By James Rea
In 1989 when Trey Bruce put away his rock ‘n’ roll drumsticks and moved to Nashville from Memphis to pursue songwriting, little did he know that his accomplishments would be so significant. He is a hit songwriter with over 200 cross-genre cuts and the co-founder of Big Tractor Music, which he launched in 1993 with Scott Hendricks. During his career Bruce has earned 13 ASCAP Awards, an Emmy Award, 5 No. 1 singles, multiple top 5 and top 10 hits, and an Academy of Country Music Song of the Year nomination. He is also one of Nashville’s top producers. Some of Bruce’s production credits include five Trace Adkins albums (More, Chrome, Comin’ On Strong, Greatest Hits 1, Greatest Hits 2), Chris Ledoux’s critically acclaimed One Road Man and Greatest Hits, Rebecca Lynn Howard’s Forgive, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gods and Guns.
In 1990, the very first song he wrote and demoed, “Things Are Tough All Over,” (a co-write with Lisa Silver) was cut immediately by Shelby Lynne. The track, produced by Billy Sherrill, was a top 15 hit and resulted in Bruce’s first publishing deal with MCA Music.
He celebrated the first of three No. 1 Randy Travis records with “Look Heart, No Hands” in 1993. Since that time, he has had songs recorded by Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, SHeDAISY, Trace Adkins, Reba McEntire, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, Deana Carter, Diamond Rio, Lorrie Morgan, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Gary Allan, Chris LeDoux, Jo Dee Messina, and the list goes on.
Bruce left Big Tractor in 2005 to partner with Kenny MacPherson and became VP of A&R and Creative for Chrysalis Music’s Nashville office. At Chrysalis, Bruce signed and developed new artists, wrote a ton of new songs and built a catalogue of roughly 800 songs in five years, as well as cuts in the rock format and No. 1 singles in Australia and Canada. “I wrote 542 of those songs and I signed Kingbilly, Chris Janson and Kree Harrison to my Chrysalis subsidiary,” he recalls. “There was the constant threat of being bought by another big conglomerate so it was a tough build. We didn’t look up, we just hit it hard for five years. I also produced Skynyrd in that period. Ken Levitan at Vector was managing Trace Adkins, and he called and said, ‘Will you write some songs with Skynyrd?’ So we wrote 5 or 6 songs, then they asked me to demo the songs and I did and he said, ‘Wow, they sound like records, do you want to cut the record?’”
In 2001, Bruce won an Emmy in the best original song category for “Where There Is Hope” and in 2002, he wrote and produced a song for the NBC TV show, Providence, and produced one song on the motion picture soundtrack, Where The Heart Is.
He’s a proud Leadership Music alum, a two-time troubadour of the Chateau de Marouatte songwriters retreat in France, a member of NSAI, CMA, NARAS, and he’s currently partnered with The Royalty Network.
The Producer’s Chair: What’s your best business advice for songwriters trying to get deals?
Trey Bruce: If you’re not an artist, or directly “hip-connected” to a hit artist early-on, it’s very difficult. I know writers who had deals at one of the three major publishing companies because they were “Jo-Bob’s” best friend or playing guitar on the road with him and they weren’t even good writers, but they were in the close proximity so they had a good chance of getting songs on records by that artist.
How did you manage to get a cut with your very first demo?
The singer in the rock band I was working with knew an engineer at MCA and he got me an appointment with Al Cooley. Noel Fox was Al’s boss. I’d written three country songs and I’d been to several publishers and I played Al a couple of songs and he ran down the hall and got Noel to come meet me. They asked me to come back and write with their writers, including Lisa Silver, and we wrote ‘Things Are Tough All Over.’ The next week they demoed it and a couple of weeks later Al called and said Bob Montgomery at CBS had put it song on hold for Shelby Lynne and they’d like to give me a publishing deal. That got me $8000 a year and I was there three years. I was delivering pizzas the first time I heard it on the radio.
What defining moment took you from producing demos to producing major artists?
I was in my last couple of months at MCA and I was going to re-sign there, when I received a call from Scott Hendricks. I had a No. 1 hit with Randy Travis called “Look Heart, No Hands” and Scott said, “I just cut a song of yours on Steve Wariner and I’ve got two more songs over here that I really like. There are several companies in town that have offered me a subsidiary publishing company, if I sign a hit writer. Would you work for me?” So we started Big Tractor with Tim Wipperman.
I was producing my own demos at MCA and one of the first songs I demoed at Big Tractor was “Whisper My Name,” which was also a No. 1 hit on Randy Travis. We got going really quickly and then, a couple of years later, Scott still owned Big Tractor but he was running Capitol Records. He signed Deanna Carter, Keith Urban and Trace Adkins. He asked me to produce Chris LeDoux and that’s how I started making records.
Did Scott mentor you as a producer?
