Up In Your Business is a Radio Show by FlagandBanner.com
TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE 137
[00:00:09] J: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Through storytelling and conversational interviews, this weekly radio show offers listeners first-hand insight in starting and running a business, the ups and downs of risk-taking and the commonalities of successful people. Connect with Kerry through her candid, often funny and informative weekly blog where you'll read and comment on life as wife, mother, daughter and entrepreneur. And now it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in your business.
[00:00:41] KM: Thank you, Jason. What a thrill to have two famous Grammy award-winning songwriters on the show today, Nashville's Mr. Steve Dean and Mr. Don Goodman. You may not know their names, but you might. But you definitely know their songs. They have written songs for George Strait, Lee Greenwood, Reba McEntire, Blake Shelton, just to name a few.
Today they're writing more songs than ever for a nonprofit called Operation Song. This Nashville-based organization's mission is to empower veterans, active duty military and their families to cathartically tell their war stories through the process of songwriting. Since 2012, the organization has written over 600 songs with veterans and their families. They hold weekly workshops in Tennessee, monthly retreats in Arkansas and Georgia, and are available for sponsored group retreats throughout the US. Anyone can participate. A musical background is not required. Only the desire of the veteran or his family to tell their story.
You can listen to some of their empowering songs at operationssong.org. And their recently released album We've Got Your Six is available on iTunes. We're going to hear some of the songs today.
Be forewarned about this show. You may want to get a tissue. Because I know I did when I was preparing for it. It is a pleasure to welcome to the table the Nashville singer, songwriters turned humanitarians, Mr. Steve Dean and Mr. Don Goodman.
[00:02:14] SD: Hey, Kerry. How are you?
[00:02:16] KM: I'm fine. Hey, Don.
[00:02:17] DG: Hey, Kerry.
[00:02:17] KM: Hey, Don. We were just talking about what a radio voice he has. I said, "Do you sing?" He goes, "Nope." He just writes the songs. Being a songwriter is a – before we jump into Operation Song, which is wonderful, being a songwriter is a dream of many. Steve Dean and Don Goodman, how did both of you start your careers? One's been in it for how long? 48 years.
[00:02:40] DG: 48. Yes, ma'am.
[00:02:41] KM: And the other's been – and you've been –
[00:02:43] SG: 47.
[00:02:43] KM: Yeah. How did you start, Don?
[00:02:47] DG: I had shacked into Nashville with a shoe box full of the worst songs you ever heard in your life. But had an unquenchable thirst to be a songwriter and I had a dream that just wouldn't die.
[00:02:58] KM: Hard work right there.
[00:03:00] SD: Actually, when I moved over to Nashville, I was born and raised in Little Rock. I love Little Rock. I think about Little Rock every day of my life still and always will. But I just got in my little Toyota that I had. A '74 Corolla SR5. Really sporty little car and put my guitar in the back-seat and. I had $600 in cash. no cellphone. No computer. I did absolutely no research. God told me to go do this, and that's what I did.
[00:03:29] KM: And you're a singer also. Aren't you?
[00:03:30] SD: Yes.
[00:03:31] KM: You're a singer, songwriter.
[00:03:32] SD: Yes. Correct.
[00:03:34] KM: Don, what was your first break?
[00:03:37] DG: Knocking on the right door. I walked up to Quadrophonic Studios and knocked on the door and there's a guy up on the roof putting the roof on and I said, "You know who I might talk to here? I hear there's a guy called Troy Seals?" And he spit the nails out off his mouth he says, "I'm Troy. What do you want?" I said, "Well I'm a songwriter." He said, "Well, heck. Who ain't?" He come down the ladder. We went inside. We wrote a song that afternoon. And my very first time in town, Joe Simon cut it that night.
[00:04:09] KM: That is meant to be.
[00:04:09] DG: Yes, ma'am.
[00:04:10] KM: How bad were your knees knocking? Well, I was terrified to sit down with Troy. I started playing my guitar and sing a little bit. Troy said, "Let me see them lyrics. Give me that guitar." He started playing and I never took my guitar out of the car again. Because he was so good. I knew I'd never be that good.
[00:04:32] KM: Was it a big studio? What was the name of the studio?
[00:04:34] DG: It was Quadrophonic Studio is what –
[00:04:35] KM: Is that a big studio?
