CHRIS CAGLE: What's On His Mind

We caught up with Chris Cagle while on tour in California: 

NORTHMUSIC: Chris, today I’d like to talk with you about your just released CD, “My Life’s Been a Country Song.” 

Cagle: Awesome 

Northmusic:  I had a chance to listen to the CD several times over the weekend and really thought it was great. 

Cagle: So you have had a chance to live with it awhile?  Do you actually listen to country music? 

NORTHMUSIC:  All the time… 

Cagle:  So what song on the album struck you the most? 

NORTHMUSIC: Actually, there were 3 – “Never Ever Gone” (the first single), “My Heart Move On” and the title song “My Life’s Been a Country Song” – I think that one defines country music! 

Cagle: Wow!  Well, I think the country music today is what, well, is what most people would call, not necessarily classic rock, more of a sense of the James Taylor, the Eagles, the Carol King.  That was the first stuff I was introduced to when I was young.  I remember being four or five years old and singing “You’ve Got a Friend”.  

Used to have this guy in the apartment complex, had an old white Fender Stratocaster and he’d sit out there with an amp and play and a mike and he would sing, (sings) “I got a gal named Molly Malone bop a bop”, and I’d get up and I’d sing “Joy to the World” – the Young Rascals – I loved “Jeremiah was a bull frog”.   I’d do Amos Moses or Grand Funk Railroad, and then Conway Twitty and Charlie Daniels and things of that nature.  

It’s so funny because I made a joke about Urban Cowboy when it hit – that all of a sudden I was the cool guy again! 

NORTHMUSIC:  You didn’t write any of the music this time?  You always wrote more songs for your other albums? 

Cagle:  That’s one of the things Scott Hendricks (producer) and I sat down an talked about.  One of the things he said to me was that he googled every critical review I have ever received.  One of the things he said was “what I want to focus on are some of the things in your career that have been pointed out as a negative and I want to take those and make those a positive. If we do that the positive parts of your career, the things people say they love about you and your career, will wind up being even stronger.” So I thought it was a very good thought process, a very good analogy and I was pretty excited about the process. It actually worked out great. 

NORTHMUSIC: Do you miss writing the songs? 

Cagle: Oh, I still wrote for the record, I just didn’t have anything that I felt was good enough to make the record. 

NORTHMUSIC:  So you plan to keep writing? 

Cagle:  Oh yeah. I can’t stop writing. I’ve been writing since I was in high school. It’s just kind of a part of my life, it’s just something that I do – it’s cheaper then drink! 

NORTHMUSIC:  Songwriters have a special quality – they write poetry but also hear it set to music. 

Cagle:  I don’t know the process for any other writers, but I usually have a song that I’ve just written the music to and I think about how it makes me feel—and that’s kind of where I start out. If the song itself makes me feel melancholy or if it makes me feel like dancing or it makes me, you know, I don’t use the word sexy much, but if makes me feel sexy –that’s kind of the stuff I look for in what I write, as well as, what I look for in a  musical trough or bed. A lot of times I think, the most important thing for a writer is to listen closely to the song itself and it will tell you what it should be about. 

NORTHMUSIC:  Is that the philosophy you used to select songs for the CD?

Cagle: Well in these songs, when I sing an outside songs, first and foremost I can not hear anyone else’s voice on it. If I hear another singer’s voice on it, I don’t even go any further, because one of the worse things ever is to have anyone coming up to me and saying I love that song but if Rascal Flatts sang it, it would have been great. Know what I mean? So I have to make sure I can definitely stand with it and make it, through my interpretation of it, a signature type of song. I guess this is what you try to do with every one of them. Some times you succeed, sometimes you fail, but at least I have a game plan in that regard.

Secondly, I have to be willing to sing it for, God willing, the next 15 years. And that’s, you know, equally important.  You have to be willing to live with it and are willing to have it in your life for a long period of time.

NORTHMUSIC:  The songs on the CD fit very well together. They seem to be very upbeat. Is this a reflection of where you are now?

Cagle:  Right. Well that was one of things we looked at. We looked at the actual beats per minute from my first record – 104 on average, then 75 then 74 on the third – we were actually going down in tempo, so we wanted to make sure we went back up in tempo.  That was something that would be really important to us, to get that tempo back up.

NORTHMUSIC: The music sounds great. Now the last CD came out a while ago.  You haven’t been around for a while.  Are you back in a good place?

Cagle:  I haven’t really been gone from the scene as much as I just haven’t been having chart success. The gist is, I’m in a very good place, things are really good as far as me on a personal level. It’s just one of those things, unfortunately, that whenever you have to deal with something personally, the music business doesn’t stop revolving around you. So you just have to make sure that you are able to flow with it and that was something that I was not able to do. I had to stop and had to take some time and get myself in a place where I was approachable, where I was able to, I don’t’ know, be around. No one wants to be around someone who’s not fun to be around I guess.

