as a career – but actually became a licensed mortician. Is that true? This interview was for CountryInterviewsOnline.net and appears here with their permission.
During a recent telephone conversation from his farm just outside of Nashville, John Conlee discussed his start in country music and his latest project – a new gospel CD, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, as well as his upcoming single, the patriotic, They Also Serve:
CIO: (Maxine) One biography indicated you didn’t start out to pursue music as a career – but actually became a licensed mortician. Is that true?
John: That’s correct. Are you feeling ok this morning? Yes, in fact I’m still licensed to do it.
I was a mortician for 6 years in my home state of Kentucky. I started working part-time because my best friend was one in our home town, Versaillies, Kentucky. He talked about it so much I became interested in it and liked it so much I decided to pursue it full time and I went to school and got my license and worked full time for 6 years and I’m still licensed to do it.
CIO: (Maxine) So how did you end up in music?
John: Music was always my hobby. I also had a great love for radio. I’m a guy who became interested in a lot of things along the way. My earliest remembrance of a hobby was music and I started taking guitar lessons as a kid. The guitar lesson only lasted a half hour on Saturday mornings giving me a bunch of free time while Mom was shopping and all that. So I would go across the street and hangout at the local radio station. I fell in love with radio and had intended to go straight into radio after school. The funeral work was actually a diversion from that plan. But after 6 years with the funeral home, I still found I had the itch for broadcasting. So I got into radio. Started in Fort Knox, Kentucky and ended up in Nashville, at WLAC radio. And that’s what allowed me to turn the old hobby of music into a career. After I had been in Nashville a while, and got to meet a lot of people at the record labels and publishing companies and my career started as a result of those contacts.
CIO: (Maxine) Your career started in the mid to late 70s and you have some 26 songs in the Top 20 and 19 albums. You’ve been very successful.
John: I’ve lost count, sounds close and we are still doing new music. We just re-released our Greatest Hits which hadn’t been available for a while and put three new songs on that last year and on my own record label by the way, Rose Colored Records. And we just released my first ever gospel CD.
CIO: (Maxine) You own your own label?
John: Yes, Rose Colored Records. We established it last year, so now we are able to put out all our own material on our own label.
CIO: (Maxine) You are a member of, and frequently perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Many new performers say it’s exciting and are awestruck the first time they perform on that stage. What’s it like? Does it hold the same feeling after all this time?
John: Well, I’m certainly honored to be a member and especially since I’m coming up on my 23 year there or maybe 24th I’ve lost count there too. It will be my 24th coming up actually this February. So now, I guess there was some nervousness those first few times I suppose, but I got over all my stage fright years ago because I started performing at school all the time when I was kid. I still think the most nervous thing is to be in front of the hometown people when you’re a kid you know, so I got over the stage fright, luckily, years ago.
CIO: (Maxine) You have been successful in having your fans stay with you, buying your music and coming out to see you in concert. Why do you think that is?
John: It’s the songs. I believe it’s the songs. I’ve always felt that way. It’s the most important link in the chain. The song quality has more to do with longevity then any other thing you can do. All the other elements come into play, but there’s an old saying on Music Row that it all begins with a song and that’s the way it should be. Unfortunately, not so many people today are paying attention to that rule as I’d like to see them pay and I think they’ll pay for it by having shorter careers in some cases.
CIO: (Maxine) Yes, certainly seems like a lot of people come and go in country music. Anybody today you think has staying power?
John: Oh sure. There always will be. One of the things that affect the staying power is just how the industry is conducting itself right now. It used to be with country music that if you had 2 or 3 hits under your belt you could stay around about as long as you wanted. That’s no longer true. But that’s always been true for pop, rock and roll. So country is just going that way to a degree and so people will come and go like that much more quickly. But there are people who will be around, Brad Paisley will be here as long as he chooses to be, he’s a talented songwriter, good guitar picker and a good singer, he’s paying attention to song. He’s just one example that will be here for awhile. Terri Clark, I’m sure will be. Trace Adkins has a distinctive sound. There are people who have a shot, but I think it will be a little more rare then it used to be. I would not like to be starting now in other words!
CIO: (Maxine) Many of the albums and single hits you have produced were about relationships, the working man and ordinary life set to music. The new album, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” is gospel. Is this a new direction for your music, or a return to the music you grew up with?
John: Really it’s back to the roots, because the first music I remember singing or hearing was in church. When I was a little kid, going with my grandparents and sleeping through most of the service probably, but the music was always early in the service and I remember singing along in the congregational singing. I’ve always loved that music. This CD has 15 songs, 10 of them are the old standards like Amazing Grace and the The Old Rugged Cross and there are 4 new gospel songs we found and there’s one patriotic song we are set to release as a single around the first of the year.
CIO: (Maxine) The song “They Also Serve” is very patriotic, and given the Iraq war, very political. Are you political?
John: The new song is political, and so am I by the way. I did two rallies for the President this past season, and campaigned diligently for him. That was a first, I hadn’t endorsed anybody before. But I thought this election was so important that I just couldn’t stay on the sidelines, so we did a couple of rallies. And this song is political. This nation and the world is facing a threat that we never faced before and this is not the time to drop the ball and sit around on our laurels and hope for the best. We will have to fight it until it’s won, no matter how long it takes. Our military is charged with doing that and my youngest child is about to graduate from Marine boot camp in a couple of weeks and will be on the front lines of this battle like so many other courageous young people.
