall 2004. The significant role of the media in manipulating our interpretation of experience is not new. In his landmark book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige explains how the media provide us with the most available categories for classifying out the social world: It is primarily through the press, television, film, etc. that experience is organized, interpreted, and made to cohere in contradiction as it were. It should hardly surprise us then, to discover that much of what finds itself encoded in subculture has already been subjected to a certain amount of prior handling by the media.62

Furthermore, the media acts in many cases as an integral component of an hegemony—in this case, Nashville’s commercial music industry—transforming cultural phenomena into resistant, subcultural categories. According to cultural theorist Stuart Hall, the media not only record resistance, they encode it into a “dominant framework of meanings, and those young people who choose to inhabit a spectacular youth culture are simultaneously returned… to the place where common sense would have them fit.”63 By characterizing the MuzikMafia as outlaws, the media and Nashville’s corporate structure affirm their dominant roles over marginalized groups. John and Kenny have expressed their opposition to MuzikMafia being described as outlaws. Both agree that outlaws want to break the rules by going against an institution. According to John, “We [the MuzikMafia] don’t want to break the rules; we just don’t think that there should be any rules.”64 Here, John’s use of the outlaw image compares more closely with that of the rebel rather than with that of an anarchist. It is significant that, even though MuzikMafia artists disavow images of both the rebel and the outlaw, the MuzikMafia certainly benefits financially from such associations disseminated by the mass media. I should emphasize that most of the MuzikMafia, John

62 Hebdige, Dick, 2003 [1979], Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Routledge: 85.

63 Hall, Stuart, 1979 [1977], “Culture, the Media, and the ‘Ideological Effect’,” in Mass Communication and Society, James Curran et al, eds. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

64 John Rich, 3 March 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

304 included, are not dissatisfied with the entire system of commercially produced music but rather are displeased with only certain, widely-accepted rules, namely those pertaining to genre classification and radio’s “consistency of format” programming guidelines. It was this shared musical and social ideology that created a bond between MuzikMafia artists and that bond, or rather its commodification, transformed the MuzikMafia into a significant component of the commercial music industry. To my knowledge, the outlaw moniker has caused no significant tension between MuzikMafia and the media. Many MuzikMafia members disagree with their public image as outlaws, but each artist is certainly benefiting financially from the association. Most MuzikMafia members accept such distortions of image as an unfortunate aspect of the commercial music industry. Max elaborates: I’m not so nuts about it [the term outlaw]. I understand that it’s like a sales pitch. It’s a little hyperbolic for my taste. Talk about the cultural baggage of a word…. It just seems a little trite. John got thrown out of Lonestar. I guess that “outcast” would be more accurate…. The term outlaw is a very effective sales tool to make people buy something. People like to define themselves as being an outlaw if they do something differently. But if you’re really an outlaw, you probably wouldn’t sell 2.5 million of jack shit. And if you were breaking all the rules, you probably wouldn’t have a major label record deal. We’re not breaking a lot of rules, here. If anything, we know the system so well that we own it. 65

For Max many other MuzikMafia musicians, financial gain and the dissemination of the music and its message trump any inaccurate representations of image. Max’s comments above raise an important point: MuzikMafia members know how to work within Nashville’s system of commercially produced music. Prior to founding the MuzikMafia, John, Kenny, Jon, and Cory had known much about the music industry from their respective experiences with major labels on Music Row. Each godfather was aware of the conflict between artistic creativity and the business of selling records. Max confirms that, although the MuzikMafia is somewhat unorthodox compared to many other commercial acts, the community is far from being outside the mainstream: You’re looking at people who understood the system and knew how to distill that change into someone who made decisions at a record store. The outlaw term has always bugged me. We don’t break rules. For Heaven sakes, we were on CMT!

65 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

305 We have a major record deal. We are all using the system. A road is still a road, from Roman times to today. We’re still making records and playing the music. It might be distributed differently. The ideas behind it might be a little different, but we’re still working within a framework…. You can use the momentum and power of the system as your tool if you understand it, and you are smarter than it, and if you work harder than it. John Rich is a great example of someone who saw a tool and fit it to his own hand.66

Here, Max confirms the MuzikMafia’s ability to function within the broader system of the commercial music industry, albeit with a sense of “false consciousness”—a phrase to which I will return later in this chapter. Fan Survey and Analysis. I examined the media’s role in disseminating the MuzikMafia’s various images in 2004 and early 2005 by conducting a survey of 425 MuzikMafia fans at the CMA Music Festival in summer 2005. I chose the CMA Music Festival because it attracts large numbers of country music fans from most of the fifty states and beyond. In 2005 over 145,000 people attended the event over a four-day period from 9-12 June in downtown Nashville.67 The survey’s questions fell into two parts: Part I, the community’s audience demographic and Part II, the fans’ knowledge of the MuzikMafia.68 I focus, here, on Part II because of its importance to this discussion of the media. I have included a copy of the entire survey and its results in Appendix C.69 The survey took place daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I solicited individuals who visited the MuzikMafia booth in the Nashville Convention Center.70 I approached those

66 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

67 According to the CMA, 145,355 people attended the music festival in 2005; CMA Press Release, “Country Music Wraps Up 2005 on a Strong Note,” 9 January 2006, Country Music Association – World official website, [http://www.cmaworld.com/news_publications/pr_common/press_detail.asp?re=498&year=2006], accessed 28 March 2006.

68 The answers to questions in Part II reflect the views of MuzikMafia’s more dedicated fan base. The prices for a four-day pass to the 2005 CMA Music Festival ranged from $125 to $250, and did not include room, board, and travel.

69 I include in Appendix D the questions and responses from the same survey which I administered at the CMA Fest in 2006.

70 I administered surveys only to those fans who visited the MuzikMafia booth. A large majority of those fans waited in line for autographs for varying amounts of time, ranging from fifteen minutes to four hours.

306 who a) were waiting to purchase MuzikMafia merchandise, b) had already purchased merchandise, or c) were waiting in line for an autograph or photo with a MuzikMafia personality. If an individual responded favorably to my question, “Are you a MuzikMafia fan?” I proceeded to ask if he/she would fill out a brief survey for my dissertation research. Not all participants completed every question, and not all fans wanted to fill out the survey. The total number of surveys returned in 2005 was 425.71 This figure was large enough to include random guesses, intentional falsities, or responses by insiders without greatly affecting general trends. Questions in Part II solicited what MuzikMafia fans knew and did not know about the community, i.e. what they had received through the media’s filters and from personal experience. I asked each participant to provide their understanding of the MuzikMafia, how they first heard of the community, their favorite artist, how long they had been a fan, the names of the godfathers, and where they had seen the MuzikMafia perform, e.g. through various media or live in concert. Part II of the survey began with Question 10, in which I asked each fan what the MuzikMafia actually is. This question required subjective input from the respondent without the aid of a list of possibilities from which to choose.72 As a result, there was much variation among the responses, and each answer contained numerous fields for analysis. I quantified the responses through thematic categorization based upon the frequency of occurrence rather than by whole, individual responses, many of which contained more than one theme. For example, in one fan’s response “MuzikMafia is a group of country artists who work towards bringing new artists into the spotlight,” there are several points of significance. First, the respondent acknowledges that the MuzikMafia is a “group of something” rather than a single band. Second, there is an emphasis on “country” as the dominant genre of the group. Third, the respondent acknowledges the mutual aid or supporting function of the MuzikMafia. I have listed in Table 13.4 the eighteen most common themes associated with MuzikMafia and their frequency of occurrence.

71 I repeated the fan survey at the CMA Music Festival in 2006. I distributed the same questions and solicited responses from approximately the same number of people.

72 Part I of the survey contained only multiple-choice questions that targeted audience demographics, e.g. age, sex, martial status, religion, economic status, place of residency, etc.

307 Table 13.4. Fan Survey: Fans’ definitions of the MuzikMafia.

What is the MuzikMafia? # of Responses out Percentage of 49973 MuzikMafia as a “group of something” 93 c. 19.8% Responses containing a single adjective, 68 c. 13.6% e.g. “awesome,” “great,” “kick-ass,” and “amazing” Country music 53 c. 10.6% Variety, combining genres, or diversity 51 c. 10.2% Mutual aid or support group 46 c. 9.2% Individualism, non-conformity, 35 c. 7.0% freedom of expression Loud, fun, exciting 25 c. 5.0% Friends 20 c. 4.0% Marginalization, outsiders, rebels, outlaws 19 c. 3.8% Organization, corporate entity, record 17 c. 3.4% label Big & Rich 15 c.3.0% Gretchen Wilson 14 c. 2.8% Social movement with a message, 12 c. 2.4% musical change Family 11 c. 2.2% Unity or a unifying construct 7 c. 1.4% Resolving injustices, revolution 2 c. 0.4% No response to this question 55 c. 11.0%

In two fields, respondents defined the MuzikMafia by using the name of specific artists, namely Gretchen or Big & Rich. This is significant because many fans identify with one or more MuzikMafia artists and have little knowledge of the entire community. The number of respondents who did not answer this question is also significant. The lack of response might signify the relative difficulty of defining the MuzikMafia. Question 11 addressed how each fan first heard of the MuzikMafia. Not surprisingly, many fans first encountered the MuzikMafia through the visual broadcast media. 174 people, or 37 % of the fans interviewed, said that they had heard of the MuzikMafia through television, with CMT being the most significant source at 23.4%. Only 7.4% of the respondents had first become aware of the MuzikMafia through radio. Only 2.6% of the respondents said that their first exposure to the MuzikMafia was

73 Several responses from the 425 people, who took the survey, included in Question 10 more than one descriptor, resulting in 499 total responses.

308 through the print media, e.g. magazines and newspapers. A significant number of fans replied that they first engaged the MuzikMafia through the purchase of individual albums, e.g. Big & Rich at 21% and Gretchen Wilson at 11.9%. The significance of the visual broadcast media reinforces its role in the manipulation and dissemination of MuzikMafia’s image and that of its members. MuzikMafia fans selected their favorite artists in Question 12. Big & Rich were the most popular among c. 44.4% of fans while Gretchen received 31.7% of the total votes. Cowboy Troy was third with 78 votes, or c. 11.8%. Gretchen would have been a logical choice for most favorite artist because of her higher album sales. However, Gretchen did not make an appearance to sign autographs during the CMA Music Festival which might have negatively affected the survey results. I should note that three respondents, or c. 0.5%, named Hank Williams Jr. as their favorite artist. This is significant because Hank Williams Jr. is not even a member of the MuzikMafia although he appears in Gretchen’s video for “Redneck Woman.” I solicited with Question 13 how long each person had been a MuzikMafia fan. From the 367 total responses to this question, 193 MuzikMafia fans, or c. 52.6%, identified themselves as such for one year. This figure is plausible since Gretchen and Big & Rich had released their respective albums approximately one year prior to the CMA Music Festival. Fifty-four people, or c. 14.7%, said that they had been a fan for two years. This figure is questionable since MuzikMafia did not perform regularly as a single entity throughout much of 2003. Of particular interest is the fact that fifteen respondents, or c. 4.1%, stated that they had been fans for four or more years. This figure is unreliable since the MuzikMafia’s first performance had taken place only three and one-half years prior. The unreliability of much of this question’s data reveals many fans’ propensity for exaggerating their appreciation for and association with the MuzikMafia.74 Question 14 targeted the fans’ direct knowledge of who the MuzikMafia’s godfathers were. There were 766 responses. Most respondents listed two or more names

74 Jason Sheer has also recognizes this phenomenon. He remembers that, during the MuzikMafia’s tenure at The Tin Roof, he met many people who falsely identified themselves as fans from the community’s shows at the Pub of Love. Sheer asserts that many people claimed such status because of the MuzikMafia’s popularity, “To have been a MuzikMafia fan from the beginning was now the ‘in’ thing;” Jason Sheer, 27 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

309 as godfathers. John and Kenny received the most votes with approximately 250 each, totaling c. 64% of the total names listed. Only thirty-nine people, or c. 5.1%, accurately identified Jon Nicholson as a godfather. Cory Gierman received only twenty-four votes, or c. 3.1%. Of particular interest is the presence of Hank Williams Jr. and Willie Nelson among the godfathers with 1% and .9%, respectively, of the total votes. Neither is a MuzikMafia member or godfather. Only eighteen respondents, or c. 2.3%, correctly identified all four godfathers. I suspect that this figure is also inflated. On the tables and countertops at the MuzikMafia booth were copies of a one-page history and explanation of the MuzikMafia that included the names of all four godfathers. 149 respondents, or c. 19.5%, left Question 14 blank. The survey’s final two questions solicited where MuzikMafia fans had seen the community’s members perform. Question 15 examines the various venues for consuming MuzikMafia music. There were 1080 responses to this question as many people checked more than one medium. Television ranked number one with 362 responses, or c. 33.5%. Radio was the second most frequently listed with 324 responses, or c. 30.0%. Live concerts ranked unusually high with 230 votes, or c. 21.3%. Recordings received 164 votes, or c. 15.2%. One would expect radio exposure to be high since Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich are signed to major labels that target radio audiences. However, television ranked the highest. This is owing to successful campaigns to market the visual image of selected MuzikMafia artists as well as their numerous appearances on award shows and talk shows. The number of fans who attended live concerts is significant. Rarely do new artists have the opportunity to reach such large numbers of fans vis-à-vis live performances. Both Gretchen and Big & Rich toured with major acts in 2004 and 2005, enabling each to reach literally millions of fans in person. The initial goal of Question 16 was to target whether or not MuzikMafia fans had attended Nashville locales during the first three years of MuzikMafia’s existence. An overwhelming majority, 69.3% of the 247 total responses, referred only to non-Nashville tour dates and venues during 2004 and 2005. Ninety respondents, or c. 28.2%, contained identifiers such as “Fan Fair” without specifying 2004 or 2005.75 Only eight people, or c. 2.5%, had attended a MuzikMafia show from 2001 through 2003. This is significant,

75 “Fan Fair” is the former name of the CMA Music Festival.