I was the only writer with Big Tractor; for about two years there was just Scott and me. I would do demos and borrow his gear and his good microphones and go to County Q like everybody else. I’d go to the studio at night when Scott was mixing Brooks & Dunn, and Lee Roy Parnell and Restless Heart and I watched him make records. I picked up the fundamentals of how to make a record and how to look for songs, and I picked up Scott’s work ethic—he would stay until four in the morning and just not quit. I remember Scott saying, “I won’t hire anybody who doesn’t work as hard as me.”
Do you have a favorite engineer?
David Buchanan, David was a Belmont grad, intern at Omni, then he went to County Q. He did a lot of the Trace records, Chris LeDoux and Rebecca.
Tell me about your first major artist sessions in the studio with Chris LeDoux.
Chris found songs at record stores in the filler on other albums. We were at the old Woodland Studios in East Nashville and it was a really good day. I was confident because I was surrounded by my engineer, David Buchanan, and my team of players who I’d been in the studio with for a few years. These players hadn’t been on a bunch of big records, so we really had a lot of fun. Working budgets was new to me but I had a production assistant, so it was nice to delegate some authority to other people. Chris was a gentle giant, a sweet guy. I remember he was about 49 or 50, hard as a rock wall and super nice, quiet and not over-confident about his musical abilities. He was just a lucky cowboy who was great at his trade and felt fortunate that he had a second career doing what he really loved, and he wrote the book on how he was going to do it. I wouldn’t say I didn’t have doubts, but I was never scared. I don’t make music out of fear.
How did you end up producing Trace Adkins?
I started producing Trace on his third record. Scott left Capitol and Trace called one day to ask me to produce his records. Scott had nothing to do with it. We had some big records. I’d already done two full albums and I called Scott and said, “Garth’s régime is gone at Capitol, do you want to make this record with me?” The first Greatest Hits was a big record. All we had to do was find one song. Chris Lacey from Warner/Chappell brought me a guitar/vocal of a song called “Then They Do.” That song really brought Trace back because he was having a rough time getting attention at Capitol under Garth’s régime.
Why haven’t we heard more from Rebecca Lynn Howard since “Forgive”?
I started writing with Rebecca right before she turned 18. I fell in love with her vocals. She’s probably one of the finest singers that ever came to Nashville. She started getting record label attention really quickly. She made two or three albums before she made Forgive. It was all under the Universal umbrella and there was a subsidiary label that Emory Gordy Jr. ran and he did a record on her and maybe a second record and then he moved up to Decca where Mark Wright was. I was writing with her and they were cutting some of my songs and I called Mark and said, “I’m begging you, this is her third album, let me cut it with you.” It moved up from Decca to Universal and Mark Wright and Tony Brown called me and said, “we want you to do this record.” I worked a long time on that record, about a year, and the whole time, “Forgive” was on hold with Faith. So I called Byron Gallimore and he called Faith and she said, if it [was going to be Rebecca’s] first single, she’d let it go. She sent Rebecca roses when it came out. It was running away at radio. I couldn’t walk into a restaurant without getting my back patted from everybody. Bruce Hinton retired right on the front of the single and by the time Luke Lewis took over during the course of a 40-week run up the radio charts, Mark Wright and Tony Brown left and he hired Dave Conrad. All my team was gone and they told me Luke was pulling the single. It was at No. 15 with a bullet and the next week it was gone. We got an ACM Song of the Year nom against four other No. 1 records. It limped up to No. 10 after they pulled the promotion and then it disappeared. They asked me to do another record, and I said, “I can’t, I’m done.” So Emory Gordy came back in and did a record on her, then she went to Joe Galante at BMG and then she was never heard of again. It breaks my heart to this day. Rebecca Lynn Howard is a massively gifted artist.
Why do you think single downloads are so popular with consumers?
Buying 99 cent singles isn’t even the point anymore. It’s all on the cloud. For $10 or $15 per month you can get whatever you want from Spotify. That is the first thing that has happened that I think can generate income that pushes us back towards the ‘90s income. If every household in America bought subscriptions, we’d be making a lot more money than 99 cent downloads. Spotify is the MySpace of streaming, which is good news, which means that something is going to come along that will pay us better.
Someone is going to come up with an artist-centric version of streaming, where they don’t cut the labels in first. I think the labels are in at Spotify for 40 percent. Spotify did independent deals with each major label and said, “What is it going to cost us to have your music?” and to hell with what the copyright owners and artists think. So when two or three artists step up and decide not to go back to the majors with their next record, because they can just hire each of those departments a la cart, then they’re going to do their own version of Spotify. Even if it takes three artists to do it, it’ll make news. It’s direct-to-fan and cutting out as many middlemen as possible. You just have to rent those publicity and marketing departments. They’re probably becoming more important than radio promotion. It takes a ton of money to get a country single up to No. 10 and then even more to get it to No. 1. Get rid of all that and just worry about distributing music, traditional brick-n-mortar marketing and internet marketing. It’s a lot cheaper to do a great marketing plan online and at late night TV and NPR than to put these traditional country radio promotion teams out there. That’s why it’s exciting because at least we know that we’re moving in a hopeful direction. I’m more optimistic right now than I have been in five or six years.
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