[00:04:36] DG: Oh, yeah. We cut Dobie Gray there, John Prine, Chris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash.
[00:04:42] SD: Fogelberg.
[00:04:43] DG: Fogelberg's first album. I got a job right there with them after we wrote that song. They gave me $75 a week to be the janitor and 25 to write songs.
[00:04:54] SD: Wow.
[00:04:54] KM: Can I tell you how many people have said they started at their career as a janitor?
[00:04:59] SD: Yeah. It gets your foot in the door, you know?
[00:05:01] KM: That's the key.
[00:05:02] SD: That's it.
[00:05:03] KM: Find out where you want to work and get a job no matter what the job is.
[00:05:06] DG: You know what my best buddy told me one time? Take the job nobody else wants. You got a job security.
[00:05:12] SD: That's true.
[00:05:13] DG: That's pretty good.
[00:05:16] KM: Steve, how about you?
[00:05:17] SD: Well, I actually um was in college at University of Arkansas, Little Rock here. I did all my schooling in Little Rock. And I was – let's see, about my sophomore year, I guess, I came home with – because music has always been the thing with me. And I was in bands and writing songs back in those days too. I brought home a .6 on my grade point average.
[00:05:41] KM: A .6.
[00:05:42] SD: Yes, ma'am.
[00:05:43] KM: Is that like below one?
[00:05:45] SD: Yes.
[00:05:46] SD: Look, quite a bit. Point-four below.
[00:05:52] DG: Sounds like Minnesota.
[00:05:54] SD: Well, I've heard a lot of things. Some people say that must be hard to do in Arkansas. I go, "Hey, wait a minute, man. That's a Kentucky joke." But anyway, so I moved over there. My first break was going into a publishing – I knocked on three doors. The third door was the charm at this point. And the man who was the publisher, his general manager took me in and liked something that I wrote. Because I was from Arkansas. This helps.
Kye Fleming, who's from Fort Smith. You may have heard of her. She's big- time songwriter in Nashville. She was from Fort Smith. And so, when they found out I was from Arkansas, then I got in the door. That was really how I got in the door. And then I got my very first song recorded by Sylvia. Remember Sylvia?
[00:06:42] KM: Yeah.
[00:06:42] DG: On the session – my song was cut on the session that Nobody was cut on. I got to watch them record Nobody. "Your nobody called today." You know that song? It was the song of the year in 1983. My song wasn't that. But it was on that session. I had been at the company for six days when I got my first song recorded.
[00:07:03] KM: Does that stuff still – go ahead. I'm sorry.
[00:07:05] SD: Well, no. I was just going to say, that night when I drove home, my butt never hit the seat. I was floating home thinking, "Oh, my gosh. This is my first song I really wrote in Nashville and it's been recorded by a national recording artist." And it went on to be a gold album. And my publisher called me down, he said, "Hey, Steve. I'm writing you a check right now, because you're making money in the music business." I thought, "Wow. This is cool." It's been a journey though.
[00:07:29] KM: You both were successful in the first week that you went to Nashville. Can that still be done?
[00:07:37] SD: Maybe.
[00:07:38] DG: Yeah. If God really likes you, you got a chance maybe. But it's tough down there. There's 250,000 people a weekend coming to Nashville right now. You can't even walk on Lower Broadway. And every one of them want to be a songwriter. You know how to get a songwriter off your porch in Nashville?
[00:07:57] KM: How?
[00:07:57] DG: Pay for the pizza. Were your parents songwriters or musical? Either one of you?
[00:08:09] SD: My dad is a writer. He's a feature writer. And he's written a lot of feature stories –
[00:08:13] KM: For the newspaper?
[00:08:15] SD: No. In his mind back in the day when he was in college, he was thinking for Look or for Life Magazine, something like that. Or People magazine today or whatever they have out today. A story about somebody. And my mother was a really great singer. I think I got a combination of both of them.
I mean, she never sang professionally, but she was singing in the church all the time and always a featured soloist. She showed me, "This is C on the piano." And I said, "Well, how do you make a c chord?" And she showed me how to do that. She was real instrumental in getting me playing an instrument, which was the piano.
[00:08:58] KM: Do you both write your songs with the guitar though?