310 because MuzikMafia members define their collectivity through their regular Tuesday night shows in Nashville. The relatively little knowledge of such from the MuzikMafia’s fan base confirms the community’s inaccurate portrayal in the media. The survey’s data shows that by summer 2005 very few among the MuzikMafia’s fan base understood what the community actually was. The survey supports the assumption that most fans received their knowledge of the MuzikMafia directly from the mass media. Very few fans knew the names of the godfathers and why the MuzikMafia had been founded. An even smaller percentage of fans had experienced the MuzikMafia through its free, regular Tuesday night shows in Nashville. The result was two MuzikMafias: a) the public, mass marketed, mass mediated image of several multi- platinum selling musicians, and b) the group of subaltern, dispossessed artists who had once celebrated their collectivity and musical diversity at the Pub of Love. Another underlying question of this research concerns changes that the MuzikMafia underwent in 2004 as a result of widespread media success. First and foremost, the MuzikMafia’s group dynamic changed drastically. As a single musical collective in Nashville, the MuzikMafia had previously had a fanbase of MuzikMafia fans. This changed when the MuzikMafia toured across the United States. While on the Chevrolet American Revolution tour, I interviewed concert attendees who identified themselves specifically as “Gretchen fans” or “Big & Rich fans.”76 Most audience members, with whom I spoke, had little or no idea who Jon Nicholson, Chance, Pino Squillace, Rachel Kice, James Otto, or other MuzikMafia members were. Many attendees did not even know what the “MuzikMafia” was but had come to the concert to see a specific act, namely Big & Rich or Gretchen. The result was an observable separation between the “famous” and “non-famous” members of the MuzikMafia. Although no lesser-known MuzikMafia member was willing to go on record with their displeasure with the situation, I often sensed

76 I briefly interviewed dozens of attendees on camera before the concert began, namely the Chevrolet American Revolution tour performance that took place on 20 November 2004 in Johnson City Tennessee.

311 considerable tension in several respective, off-camera conversations about the more popular MuzikMafia artists.77 Of significance to this research is the question of MuzikMafia’s retention or loss of identity on the national stage. I have described how the MuzikMafia closed each show of the Chevrolet American Revolution tour with all members performing simultaneously on stage. Unfortunately, the MuzikMafia’s attempts to recreate the “open jam” of its Tuesday night shows in Nashville failed in the new, commercial environment. The cacophony of sound coming from the stage’s thirty or more microphones was difficult at best for the tour’s sound engineers to appropriate for live audiences of five to ten thousand people. MuzikMafia artists also spanned the entire length of the sixty-foot stage, creating an overwhelming spectacle that confused many audience members who did not know where to focus their attention. In addition, the mass amount of applause frequently resulted in two or more MuzikMafia artists soloing at the same time, each wanting to have their respective share of the spotlight. The intimacy and informality that had once characterized the MuzikMafia’s weekly shows in Nashville had lost their prominent positions among the MuzikMafia’s hierarchy of identities amidst the community’s national popularity and considerable financial gain. 2005: The Second Wave By the end of 2005 the MuzikMafia’s collective identity had transformed as had the identities of its respective members. Audience reception played a significant role in how MuzikMafia members re-negotiated their respective identities. Nowhere is this more evident than with John and Kenny. Both exhibit considerable influence on the MuzikMafia and its artistic direction. The two also spend more time in the public domain than any other MuzikMafia artists. In addition to appearances on televised award shows, talk shows, radio interviews, music videos, and concert tours, John and Kenny have appeared in a variety of television commercials, television mini-series, fundraisers, sporting events, and car rallies. Big & Rich’s live show is the best example of how performers construct and renegotiate identity on stage. John and Kenny perform for their audiences while at the same

77 I have chosen to keep the names of several disgruntled MuzikMafia members anonymous due to the fact that public exposure could negatively affect their relationship with the MuzikMafia and possibly their career in the recording industry.

312 time reacting to the audience’s reception of the music. For example, I observed Big & Rich’s opening set for Brooks & Dunn on two different occasions as part of the Deuces Wild tour: 25 August 2005 in Pelham, Alabama, and 28 October 2005 in Atlanta, Georgia. The two shows were almost identical in flow, stage comportment, lighting, song tempos, verbal commentary between songs, physical movement, length, and song choice. The similarities seemed remarkable and unnatural for a live show. Max provides an explanation. In early 2005 Max observed Big & Rich’s manager Marc for three days. Max reports how Marc methodically analyzed each aspect of Big & Rich’s set. For Max and many others, Big & Rich’s performances are exciting. However, by observing Marc, Max realized that much thought lies behind each performance and that every detail has been carefully rehearsed. According to Max: He, [Marc] nipped and tucked that show everyday, That’s the best part of it: demystifying the action. There is logic behind these actions. These aren’t just random occurrences. There is a method that enables it to work consistently.78

But Max’s observations did not stop with Marc. Max also analyzed Big & Rich’s staging for himself, and in doing so, he deduced the multi-dimensional planes that exist. Max elaborates: The most important thing 90% of the time is the vocal plane. Working your way back you’ve got Adam [on electric guitar] and Ethan [on electric bass]. Those guys are always moving. If people get tired of focusing on Big & Rich, they can focus on Adam for a while. He communicates so well with the motion of his playing [and] what he’s trying to communicate. Dean Hall is great at that too. Ethan jumps up and down. In the back plane there is Brian. This is the John and Kenny show up front, but it’s the Adam show on stage right. The reason that I started paying attention to it is because it worked. I saw the difference in how people reacted during a Big & Rich show compared to other shows. People go crazy for Big & Rich. People get excited. By the end, people are going crazy. I bet that if you sat John Rich down, he could tell you every event on the stage.79

I observed such multi-dimensional planes in action in the two Deuces Wild performances above. During any given song’s verse, Big & Rich were the focal point for the audience. However, during a song’s bridge or chorus, the audience’s attention moved

78 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

79 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

313 to any one of the stage’s other “planes.” Adam emphasized his up-and-down motion and often walked behind John and Kenny to Ethan at stage left. Ethan often retreated to Brian at the rear of the stage during a song’s verses or one of Adam’s solos. Ethan sometimes joined Brian on his riser during a drum feature to draw the audience’s attention further in that direction. The diversity of focal points contributed to an unusually consistent flow throughout the performance. The experience was similar to observing the inside of a beehive or a circus. Each musician performed specific tasks towards a common goal: to provide an entertaining show for the audience. Most MuzikMafia members agree that they have observed the most development in Max. When Max began performing with the community in late 2001, he considered himself a “timid” performer who did not think about stage presence at all.80 In fact, he admits that John and Kenny had discussed with him on numerous occasions the matter of being a better communicator. For Max, there is no problem with communicating his message in the studio for an audio recording. However, while on stage, one has to employ all the senses in order to convey musical meaning to the audience.81 Max admits that physical motion plays a much greater role on stage than he had previously imagined. He elaborates, “Cameras don’t like me sitting here talking. That’s really boring after a while. Cameras like John pouring beer on Dean Hall’s head.” Max continues: I’ve actually experimented with stuff like this on stage. ‘Cause you can tell by how many flashes go off if people think something is cool. Sometimes I’ll stand for a while and nothing happens. Then, if I run to the front of the stage and jump, then all the flashes go off. Everything pops. That’s what I got from watching John Rich in every single one of those Big & Rich shows on tour, all of them.82

Here, Max is consciously altering his stage movements based upon an audience reaction or expectation.

80 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

81 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

82 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

314 However, musical communication is not exact. Max reflects on the accuracy of his messages and on the symbiotic relationship between audience and performer: Sometimes I’m a sender, and sometimes I’m a receiver. The question is: “When I’m sending, is it being received the way that I intended?” Sometimes you have to bring in other tools than what’s coming out of your instrument in order to get your point across. It’s a visual medium. You have to encode and decode. You’re always looking for ways to insure that the message is getting across as accurately as possible. The task is enormous.83

Here, one observes the intentionality of musical experience. In phenomenology, intentionality is a doctrine that states that every mental act is related to some object.84 For example, in order to think, one must think about something; or in order to love, one must love something or someone. Early phenomenologists Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) agreed that intentionality is a defining characteristic of all Erlebnisse, or lived experiences.85 Ethnomusicologist Harris Berger has applied this principle to shared experiences among musicians and their audiences, creating what phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) refers to as an interworld.86 In the cases of Max and Big & Rich, the shared experience lies between the performers and the audience in the context of the live concert. Berger describes his observations of a similar phenomenon at a hard rock concert in Cleveland, Ohio: All of the players’ actions are oriented toward the crowd; they not only have fun, they project the image of having fun and draw the listeners into that fun. As such the audience, the audience is always in the near background of the rocker’s experience, and their awareness of the audience’s awareness is vital to the performance.87

83 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

84 Moran, Dermot, 2000, Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge: 47.

85 Moran, Dermot, 2000, Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge: 232.

86 According to Merleau-Ponty, an interworld is “a world partially drawn into the subject’s experience and partially shared between subjects;” cited in Berger, Harris, 1999, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press: 21.

87 Berger, Harris, 1999, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press: 155.

315 However, there is fundamental difference between Big & Rich and the local rock band that Berger observed. Big & Rich receive much feedback from expensive managers, publicity agents, record label executives, tour personnel, television footage, and millions fans in addition to their own observations during live performances. The above input contributes to how the duo defines and re-defines their respective and collective identity. My goal in Unit III was the documentation and examination of change in the MuzikMafia. But there are different kinds of change, each affecting the MuzikMafia and its socio-cultural context in different ways. Changes in identity have occurred at the individual and group level, and the MuzikMafia has caused change in the Nashville music scene, and the commercial music industry. Underlying, perhaps more philosophical, questions include “What constitutes significant change?” and “How is change different from variation or innovation?” People often refer to a friend or an acquaintance as “a changed person.” Fans sometimes describe a popular music artist, who has forgotten his/her roots or is performing different genres of music, as “having changed.” John Blacking’s notion of musical change is relevant to this discussion. Blacking asserts that musical change is different from other kinds change such as social change, and he also distinguishes between radical change and simple variation and innovation.88 In the case of the MuzikMafia, I point to three different levels where Blacking’s understanding of musical variation and innovation might apply: the individual, the group, and the cultural system of Nashville’s commercial music industry, each of which can be divided into the musical and the social. It is not surprising that I witnessed little musical change at the individual level in my observations of MuzikMafia artists in 2004 and 2005; the MuzikMafia was a commercial endeavor almost from its beginning in 2001. Performances by each MuzikMafia artist in 2004 and 2005 included noticeable consistencies in repertoire, stage comportment, reactions to audience participation, vocal range, instrumentation, and style.

88 Blacking, John, 1995 [1977], “The Study of Musical Change,” in Music Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking, Reginald Byron, ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 148.

316 I describe differences that emerged during any given performance in 2004 or 2005 as variations or innovations. For example, John and Kenny performed an audience favorite entitled “Limo Larry” with only guitar accompaniment at the Pub of Love on numerous occasions.89 By fall 2004 the song included drumset, electric bass, rhythm guitar, lead electric guitar, and a variety of percussion accessories. Such additions did not change the meaning of the song’s text, its melody, or its harmony. Nor did the audience’s dramatic increase in size and composition negatively affect the sense of communitas that the sing-a-long encouraged. Likewise I noticed little social change in regards to identity at the individual level. For example, John’s insatiable ego was similar among performances that I attended throughout 2004 and 2005, that Paul Worley had described to me of his experiences with John in 2002, and that I observed in Dyer’s video footage from Pub of Love shows in 2001 and 2002.90 Max supports my conclusions about the absence of significant identity change in John and Kenny: Those guys have always worked this hard. Even back in 2001 they were doing some production stuff, and even then it still took me three weeks to get a hold of Kenny. He was in town, but he was so busy. Now I have the same problem. That’s the weird thing: they always acted like millionaires. Things aren’t weird now with all the publicity, they’re better. Kenny was always on a mission…. John Rich is doing the same stuff.91

I should point out that, although Max identifies several changes—here, variations and innovations—in his own stage comportment and musical proficiency, he believes that he is the same person as he was in 2001.92 I concur with his self-assessment which I apply in similar fashion to other MuzikMafia members. On the other hand, I have observed significant social change in the MuzikMafia at the group level. Some changes were endogenous, or generated from within, while others

89 Various interviews with MuzikMafia artists. In addition, I observed video footage of “Limo Larry” during a MuzikMafia performance on 1 May 2002; Dyer video footage, catalogue number PM427.