NORTHMUSIC: Well the CD sounds like you had a lot of fun making it.

Cagle:  I did. I did. It was a lot of fun making it. It was a great process. I only hope we can do it again and it’s equally as joyful. 

NORTHMUSIC: You’re on the same label –EMI/Capitol – but there’s a new producer?

Cagle: Yes.  I went and worked with Scott Hendricks. He’s the guy who originally signed me to EMI and it worked out great. Scott is a great guy and we had a great time and I loved working with him. I look forward to workin’ with him some more.

NORTHMUSIC: What are your plans for touring?

Cagle:  We are already out on tour. We’ve been playing shows left and right –we’re probably going to do 120 shows this year. It will be a lot of fun.

NORTHMUSIC: Any plans to come to here in New England?

Cagle: Yeah, people ask me that all the time, when you planning to come here. I’ll go anywhere they’ll ask me. 

NORTHMUSIC: Well, you should come – we have a huge number of country fans here!

Cagle:  Country music in the northeast is a lot bigger than people ever anticipated. There’s a lot of great country fans up there.  We would definitely like to get up there and spend some time with you guys.

NORTHMUSIC:  Are you planning videos to go with the new album?

Cagle:  Yes, will hopefully shooting some videos pretty soon.

NORTHMUSIC: Do you enjoy making videos?

Cagle:  No, ma’am!  I don’t. I enjoy the creative part. But watching me on TV or hearing me sing is kind of like – well I’m not one of those guys that likes to hear myself sing. I know that sounds crazy. You know it’s like, here’s a great example, like you know you make a recording/greeting which you leave as your message on the answering machine “Hey this is Chris, sorry I missed your call” and then you call yourself and you hear yourself and you think “Damn I sound like that!”  That’s kind of how I feel about videos. Sometimes I’ll listen—owww, I don’t hear that when I sing. It’s like, I don’t know, I just have to stop myself from micro-managing my own range and say look you are here for a reason, even if you don’t know what it is, you’re here and enjoy it and live in the moment and have a good time because one day it will be over. Make sure you don’t miss out while you’re on the journey. I think is the most important thing.

NORTHMUSIC:  I read where you ae looking forward to Fan Fair this year. How do you feel about what Kix Brooks said about people making money off of the Fair, while the artists don’t get paid?

Cagle: You know what I don’t worry about other people’s opinions in this business.  Personally I think that, first of all Kix Brooks is a very intelligent, smart man who has done a lot and will continue to do a lot for country music. I think what he was complaining about was not about getting paid for playing Fan Fair. My deal with Fan Fair is this, that’s the one week I get to go and give a thank you to everybody, not that I don’t do it from the stage, but it’s the one time they are all there in one place because they all come down to see so many stars. Where your question came from is an interview I did about my fan club party this year. What I want it to be. We are doing out to a lake and when I get off the bus, I’ll say look everyone put your cameras up and your pens up. I want to come find out about you. I’ll do the meet and greet and sign your stuff and take pictures and sing for you later. I want to flip burgers with you, I want to play volleyball with you, I want to go ride a boat with you, I want to hang out with you. I want to find out about what it is, you know, why me? There are a lot of great artists in this business. I want to understand--course I’m saying that and I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to to know (laughs), because I might mess it up. I want to get to know my fans.

Here I’m sitting in this hotel room with my computer and my screen saver is a horse that I own, which is by no means an inexpensive purchase.  I would never have been able to that if it had not been for music and I would not have been able to do music if it hadn’t been for the fans. So I want to make sure that they know that I am grateful and it’s not just something we say. A lot of artists talk about “Oh I’m so thankful, thank you this and thank you that”, but talk is cheap – I want to show them.

I’m trying to get the deal sponsored corporately so that catering is free. I want to have the biggest fan club party. I want to grow a tradition for Fan Fair where people go “Cagle’s having his party today and everyone is going to be there, so we might as well not do anything on Wednesday—except go to Cagle’s party. Because that’s were all the people are going to be.” That’s what I’m trying to build.

I’m trying to get the people from “Dinner Impossible” to come down and actually film the party, you know where the guy comes in and says “should you take this mission, Chris Cagle is having a party for his closest members of his fan club and friends and you have to do this for this many people, you get this much money” you know and have them come and do that. The problem I’m running into is that  basically they don’t film at that time. So I may have to figure something else out, but the bottom line is I want them to come and be able to do it and not have the fans pay for it. 

NORTHMUSIC:  I think your fans will appreciate the effort.

Cagle: Let me tell you something.  This is not me bragging. This is just a simple thing that happened that let me know that I was on the right track in my attitude towards the fans. Don’t get me wrong, some of them, I have been rude to in the past. You show up at my house, you aren’t going to get the friendly Chris Cagle the singer. I’ll walk out in my underwear and tell you to leave--which is exactly what I did. And it’s sad because this guy had brought his kids on vacation to find my condo and come say hi. They asked if they could come walk through. And I was like “no you can’t come in my house!” And I actually tried to get it under a charitable trust so it would be hard to find –but it’s only happened a few times.

