LET THEM BE LITTLE
(Richie McDonald/Billy Dean)
Richie: I was in the backyard and my daughter Mollie who was about a year and half at the time, came out of the house wearing nothing but a smile. I told her you gotta put on some clothes, it’s cold outside.’ She started crying, and I felt bad. The same week my son Rhett brought this little piece of paper home from kindergarten that said: ‘Dear Parents, My arms are short, my legs are short, please have patience with me because I’m a little person. Don’t let me grow up too fast. Enjoy every moment.’ The next day I was sitting down at the piano in our living room and started piddling around with the idea and it started falling out. Billy Dean helped me pull it all together.
T.G.I.F.
(Richie McDonald/Philip Douglas/Ron Harbin)
Richie: I took Ron Harbin and Philip Douglas out on the bus, and we were somewhere in Ohio. We had already written a couple of songs, and Ron said, ‘Man, I got this idea called T.G.I.F. that I’ve never heard it written.’ We felt if we hooked it and it came off right, in every album there’s a slot for a song like that, just a fun weekend kind of song. Just turn it up and kind of don’t think about anything, stomp your foot and have fun. It’s not about anything but just having a good time.
SUMMERTIME
(Dean Sams/Rivers Rutherford/Tom Shapiro)
Dean: It was the middle of winter when we wrote the song and we were thinking, ‘Dang, I’m ready for some warm weather, lakes and boats and all that stuff.’ I initially thought of something fun but we wrote it about a very intimate relationship with somebody that you’re in love with.
NOW
(Steve Robson/Jeffrey Steele)
Dean: This was one of the first songs we were pitched.. There’s so much passion in the melody and the message is so immediate about being ‘right here, right now.’ The best songs make the record and this song made the record.
MR. MOM
(Richie McDonald/Ron Harbin/Don Pfrimmer)
Richie: ‘Mr. Mom’ is more of a tribute to the housewife, the one who doesn’t get the credit. I can’t imagine doing what my wife does, and if I did, the result would be Pampers in the dryer, crayons all over the floors and walls. ‘Mr. Mom’ is a light-hearted way of saying thanks to the stay-at-home mom. They have a tough job.
FROM THERE TO HERE
(Richie McDonald/Ron Harbin/Don Pfrimmer)
Richie: This song is about journeys. The first journey is the Wright brothers and how the airplane got from Point A to Point B. The next journey is that of a soldier and his loved one and how they made it 50 years. The final journey is of a band, Lonestar or any other four-piece band that started out in a van and a U-Haul trailer playing everywhere they could just to be heard. The song works so well as a duet with Randy Owen of Alabama because this song tells Alabama’s story and it tells our story, so why don’t we both tell it?’ As a songwriter and an artist, a highlight of my career is getting to sing a song with Randy Owen, because we look up to those guys. They really are heroes, and I’ll never forget it.
SOMEBODY’S SOMEONE
(Richie McDonald)
Richie: I was watching TV one night, and there was a story about an American soldier dying. I imagined my little boy coming up to me and asking, ‘Daddy, did you know this guy who died? Was he your friend?’ And I just basically say, ‘No, I didn’t know him, but he was somebody’s someone.’ It seems like every single day there’s another soldier who dies, and it got me thinking: ‘No, I didn’t know him, never will know him, but he definitely was somebody’s someone.'