Joey + Rory
Cut X Cut
Joey+Rory: The Life Of A Song
By Rory Feek
1. Play the Song (Rory Feek)
Feeling more than a little frustrated by the music industry’s over-analyzing of songs and singers, I wrote this song a few years ago just to vent. Until Joey decided to have us sing it at the audition for Can You Duet, I never really expected it to be heard by anyone, let alone be part of a record we would make. But here it is, the leadoff track to our album. Our producer Carl Jackson absolutely loves this song. He says it’s our ‘Murder on Music Row’. I don’t know about that…feels more like a small “stabbing on 16th Ave” to me. LOL. Anyway, I get tired of hearing that a song is ‘too country’ or ‘too serious’ or whatever. Hey, somebody just play the dang song. Let’s stop guessing what people want to hear (and letting it affect what we write or record), and let them make up their own minds. I bet we’ll all be surprised by what we find out.
2. Sweet Emmylou (Rory Feek & Catherine Britt)
I wrote this song with a singer/songwriter named Catherine Britt (she was an artist on RCA at the time) a couple years ago in the kitchen at an office on music row. She was a big Emmylou Harris fan, just like my wife Joey is. I think I started singing the opening line and melody, and it all just fell out from there. We wrote the whole song together pretty fast. I had hoped that Catherine would cut it on one of her records at the time (I think Joey was secretly hoping she wouldn’t, so she could record it someday), but unfortunately (and luckily) it didn’t happen. The track on this one is really gorgeous in my opinion. Joey and I probably sing this song more often than any other. Everyone just loves it. A lot of people tell Joey she sounds a lot like Emmylou- what an amazing compliment - but there’s only one Emmylou. I’d like to think there’s also only one Joey Martin, and this is her at her best in my opinion. I’m so proud to get to sing with her, but even more proud to call her my wife.
3. Tonight Cowboy You're Mine (Rory Feek, Joey Martin & Heidi Feek)
This is our daughter Heidi’s first cut. We were sitting at a kitchen table again (this time at our farmhouse) a few months ago, one night after dinner. I pulled out my guitar and Joey and Heidi pulled out some paper and pens (actually, it was their laptops, now that I think about it!!) and we just took off writing from that opening line. Joey grew up riding horses and loves the western lifestyle. To her, this story is romance at its best, kinda like a page out of Louis L’amour, and it sounded pretty darn good to me too! Writing about a romantic evening for Mom and Dad probably was a bit weird for Heidi, but she loved writing together and added a lot. She’s really smart and a great singer/songwriter in her own right. We’re so glad to be able to share in this moment with her. We hope to get a cut on one of her records someday!!!
4. Cheater Cheater (Rory Feek, Joey Martin, Kristy Osmunson & Wynn Varble)
From that first evening I brought the opening verse and chorus of this song home and played it for Joey…it was over! She didn’t just like what it said, she flat out LOVED everything about it. When I’d started the song earlier that day in a writing appointment at the office with Kristy O (one of the members of Curb act Bomshel), I’d thought there might be something there…but Joey KNEW what this song was and what it could be in an instant. She’s the one that championed it and made sure it didn’t just become another song that never saw the light of day. Within a week or so of that first night, Joey and I were sitting down with Kristy and our good friend Wynn Varble again at the office finishing it. The funny thing is, anyone who knows Joey knows that she’s normally not like that. She’s all soft and kind and gentle. But she’s got a side to her, just like most of women do I guess, that if you get her riled up…boy, you’d better just watch out. She complicated…she’s your basic Jesus-lovin’, angel-voiced-singin’, Betty-Crocker-cookin’, super-model-lookin’ country woman with a knife in her pocket and a pair of Justin boots just waitin’ to kick the butt of any ‘ho’ that messes with her man. Amen honey. That’s why I love ya.