90 John frequently refers to his large ego during MuzikMafia performances.

91 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

92 Max Abrams, 8 May 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

317 were exogenous, or generated from without. The primary factor for the various changes in the MuzikMafia from 2001 through 2005 was the community’s growth in popularity. The significant amount of income generated by several MuzikMafia artists changed the MuzikMafia’s group dynamic. Those who performed at the Pub of Love received no monetary compensation for weekly performances. The emphasis was on the group and its imagined, collective dispossession. By 2004 the MuzikMafia was attracting many new artists whose goals included public exposure that might lead to a record deal. The community had transformed from an escape from the corporate, non-artistic aspects of Music Row into an opportunity for many artists to gain access to Music Row. The above external changes resulted in various internal changes, with the most noticeable being Gretchen’s change in social relationship with the MuzikMafia. Most community members have accounted for Gretchen numerous performances with the MuzikMafia from October 2001 through June 2003. However, her Nashville appearances with the MuzikMafia thereafter became sporadic due to the significant amount of time she spent working on her debut album, promotions, interviews, tours, etc. In fact, from June 2004 through December 2005 Gretchen performed with the MuzikMafia at only four of the community’s twenty-two official Nashville performances.93 It is little known outside the MuzikMafia’s inner circle that Gretchen has maintained considerable social distance from the community since she signed with Sony in 2003. Gretchen’s failure to acknowledge the MuzikMafia during several of her televised award acceptance speeches in 2004 and 2005 has hinted at such, although Gretchen has never publicly addressed this topic. I base my hypothesis on several behind-the-scenes observations during the course of this research. On 20 November 2004 I observed at a performance on the Chevrolet American Revolution tour how Gretchen’s personal area backstage was on the opposite side of the tunnel entrance from the one labeled “MuzikMafia.” Access to her green room, where she spent much of her free time, was also limited.

93 According to the godfathers, an “official” MuzikMafia show includes performances in which at least one godfather is present. Although the MuzikMafia community still exists if one or more godfathers are absent, Cory, John, Jon, and Kenny identify certain performances as official because of the Pub of Love atmosphere that the godfathers strive to maintain.

318 A similar phenomenon occurred at the community’s performance at the Ryman Auditorium that had been scheduled as part of the 2005 Chevrolet American Revolution tour.94 The dressing room for Gretchen and her band was on the third floor on the side of the building opposite the MuzikMafia. My back stage pass that read “Big & Rich” did not grant me access to Gretchen’s green room. In addition, I had received prior notice that Sony had forbidden the videotaping of Gretchen’s segment of the show by the MuzikMafia’s own camera crew, myself included. The events surrounding my interview with Gretchen for the purposes of this research also reveal her social distance from the MuzikMafia. From August 2004 to April 2005 Cory tried unsuccessfully to schedule an interview between Gretchen and me. His status as a MuzikMafia godfather was to no advantage with Gretchen’s representatives at Sony. During May and June 2005 I was in frequent contact with Craig Campbell, Sony’s Director of Press and Publicity, who also made several unsuccessful attempts to schedule an interview. From July 2005 through March 2006 I maintained regular contact with Gretchen’s manager Marc Oswald, who tried to schedule an interview “as a personal favor.”95 Marc eventually convinced Gretchen into a telephone interview that never materialized. On 21 February 2006 Marc requested a written list of ten questions that Gretchen could read and answer via email. On 3 April 2006 I received an email from Crystal Dishmon of the Morris Management Group that contained typed answers to my interview questions. Crystal had received the questions and answers from Gretchen’s road manager David Haskell who had told Crystal that the material was for “the MuzikMafia guy.”96 The content of those interview questions does not appear in this research because I am uncertain as to the context in which the questions were asked and if Gretchen was the person who actually answered them.

94 The Ryman performance was originally planned to take place on 30 November but was rescheduled for 19 February 2006.

95 Marc Oswald 14 July 2005, unrecorded telephone conversation with author, Nashville.

96 Email correspondence between Crystal Dishmon and author, 3 April 2004. The email contained David’s initial email to Crystal containing the answers to my interview questions.

319 My observation and analysis of Gretchen’s social distance from the MuzikMafia was confirmed by several individuals. Jules Wortman describes her experiences with trying to get Sony to work with Warner Bros on various MuzikMafia-related projects: When the whole thing started going [Big & Rich and MuzikMafia], I was getting the cover stories for USA Today, etc., and I would call Sony and tell them what we were doing and asked if Gretchen could be a part of it. They [Sony] were great at first, but they really don’t want to do it anymore. They want to keep it [Gretchen and the MuzikMafia] separated.97

It is apparent that Sony, which had marketed Gretchen strictly as a hardcore country artist to a conservative fan base, wanted to maintain considerable distance from the MuzikMafia, a community that promoted a “love everybody” liberalism and artistic flexibility. Because my research emphasizes the MuzikMafia, Sony granted me very limited accessibility to Gretchen in 2004 and 2005. Another incident involved Gretchen’s promotion to the rank of “godmother.” The four godfathers named Gretchen as an “official” godmother during a performance that took place on 20 November 2005 in Erie, Pennsylvania. An anonymous MuzikMafia member close to the godfathers described the events surrounding the incident as “weird” and that the announcement had been a surprise to many MuzikMafia artists.98 Jon Nicholson commented on the event during an interview the following day for a local radio station. The contents of the interview are little known since the MuzikMafia attempted to prevent the interview from being rebroadcast.99 Gretchen’s social distance from the MuzikMafia validates my original discussion of commitment and detachment among MuzikMafia artists that I describe in Chapter Two. Gretchen entered the MuzikMafia through her association with John Rich, whom she first met in 1999. It was also through John’s influence that Gretchen was granted permission to meet with John Grady at Sony, which eventually led to Gretchen’s record

97 Jules Wortman, 26 August 2005, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

98 Anonymous MuzikMafia member, 9 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection. I have kept the identity of the above source anonymous to protect his/her ongoing relationship with the MuzikMafia.

99 Anonymous MuzikMafia member, 9 February 2006, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

320 deal and subsequent commercial success. John also wrote or co-wrote many of the songs that appear on Gretchen’s first two albums. It is clear that Gretchen’s professional commitment to John overshadows her relationship with the MuzikMafia and its membership. The “Gretchen Question” as I describe her nebulous association with the MuzikMafia is a topic best suited for a future publication. The MuzikMafia’s influence on social and musical change within Nashville’s commercial music scene has been significant, especially when one considers the popularity of the unified show among Nashville music clubs. Until October 2001, the general practice was for a venue to hire several acts to perform over the course of an evening. Each act would feature a solo artist or band that would have little to do with the evening’s other performers except for perhaps a similarity in musical style. The MuzikMafia created and marketed themselves as a unified show with an announcer— usually a godfather—and a series of artists who were closely related in terms of their stylistic marginality, propensity for improvisation, and their belief in artistic diversity. A MuzikMafia show contains a clear beginning that comprises a gradual, unrehearsed entrance by one or more artists. The show continues with one or more climaxes with guest artists, one of Kenny’s sermons, or performances by community members that include favorites such as “Limo Larry.” Finally, there is a conclusion characterized by a gradual, winding down of concert energy and a dissipating audience. The idea of a unified show spread throughout the Nashville music scene, especially in 2004 and 2005. In fall 2004 Chance began regular performances of the Nashville Trailer Choir that carried on MuzikMafia traditions such as stylistic diversity and a unified show format. Not yet mentioned in this research is Alabama Line, a similar phenomenon organized by Jamey Garner that frequently performed at the Rhythm Kitchen or 3rd & Lindsley. Jamey had been a finalist in the first season of Nashville Star. He modeled Alabama Line after MuzikMafia shows at which he performed on occasion in 2004. The music that was being created by Nashville’s well-known commercial artists in 2004 and 2005 greatly contrasted with that of artists immediately the preceding the MuzikMafia’s rise to national prominence. I refer to this phenomenon as the “Gretchen Effect,” since it was Gretchen’s recording of “Redneck Woman” that returned hardcore

321 country musical style to the forefront of Nashville’s commercial output. As Paul Worley admits in Chapter Ten, country music had been “dead or was in the process of dying” as of 2002.100 Gretchen’s rough, edgy sound and her lower class, redneck persona energized commercial country’s fan base while promoting an empowering, if not threatening, female image. Gretchen’s presence in the commercial mainstream contributed to a resurgence in the popularity of Hank Williams Jr., Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and other “outlaw” music acts. In 2004 and 2005 CMT broadcast two respective versions of the CMT Outlaws. The televised concerts confirmed the significance of many once- marginalized artists to the genre of commercial country. In addition, Gretchen’s 2006 performance schedule included the Redneck Revolution Tour that featured artists such as Van Zandt, Blaine Larson, and Trace Adkins. Commercial country acts such as Jo Dee Messina reached new popularity in 2004 and 2005 by hardening their image—an obvious result of the “Gretchen Effect.” Messina released “My Give a Damn’s Busted” in January 2005. The song reached Number One on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart twenty weeks later in May 2005.101 The video features Messina dressed in maroon leather outfit—a stark contrast both musically and visually to her earlier video for the hit song “Bye Bye.” Another cause for such rapid variation in Nashville’s commercially produced music is the influence of John with what I aptly call the “John Rich Effect.” John co- wrote “Redneck Woman” and many other songs from Gretchen’s albums Here for the Party and All Jacked Up. Dominant themes among John’s commercial output include the embracing of one’s roots and the life of the Jedermann—or in Gretchen’s case the Jedefrau. John’s Number One hit for Faith Hill entitled “Mississippi Girl” tells the story of a woman who does not change her ways and still maintains close ties to her

100 Paul Worley, 17 November 2004, interview recorded by author, Nashville, computer video file, personal collection.

101Billboard Magazine, 14 May 2005, “Hot Country Singles and Tracks,” from Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/archivesearch/album_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000910961] accessed 18 April 2006.

322 Mississippi upbringing amidst wealth and national popularity.102 Jason Aldean reached Billboard’s Top Ten Country Singles and Tracks with John’s song “Hicktown” in October 2005.103 The “John Rich Effect” is little known outside Nashville’s music community, but John’s work as a songwriter and producer had a profound influence on Music Row’s commercial output during the rise of the MuzikMafia.

The MuzikMafia Dichotomy: The Social vs. the Commercial The ongoing changes in the social structure of the MuzikMafia have been apparent and numerous since the MuzikMafia’s inception in 2001, specifically those changes that resulted the community’s various commercial endeavors. The result is two MuzikMafia’s: a) the MuzikMafia as a social collective, and b) the MuzikMafia as a profit-driven commercial enterprise, as shown in Table 13.5. Table 13.5. The MuzikMafia social collective vs. MuzikMafia as a commercial enterprise.

MuzikMafia as a Social MuzikMafia as a Commercial Collective Enterprise Free Tuesday night shows in Nashville Concert tours Behind the scenes parties, jam Mass media exposure sessions Music publishing Raybaw Records Publicized fundraisers

For example, in fall 2004 Warner Bros. and the MuzikMafia created a new record label, a co-venture known as Raybaw. All decisions concerning the label’s operations and artist roster include official votes by the MuzikMafia godfathers, Warner Bros.’ Chief Creative Officer Paul Worley, manager and entrepreneur Dale Morris, and Marc Oswald who together comprise Raybaw’s board of directors. Marc Oswald, who manages

102 Billboard Magazine, 3 September 2005, “Hot Country Singles and Tracks,” from Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/archivesearch/album_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001021296] accessed 18 April 2006. John co-wrote “Mississippi Girl” with MuzikMafia guitarist Adam Shoenfeld.

103 Billboard Magazine, 22 October 2005, “Hot Country Singles and Tracks,” from Billboard Magazine’s official website, [http://www.billboard.biz/bb/biz/archivesearch/album_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001305539] accessed 18 April 2006.

323 Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich, and Cowboy Troy, also has additional input into decisions made at Raybaw on behalf of his clients. Most if not all MuzikMafia acts are booked and promoted by representatives for Greg Oswald who is the president of the Nashville branch of William Morris Agency and who is also Marc Oswald’s older brother. Although Greg makes significant contributions to the MuzikMafia’s internal decisions and those pertaining to booking and promoting, he has relatively little influence at Raybaw. Marc Oswald, on the other hand, asserts considerable authority in MuzikMafia’s internal decisions and decisions concerning Raybaw. Three of the four original godfathers, respectively, also owns and operates at least one independent music publishing company. Each enterprise maintains a catalog that includes its respective godfather’s own songs as well as those written by singer/songwriters that each godfather has contracted over the years.104 In addition, the MuzikMafia has its own music publishing company known as MuzikMafia Publishing. In addition, the MuzikMafia has its own commercial enterprise known as MuzikMafia LLC that is responsible for the MuzikMafia brand name and the development of the community’s artists. The company has a substantial annual operating budget and maintains a support staff that is responsible for artist development, management, marketing, and media, which includes the MuzikMafia website, the MuzikMafia internet radio station, and additional episodes of MuzikMafia TV.105 The polity of MuzikMafia LLC most closely resembles that of the MuzikMafia during its earliest days, with the four godfathers making most if not all significant decisions. I should note that, although Gretchen has maintained the rank of godmother since November 2005, she has little to do with daily operations of MuzikMafia LLC. In addition, godfather Cory Gierman, who had been general manager of MuzikMafia LLC

104 The godfathers and their respective music publishing companies are as follows: Alphin: Love Everybody Music and Big Love Music; Rich: Rich Texan Music; and Gierman: Mo Famous Music.