[00:09:01] SD: Yeah. Mostly. I mean, these days, it is. I have tons of songs I used to write on the piano though all the time. And I still like to do that.
[00:09:09] KM: Do you do that, Don?
[00:09:11] DG: I play guitar. I'm not a real good guitar player. But as far as singing goes, I sat between my mama and daddy at the Church of Christ. Mama sang sharp soprano and daddy sang flat bass. I didn't have a prayer. Pitch is the great elusive thing that lives somewhere out in the universe.
[00:09:31] KM: You both went to the Grammys, right?
[00:09:33] DG: Yes ma'am.
[00:09:33] SD: Yes.
[00:09:34] KM: How was it?
[00:09:36] DG: Oh, it's amazing.
[00:09:37] SD: It was amazing.
[00:09:39] DG: It's Disneyland. It's just an awesome thing.
[00:09:43] SD: We went to the ACMs, too, one time, which is Academy of Country Music. Because our song was up for song of the year. We were in the top five.
[00:09:49] KM: Which one?
[00:09:50] SD: Watching You.
[00:09:51] KM: Was it y'all song together or just yours?
[00:09:52] SD: No. It's just a song I wrote with Rodney Atkins and a guy named Brian White.
[00:09:58] KM: So you went?
[00:09:59] SD: Oh, yeah. It was nerve-wracking as everything. Because when it came up, I was thinking, "We're not going to win. We're not going to win." And we didn't. But it was still amazing to be there. And just being in the midst of all those people.
[00:10:14] KM: Peers.
[00:10:16] SD: Peers. Yeah.
[00:10:18] KM: But you have won six Emmys of songs you've co-written.
[00:10:21] SD: Yes. Six number ones.
[00:10:23] KM: Six number ones.
[00:10:24] DG: Yeah. That's pretty good. How many Grammys have you won?
[00:10:28] DG: I have been nominated for a Grammy.
[00:10:29] KM: You've not won one.
[00:10:30] DG: If you look up nominated in the dictionary, it means you didn't win.
[00:10:34] KM: Don, you won a Grammy though. Didn't you?
[00:10:36] DG: No, ma'am. No. I'm nominated.
[00:10:37] KM: Oh, I'm just really messing up.
[00:10:39] DG: Yeah. That's okay. But I was nominated for song of the year two times. And I'll tell you a funny story. I'm sitting there and I'm nominated for Lee Greenwood's Ring On Her Finger, Time On Her Hands, right? And everybody's going, "You got it. You got it. It's a lock." Well, that was a year Willie Nelson cut You Were Always On My Mind.
[00:10:58] KM: Oh, wow.
[00:10:59] DG: For seven times, we were nominated for song of the year that year. And all seven times, "You were always on my mind." You just want to die.
[00:11:08] SD: Is Willie in the room?
[00:11:10] KM: Right.
[00:11:13] DG: I hear it in my sleep. I have nightmares, I hear Willie singing that song.
[00:11:18] KM: It's a good song.
[00:11:18] SD: The Grammy thing for me though, really, Reba McEntire's Greatest Hits Volume II won a Grammy. My song is on there. But I didn't get a Grammy. I didn't get it. But the album, she got the Grammy. I got the CD.
[00:11:34] KM: Don, you wrote a song Ol' Red for Blake Shelton.
[00:11:39] DG: Yes, ma'am. They just keep opening up those bars and I just keep getting money. It's awesome.
[00:11:42] KM: I was going to say, do you just get – what is that called when you get –
[00:11:46] SD: Royalties?
[00:11:46] KM: Royalties.
[00:11:46] DG: And residuals.
[00:11:48] KM: And residuals.
[00:11:50] SD: When they opened up Ol' Red, what do they call that? Is that a residual?
[00:11:52] DG: That's a residual. Yeah. Every time they open a new one – and I got to say this. Blake Shelton demanded that they pay the writers.
[00:12:03] KM: That's nice.
[00:12:03] DG: And he says, "I wouldn't be here without that song. By golly. Pay the writers." That's a good man.
[00:12:09] KM: Is there anybody you wouldn't work with in the industry?
[00:12:13] SD: I probably wouldn't mention any names. But –
[00:12:15] DG: Well, I couldn't hear the question.
[00:12:17] KM: Is there anybody you wouldn't work with in the industry?