Oh yeah, this is where I was going with this.  I digressed and lost my train of thought – Last year’s fan club party I had two ladies get up and leave in the middle of it. If you get up and leave my fan club party, I’m going to call you out. So I was like whoa, whoa, whoa and they turn around. I asked “Where you all going?”

“Oh we’re going to this other artist’s party.”

I was like, you are kidding me. And they were like we’re sorry. Ok tell her I said hi and I think she’s great and I do. But anyway, they were back in twenty minutes and they walked back in and I said ha ha you’re back and she said you know what?

Her’s was free and we paid $50 to come to this one and I’m telling you right now I would pay a thousand! We got over there and we were shoved into a cattle car, waiting in line and you couldn’t touch’em and you couldn’t talk to her, you had to stand by – they might as well have had a wax museum figure standing there and you’d just take a picture with it. She said you let us ask questions, personal questions.  You know as long as they don’t ask me what kind of underwear I wear it’s all good.  What I mean by that is, if people are going to ask me a question, I want it to be something of substance. My personal grooming habits are really none of your business. (laughs) I mean if that’s all we got to talk about, I’ll share.

NORTHMUSIC:  I promise I won’t ask that—I already crossed it off my list!

Cagle:  Well, what I’m getting at is that even though we had to charge money for the fan club because o the venue, because we had dinner and things of that nature. The fact that they came back for the interaction, that’s when I realized, you know, I need to get more interactive.

NORTHMUSIC: Do you live in Nashville?

Cagle:  I have a condo in Nashville and when I stay in Gainsville, Texas in my off time at a place called “Babcock Ranch”.

NORTHMUSIC: And do you raise horses?

Cagle:  Yes, I raise cutting, and reining and working cow horses. I have my horses and my dogs, and of course my dogs travel with me. I have 103 pound, 3 year old American bull dog named Capone and I just bought a Dogue de Bourdeaux which is basically the Turner and Hooch movie dog and he’s 4 months old and 50 pounds and his name is Homey.

In fact, the first 3 questions I ask when you come to work for me is, do you have a drug problem, do you have a drinking problem or a problem with animals. Actually I had a guy answer yes to one of them, and I said man I want to introduce you to a place called Music Cares if you want to get help, go get it, but you’re not working for me. I don’t need the problem. I grew up with it. I grew up with alcoholism. I grew up with prescription drug abuse in my family and I’ve seen it.   I’ve seen the damage it does and I’m not going to have it in my organization. I personally, in the first 2-3 years, I mistook the performance and the profession for a party and I almost got locked down in it pretty tight. I’m glad I woke up and realized it, because I don’t know if I’d still be doing this.

NORTHMUSIC:  It must be a real problem when you’re on the road so much?

Cagle:  The thing you have to realize when you come into a town is that the program directors want to come party with you, because they haven’t gotten to do anything in 6 or 8 weeks, so there going to come in and they want to party. The problem is you can’t do that every night. Every night there’s a reason to celebrate, there’s someone to party with, there’s a reason – “oh the book’s come out and we’re number 1 so lets have a beer.” And its like, before you know it, you’re no longer the center of attention – you’re now the obnoxious guy at the party.  Everyone says “thank god he’s gone” after he’s left! So I saw us kind of starting to become that and I changed it.

NORTHMUSIC: Well the CD seems to be on the right track. What’s going to be the second single?

Cagle: I don’t know. Mike Duggan is in love with the song called “I Don’t Want to Live”, I personally think “No Love Songs” is a hit.

NORTHMUSIC:  I could see “Little Sundress” as a video?

Cagle: Yeah, the problem with that song is I did that song pretty much because my producer wouldn’t shut up about it. I like the song, but it’s been done to death by Chesney. That stuff has been sung about and sung about. But it still does make you feel good.

NORTHMUSIC: Well, I could see a video of “No Love Songs”?

Cagle:  Yeah, that one I picture the video. Either Terry Bradshaw or Mathew Mccongeghy and I at some place like the Harbor Rest Saloon in Key West. We’re sitting at the bar and insead of me singing, I look at the camera, like in Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, where every once in a while he’d look at the camera (though you’re never suppose to look at the camera), he’d look at the camera and say ok wait.  So in the very beginning I’d look in the camera and say “he was sitting by be in beachfront bar” and then it cuts away and there’s me bringing him a couple of beers and lighting a couple of cigars and he starts talking and rambling, but he’s talking the song, and “when he stood up on the stool, like a fool and started hollering” – and when he’s hollering at the band, I look over my shoulder and it’s me and the band singing. I think it would be really cool. Pretty decent budget.

In fact I may ask to direct this next one!

That would be fun!