Those Wacky Co-Writes - Trey Bruce's Big Diamond Rio Hit

[Ty Hager]

And once again, sometimes the experts get it wrong...

 

TH:  As I was looking at some of the hits that you’ve had, I was reminded about when I first moved to Tennessee back in ’82.  I went to Opryland, and there was a group playing there called the Tennessee River Boys.  That group became Diamond Rio, and you had a really big hit with them.

TB:  That’s right, the “cow in the road†song.  “That’s How Your Love Makes Me Feelâ€.

TH:  Wrote it with Max T. Barnes.

TB:  Sure did.  That was an easy write, like a lot of writes with Max…we spent a couple of hours on it.  The thing that I’ve always thought was strange about that write, and that it got cut, was that I was saying things to Max in the write, I was saying, “You know, it’s kind of like, you’re driving down the road, and you buy an ice cream, and you see a cow, and you swerve to the left…† And I’m saying these things to him as if it’s those defining moments.  It’s like, “That’s how loving you makes me feel.† It’s crazy and spontaneous.  And he was singing it back to me.  Instead of us using those as ideas and –isms to get us to the real lines, he started singing them.  And I was just blown away.  I didn’t mean for that to be what the lines were.  “There’s a cow in the road, and you swerve to the left…† And he sang it back to me, and we were just, “Are you kidding me?  That’s the song?!† So anyway…and then several guys in the band really liked it.  Mike Dungan - who’s at Capitol now - he was in marketing or promotion or something at Arista at the time, he loved the song.  They played it in the meeting, and the story goes that Tim Dubois (then President of Arista Records) took the cassette out and threw it in the garbage, and said, “Guys, if that’s a hit song, I don’t know what I’m doing.â€

 

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[Escape]

Pretty funny.  Thanks for the anecdote.  Always nice to get a peak into successful songwriters' processes.