[00:12:20] DG: Steve.
[00:12:22] SD: Well, just playing. You got me a lot, man.
[00:12:27] DG: Let me tell you about this guy. All right? When we went to Chattanooga to fire up Operation Song program in Chattanooga, they told me I could pick any songwriter I wanted to take with me over there. And so, I picked Steve for selfish reasons. At the time, he had just won the most performed song of the last decade.
[00:12:48] KM: Which one?
[00:12:50] SD: Watching You.
[00:12:53] DG: Everywhere we go, I sing Ol' Red. Everybody sings along. He sings Watching You and they stand and sing along. All the mothers are crying. It's amazing.
[00:13:03] KM: I love it. All right. This is a great place to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Grammy-nominated Nashville songwriters, Mr. Steve Dean and Mr. Don Goodman. As I said earlier, you may not know their names, but you know their work as they have collaborated and written songs for Reba, Blake, Lee Greenwood, George Strait, and many more. Today, they are writing headline songs. Healing songs and headline songs with and for veterans, active duty and their families through a nonprofit called Operation Song. Their success has been acclaimed and interviews by the Today show and PBS. We're going to talk all about it and learn all about it. Get your tissue ready. We'll learn more about this special program, these special guys, and how you can get involved after the break. Stay tuned.
[BREAK]
[00:13:52] GM: You're listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Over 40 years ago with only $400, Kerry founded Arkansas Flag and Banner. During the last four decades, the business has grown and changed starting from door-to-door sales, then telemarketing, to mail order and catalog sales. And now, flagandbanner.com relies heavily on the internet and live chats with customers all over the world.
Over this time, Kerry's business and leadership knowledge has grown. As early as 2004, she began sharing her knowledge in her weekly blog. In 2009, she founded the nonprofit Friends of Dreamland Ballroom. And in 2014, Brave Magazine, a biannual publication. Today, she has branched out into podcasts, Facebook live stream, and YouTube videos of this radio show.
Each week, you'll hear candid conversations between her and her guests about real-world experiences on a variety of businesses and topics that we hope you'll find interesting and inspiring. Stay up to date by joining flagandbanner.com's mailing list. You'll receive our watercooler weekly eblast that notifies you of our upcoming guests, happenings at Dreamland Ballroom, sales at flagandbanner.com, access to Brave Magazine articles and Kerry's current blog post. All that in one weekly email. Or you may simply like flagandbanner.com's Facebook page for timely notifications.
Telling American-made stories, selling American-made flags, the flagandbanner.com. Back to you, Kerry.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[00:15:18] KM: You are listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. And I'm speaking today with Grammy-nominated songwriters Mr. Steve Dean and Mr. Don Goodman from Nashville, Tennessee. Today, they're lending their talents and passion to a program called Operation Song, whose mission is to heal veterans and their families through the cathartic process of songwriting.
Before the break, we talked about breaking into the business of songwriting. How lucky these guys were? They landed a job the first week in Nashville back in the 1970s. They packed up their cars with their guitars, drove down there with their knees knocking, knocked on doors and were very successful. And now they're paying it forward. And we're going to find out how this all came to be. Who wants to tell us how Operations Song got started? Don does.
[00:16:02] DG: Operation Song started – the founder, Bob Regan, was playing with USO tour in Iraq. And he noticed while he was there that, at the National Guard, some of those people are grandparents that are over there serving. and Bob thought, "Man, how cool it'd be if we just had a tent here that said the songwriter's in." And let those people just come in and tell the stories about what it was like being there. When he came home, he went to the VA and approached the VA on that and they gave us a shot. And we started at the VA with six veterans gathered around the table.
[00:16:38] KM: In what city?
[00:16:38] DG: In Murfreesboro, Tennessee at Sergeant York. The VA there.
[00:16:43] KM: He got the idea when he was out –
[00:16:46] DG: In Iraq.
[00:16:46] KM: Doing in the field. And came back and pitched it to the veterans that had returned in Murfreesboro.
[00:16:52] DG: And they did it. And it was so successful that the VA is just all up in our corner now.
[00:16:59] KM: So you've been with them since the beginning. You've been with Bob since the beginning. Tell me about the first experience when you set up and where the veterans came from.