CIO: (Maxine) So this song is very personal?
John: Yes, it’s personal exactly. This song is talking about the families who are supporting their love ones who are serving. My wife and I and our whole family are now among that number. There is trepidation for sure about the whole thing but there is no one to talk to about this deal, no one to negotiate with, let’s try to work it out and all that. There’s nobody to do that with. So we have no choice but to do what we’re doing. We need to do it quickly and with a lot of force, in my opinion.
CIO: (Maxine) Must be hard though with a son in the military?
John: Absolutely. It’s his choice certainly; it’s something he wanted to do before. He’s been talking about joining the Marines even before 9/11 ever happened. He started this idea in junior high of joining the Marines, but it intensified after 9/11. This is just what he’s supposed to do evidently, and I’m proud of him and we support him 100 percent.
CIO: (Maxine) Videos now play such an important role in promoting music. Your last video was “Fellow Travelors” in 1989. Are you planning a video for this song?
John: I’m not a big video fan personally. So many times, it could be said, that videos have brought down the quality of songs today, because some artists often pick songs that would have a hard time standing on their own without the video to help paint the picture – that’s why I’ve never been a big fan of them.
CIO: (Maxine) In other words, let the song paint the picture in your mind?
John: Yes. Theatre of the mind is one of the things I love about great songs – I was obviously attracted to radio for that reason.
But with this song, it was important enough that we would do the video to help get it out there and get it exposed, and also to honor those families who have people serving in our military. Hopefully, people will be able to see the video in January or early February.
CIO: (Maxine) Today’s performers seem to be out on the road some 200+ days a year. You don’t tour that much and stick fairly close to home, yet have had great success. Why do you think this is so?
John: We still do 75 or 80 shows a year on the road plus the Opry, so we are still really busy. The most I ever did was probably 120 dates in my career. I did this on purpose. I never did like the staying gone months at a time deal, I had a family and frankly I’d probably go crazy being gone so long and not on the farm! I’ve always been a weekend warrior with this and we still are.
CIO: (Maxine) That’s amazing given that so many of today’s performers are on the road 200 to 300 days a year.
John: That’s true and in the old days when that that was really relevant, I think that’s probably when most folks got into so much trouble with substance abuse and such because it just drives you nuts after a while. It certainly would me. I know my limitations and I wouldn’t be happy doing it, so I don’t.
CIO: (Maxine) You live on a 32 acre farm outside Nashville. A working farm?
John: We still operate the 250 acre farm in Kentucky where I was raised, and we live and work on a 75 acre spread here in Nashville.
We raise cattle and we raise our own hay. We don’t raise row crops any more because we just don’t have the help and I’m not here enough to do it. Tobacco is still the cash crop in Kentucky, at least as we speak, but that could go away any minute. There’s talk now that there will be a buyout and the whole tobacco deal will go away from this country and be raised in South America or somewhere. And we’ve been leasing ours out for some time. Basically, we raise cattle and hay and that keeps us as busy as we want to be.
CIO: (Maxine) You helped start Farm Aid to help small farmers. Has anything changed?
John: The whole reason Farm Aid came into being is because we were slowly going corporate and away from family farms. That’s still true. We’ve won many battles but we are losing the war and I think much of the argument for keeping the family farm system and having a whole lot of smaller farmers raising stock, can be seen in some of the diseases we see, like mad-cow. This is what happens when you put to many animals in too small a place, which is what corporations do. Even small family farmers, who want to be in say the hog business, have to do the big numbers and small confinement deal in order to make a profit. Yeah, we’re still headed down the wrong road no doubt about it. Will it change? Not any time soon.
We will choose to attack it in everyway but the one that would work best. This is to get the price up on all these commodities that these small farms produce and go back to the small operators to do it. That’s a pipe dream in today’s world. It would be like saying, lets not let all the banks merge into the top three – that ain’t going to happen either! It’s going to keep going this way until something blows up and I don’t know when that will be.
CIO: (Maxine) It’s like the radio stations folding in on themselves and its becoming harder to get music played?
John: Yes, absolutely and what a big, big mistake that is. But things have a way of cycling around and here comes along the internet and satellite radio and they will provide some competion and it will allow what needs to surface, to surface. You sit back and say well it would be nice if it didn’t have to happen this way and we didn’t have to go through this turmoil and then fix things later, but that’s just human nature. We humans love doing this!
CIO: (Maxine) Any plans to retire out to the farm and leave music?
John: No. Not as long as folks what to hear me and I can hook it. Gets to a point where I’m waivering you won’t see me on stage. But as long as I’m able and people what to hear me, I’ll be there doing it.
CIO: (Maxine) Any advice to country performers coming up?
John: Song and sound are the main things. These days it so tempting to become a video act and get caught up in all the trappings and stuff. But if you really have a heart for the music, it shines through, it’s the best way to do it and you’re a lot happier if it works that way.
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