105 At the request of the godfathers, I have not included the exact amount of the annual operating budget of MuzikMafia LLC. The MuzikMafia internet radio station produces approximately 80,000 streams per month. The MuzikMafia website also includes additional episodes of MuzikMafia TV that were not shown in the series’ premiere on CMT in January 2005; Bill Moore, Director of Brand Development with MuzikMafia LLC, 15 January 2007, unrecorded telephone interview with author.

324 since its incorporation in early 2006, resigned his title to Charlie Pennachio in May of that year so he could dedicate more time to his own music publishing company.106 I have included in Table 13.6 a summary of the MuzikMafia’s various commercial enterprises as of summer 2007. Table 13.6. The MuzikMafia’s various commercial enterprises as of 2007.

Raybaw Records MuzikMafia’s co-venture with Warner Bros. Love Big Music Kenny Alphin’s respective music publishing Love Everybody Music companies Big Love Music Rich Texan Music John Rich’s respective music publishing John D. Richafella Music companies Mo Famous Music Cory Gierman’s music publishing company MuzikMafia, LLC The MuzikMafia commercial entity MuzikMafia Publishing John Rich and Kenny Alphin’s music publishing co-venture

Current Social Complexity For the individual MuzikMafia member, an association with the MuzikMafia’s various commercial enterprises as of 2007 is complicated. Shannon Lawson, for example, is an integral performer with the MuzikMafia social collective in its weekly Nashville performances and organized tours. However, his relationship with Raybaw is limited to sporadic backup vocal and instrumental tracks on other artists’ albums. Shannon has a publishing contract with MuzikMafia Publishing and John Rich’s publishing companies, Rich Texan Music and John D. Richafella Music, but not with that of any other godfather. Brian Barnett, who has been a member of the MuzikMafia since its first performance in 2001, has a different story. Barnett is the “bare-chested” drummer who performed in Gretchen Wilson’s video for her hit song “Redneck Woman” and who toured with Big & Rich from spring 2004 through spring 2006. However, for various reasons he is no longer with Big & Rich, Warner Bros., or MuzikMafia LLC but still performs on occasion at shows in Nashville as a member of the MuzikMafia social collective.

106 Charlie Pinnachio is most well-known as a member of the boy band Linear that achieved relative commercial success in the early 1990s.

325 Dean Hall’s relationship with the MuzikMafia is problematic at best. Having been a member of the MuzikMafia since spring 2004, Dean became Gretchen’s lead guitarist in January 2005. However, like Gretchen, Dean has had little contact thereafter with the MuzikMafia social collective, MuzikMafia LLC, or Raybaw. He officially ended his association with the MuzikMafia via formal letter to the godfathers in January 2006 but remained with Gretchen’s band for the rest of the year. Anonymous sources have suggested several respective reasons for Dean’s separation from the MuzikMafia, including a) Dean’s frustration with Raybaw’s management concerning a possible recording contract for him and b) Dean’s personal aversion towards an “unnamed MuzikMafia member.”107 Dean left Gretchen’s band in 2007 for various reasons and returned to his position as an independent guitarist within the Nashville music scene.108 Max Abrams has undergone a series of functional transformations in the MuzikMafia since I began this research in 2004. At the onset of this study, Max was the MuzikMafia’s lead saxophone and stage manager for all MuzikMafia shows in Nashville. In fall 2004 Max added to his duties the role of lead sax player in Jon Nicholson’s band and performed with Jon on tour and on his debut album, A Lil Sump’m Sump’m. However, when Jon began distancing himself from the MuzikMafia in 2006 with a move to California, Max remained in Nashville and forged a career as independent artist with numerous non-MuzikMafia related activities that included work as a studio musician and record producer. As of 2007 Max draws a regular salary as Kenny’s assistant in Kenny’s various personal projects such as the Save Darfur campaign, Kenny’s University of Creativity, and his Pirate Project and each of Kenny’s various commercial music publishing companies. Max maintains frequent contact with MuzikMafia LLC and MuzikMafia Publishing due to their collaborations on a range of projects. Max has little to do with Rich Texan Music and John D. Richafella Music because of their concentrations in pop-rock. Max had very little contact with Cory Gierman or Jon

107 The above sources will remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of their comments and because of their relationship with Dean and the MuzikMafia, respectively. I suspect that the “unnamed MuzikMafia member” is John Rich due to his considerable authority in all MuzikMafia matters, commercial or otherwise.

108 Out of professional courtesy, I have not included Dean’s reasons for leaving Gretchen’s band in 2007.

326 Nicholson in 2007. In addition, Max performed saxophone only infrequently in 2007 because the MuzikMafia seldom convened for shows that year.

Newest Members The MuzikMafia’s loss of several artists, namely Chance and Dean, paralleled the MuzikMafia’s addition of new ones.109 In winter 2006 the godfathers invited well-known commercial country artist John Anderson to join the MuzikMafia; John Rich had been working closely with Anderson throughout 2007, producing Anderson’s new album Easy Money.110 Shanna Crooks, who had been as a backup vocalist for Chance and songwriter for John Rich’s publishing companies, was invited to join the MuzikMafia in spring 2007. Jennifer Bain, a.k.a. “SWJ” who had performed with the Mafia Mizfits and who later worked as a personal assistant to Cory Gierman and John Rich, respectively, became the MuzikMafia’s first official spoken word artist in summer 2007. Finally, Sean Smith, who had been lead guitarist in Jon Nicholson’s band since fall 2004, became a MuzikMafia auxiliary member in 2006. I have included in Table 13.7 a list of the MuzikMafia’s membership as of summer 2007. Table 13.7. The MuzikMafia’s membership as of summer 2007.

Godfathers/Godmother 1. John Rich 4. John Nicholson 2. Kenny Alphin 5. Gretchen Wilson 3. Cory Gierman Other Primary Members 6. James Otto 11. Fred Gill (a.k.a. “Two-Foot Fred”) 7. Cowboy Troy 12. Shanna Crooks 8. Damien Horne 13. John Anderson 9. Shannon Lawson 14. Jennifer Bain (a.k.a. “SWJ”) 10. Rachel Kice

109 Chance’s affiliation with the MuzikMafia and MuzikMafia LLC ended in November 2006 although he remained with Raybaw until February 2007. Although Jon Nicholson and Cory Gierman remain godfathers of the MuzikMafia, as of summer 2007 they both have little to do with MuzikMafia LLC, MuzikMafia Publishing, or the MuzikMafia social collective. Furthermore, Bill Moore, who had played an integral, behind-the-scenes role in the MuzikMafia’s commercial development from fall 2004, left the MuzikMafia in summer 2007.

110 Anderson, John, 2007, Easy Money, produced by John Rich, Warner Bros/WEA 44438, compact disc. Anderson’s debut performance with the MuzikMafia took place at the Mercy Lounge on 28 November 2006.

327 Table 13.7. (cont.)

Auxiliary Members 15. Max Abrams 19. Elijah “D.D.” Holt 16. Brian Barnett 20. Adam Shoenfeld 17. Pino Squillace 21. Ethan Pilzer 18. Jerry Navarro 22. Sean Smith

A MuzikMafia Show in 2007 The various changes in the MuzikMafia’s social collective became most apparent at a show that took place on 30 January 2007. The MuzikMafia was performing at a club called Fuel located at 114 Second Avenue South. Although Fuel is technically located in SoBro, the club is only half a block from the mainstream commercial music scene of The District on lower Broadway in downtown Nashville. The club’s owners advertise live music nightly, specifically Top 40 music from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.111 My experiences at Fuel greatly contrasted with those of earlier MuzikMafia shows from 2004 through 2006. First, there was only one MuzikMafia fan whom I recognized from shows at the Mercy Lounge, Bluesboro, or 12th & Porter; this is significant when one considers that MuzikMafia had had a dedicated audience of twenty to fifty people who regularly attended weekly shows in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Second, during Shannon Lawson’s set, few people, if any, danced as had been the case at earlier MuzikMafia shows; most onlookers stood near the stage while drinking alcohol and conversing with friends. Third, Bill Moore, who was the director of brand development for MuzikMafia LLC at the time, focused little of his attention on the club’s stage; instead, Bill spent much of his time passing out free samples of an energy drink whose marketing campaign was of interest to MuzikMafia LLC. Fourth, the audience comprised more well-dressed young professionals than I had observed at previous shows, including a significant number of females who had obviously undergone one or more cosmetic surgical procedures. Despite the above contrasts in social context, the show’s musical flow compared greatly with previous MuzikMafia performances in Nashville. Godfathers John Rich and Jon Nicholson started the evening and included impromptu dialogue between songs.

111 From Fuel’s official website:[ http://www.fuelsecondavenue.com/ ], accessed 24 May 2007.

328 However, this performance with the MuzikMafia was a first for Jon in recent months. He had been living and performing in California at the request of Warner Bros/Raybaw in an effort to market his music to different audiences than those found in the South. Each artist, namely John, Jon, Shannon, and Shanna Crooks played songs that I recognized from 2004 through 2006. The “open jam” that had been staple at MuzikMafia shows since 2001 was also included. The MuzikMafia’s gradual rise from the local to the national popular mainstream is not atypical when placed within its socio-cultural context: the hegemony of the commercial music industry. However, in contrast to many popular artists and despite widespread commercial success and considerable social change, MuzikMafia members have retained many themes such as “Love Everybody” and “Music without Prejudice” that have defined their community and identity since 2001. These themes reflect the godfathers’ shared ideology of inclusivity and self-empowerment within a commercial hegemony. On the other hand, the godfathers’ shared ideology was based upon a false consciousness of themselves, collectively, as anti-commercialism or anti-Music Row. Not only was the MuzikMafia a commercial venture almost from its first performance at the Pub of Love in 2001, the collective’s increasing commercial success thereafter slowly revealed an embracing of the commercial hegemony that it once protested. As this research has shown, the MuzikMafia was actually a vital and expected component of Nashville’s commercial hegemony and quite necessary to its ongoing stability.

329 APPENDIX A GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS1

A&R – artist and repertoire; a person employed by a record company, a music publisher, or record producer to find new artists and song material with commercial potential.

ACM – Academy of Country Music

CMA – Country Music Association cut – a track on a sound recording.

EPK – Electronic Press Kit: A brief video documentary of an artist that is distributed to the media in order to generate publicity. germ – a colloquial term used in the music industry to describe a person who inflates his/her own self-importance by their close proximity to prominent artists.

IEBA – International Entertainment Buyers Association mastering – the process of transferring audio from a master tape to a disc used to manufacture copies of recordings merch – merchandise; a product that is bought wholesale and resold retail mixing – to combine and blend two or more separate recording tracks into one or two equalized tracks overdubbing – the process of recording or adding vocals, instruments, or sound effects to previously recorded tracks overhead – operating costs of a business plugger – a person who plugs a product, e.g. a songplugger, a recording promotion person pre-production – the first of three stages or record production (followed by production and post-production) and involves devising a record’s concept or direction in which the artist is matched with suitable song material, musicians, arrangers, etc.; preparing a recording budget, securing funding for sessions, booking a studio and engineer, and hiring backing musicians and vocalists; insuring that all equipment and instruments are available; and rehearsing the artists and accompanists

1 Most of the glossary’s definitions come from Whitsett 1998 with the exception of “germ,” “Pro Tools,” and the glossary’s various acronyms.

330

Pro Tools – an industry standard among digital audio editing software that is used to create and manipulate sound in high quality recordings producer – the person who oversees the creation of a recording from concept to actuality publicist – a person employed to generate publicity for a company, organization, or individual

RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America royalty –consideration or payment for the right to use copyrighted material or compensation for services sound engineer – a sound technician charged with maintaining, manipulating, and mixing delivery systems in order to provide quality sound reproduction tracking – a recording technique in which a musician or singer doubles a performance on a separate track to achieve the effect of having used a larger ensemble transfer - to copy data, sound, or images from one source to another non-disclosure agreement – an agreement or contract provision in which one party acknowledges it is, or will be, entrusted with another’s proprietary information and agrees not to disclose such information to another party without permission.