[00:17:10] DG: I'll tell you this, all right? And this will tell you what Op Song's all about. I'd been there three weeks, Bob had to go out of town. He asked me to take a class. First day in the class, I get this Vietnam vet. And he's uptight and I can tell. And I just got talking about his family and where he come from. And I kind of gained his confidence. And I just took a shot and I said, "Tell me what it is you can't say." And he looked at me and his lips started trembling. And he said, "I'll tell you what I can't say." He says, "My first night in Vietnam, they were running water buffalo at us and the VC were firing out of the buffalo." He says, "I was 17 years old in a foxhole with a rifle scared to death. Anything I heard, I shot." Next morning when the sun come up, there was a little eight or nine-year-old girl in front of his foxhole with her arms reaching out toward him and her hair blown back and a hole in her chest. And he knew he'd killed her."
He had alcohol addiction, drug addiction, four broken marriages. The man was just absolutely broken. He said he saw her every day of his life. We wrote that song. And he got that demon out there he had been dealing with for 50 years. And the next week, his wife came with him and she said, “Are you Don Goodman?” I said, “Yes, ma'am. I am.” She says, “I don't know what you've done, but my husband doesn't wake up screaming anymore." I was addicted. I have been writing with them every day I can ever since.
[00:18:54] KM: Let's play one of your songs.
[00:18:54] SD: Let's do that.
[00:18:56] KM: Which one?
[00:18:57] SD: Let's see. Which one are we starting with? We Shot the Pictures. That'd be great. Yeah.
[00:19:03] DG: You want to tell them about it?
[00:19:04] SD: Sure. Bruce Wesson is or was a Vietnam War photographer. He's still living, of course.
[00:19:11] KM: And he's a Little Rock native.
[00:19:12] SD: He's a Little Rock native. He's a great friend. Actually, I met him through my dad at the church there, you know? And so, one day I was there visiting and we went to church and I saw Bruce in the hallway and I said, "Hey, Bruce. I'm working with a group called Operation Song now. And I would love to be able to write your story." He said, "Well, you know, let me think about that." And I got back home Wednesday or Thursday. He gave me a call and said, "I'd like to do that." Really, Bruce's song was the very first song that was written in Little Rock for Operation Song Little Rock.
[00:19:49] KM: And Bruce is a photographer. He didn't carry a gun. He said to me, he said – he's the one who introduced me to you, guys. And he said, "I told these guys things I'd never told my wife yet.”
[00:19:57] DG: Yeah.
[00:19:59] KM: Let’s hear Bruce's song. He was a photographer in Vietnam.
[00:20:02] DG: Right.
[SONG PLAYING]
[00:23:13] KM: Wow. For everybody out there, we didn't say a word during that. That was powerful, wonderful.
[00:23:22] DG: The truth is a powerful thing.
[00:23:23] KM: Yes. So good. Let's talk about the process. How do you get them started?
[00:23:33] DG: I usually start out like where are you from, what'd your daddy do. Did you grow up in the country, grow up on a farm? Oh, he grew up in town, chop paper out. The whole thing is to establish trust. I had a veteran early on. I asked him a heavy question a little too quick. He looked at me, and he says, “Hos, we're going to have to build a little trust before we go there.”
[00:23:55] KM: Oh, taught you a lesson, didn't he?
[00:23:57] DG: Yes, baby. Taught me a big old lesson –
[00:24:00] KM: Early on. That was early, though. That was –
[00:24:03] DG: Yes. Now, we've done it so many times. But here's the deal. You go from writing with a 96-year-old college professor. You got to get to his mentality and speak in his words.
[00:24:19] KM: What do you mean with a 96-year-old college professor?
[00:24:22] DG: A 96-year-old, he was college professor for, jeez, only 40, 50 years after he come home from Vietnam. I mean, from World War II. His language, I stood at Nagasaki on that crystallized sand and stared at the atrocity that man had done to man. Out of all of that insanity, I found Christianity. From the horrors of their war, I found peace. Or you go write with an eight-year-old girl, and you got to be her voice, and you go, “Mama, push me in the swing so high up to heaven where the angels fly. I want to go where Daddies go and never die. Mama push me on the swing so high.” You got to be their voice.
[00:25:05] KM: I don't know if I’m going to be able to do this interview.
[00:25:08] DG: It’s all right.
[00:25:10] KM: All right. So they come in. How many are in a group?