5. Rodeo (Rory Feek, Joey Martin & Cory Batten)
We love the rodeo. We’ve played a few of them and watched a bunch of others. Over the last year or two, we’ve become pretty good friends with Justin McBride, who’s a world champion PBR bull-rider for two years running. We sit at home and watch him ride as often as we can. We watch them all ride. They’re driven, like we’re driven I guess. But their passion a lot of times ends up getting them hurt really bad and much worse sometimes. Not to mention how hard it must be on the wives, girlfriends and the families of all the cowboys out there on those circuits trying to win that elusive gold buckle. Cory Batten and I started this song at our farm one day. He’s a great singer and a wonderful piano player and that first verse we wrote just haunted me. There was something about the thought that the rodeo was like another woman to a man, and just how strong her pull was on him. I carried it around for months…always trying to figure out where to go with it, what the chorus was really trying to say. A few months later Joey and I and Cory got together and started working on it. This time, with Joey’s thoughts and her pretty voice in the mix, it all just came together.
6. Heart of the Wood (Dan Demay & Tony Villanueva)
This is one of our personal favorites…not just on the album, but of all time. I have a real good friend named Tony Villanueva that I used to write with quite a bit (he was the lead singer of the alt-country band The DeRailers in the 90’s), and he got out of the business a few years ago and become a preacher back in Oregon. He’s a special guy and when the Lord called him to ministry, he pretty much put his guitar down and just followed the call. I hear from him from time-to-time. He’s out there in Oregon among the tall pines, raising his babies and doing His will. I had no idea he was a writer on this song until much later. It was just an added blessing. Joey actually found this song. She had called a few songwriter friends and asked if they would send her a CD of some songs to possibly record and a writer in town named Dan DeMay sent her a disc with 21 songs on it. She listened to every song, and this was the 21st one on the CD. When I came home that day, she told me all about it and played it for me. I was knocked out. I cried when it got to the end. I still do. She called Dan and told him that one day she would record it. When we got our record deal, it was on the top of our list. In the end, we decided to record this one acoustically. That’s what Dan’s original recording was. Just him and a guitar and a song. We sat across from each other with two microphones and recorded this one live in one take at the end of a long day at the studio. No frills. Just a great song that we love singing. It was Carl’s idea to keep the before-and-after dialog in it. I like having it in there. It captures that one particular moment and freezes it in time.
7. Tune of a Twenty Dollar Bill (Shawn Camp & Mark D. Sanders)
Joey’s best friend Sandy sent us this song in an email while we were staying at Opryland Hotel during the taping of the Can You Duet TV show. Not sure what made her send it to us, she’d never done that before, but we immediately loved it and started singing it up and down the halls of the hotel. It was a cut by a bluegrass group called The Lonesome River Band. Turns out that we knew Brandon Rickman, the singer of the group that had recorded it. And we also knew Shawn Camp, one of the writers of the song. I’m a big fan of his writing and singing. In my opinion, he’s one of the few American originals left in country music. Carl Jackson and all the players just tore this song up. It was all we could do to hang on!
8. Loved the Hell (Rory Feek, Joey Martin & Wynn Varble)
We wrote this with Wynn Varble also. He’s one of the funniest characters you’re ever gonna run across. He’s also one of the most talented and nicest. I was in the barn at our farm one evening about two years ago, just sitting around playing guitar and I started singing the chorus. Don’t know why, but the words and melody just sorta showed up. I came in the house later and found Joey on the couch and played the couple lines I had started for her. When she started singing them, I knew it was gonna be special. We called Wynn over a day or two later and we all sat out there in the barn and wrote it. I can relate to the man in the song, because it’s taken me a long time to come around and get ‘the hell loved out of me’. Before I met Joey, I’d been in some crummy relationships. Mostly my fault honestly. But I’d always prayed to be blessed with an extraordinary woman to spend my life with…turns out I had some serious work to do. If I was ever gonna get to be with an extraordinary woman, I was gonna have to become an extraordinary man first myself. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it. Joey’s love is like a compass. It leads me closer to it everyday.