331 APPENDIX B BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF SELECTED MUZIKMAFIA ARTISTS

James Otto James has been with the MuzikMafia since its first performance on 23 October 2001 and remains an integral component in the community’s political structure. James is one of several MuzikMafia artists who closely identify with commercial country music. 2 James’s style also includes heavy influences from rhythm and blues. James was born on 29 July 1973 on an army base in Benton City, Washington. His father, a career military man and also a musician, contributed much to James’s musical growth and development. Following his parents divorce when he was three, James spent his youth in numerous areas of the country, including North Dakota and then Alabama with his mother, and preceding a return to Washington to his father. James’s formal musical training consisted of violin in second grade, voice in third grade, and saxophone in sixth grade, but it was not until high school that he developed his appreciation for electric guitar. His musical interests have included the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osborne, Steppenwolf, Bob Seeger, Travis Tritt, Garth Brooks, Hank Williams Jr., Willie Nelson, Van Halen, and Prince. Disinterested in his prospects for college, James found gainful employment in other areas. In 1993 he enrolled in the United States Navy, spending the bulk of his two- year enlistment period as a deck seaman. Following his discharge from military service and a series of menial jobs in Seattle, James moved to the Nashville area in 1998 where he spent his days driving an oil truck and his nights performing music in local clubs. He eventually secured a record deal with Mercury Records that released his debut album Days of Our Lives in 2004.

Gretchen Wilson Gretchen is the most well-known member of the MuzikMafia, largely the result of her multi-platinum debut album Here for the Party that Sony/Epic released in May 2004. Gretchen’s hit song “Redneck Woman” and her hardcore lifestyle have contributed much to the change in sound, image, and direction of commercial country since Gretchen emerged onto the national scene. Born 26 June 1973, in Pocahontas Illinois, Gretchen experienced a difficult childhood. Her mother, a high school drop-out, was sixteen years old when Gretchen was born, and Gretchen’s father left when she was two. Consisting of Gretchen, her mother Christine, and her younger half-brother Josh, the family relocated frequently, having been evicted numerous times from various trailer homes for non-payment of rent. By the time Gretchen dropped out of school in eighth grade to tend bar full-time, she had attended approximately twenty different schools. By age fifteen, Gretchen was living on her own, supporting herself with monies earned from bartending and singing with various bands. Gretchen moved to Nashville in 1996 where she worked as a bartender at the Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar in Printer's Alley. She supplemented her income by

2 Other MuzikMafia artists who closely identify with commercial country music include John Rich, Gretchen Wilson, and Shannon Lawson.

332 singing demos for various Nashville songwriters. It was in March 1999 at Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar where Gretchen first met John, who later marketed Gretchen and her music to various record labels on Music Row.

Brian Barnett Brian is most recognizable as the “bare-chested” drummer in Gretchen Wilson’s video for her Number One single “Redneck Woman.”3 Brian toured regularly with Big & Rich from summer 2004 through summer 2006, and he is among the MuzikMafia’s original members. Brian was born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, on 27 February 1962 into what he describes as a “blue-collar family.”4 His father regularly worked sixty hours a week in a machine shop, and Brian’s mother had worked since she was sixteen for an international harvester. Brian began learning to play drums at age eight, and he spent his formative years listening to Bob Dylan, Chicago, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Machine Head, and Rush. Brian has experienced many difficulties in life. He was expelled from Catholic school in eighth grade for smoking marijuana, and he dropped out of high school during his sophomore year to pursue music full-time with his band. By age eighteen, Brian was married and had two children. He received his General Equivalency Diploma (GED) in 1988, fours years after moving to Nashville. During his early years in Nashville, Brian— then divorced—supported himself by performing at the Opryland theme park followed by numerous performances with his own band Exit 65. Brian has been a member of the MuzikMafia since its first performance on 23 October 2001.

Max Abrams Max Abrams’s role in the MuzikMafia is three-fold. Known as “Max the Sax,” he is first and foremost the lead saxophone player, contributing that timbre to the texture of most songs at live MuzikMafia performances and many studio recordings. Secondly, Max monitors and directs, when necessary, the flow of each stage performance. His duties as stage manager involve regulating the order and sometimes the length of solos as well as who performs and when with the assistance of Cory. Third, Max is a regular, touring member of Jon Nicholson’s band. Max was born on 10 November 1977 in Lexington, Virginia. His family resided in several cities in the Lexington area, namely Sweetbriar, Monroe, and Amherst before moving to Lynchburg in 1983.5 Abram’s light New York accent reveals his parents’ early years on Long Island and the influence of his grandparents who are from Brooklyn. Max experienced a somewhat difficult childhood in school. He struggled in elementary school until he was diagnosed with poor eyesight, not a learning disability as suggested by his teachers. Despite a relatively low degree of musical proficiency with

3 John and Kenny often introduce Brian at MuzikMafia shows as the “bare-chested” drummer.

4 Barnett, Brian, 7 June 2005, recorded interview with author, computer video file, personal collection.

5 Amherst, Virginia, is located thirty-three miles southeast of Lexington on Highway 60. Sweetbriar and Monroe are located along a fifteen-mile section of Highway 29 between Amherst and Lynchburg.

333 piano lessons between third and tenth grade, Max began to enjoy music at age eleven. His godfather had supplied him with numerous vintage recordings that, according to Max, had spawned his interest in jazz and in the saxophone. Max graduated high school with honors before continuing his education in 1995 at Princeton University where he studied history. During his junior year, Max changed his major to music. Despite not having played saxophone for over a year for numerous reasons, Max graduated from Princeton in spring 1999. He spent several months searching unsuccessfully for employment outside the music business before moving to Nashville in November of that year. During his first year in Nashville, Max supported himself by performing music around town. His jobs included a stint as saxophonist in Infinity, a Top 40 cover band headed by his landlord Warren White, and two annual performances of the Rocky Horror Picture Show with a Nashville production company. Max met and befriended Kenny in October 2000 while at 12th & Porter where performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show took place. Kenny was playing the role of Eddie in both the 2000 and 2001 productions.6 Impressed with Max’s abilities on the saxophone, Kenny asked Max to join his band luvjOi.7 It was during a luvjOi performance in early 2001 where Max first met John. Max began performing with MuzikMafia in November 2001, several weeks after the collective’s first show.

Pino Squillace Giuseppe “Pino” Squillace is the only member of the MuzikMafia who was born in Italy. Despite popular belief, he exerted no influence on the godfathers in regards to selecting the community’s name.8 Pino is the MuzikMafia’s primary auxiliary percussionist, specializing in the conga drums, and has performed with the MuzikMafia since October 2001.9 In addition to his musical and ideological contributions to the MuzikMafia, Pino is also an entrepreneur of historical significance within Nashville’s business community. Pino was born on 15 January 1962 in the small town of Savelli in the province of Catanzaro in the Calabria region of southern Italy.10 When Pino was two years old, his family moved to in Milan where he lived for twenty years. Following a destructive addiction to cocaine and heroin, for which he spent thirteen months in a rehabilitation

6 Max performed in the production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show that took place in late October 2000 and 2001 at 12th & Porter located at 114 12th Ave. S across the street from the Pub of Love.

7 Big Kenny had played saxophone, among other instruments, while growing up in Virginia.

8 Interview with author, 8 March 2005.

9 Most MuzikMafia musicians and fans refer to Pino as the Italian immigrant who plays the bongo drums, mistakenly identifying his conga drums as bongos. He has never performed a set of bongos on a MuzikMafia stage.

10 With a population between 500 in winter and 900 during the summer months, Savelli is located in Calabria region of southern Italy. The province of Cantanzaro that surrounds Savelli, faces the Squillace Gulf on the Ionian Sea and is partly surrounded by the Sila Mountains.

334 clinic in the town of Asti, Pino moved to Florence where he studied percussion at the Mac Poldo School of Music in nearby Prato. Concurrent to his musical studies, Pino co-founded a rehabilitation program outside of Florence that housed at-risk youths. Pino forged much of his wealth with his own company that specialized in the sale of women’s cosmetics. In a business deal gone sour, he lost his company and his fortune. In 1989 Pino immigrated with his family to the United States for a new start. In December of that year, the Squillace family arrived in San Francisco, California, with six suitcases and two hundred dollars to their name. They moved into a garage apartment owned by Pino’s in-laws in Crescent City located along California’s west coast approximately twenty miles south of the Oregon state line. In spring 1990 the Pino’s moved to Los Angeles where Pino found employment in numerous fields. After a brief stint making pizzas for Gina’s Pizza, Pino sold aluminum windows for Superior Engineering Products. His relative success in the latter allowed him and his family to move out of their small L.A. apartment that they had been sharing with another family into more spacious accommodations. In 1993 the family relocated to Nashville, where Pino became a successful entrepreneur. His restaurant Caffee Milano contributed much to the music scene in The District. In addition, Pino was also influential in the commercial development of the Demonbreun Street Roundabout area adjacent to Music Row.

Damien Horne Also known as “Mista D,” Damien started performing regularly with the MuzikMafia in August 2002, although he did not become an official member until early 2005. His current musical style includes stark influences from R&B, gospel, and pop. Damien was born 14 July 1978 in Hickory, North Carolina, into a low-income family.11 Damien is one of twelve siblings: four by his parents, Barbara Horn and Charles Semmes, and eight whom his father shared with other women. Damien grew up largely influenced by his mother who encouraged his musical participation in the local church choir. His father, an alcoholic for much of Damien’s life, played a lesser role in Damien’s early development. Damien’s musical interests centered on gospel and R&B throughout much of his childhood and early adult years. He began learning to play piano at age seventeen by copying church musicians. Following high school graduation in Hickory and a two-year stint at Guilford Tech in Greensboro, Damien moved to Hollywood, California, where he became homeless for a year before returning home to North Carolina. He moved to Nashville in summer 2002 where he immediately started learning to play the guitar in addition to his seminary studies at Freewill Baptist College. While performing on a street corner in downtown Nashville in 2002, Damien caught the attention of John Rich, who invited him to perform the following week with the MuzikMafia.

11 Horne, Damien, 25 May 2005, recorded interview with author, computer video file, personal collection.

335 Jerry Navarro As the primary bassist for the MuzikMafia, Navarro’s duties are two-fold. Since January 2004 he has accompanied the MuzikMafia during most Tuesday night shows in Nashville. However, Jerry is also the bassist for most of Jon Nicholson’s solo endeavors, including Jon’s 2005 debut album entitled A Lil’ Sump’m Sump’m. Jerry was born on 1 March 1976 in Oxnard, California, a small Hispanic farming community between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.12 He began guitar lessons at age five with his father, and by age six Jerry was regularly performing traditional Mexican music with his family at local restaurants. Introduced to him by his aunt Terry, the bass became the focus of Jerry’s interests at age twelve. Jerry dropped out of high school in 1993 at age seventeen to pursue music professionally. He later received his General Equivalency Diploma (GED) as a result of accumulated college credits. Jerry moved to Nashville in 1996 to study music, but by 1999 he had left higher education to pursue music full-time in the Nashville area.13 In January 2004 Pino invited Jerry to perform with the MuzikMafia at Dan McGuinness Pub. Jerry had known Pino from numerous performances at Caffee Milano in downtown Nashville. Jerry also had known Kenny through a mutual friend who played keyboard in Kenny’s band.

Elijah “D.D.” Holt D.D. is known by MuzikMafia members and fans as Jon’s drummer and keyboardist. Pino contacted both D.D. and Jerry in early 2004 for the purpose of filling vacancies in Jon’s band. The MuzikMafia had resumed performances in January 2004 at Dan McGuinness Pub, and the weekly event gave Jon the opportunity to experiment with new band members. D.D. was born Elijah Demond Holt on 19 September 1973 in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up in nearby Hendersonville. He started taking drums lessons at age nine at a local music store. When D.D. was fourteen years old, his uncle introduced him to the basics of gospel-style organ. In 1993 D.D. became the regular organist with the famed Born Again Church in Nashville, a position that he has held ever since.14 D.D. is an accomplished percussionist and organist, and he has performed with many well known artists independent of his MuzikMafia affiliation. According to D.D., his first professional experience as a musician was at age seventeen when he began performing regularly with gospel legend Bobby Jones, including national tours and several broadcast

12 Located 62 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles and 35 miles south of Santa Barbara, Oxnard currently contains approximately 190,000 residents, many of whom are of Hispanic descent, (Oxnard Chamber of Commerce website, [http://oxcc.wliinc2.com/relocation/facts.asp] accessed 5 March 2005.

13 Jerry attended Belmont University in Nashville from fall 1996 to spring 1998. In fall 1998 Jerry was encouraged to transfer to Middle Tennessee State University by Lalo Davila, a percussion instructor at MTSU who is also of Hispanic descent.

14 The Born Again Church’s 3000-person membership includes, among others, the Winans family, known throughout the Christian music industry as the “First Family of Gospel Music.”

336 performances on Black Entertainment Television (BET).15 From 1997 to 2002 D.D. toured with seven-time Grammy Award winner CeCe Winans who was also a member the Born Again Church.16

Fred Gill Fred is among the most recognizable members of the MuzikMafia, having received national attention as the dwarf who appeared in Big & Rich’s video for the hit song, “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).” Although Fred is three-foot two inches tall, he is known by friends and fans as “Two Foot Fred” or “The Deuce.”17 Born 27 July 1974 in Seymour, Indiana, Fred experienced considerable health problems early on in life. He was born with a form of dwarfism known as diastrophic displaysia. His other ailments from birth included a cauliflower ear, a cleft pallet, two club feet, and scoliosis that multiple surgeries attempted to correct throughout his childhood. After graduating from high school in the spring of 1993, Fred began his studies at Ball State University where he graduated in 1997 from the Entrepreneurship Program with a Bachelor of Science in Business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. Today, Fred owns his own corporation, Gill Enterprises, LLC that includes a Seymour pub called The Funkey Monkey, 259 rental properties, and a spice company called Phat Freddie’s Seasonings. Fred became a member of the MuzikMafia through John, whom he met at a Nashville bar during Fan Fair in 1998.18 The two corresponded with one another every few months until February 2004 when John approached Fred about appearing in the “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” video.19 In 2004 and 2005 Fred appeared with Big & Rich on their tours with Tim McGraw, Brooks and Dunn, and the MuzikMafia, respectively.

