Randall accepted a songwriting deal with Ree Guyer at Wrensong Music Publishing, and his career started turning around. Lyle Lovett and Bush tapped him to go back out on the road, and soon John Grady, Sony Music Nashville President, offered him a chance to record a new album.
"Jon Randall is an incredibly gifted artist, who grew up in Texas, and has been around Country Music his entire life," Grady said. "He and his talents are a gift to the Country Music industry."
Randall asked George Massenburg to produce and the two went with a different approach - recording live in one room all together.
"I'm better when I perform live," Randall said. "We decided this record needs to be built around me - the band needs to follow me. All the imperfections are there, but the imperfections to me are better than when I try to do it perfect."
The album features 12 songs written by Randall that highlight the tenor harmonies that are so often sought by other artists in the studio. Randall's girlfriend Jessi Alexander sings harmony on the title track, and his father Ronnie co-wrote the beautiful "North Carolina Moon," featuring harmonies by Sonya Isaacs. As a nod to his love of bluegrass, the album is capped with the Robert Lee Castleman tune, "My Life." The song is meaningful to Randall because it includes instrumental work by Bush, Bela Fleck and John Cowan from one of his favorite bands, New Grass Revival.
"That song is my tip of the hat to New Grass," Randall said. "One of the greatest moments of my whole life was being onstage at Telluride with Sam, and John Cowan, and Larry Adamaniuk, and they wanted to do a set of bluegrass and Bela came out and we did all this New Grass stuff. That was my most favorite thing I've ever done - for me, that's like getting to play with the Stones."
Randall is touring periodically with Earl Scruggs and his band, and will soon sing on a Scruggs album. He is promoting his Sony album, and looking forward to the next one.
"At one point I was ready to leave this town, Randall said. "I had already put it in my head that I'm gone. But then everything turned around. ... I'm still doing my artist thing, and still go out and play with my heroes. And I like making that work."
Songwriters Bill Anderson and Jon Randall are nominated for 2005 CMA Song of the Year for "Whiskey Lullaby," recorded by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss. "The 39th Annual CMA Awards," which airs live Tuesday, Nov. 15 (8:00 - 11:00 PM/ET) on the CBS Television Network from Madison Square Garden in New York City, will be hosted by Brooks & Dunn.