9. Free Bird (Allen Collins & Ronald W. Vanzant)
Joey got a random call about 3 years ago to come in and audition for a movie that was gonna be made out in LA soon. The movie was called Paper Wings (not sure what ever became of it) and they were looking for a female lead that could play an aspiring country singer. Someone had heard of and recommended Joey for the part. She’d never got a call like that before, but she thought it’d be fun to audition, so they sent her a script and set up a date to meet her. We read the script and loved the story. The deal was though, that for the audition, each girl was required to create and sing their own rendition of the Lynyrd Skynyrd song “Free Bird” for the casting director, writer, director, etc… It was a part of the storyline (It was a great script…hope the movie comes out one day soon!). Anyway, sitting around one evening with our friend Rob Harris, Joey and I and Rob started messing with the song and for some reason I started playing it as a ¾ time waltz. Then Joey started singing and that melody that we’ve all heard over and over a million times suddenly became brand new to us. It had a sadness and sweetness that we hadn’t noticed before. In the end, Joey didn’t get the part (long story…she made the director cry when she sang it), but it caused us to learn the song like that, and when the time came to sing an old rock cover song on Can You Duet, we knew which one we wanted to do. We think Carl and the players created a masterpiece of this one. We were honored to be part of making something old, new again.
10. Boots (Mike Ward, Touchstone McDonald & Mark Harris)
Carl Jackson brought this song to us. He said he’d had it for a while and thought it was just right for us. We wear nothing but boots. Literally. Dress boots, work boots, lace-up ropers…you name it, we wear ‘em. Right after we got married, for my first birthday that we spent together, Joey bought me a pair of Justin crepe-soled boots. I smiled and said thanks, but I didn’t like ‘em. They were unusual and had thicker than normal soles. I liked my old boots. She had this old pair of crepe-soles that she wore all the time and swore that if I just tried them and wore ‘em for a week, I’d never take them off. She was right. I wore the soles off those boots…then had them re-soled a couple of times, till I finally retired them and bought some more. She was right about those boots and so was Carl. Like a worn in pair of old leather boots…this song fits us perfectly.
11. To Say Goodbye (Rory Feek, Joey Martin & Jamie Teachenor)
I’m not usually a crier (my wife and kids might lie and tell you different), but when this song came along, I was a basket case. Joey and I and another great friend and co-writer, Jamie Teachenor, were writing at the office one day about a year ago when we started this song. The first verse and the last verse happened all at once, and when they did, I almost couldn’t breathe. I was devastated. Maybe they won’t hit other people the same way, but for me…the scenarios depicted in the storyline hurt me bad. I was obsessed with this song for months. I worked on the chorus week after week trying to figure out what it was trying to say (I think all the best songs tell you what they want to say, and not the other way around), but nothing seemed right. I went on last year to write lots of other songs, but my heart kept coming back to this one. It was like these people and this song had something to say, and we were supposed to finish it. One afternoon, the answer to the puzzle just showed up. It was the final lines in the chorus, “It’s not that she can’t let him go, she just wants to say goodbye”. Jamie and I sat at the piano and ‘knew’ in our hearts that it was right. That it was complete. This is probably my favorite cut on our record. I can be listening and unexpectedly, the storyline will grab me. It’ll make me hold my breath and draw me deep into their loss and their love. We all want to love someone that much, and also be loved that much when we go. This song I think has special meaning to Joey. When she was 18, she lost her younger brother Justin in a car accident just a mile from the farmhouse they lived in and grew up in Indiana. She misses him so much. When out of nowhere, his memory shows up, she still holds her breath. And she cries for what seems like no reason. But I think I know why now… even after 14 years, she still wants to say goodbye.
12. The Life of a Song (Patrick Jason Matthews & Rebecca Lynn Howard)
The song is everything. Without it, we’re just voices with nothing to say. Jason and Rebecca wrote the song that says it all in my book. This time for Joey and I, this moment in the spotlight…in time, it will pass. But this song and the others we’ve recorded on this record, they will live on. They’ll travel to places that we can only dream of. They’ll touch people that Joey and I will never know or meet. They carry smiles, laughter, tears, hope, and love inside them. I know I’m blessed to get to live the life of a songwriter…but oh, how I wish I could live the life of a song.