15 Bobby Jones is well known throughout the gospel industry. In 1980 he moved his television show Bobby Jones Gospel from Nashville’s NBC affiliate WSMV to the BET where Bobby Jones Gospel soon became the network’s highest rated program.

16 Since 1991 Winans has received seven Grammy Awards and nineteen Grammy nominations. CeCe Winans has recorded seven solo albums since 1995, the first of which won a Grammy Award for Contemporary Soul Gospel Album. In 2003 EMI released the recording CeCe Winans Presents the Born Again Church Choir that was certified platinum.

17Gill, Fred, 11 March 2005, recorded interview with author, computer video file, personal collection.

18 Fan Fair is the former name of the CMA Music Fest, Nashville’s premiere annual event that promotes commercial country music.

19 The filming for the “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” video took place on Thursday, 15 April 2004, on the Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge in downtown Nashville.

337 APPENDIX C MUZIKMAFIA FAN SURVEY AND RESULTS 2005

THE CONTEXT:

The following survey was conducted over a four-day period from 9-12 June 2005 at the Country Music Association Music Fest (formerly known as Fan Fair). The survey took place daily from 10AM to 4PM. I solicited individuals who visited the MuzikMafia booth in the Nashville Convention Center. I approached those who A) were waiting to purchase MuzikMafia merchandise, B) had already purchased merchandise, or C) were waiting in line for an autograph or photo with a MuzikMafia personality. If an individual responded favorably to my question, “Are you a MuzikMafia fan?” I proceeded to ask if he/she would like to fill out a brief fan survey for my dissertation research. Not all participants completed every question, and not all fans wanted to fill out the survey. The total number of surveys returned was 425. This figure is large enough to include random guesses, intentional falsities, or responses by insiders without greatly affecting general trends.

The survey contains two parts. Part I contains background information that identifies specific demographic criteria of MuzikMafia’s fan base. Part II targets what MuzikMafia fans know and do not know about the MuzikMafia as well as where, when, and how the fans have received exposure to the MuzikMafia.

RELIABILITY:

I posit that the demographic information contained in Part I (questions 1-9) reflects the more country-oriented division of MuzikMafia’s fan base. I administered the survey during a national festival for country music fans in Nashville, Tennessee. The MuzikMafia booth was one of 220 booths that provided country music fans with merchandise while hosting numerous celebrity appearances. However, because MuzikMafia’s first three well-known artists, namely Gretchen Wilson, Big and Rich, and Cowboy Troy, have been marketed to primarily country audiences, the data could reliably reflect national trends. The knowledge-based information contained in Part II (questions 10-16) reliably reflects the views of MuzikMafia’s more dedicated fan base. The prices for a four-day pass to the CMA Music Fest 2005 ranged from $125 to $250, and did not include room, board, and travel. I administered surveys only to those fans who visited the MuzikMafia booth. A large majority of those fans waited in line for autographs for various amounts of time, ranging from fifteen minutes to four hours.

THE SURVEY QUESTIONS AND RESULTS:

1. What is your gender? (male or female) a. 425 responses b. RESULTS:

338 i. Male: 100 (c. 24%) ii. Female: 325 (c. 76%) 2. What is your ethnicity? a. 417 responses b. RESULTS: i. Caucasian: 396 (c. 95%) ii. Native American: 9 (c. 2.2%) iii. African-American: 3 (0.7%) iv. Hispanic: 3 (0.7%) v. Asian 3: (0.7%) vi. Other: 3 (0.7%) 3. How old are you? a. 425 responses b. RESULTS: i. Age 8 or 9: 2 (c. 0.5%) ii. Age 10-19: 108 (c. 25.4%) iii. Age 20-29: 89 (c. 20.9%) iv. Age 30-39: 99 (c. 23.3%) v. Age 40-49: 87 (c. 20.5%) vi. Age 50-59: 36 (c. 8.5%) vii. Age 60 +: 4 (c. 0.9%) 4. What is your employment status? a. 463 responses (some individuals checked more than one kind of employment, e.g. student and part-time work. b. RESULTS: i. Full-time: 221 (c. 47.7%) ii. Student: 110 (c. 23.8%) iii. Part-time: 53 (c. 11.4%) iv. Self-employed: 46 (c. 9.9%) v. Homemaker: 15 (c. 3.2%) vi. Retired: 7 (c. 1.5%) vii. Unemployed: 5 (c. 1.1%) viii. Other: 6 (c. 1.3%) 5. What best describes your family’s yearly gross income level? a. 391 responses b. RESULTS: i. $0-9,999: 25 (c. 6.4%) ii. $10,000-29,999: 51 (c. 13%) iii. $30,000-49,999: 90 (c. 23%) iv. $50,000-69,999: 75 (c. 19.2%) v. $70,000-89,999: 55 (c. 14.1%) vi. $90,000-119,999: 49 (c. 12.5%) vii. $120,000 +: 46 (c. 11.7%) 6. Where were you raised? a. 412 responses b. RESULTS:

339 i. Non-U.S.: 11 (c. 2.7%) comprising fans from the U.K., Canada, Japan, and the Bahamas ii. United States: 401 (c. 97.3%) 1. AL: 9 (c. 2.2%) 2. AR: 7 (c.1.7%) 3. CA: 11 (c. 2.7%) 4. CT: 12 (c. 2.9%) 5. DE: 1 (c. 0.2%) 6. FL: 22 (c. 5.3%) 7. GA: 10 (c. 2.4%) 8. HI: 1 (c. 0.2%) 9. IL: 31 (c. 7.5%) 10. IN: 25 (c. 6.1%) 11. IO: 1 (c. 0.2%) 12. KY: 28 (c. 6.8%) 13. LA: 11 (c. 2.7%) 14. MA: 7 (c.1.7%) 15. MD: 8 (c. 1.9%) 16. MI: 15 (c. 3.6%) 17. MN: 4 (c. 1%) 18. MO: 9 (c. 2.2%) 19. MS: 4 (c. 1%) 20. NC: 9 (c. 2.2%) 21. NH: 3 (c. 0.7%) 22. NJ: 3 (c. 0.7%) 23. NM: 1 (c. 0.2%) 24. NV: 1 (c. 0.2%) 25. NY: 21 (c. 5.1%) 26. OH: 29 (c. 7%) 27. OK: 2 (c. 0.5%) 28. OR: 1 (c. 0.2%) 29. PA: 20 (c. 4.9%) 30. RI: 1 (c. 0.2%) 31. SC: 7 (c.1.7%) 32. SD: 4 (c. 1%) 33. TN: 35 (c. 8.5%) 34. TX: 19 (c. 4.6%) 35. UT: 1 (c. 0.2%) 36. VA: 11 (c. 2.7%) 37. VT: 6 (c. 1.5%) 38. WA: 2 (c. 0.5%) 39. WI: 4 (c. 1%) 40. WV: 4 (c. 1%) 41. WY: 1 (c. 0.2%) c. United States Regional Breakdown:

340 i. Southeast (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN): 142 (c. 35.4%) ii. Midwest (OH, IL, IN, IO, MI, MN, MO, SD, WI): 122 (c. 30.4%) iii. Northeast (CT, MA, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT): 53 (c. 13.2%) iv. Mid-Atlantic (DE, PA, MD, VA, WV): 44 (c. 11%) v. Southwest (NM, OK, TX, UT): 23 (c. 5.7%) vi. Pacific (CA, HI, NV): 13 (c. 3.2%) vii. Northwest (OR, WA, WY): 4 (c. 1%) 7. What is your religion/denomination? (also specify if no affiliation) a. 390 responses (not all who filled out a survey completed this question); NOTE: some categories do overlap, e.g. a Baptist is both a Christian and a Protestant. An individual’s preference for one moniker over the other might reflect an array of personal attitudes or could also signify that the respondent did not understand the question. b. RESULTS: i. Baptists: 79 (c. 20.3%) ii. Catholic: 74 (c. 19%) iii. Christian: 66 (c. 17%) iv. Methodist: 25 (c. 6.4%) v. Church of Christ: 12 (c. 3.1%) vi. Lutheran: 10 (c. 2.6%) vii. Non-denominational: 10 (c. 2.6%) viii. Protestant: 9 (c. 2.3%) ix. Episcopalian: 6 (c. 1.5%) x. Presbyterian: 5 (c. 1.3%) xi. Jewish: 3 (c. 0.8%) xii. Church of God: 2 (c. 0.5%) xiii. Pentecostal: 2 (c. 0.5%) xiv. Brethren: 1 (c. 0.3%) xv. Christian Scientists: 1 (c. 0.3%) xvi. Jehovah’s Witnesses: 1 (c. 0.3%) xvii. Nazarene: 1 (c. 0.3%) xviii. No affiliation 83 (c. 21.3%) 8. Which if the following best describes the environment in which you live? a. 410 responses b. RESULTS: i. Suburban: 181 (c. 44.1%) ii. Rural: 160 (c. 39%) iii. Urban: 69 (c. 16.8%) 9. What is the highest level of education that you completed? a. 416 responses. NOTE: An item such as “less than high school” can refer to someone who has not yet graduated from high school or to someone who dropped out before receiving a diploma. b. RESULTS: i. Less than high school: 60 (c. 14.4%)

341 ii. High school graduate or equivalent: 100 (c. 24%) iii. Some college/vocational school: 127 (c. 30.5%) iv. College graduate: 95 (c. 22.8%) v. Some post-graduate study: 18 (c. 4.3%) vi. Master’s degree: 14 (c. 3.4%) vii. Doctoral degree: 2 (c. 0.5%) 10. In your opinion, what is the MuzikMafia? a. This question requires subjective input from the respondent without the aid of a list of possibilities from which to choose. As a result, there was much variation among the responses, and each answer contained numerous fields for analysis. I quantified the responses through thematic categorization based upon the frequency of occurrence rather than by whole, individual responses, most of which contained more than one theme. For example, in the response “MuzikMafia is a group of country artists who work towards bringing new artists into the spotlight,” one finds several points of significance. First, the respondent acknowledges that the MuzikMafia is a “group of” something rather than a single band. Second, there is an emphasis on “country” as the dominant genre of the group. Third, the respondent acknowledges the mutual aid or supporting function of the MuzikMafia. I have listed below the eighteen most common themes associated with MuzikMafia and their frequency of occurrence. b. 499 duplicated responses. NOTE: For the sake of brevity, I have omitted the low number of non-duplicated responses. c. RESULTS: i. MuzikMafia as a “group of” something: 93 (c. 19.8%) ii. Responses containing a single adjective: 68 (c. 13.6%) 1. Most frequent were: “awesome,” “great,” “kick-ass,” and “amazing.” iii. Country music: 53 (c. 10.6%) iv. Variety, combining genres, or diversity: 51 (c. 10.2%) v. Mutual aid or support group: 46 (c. 9.2%) vi. Individualism, non-conformity, freedom of expression: 35 (c. 7.0%) vii. Loud, fun, exciting: 25 (c. 5.0%) viii. Friends: 20 (c. 4.0%) ix. Marginalization, outsiders, rebels, outlaws: 19 (c. 3.8%) x. Organization, corporate entity, record label: 17 (c. 3.4%) xi. Big & Rich: 15 (c.3.0%) 1. Here the respondents defined the MuzikMafia by using the name of specific artists. xii. Gretchen Wilson: 14 (c. 2.8%) 1. Ibid. xiii. Social movement with a message, musical change: 12 (c. 2.4%) xiv. Family: 11 (c. 2.2%) xv. Unity or a unifying construct: 7 (c. 1.4%) xvi. Non-traditional: 6 (c. 1.2%) xvii. Cowboy Troy: 5 (c. 1.0%)

