For months John tried getting in touch with her and for months Gretchen ignored his calls until someone finally said, “Look, you should really return his call. He might be able to help you out.” Oh, John helped her out all right. He not only introduced her to his circle of friends – “they started to use me singing on some demos” – but he also taught her how the Nashville songwriting community really works, “how they write, break for lunch and then come back and how they come up with ideas and how to contribute to a songwriting session.” Gretchen also became a member of the Muzik Mafia, a loose-knit group of singers, songwriters and musicians who get together to jam (and party) every Tuesday in a local Nashville nightspot. It was in front of her peers – very honest peers – that she honed her songwriting style.
I’m a redneck woman/ I ain’t no high class broad/ I’m just a product of my raising/ I say, ‘hey y’all’ and ‘yee-haw’/ and I keep my Christmas lights on/ on my front porch all year long/ and I know all the words to every ol’ Bocephus song/ so here’s to all my sisters out there keeping it country/ let me get a big ‘hell yeah’ from the redneck girls like me, hell yeah/ hell yeah, hell yeah/ hell yeah/ I said hell yeah!
Having become quite the songsmith, Gretchen has written or co-written upwards of 80 tunes, some of which she’s penned with John. “We have almost that kind of brother-sister relationship,” she explains. “When we sit down to write a song it almost takes on a life of its own. I guess he just knows me so well that it’s almost like I’m writing with myself. He knows who I am and what I want to say.” As one would expect, she has a lot to say about the life she’s lived. In fact, not since Loretta Lynn and perhaps Dolly Parton has a female artist in country music been so brutally honest in song about her own lifestyle and the people around her. “What I’m doing has definitely been done before, it just hasn’t been done in a long time,” Gretchen says. “It’s not perfect and it’s not glamorous.”
“I had to struggle here,” she continues, “and all the people who did turn me down and the all the things that happened, it couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.” She signed with Sony Music Nashville and its newlyappointed label head, John Grady, is adamant that Gretchen be portrayed as she is. “It would be hard for me to be more excited about a new artist than I am about Gretchen Wilson,” says Grady. “The industry known as country music needs her desperately. Thank God she’s signed with us.” Gretchen immediately went in the studio with producers Mark Wright and Joe Scaife with John Rich co-producing. The resultant Here For The Party perfectly sums up Gretchen’s quest for getting her music out to the masses. She’s not Faith Hill and she’s not Shania Twain, but that’s what separates her from the others and better positions her to speak to a majority of the population that has long since been without a voice.
The synergy building between Gretchen and John Rich has reached a crescendo – that’s precisely why the two were enjoying a late night in downtown Nashville celebrating their pending success, when they decided to walk over to the Boogie Bar to catch last call. As he had for 10 years, John walked up to the side door of the Ryman and proclaimed, “One of these days this door is going to open,” when lo-and-behold, he gave it a yank and much to their amazement it actually opened. With blank stares on their faces, they stepped inside and walked down the ramp leading to the famed stage, only to find it empty except for a small stand with an acoustic guitar that had a pick hooked in the strings. “I think I stopped halfway down the ramp from where I came in and just looked at it,” she remembers. “I tried to soak it in and realize, for a moment, where I was. After thinking about it for 10 seconds, I charged it. I knew it might be my only opportunity for a long time. I knew it was my only opportunity to do it that way.” John struck a chord and the impromptu 1 a.m. one-song concert began in earnest. “Obviously I didn’t play to a roomful of people,” she admits, “but it felt like I played to a room full of important people. It was almost like I was standing there proving myself to the old country singers. Those two-and-a-half minutes when I was actually singing the song, I mean, I couldn’t even open my eyes. I was just trying to take it all in. I was just trying to live in the moment.”
And next time Gretchen plays in the Ryman Auditorium, she’ll be invited to come in the artists’ entrance.
