Bill's Blog

BILL BLOG Wednesday August 31, 2022 The last day of August!   YESTERDAY I felt so fortunate to be in the studio audience yesterday afternoon for the taping of the new Brotherly Love project coming out soon. Two of my favorite co-writers are in this amazing quartet. Jimmy Fortune and Mike Rogers . The quartet also includes Ben Isaacs of the amazing Isaac Family , and Bradley Walker .   Yesterday their quartet taped over 20 songs inside the old studio where Hee Haw was filmed that will be included on a Gaither Family released DVD and CD, and you’ll also be able to download it of course.   What a great mixture of songs. From old gospel songs I used to sing like “Church in the Wildwood” and “Precious Memories” to popular songs like “Let Em’ In” from Paul McCartney and Wings and “I Can See Clearly Now” and a great version of “My Girl”. And they also included the great song Jimmy Fortune wrote that was a hit for the Statler Brothers , the quartet he was part o

BILL BLOG Tuesday August 30, 2022   Tuesday has arrived in Music City. Another hot one on tap with high near 90.   YESTERDAY It was Christmas at my publishing company yesterday morning as I sat down and wrote an up-tempo bluegrass Christmas song with Jerry Salley. Jerry has had so many of his songs recorded in the bluegrass field that you can’t possibly count them all. So I could not have had a better co-writer for this particular song idea I brought with me. Jerry is the head guy at Billy Blue Records, a major publishing company, and they are getting ready to record a bluegrass Christmas album that will feature many of the artists that are on the label including Darin & Brooke Aldridge , Marty Raybon , and others. One never gets over optimistic, but I do think there’s a better than good chance that our song might land on the project. We’ll see. Like always, it’s weird writing Christmas songs I the heat of August, but this is the time of year studios are full of singers tack

BILL BLOG Monday August 29, 2022   Monday morning back home in Nashville. We’re at the very end of August. Hard to believe. College football games were on Saturday, a sure sign Fall is on us…even if the temperatures are still in the 90’s here.   THE WEEKEND Friday in Little Rock I wrote with an 86-year-old veteran named John W. “Doc” Crawford at our Freedom Sings USA retreat. Doc had a different kind of military story. He’s in the Airforce for 8 months when he gets a notice that he’s college exempt. He didn’t know it. So he’s out of the service and onto being a literature major, a teacher, a poet, a musician and more. The 8 months he did serve? He did KP duty. And he cooked.   So it gave me a chance to write something lighthearted with him, which does not happen a lot because a lot of the military stories are stories of combat and the result of combat, loss and much more. For instance, Minnie Murphy , one of our other writers, sat with a woman who lost her husband in the inciden

BILL BLOG Friday August 26, 2022   Good Friday morning from Little Rock.   YESTERDAY It was a 5 and half hour trip from my house to Little Rock with songwriters Wood Newton and Bobby Tomberlin keeping me company on the ride over. Pretty good company to have and the miles flew because of the conversation and having a chance to catch up with each other.     We got to our hotel at about 3 pm and had a couple of hours before we made our way over to the Military Museum for our meet and greet with our veterans and the Freedoms Sings USA staff and volunteers who set this weekend up for us to write songs with veterans. I got the chance to meet my veteran named “Doc” who’s in his 80’s now and served just one year in the service before health reasons took him out. He’s apparently a poet so I may not have much work to do when we sit down to write his story into a song later this morning. Looking forward to it.     Each of the 5 Nashville songwriters got up and did a couple of son

BILL BLOG Thursday August 25, 2022   Thursday morning, getting ready to hit the road to Little Rock.   YESTERDAY I went through a check list of “gotta do’s” before the trip today to Arkansas. Booked a flight from Texas to Tampa for early next year, worked on new show in Gulf Shores for the early part of November with details coming soon, and pitched a few songs to an artist who’s looking for songs to record soon. Packed a bag, put a guitar in a bag, and I think I’m good for the little over 5-hour run in front me today.   BEACH RUN Looking ahead at a little beach tour this year.   October 8 Gulf Shores with Brent Burns. Venue to be revealed soon. October 9 in Mobile, Alabama. Comedy show with Juanita Smith at the Peoples Room. October 20-23…Blast on the Bay Songwriters Festival with “Hits & Grins”. October 28…Sarasota, FL for Flip Flop Stock with a bunch of Trop Rock artists November 1-6…Key West for MOTM the big Trop Rock gathering. November 10-12 at the

BILL BLOG Wednesday August 24, 2022   Trying to get over the hump this Wednesday and get ready for a road trip to Little Rock in the morning.   YESTERDAY I wrote for the first time with Kirsti Kraus , a Wisconsin native for the first time. Kirsti plays some in the Trop Rock world that I also play in, and that’s how we met for the first time, and that how the writing session came to be yesterday. Kirsti is working on a new project, so I brought a couple of ideas, and we picked one and wrote that. Kind of rocks with a swampy feel and hopefully it might be something they record on this new CD she’s working on. Certainly enjoyed getting to know her better. It was great to talk cheese curds, brats, beer, and all things Wisconsin with her after I lived in the Badger State 6 years myself when I did the morning radio show at WMIL FM*106 in Milwaukee.       It was also great bumping into my friend and co-writer Jimmy Fortune who was in one of our recording studios laying a vocal down on

  BILL BLOG Tuesday August 23, 2022   Tuesday the 23 rd of August already.   YESTERDAY I was in a writing room at my publishing company with my buddy Nathan Woodard who’s a terrific writer. Nathan has had a lot of gospel-Christian songs of his written through the years, but yesterday he brought a reflective song about someone looking back at their life and having no regrets. In fact, despite all the ups and downs of his life, he would choose to live the same life over again if given a second pass at it. AND he had a great melody to go with it. So all I had to do was sit there with my guitar and look pretty. <g>   NASHVILLE SHOW I want to toss this out to those of you who may be thinking about making the trip here to Nashville sometime. Folks ask me from time to time, “Do you ever play in town”?   The answer is, “not a lot” but every now and then. Most of my shows are out on the road as you can see here on my TOUR CALENDAR . But I do have a show coming up in town on a