342 1. Ibid. xviii. Resolving injustices, revolution: 2 (c. 0.4%) d. No response to this question: 55 (c. 11.0%) i. This is significant because the lack of response might signify the relative difficulty of defining the MuzikMafia. 11. How did you first hear about the MuzikMafia? a. 471 responses. NOTE: respondents often provided several sources of early exposure to the MuzikMafia, e.g. radio, friends, and artists’ recordings. b. RESULTS: i. Broadcast media 1. CMT: 110 (c. 23.4%) 2. Television (in general): 45 (c. 9.6%) 3. Radio: 35 (c. 7.4%) 4. Music videos (in general): 10 (c. 2.1%) 5. GAC: 5 (c. 1.1%) 6. MTV: 3 (c. 0.6%) 7. VH-1 Country: 1 (c. 0.2%) ii. Print media 1. Country Weekly: 6 (c. 1.3%) 2. Magazines (in general): 6 (c. 1.3%) iii. Fan Fair / CMA Music Fest: 22 (c. 4.7%) 1. Note: most respondents did not specify which year they attended. iv. Live performance: 22 (c. 4.7%) v. Friends / word of mouth: 19 (c. 4.0%) vi. Family: 16 (c. 3.4%) 1. Note: many respondents named their children as an initial source for information on the MuzikMafia. vii. Internet: 8 (c. 1.7%) viii. MuzikMafia artists (recordings or otherwise) 1. Big & Rich: 99 (c. 21%) 2. Gretchen Wilson: 56 (c. 11.9%) 3. James Otto: 2 (c. 0.4%) 4. Chance: 1 (c. 0.2%) 5. Vicky McGehee: 1 (c. 0.2%) 12. Who is your favorite MuzikMafia artist? a. 662 responses. NOTE: most respondents named two or more artists as their favorite. b. RESULTS: i. Big & Rich: 294 (c. 44.4%) ii. Gretchen Wilson: 210 (c. 31.7%) iii. Cowboy Troy: 78 (c. 11.8%) iv. James Otto: 15 (c. 2.3%) v. All MuzikMafia artists collectively: 14 (c. 2.1%) vi. Shannon Lawson: 8 (c. 1.2%) vii. 2-Foot Fred: 8 (c. 1.2%)

343 viii. Chance: 7 (c. 1.0%) ix. Dean Hall: 6 (c. 0.9%) x. Mista D: 6 (c. 0.9%) xi. Jon Nicholson: 4 (c. 0.6%) xii. Rachel Kice: 3 (c. 0.5%) xiii. Hank Williams, Jr.: 3 (c. 0.5%) 1. This figure is significant because Hank Williams Jr. is not an official MuzikMafia artist. xiv. Alaska Dan: 2 (c. 0.3%) xv. Pino Squillace: 1 (c. 0.2%) xvi. Brian Barnette: 1 (c. 0.2%) xvii. SWJ: 1 (c. 0.2%) xviii. Atom: 1 (c. 0.2%) 13. How long have you been a fan (months/years)? a. 367 responses. I omitted responses that were ambiguous or non-specific such as “from the beginning” or “a while.” Many fans with whom I spoke identified the MuzikMafia’s beginning as spring 2004 when Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson released album singles, so non-specific points of reference are relative and unreliable. b. RESULTS: i. 0-3 months: 24 (c. 6.5%) ii. 4-6 months: 19 (c. 5.2%) iii. 7-11 months: 10 (c. 2.7%) iv. 1 year: 193 (c. 52.6%) v. 1.5 years: 43 (c. 11.7%) vi. 2 years: 54 (c. 14.7%) 1. This figure is unreliable since MuzikMafia did not perform regularly as a single entity throughout much of 2003. It is likely that many of these respondents became fans in early 2004 when the MuzikMafia re-convened at the Dan McGuiness Pub in January that year. vii. 2.5 years: 4 (c. 1.1%) viii. 3 years: 5 (c. 1.4%) ix. 4 years or more: 15 (c. 4.1%) 1. This figure is unreliable since the MuzikMafia’s first performance took place on 23 October 2001. It is likely that fans are referring here to familiarity with an individual artist such as John Rich who performed with Lonestar from 1993 to 1998. 14. Who are the MuzikMafia godfathers? a. 766 responses. NOTE: Most respondents listed two or more names as godfathers. I have omitted the names of artists who only received one vote, assuming that the respondent was an either acquaintance of a particular MuzikMafia artist or simply did not know any of the godfathers and entered a name at random. b. RESULTS:

344 i. John Rich: 252 (c. 32.9%) 1. NOTE: The above figure may be inflated. Twenty-two respondents placed “?” marks after their answer. ii. Big Kenny: 250 (c. 32.6%) 1. NOTE: The above figure may be inflated. Twenty-two respondents placed “?” marks after their answer. iii. Jon Nicholson: 39 (c. 5.1%) iv. James Otto: 27 (c. 3.5%) v. Cory Gierman: 24 (c. 3.1%) vi. Hank Williams, Jr.: 8 (c. 1.0%) 1. NOTE: The above figure is significant since Hank Williams Jr. is not an official member of the MuzikMafia. vii. Gretchen Wilson: 7 (c. 0.9%) viii. Willie Nelson: 6 (c. 0.8%) 1. NOTE: The above figure is significant since Willie Nelson is not an official member of the MuzikMafia. ix. Cowboy Troy: 2 (c. 0.3%) x. Shannon Lawson: 2 (c. 0.3%) xi. Correctly identified all four godfathers: 18 (c. 2.3%) 1. NOTE: The above figure is unreliable. On the tables and countertops at the MuzikMafia booth were copies of a one- page history and explanation of the MuzikMafia that included the names of all four godfathers. xii. Either did not answer the question or responded only with a “?”: 149 (c. 19.5%) 1. NOTE: The above figure is significant. 15. Where have you seen/heard the MuzikMafia perform? a. 1080 responses. Most respondents selected two or more of the possibilities below. b. RESULTS: i. Television: 362 (c. 33.5%) ii. Radio: 324 (c. 30.0%) iii. Recordings: 164 (c. 15.2%) iv. Live concerts: 230: (c. 21.3%) 16. If you have seen live shows by MuzikMafia artists, where and when (approximate month/year) did they take place? a. 319 responses. The initial goal of this question was to target whether or not MuzikMafia fans had attended Nashville locales during the first three years of MuzikMafia’s existence. An overwhelming majority of responses referred only to tour dates and venues outside of Nashville during 2004 and 2005. I have listed the responses below according to the year in which a fan attended a live show. I omitted the names of individual cities due to the high number of non-duplicated responses. Of the 425 surveys received, only 247 respondents (c. 58.1%) answered this question, but many had attended more than one live show. b. RESULTS:

345 i. 2005: 90 (c. 28.2%) ii. 2004: 131 (c. 41.1%) iii. 2003: 6 (c.1.9%) iv. 2002: 2 (c. 0.6%) v. 2001: 0 (c. 0.0%) vi. No date given: 90 (c. 28.2%) 1. NOTE: Many of the above responses contained identifiers such as “Fan Fair” without specifying 2004 or 2005. Several respondents listed only the names of cities or venues.

346 APPENDIX D MUZIKMAFIA FAN SURVEY AND RESULTS 2006

THE CONTEXT:

The following survey was conducted over a four-day period from 8-11 June 2006 at the Country Music Association Music Fest (formerly known as Fan Fair). The survey took place daily from 10AM to 4PM. I solicited individuals who visited the MuzikMafia booth in the Nashville Convention Center. I approached those who A) were waiting to purchase MuzikMafia merchandise, B) had already purchased merchandise, or C) were waiting in line for an autograph or photo with a MuzikMafia personality. If an individual responded favorably to my question, “Are you a MuzikMafia fan?” I proceeded to ask if he/she would like to fill out a brief fan survey for my dissertation research. Not all participants completed every question, and not all fans wanted to fill out the survey. The total number of surveys returned was 430. This figure is large enough to include random guesses, intentional falsities, or responses by insiders without greatly affecting general trends. The survey contains two parts. Part I contains background information that identifies specific demographic criteria of MuzikMafia’s fan base. Part II targets what MuzikMafia fans know and do not know about the MuzikMafia as well as where, when, and how the fans have received exposure to the MuzikMafia.

RELIABILITY

THE SURVEY QUESTIONS AND RESULTS:

17. What is your gender? (male or female) a. 429 responses b. RESULTS: i. Male: 94 (c. 21.9 %)

347 ii. Female: 335 (c. 78.1%) 18. What is your ethnicity? a. 429 responses b. RESULTS: i. Caucasian: 408 (c. 95.1%) ii. Hispanic: 9 (2.1 %) iii. Native American: 6 (c. 1.4 %) iv. Asian: 3 (0.7 %) v. African-American: 2 (0.5 %) 19. How old are you? a. 427 responses b. RESULTS: i. Age 8 or 9: 1 (c. 0.2 %) ii. Age 10-19: 82 (c. 19.2 %) iii. Age 20-29: 113 (c. 26.5 %) iv. Age 30-39: 89 (c. 20.8 %) v. Age 40-49: 83 (c. 19.4 %) vi. Age 50-59: 51 (c. 11.9 %) vii. Age 60-69: 7 (c. 1.6 %) viii. Age 70+: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 20. What is your employment status? a. 462 responses (some individuals checked more than one kind of employment, e.g. student and part-time work. b. RESULTS: i. Full-time: 240 (c. 51.9 %) ii. Student: 91 (c. 19.7 %) iii. Part-time: 55 (c. 11.9 %) iv. Self-employed: 35 (c. 7.6 %) v. Homemaker: 22 (c. 4.7 %) vi. Retired: 9 (c. 1.9 %) vii. Unemployed: 7 (c. 1.5 %) viii. Other: 3 (c. 0.6 %) 21. What best describes your family’s yearly gross income level? a. 398 responses b. RESULTS: i. $0-9,999: 17 (c. 4.3 %) ii. $10,000-29,999: 55 (c. 13.8 %) iii. $30,000-49,999: 89 (c. 22.4 %) iv. $50,000-69,999: 78 (c. 19.6 %) v. $70,000-89,999: 61 (c. 15.3 %) vi. $90,000-119,999: 48 (c. 12.1 %) vii. $120,000+: 50 (c. 12.6%) 22. Where were you raised? a. 423 responses b. RESULTS:

348 i. Non-U.S.: 13 (c. 3.1%) comprising fans from the U.K., Canada, and France ii. United States: 410 (c. 96.9%) 1. AL: 9 (c. 2.2 % out of 410 U.S. responses) 2. AR: 2 (c. 0.5 %) 3. CA: 17 (c. 4.1 % ) 4. CO: 1 (c. 0.2 % ) 5. CT: 8 (c. 2 % ) 6. DE: 2 (c. 0.5 % ) 7. DC: 3 (c. 0.7 % ) 8. FL: 30 (c. 7.3 %) 9. GA: 12 (c. 2.9 % ) 10. ID: 1 (c. 0.2 % ) 11. IL: 41 (c. 10 % ) 12. IN: 16 (c. 3.9 % ) 13. IA: 5 (c. 1.2 %) 14. KY: 28 (c. 6.8 % ) 15. KS: 3 (c. 0.7 % ) 16. LA: 5 (c. 1.2 % ) 17. MA: 9 (c. 2.2 %) 18. MD: 12 (c. 2.9 % ) 19. ME: 2 (c.0.5 % ) 20. MI: 22 (c. 5.4 % ) 21. MN: 7 (c. 1.7 %) 22. MO: 14 (c. % ) 23. MS: 7 (c. 1.7 %) 24. NC: 6 (c. 1.5 %) 25. ND: 1 (c. 0.2 % ) 26. NJ: 9 (c. 2.2 %) 27. NM: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 28. NV: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 29. NY: 20 (c. 4.9 %) 30. OH: 12 (c. 2.9 %) 31. OK: 4 (c. 1 %) 32. OR: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 33. PA: 27 (c. 6.6 %) 34. RI: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 35. SC: 3 (c. 0.7 %) 36. SD: 2 (c. 0.5 %) 37. TN: 29 (c. 7.1 %) 38. TX: 16 (c. 3.9 % ) 39. UT: 1 (c. 0.2 % ) 40. VA: 11 (c. 2.7 %) 41. WI: 7 (c. 1.7 %) 42. WV: 3 (c.0.7 % ) 43. WY: 2 (c. 0.5 %)

349 c. United States regional breakdown: i. Southeast (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV): 145 (c. 35.4 %) ii. Midwest (OH, IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, SD, WI): 130 (c. 31.7 %) iii. Northeast (CT, DC, DE, MA, MD, ME, NJ, NY, PA, RI): 93 (c. 22.7%) iv. Southwest (CA, CO, NM, NV, OK, TX, UT): 41 (c. 10 %) v. Northwest (OR, ID, WY): 4 (c. 1 %) d. Where do you live now? e. U.S. regional breakdown: i. Southeast (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV): 179 (c. 43.7 %) ii. Midwest (OH, IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, SD, WI): 114 (c. 27.8 %) iii. Northeast (CT, DC, DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI): 85 (c.20.7 %) iv. Southwest (AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, OK, TX, UT): 34 (c. 8.3 %) v. Northwest (OR, ID, HI): 3 (c. 0.7 %) f. 23. What is your religion/denomination? (also specify if no affiliation) a. 400 responses (not all who filled out a survey completed this question); NOTE: some categories do overlap, e.g. a Baptist is both a Christian and a Protestant. An individual’s preference for one moniker over the other might reflect an array of personal attitudes or could also signify that the respondent did not understand the question. b. RESULTS: i. Catholic: 83 (c. 20.8 %) ii. Christian: 82 (c. 20.5 %) iii. Baptist: 61 (c. 15.3 %) iv. No affiliation: 56 (c. 14 %) v. Lutheran: 34 (c. 8.5 %) vi. Methodist: 16 (c. 4 %) vii. Protestant: 16 (c. 4 %) viii. Non-denominational: 11 (c. 2.8 %) ix. Presbyterian: 9 (c. 2.3 %) x. Jewish: 8 (c. 2 %) xi. Episcopal: 8 (c. 2 %) xii. Church of Christ: 5 (c. 1.3 %) xiii. Mormon: 3 (c. 0.8 %) xiv. Wiccan: 2 (c. 0.5 %) xv. Church of God: 1 (c. 0.3%) xvi. Pentecostal: 1 (c. 0.3%) xvii. Jehovah’s Witness: 1 (c. 0.3%) xviii. Holiness: 1 (c. 0.3%) xix. Congregational: 1 (c. 0.3%)

