Bill's Blog

BILL BLOG Tuesday February 28, 2023   Tuesday morning and already we’re looking at the last day of February. Sunny and 72 in Nashville today. Beautiful.   YESTERDAY I spent some time online writing with Troy Engle in Pennsylvania yesterday. Always fun. Troy was wearing his bib overalls yesterday, so it was pretty easy to gravitate towards a country-bluegrass song with him. I grew up in a small town in Missouri, and the very first house I remember living in sat right by the railroad tracks. So I channeled some of that into a song idea and Troy took the title and or “hook” of the song and turned it into a better idea. One of the great things that happens when you co-write with the right folks. Troy not only sings but is a GIFTED player. You name it…he plays it…and well. So by early afternoon Troy had already sent me a working recording of the new song that we can pitch to bluegrass artists looking for new songs.   Troy is also recording a new album for PInec

BILL BLOG Monday February 27, 2023   Monday morning coming up.   THE WEEKEND For the most part an uneventful weekend here at the Whyte House. We had a little rain after having the temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s last week so if the sun pops out and stays awhile it’s going to be lawn mowing time sooner than later here in middle Tennessee. It’s going to be 76 here today.   Spring training baseball was back on TV with some new rules including a pitch clock that’s going to make things interesting. And that danged shift is gone so I’m happy about that.        So you can see what a lazy weekend I had.   SOMETHING TO DRONE ABOUT We got my son in law Casey a little miniature drone for Christmas. He’s a pilot so we knew he’d master it pretty quickly. Did he ever. Check out this little drone footage he shot over a castle on the Rhine River over the town of Heidelburg this past weekend in Germany near where he and my daughter are now stationed with the Army. My wife Kathy

BILL BLOG Friday February 24, 2023   Friday morning and we’re headed for the last weekend of February already.   YESTERDAY My songwriting appointment cancelled yesterday after my co-writer called and let me know he wasn’t feeling 100% so that gave me the day open and I got out just a bit to enjoy the warm weather. It hit 80 degrees yesterday and that broke a 127-year-old record. The highest temperature on February 23 before yesterday was 74 and that was way back in 1897.    Folks had their AC on here in Music City yesterday. Amazing. It’s starting to feel like baseball weather around here.   Little cooler today with a high on tap of just 51.   And it’s not that long until we do spring forward in time. That’s coming up on March 12…just a couple of weeks away.   MARCH SHOWS With February coming to an end, here’s a look at a couple of shows I have on the books in March.   March 10 and 11 at Dollywood for a festival to celebrate the 50 th Anniver

BILL BLOG Thursday February 23, 2023   Hello Thursday morning…and summer…or so it seems. High of 80 today in Music City. Meanwhile there are 850,000 power outages around the country from the snowstorm that’s covering a wide swath of folks. I see a few more folks contemplating moving south once they dig out.   Heck, even Los Angeles is under a winter storm warning.   YESTERDAY I finished up a song with Jerry Salley & Victoria Venier yesterday at my publishing company. We had started on this one several weeks ago and got back together to smooth some rough edges and finish it up. If you write a lot of songs you do kind of get to a point where you sense you’ve written something special. And this song that came from a very personal story from Jerry Salley turned out that way. Grateful to be part of this song that has such a strong reminder in it of how important it is to get home and see you folks you love while you can.  SHOW DATES I got a little mor

BILL BLOG Wednesday February 22, 2023   Wednesday morning…and it’s National Margarita Day. 77 degree high here in Nashville today…81 tomorrow!   Meanwhile 65 million folks are under WINTER weather alerts in the US today. Glad to be living in the south.   YESTERDAY It was a fruitful double header day of songwriting that started with my big young buddy from Kentucky, Alex Miller . Alex had started a bluegrass song idea that he shared that was fun and up-tempo. And since I write for a bluegrass publishing company, these ideas are always welcome. So we wrote that in pretty short order, and then had time for him to run another idea by me that was a 360 turn away from the first tune. This one was “classic” in nature. Think Sinatra , Mills Brothers , Patsy Cline kind of feel. I LOVE those kinds of melodies and songs so it was so much fun bringing that thought home.   So two songs, one session and later we had time for lunch and catching up on his busy career.

BILL BLOG Tuesday December 21, 2023   Tuesday morning coming at you from Nashville. And it’s getting warm in Music City y’all. 66 for a high today. Record warmth in the south, record cold up north…weird.   YESTERDAY I wrote online with my Maryland friend Rick Lang who is now writing songs full time after selling his exotic lumber business that he and his wife ran for years. So he’s sort of semi-retired like me…doing what he loves to do.   Rick sent me three or four ideas before we started writing, and I chose the one that I liked the most, wrote a couple of verses and a chorus before our appointed writing time, so at that point we just had to add another verse and tweak what was in front of us.   Rick wrote a bunch of bluegrass songs years ago all by himself out east while he still had his business. He then played a bunch of those for our mutual friend and head of Billy Blue Records Jerry Salley . Jerry then turned around and produced an album “ Gonna

BILL BLOG Monday February 20, 2023   Monday morning…back home in Nashville. 64 for a high today in Nashville…and up to 81 on Thursday!   Meanwhile, Minneapolis could get 12 inches of snow this week. Uh…I’ll take Nashville.   PRESIDENT’S DAY That’s today…so don’t forget to buy your mattress before it’s too late.   THE WEEKEND Friday and Saturday I was in Benton, Arkansas for our Freedom Sings USA songwriters retreat. I made the trip over from Nashville with Bobby Tomberlin who has written songs like “One More Day” for Diamond Rio . Bobby is also deep into the history of country music, started as a kid on a small radio station in Lower Alabama and has now been a songwriter-singer for a lot of years. So we have a lot in common. And the 5-hour drive went very quickly as we talked about the Opry, and country music artists, the state of the industry and writing songs. I always learn something new in those conversations, and maybe Bobby does as well.    

BILL BLOG Friday February 17, 2023   Friday morning and I’ve got a guitar and a bag packed for a trip to Arkansas in a couple of hours.   We had some very loud storms off and on throughout the day yesterday. Those have finally blown through and now the temperature has dropped. After being near 70 yesterday today’s high will only be 43 in Nashville.   YESTERDAY I was supposed to write my super talented friend Jimmy Fortune yesterday, but if you keep up with this little blog then you know that Jimmy had bypass surgery on Wednesday morning. 5 of them. That of course cancelled our little get together at his house. The really GREAT news is that yesterday he was already sitting in a chair and talking. Such a wonderful thing to hear, and I appreciate several folks in his inner circle keeping me posted on his progress. He’ll be back to doing what he does best in about 3 months…singing and writing and entertaining folks like only Jimmy can do.      Jimmy stays i