350 xx. Wesleyan: 1 (c. 0.3%) 24. Which if the following best describes the environment in which you live? a. 417 responses b. RESULTS: i. Rural: 180 (c. 43.2 %) ii. Suburban: 176 (c. 42.2 %) iii. Urban: 61 (c. 14.6 %) 25. What is the highest level of education that you completed? a. 415 responses. NOTE: An item such as “less than high school” can refer to someone who has not yet graduated from high school or to someone who dropped out before receiving a diploma. b. RESULTS: i. Less than high school: 50 (c. 12 %) ii. High school graduate or equivalent: 85 (c. 20.1 %) iii. Some college/vocational school: 147 (c. 35.4 %) iv. College graduate: 100 (c. 24.1 %) v. Some graduate study: 11 (c. 2.7 %) vi. Master’s degree: 21 (c. 5.1 %) vii. Doctoral degree: 1 (c. 0.3 %) 26. In your opinion, what is the MuzikMafia? a. This question requires subjective input from the respondent without the aid of a list of possibilities from which to choose. As a result, there was much variation among the responses, and each answer contained numerous fields for analysis. I quantified the responses through thematic categorization based upon the frequency of occurrence rather than by whole, individual responses, most of which contained more than one theme. For example, in the response “MuzikMafia is a group of country artists who work towards bringing new artists into the spotlight,” one finds several points of significance. First, the respondent acknowledges that the MuzikMafia is a “group of” something rather than a single band. Second, there is an emphasis on “country” as the dominant genre of the group. Third, the respondent acknowledges the mutual aid or supporting function of the MuzikMafia. I have listed below the eighteen most common themes associated with MuzikMafia and their frequency of occurrence. b. 719 duplicated responses. NOTE: For the sake of brevity, I have omitted the low number of non-duplicated responses. c. RESULTS: i. Artists/musicians: 160 (c. 22.3 %) ii. MuzikMafia as a “group of” something: 136 (c. 18.1%) iii. No response to this question: 67 (c. 15.6 % out of 430 respondents) 1. This is significant because the lack of response might signify the relative difficulty of defining the MuzikMafia. iv. Variety, combining genres, or diversity: 55 (c. 7.6 %) v. Responses containing a single adjective: 50 (c. 7 %)

351 1. Most frequent were: “love them,” “great,” “awesome,” and “the best.” vi. M.A.F.I.A., “music without prejudice”: 47 (c. 6.5 %) vii. Country music: 40 (c. 5.6 %) viii. Mutual aid or support group: 30 (c. 4.2 %) ix. Individualism, non-conformity, freedom of expression: 28 (c. 3.9 %) x. Marginalization, outsiders, rebels, outlaws: 27 (c. 3.8 %) xi. Organization, corporate entity, record label: 23 (c. 3.2 %) xii. Loud, fun, party, exciting: 21 (c. 2.9 %) xiii. Virtuosic, talented: 19 (c. 2.6 %) xiv. Big & Rich: 19 (c. 2.6 %) 1. Here the respondents defined the MuzikMafia by using the name of specific artists. xv. Friends: 15 (c. 2.1%) xvi. Social movement with a message, musical change: 12 (c. 1.7 %) xvii. Gretchen Wilson: 11 (c. 1.5 %) 1. Ibid. xviii. Cowboy Troy: 8 (c. 1.1 %) 1. Ibid. xix. Family: 7 (c. 1 %) xx. Crazy: 7 (c. 1 %) xxi. For the common person: 2 (c. 0.3%) xxii. Hard rock music: 2 (c. 0.3 %) 27. How did you first hear about the MuzikMafia? a. 477 responses. NOTE: respondents often provided several sources of early exposure to the MuzikMafia, e.g. radio, friends, and artists’ recordings. b. RESULTS: i. Broadcast media (total: 28.1 %) 1. CMT: 65 (c. 13.6 %) 2. Radio: 43 (c. 9 %) 3. Television or in general: 15 (c. 3.1%) 4. Awards shows: 5 (c. 1 %) 5. Music videos (in general): 4 (c. 0.8 %) 6. GAC: 3 (c. 0.6 %) a. Total: 28.1 % ii. Print media (total: 1 %) 1. Magazines (in general): 3 (c. 0.6 %) 2. Country Weekly: 2 (c. 0.4 %) iii. Fan Fair / CMA Music Fest: 37 (c.7.8 %) 1. Note: many respondents did not specify which year they attended. iv. Live performance: 30 (c. 6.3 %) v. Friends / word of mouth: 15 (c. 3.1 %) vi. Internet: 14 (c. 2.9%) 1. Note: many respondents named their children as an initial source for information on the MuzikMafia.

352 vii. Family: 13 (c. 2.7 %) viii. Recordings (in general): 8 (c. 1.7 %) ix. Specific artists (total: 46.1 %) 1. Big & Rich: 161 (c. 33.8 %) 2. Gretchen Wilson: 45 (c. 9.4 %) 3. Cowboy Troy 4 (c. 0.8 %) 4. James Otto: 6 (c. 1.3 %) 5. Shannon Lawson 1 (c. 0.2%) 6. Rachel Kice 1 (c. 0.2%) 7. Kid Rock: 1 (c. 0.2%) 8. Martina McBride: 1 (c. 0.2%) 28. Who is your favorite MuzikMafia artist? a. 638 responses. NOTE: most respondents named two or more artists as their favorite. b. RESULTS: i. Big & Rich (group): 277 (c. 43.4 %) 1. John Rich (solo): 12 (c. 1.9 %) 2. Big Kenny (solo): 1 (c. 0.2 %) ii. Gretchen Wilson: 147 (c. 23 %) iii. Cowboy Troy: 67 (c. 10.5 %) iv. James Otto: 31 (c. 4.9 %) v. All MuzikMafia artists collectively: 19 (c. 3%) vi. 2-Foot Fred: 18 (c. 2.8 %) vii. Rachel Kice: 12 (c. 1.9 %) viii. Shannon Lawson: 12 (c. 1.9 %) ix. Jon Nicholson: 7 (c. 1.1%) x. Chance: 5 (c. 0.8 %) xi. Mista D: 3 (c. 0.5 %) xii. Max Abrams: 2 (c. 0.3 %) xiii. Adam Shoenfeld: 1 (c. 0.2 %) xiv. Non-MuzikMafia artists 1. Hank Williams, Jr.: 3 (c. 0.5 %) 2. Trailer Choir: 2 (c. 0.3 %) 3. Shannon Brown: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 4. Shanna Crooks: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 5. Willie Nelson: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 6. Tanya Tucker: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 7. Toby Keith: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 8. Van Zandt: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 9. Shania Twain: 1 (c. 0.2 %) 29. How long have you been a fan (months/years)? a. 375 responses. Many fans with whom I spoke identified the MuzikMafia’s beginning as spring 2004 when Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson released album singles, so non-specific points of reference are relative and unreliable. b. RESULTS: i. 0-3 months: 17 (c. 4.5 %)

353 ii. 4-6 months: 3 (c. 0.8 %) iii. 7-11 months: 4 (c. 1.1 %) iv. 1 year: 48 (c. 12.8 %) v. 1.5 years: 23 (c. 6.1 %) vi. 2 years: 178 (c. 47.5 %) vii. 2.5 years: 14 (c. 3.7 %) viii. 3 years: 49 (c. 13.1 %) 1. This figure is unreliable since MuzikMafia did not perform regularly as a single entity throughout much of 2003. It is likely that many of these respondents became fans in early 2004 when the MuzikMafia re-convened at the Dan McGuiness Pub in January that year. ix. 4 years or more: 19 (c. 5.1 %) x. Since they started: 13 (c. 3.5 %) 1. This most probably refers to album releases by Big & Rich and Gretchen in 2004 rather than the MuzikMafia’s official begin date in 2001. xi. “A long time”: 7 (c. 1.9 %) 30. Who are the MuzikMafia godfathers? a. 804 responses. NOTE: Most respondents listed two or more names as godfathers. b. RESULTS: i. John Rich: 251 (c. 31.2 %) ii. Big Kenny: 248 (c. 30.1 %) iii. Jon Nicholson: 48 (c. 6 %) iv. Cory Gierman: 23 (c. 2.9 %) v. Gretchen Wilson: 22 (c. 2.7 %) vi. Correctly identified all four godfathers: 19 (c. 4.4 % out of 430 respondents) vii. Correctly identified all four godfathers and Gretchen as godmother: 8 (c. 1.9 % out of 430 respondents) viii. Either did not answer the question or responded only with a “?”: 154 (c. 35.8 % out of 430 respondents) 1. This figure is significant. ix. James Otto: 16 (c. 2 %) x. Cowboy Troy: 4 (c. 0.5 %) xi. Chance: 2 (c. 0.2 %) xii. Rachel Kice: 1 (c. 0.1 %) xiii. Non-MuzikMafia members (total: 3.9 %) 1. Hank Williams Jr.: 12 (c. 1.2 %) 2. Willie Nelson: 4 (c. 0.5%) 3. Marc Oswald: 4 (c. 0.5%) 4. Charlie Daniels: 3 (c. 0.4%) 5. Waylon Jennings: 3 (c. 0.4%) 6. Kid Rock: 2 (c. 0.2 %) 7. Al Pacino: 2 (c. 0.2 %)

354 8. Johnny Cash: 2 (c. 0.2 %) 9. Merle Haggard: 2 (c. 0.2 %) 10. David Allen Coe: 1 (c. 0.1 %) 31. Where have you seen/heard the MuzikMafia perform? a. 1197 responses. Most respondents selected two or more of the possibilities below. b. RESULTS: i. Television: 350 (c. 29.2 %) ii. Radio: 329 (c. 27.5 %) iii. Recordings: 196 (c. 16.4 %) iv. Live concerts: 300 (c. 25 %) v. Other 1. Fan Fair (CMA Fest): 10 (c. 0.8 %) 2. Fan party: 4 (c. 0.3%) 32. If you have seen live shows by MuzikMafia artists, where and when (approximate month/year) did they take place? a. The initial goal of this question was to target whether or not and when MuzikMafia fans had attended Nashville locales during the first five years of MuzikMafia’s existence. Many respondents referred only to tour dates and venues outside of Nashville during 2004, 2005, and 2006. I have listed the responses below according to the year in which a fan attended a live show. I omitted the names of individual cities due to the high number of non- duplicated responses. Instead, I grouped the responses simply as Nashville or non-Nashville performances. b. RESULTS: i. Dates: 373 responses 1. 2006: 98 (c. 26.3 % out of 373 responses) 2. 2005: 214 (c. 57.4 %) 3. 2004: 55 (c. 14.7 %) 4. 2003: 2 (c. 0.5 %) 5. 2002: 2 (c. 0.5 %) 6. 2001: 1(c. 0.3 %) 7. 2000: 1 (c. 0.3 %) ii. Specific Cities/Locales: 405 responses 1. Nashville locales: 171 (c. 42.2 %) a. Note: the above figure includes to a large extent performances at the CMA Music Festival b. Free Tuesday night club shows: 9 (c. 5.3 % out of 171 responses) 2. Non-Nashville locales: 234 (c. 57.7 %)

355 APPENDIX E

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378 VIDEOGRAPHY

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379 The Last Castle. 2001. Directed by Rod Lurie. Written by David Scarpa and Graham Yost. DreamWorks Pictures.

380 DISCOGRAPHY

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381 Hall, Dean. 1997. The Ghost of James Bell. Produced and arranged by Dean Hall. Python Records DH73197, compact disc.

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Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm and Blues, 1945-1970, 2004, compiled by Daniel Cooper and Michael Gray, mastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio & Alan Stoker , Country Music Foundation Records B0002100-02, two-compact disc set.

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382

Wilson, Gretchen. 2004. Here for the Party. Produced by Mark Wright and Joe Scaife; associate producer John Rich. Sony/Epic EK 90903, compact disc.

Wilson, Gretchen. 2005. All Jacked Up. Produced by Gretchen Wilson, John Rich and Mark Wright. Sony/Epic EK 94169, compact disc.

ZZ Top. 1983. Eliminator. Produced by Bill Ham. Warner Bros. 23774, LP.

383 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

David B. Pruett received the B.M. degree (percussion performance) and B.A. equivalent in German from Appalachian State University in 1996 and the M.A. in German and M. M. in Musicology (ethnomusicology) with a certificate in world music from the Florida State University in 2000. His publications include articles in the Country Music Annual 2002 (University of Kentucky Press, 2002), Journal of Historical Research in Music Education (2003), Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World (The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005), and four entries in Encyclopedia of Appalachia (University Press of Tennessee, 2006). David has presented his research at a variety of regional, national, and international conferences. He is currently Instructor for Ethnomusicology at Middle Tennessee State University.

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