[00:25:13] DG: Well, it all depends. Steve, tell them about the difference.
[00:25:16] ST: Okay. Well, in our situation in Chattanooga, when we started Chattanooga, we had six people. We had six veterans, I mean, and all sitting around the table. Don is known in the class now that we've come a long way in this class. He's been lovingly nicknamed Shakespeare.
[00:25:35] KM: Oh, I love it. That is a good one.
[00:25:38] DG: They call him Beethoven.
[00:25:40] KM: Oh, that's good, too.
[00:25:44] ST: I didn't know for sure if these guys even liked me when I first got – I didn't know what to expect. I don't think any of us really did. I mean, Don had more experience at it than I did from Murfreesboro, but most of these guys in our class, not most, at least half of them were Vietnam veterans at the time. They're not that much older than me. They might have been – at the time when we started that, I guess I was probably 60. They were mostly 65 and 66 years old. Some were 70, but that's not a big age difference. I was afraid that – I mean, I hadn't done anything like that. I mean, I've been a songwriter this whole time, playing my guitar. I just thought these guys have done so much. They're not going to really like me that much.
But as time went along, we got the first man to speak in our class. Jerry is his name. He said – because Don said, “Well, does anybody have anything they want to say?” Jerry raised his hand. He says, “Well, I got some poems I've written.” Don said, “You want to read them?” He goes, “Nope, you read them.” Gave them to Don and that was how we first broke the ice, I think, in our class. Jerry's song is powerful song. It's called Young Jerry, Old Jerry. He was young Jerry going into Long Binh. He flew into Vietnam. He landed at Long Binh. He saw the soldiers coming out of the jungle, and he said, “I created the old Jerry. I said if I ever get out of here alive, I know who the old Jerry's going to be.”
He says, “This is one of the coolest things, I think.” He says, “Sometimes, young Jerry turns out the light while old Jerry lies awake all night.” See, that's what it's all about.
[00:27:34] KM: How many were in that class that you're talking about?
[00:27:36] ST: There were six.
[00:27:38] KM: Where did – how did you – did the Veterans Administration recommend them to you? Is it part of their therapy?
[00:27:44] ST: We got them from the vet center. There's a vet center in most towns and –
[00:27:50] KM: They're in there already, maybe doing some others treatments and trying to get over PTSD. You say this might be a new way for you to add to what you're already doing.
[00:27:59] ST: Music therapy, creative therapy. That's what I like to call it.
[00:28:05] KM: So they come in pretty willingly because they're already at the VA. They're already seeking help.
[00:28:10] ST: And they're skeptical because you hear, “Okay, come on. We're going to write a song, and it's going to help you with your PTSD.” They're like, “Yes, right. I've had 15 years of therapy and a million pills, and that can't help. I'm going to write a song, and that's going to make a difference.” But then once that first song at the table gets written and the next guys and the next guys and they're all start crying together and then they got their platoon back and they know they got someone, they're not alone. When they see the similarities in their story, they realize they're not the only guy who's buying their groceries at two in the morning, so they won't see nobody in the store. Take their garage out at midnight, so they don't have to talk to the neighbors, won't go near fireworks. Car backfires and they're under a car.
These guys are coming home. They used to call it shell shock right now. Now, do you realize that 32% of all people at the VA are diagnosed with PTSD, and there are 21 military-related suicides a day in this country?
[00:29:16] KM: I read that, 20 a day. Twenty veterans kill themselves a day.
[00:29:20] ST: Now, right now, we're in harm’s way in 73 countries, 73 countries. How many veterans are we going to have coming home? And we can't take care of the ones we got right now. They're reaching out for new ways and creative therapy, fishing. They got like healing waters. They take them fish, and it's to get them back together and give them back the squad, the platoon, the safety of knowing someone has their back. That's what Operation Song is. That's what we've done.
[00:29:53] KM: It started in 2012. How many – I read 600.
[00:29:57] ST: We're over 750 now.
[00:29:59] KM: I want to talk about the process of writing the song, too. We know how you're starting to get them to open up, but let's play another song. We're at the halfway mark. Which song – did we want to do Chattanooga Rain? This is about the family.
[00:30:12] ST: Right. We don't have that one with us. But you do, I think.
[00:30:15] DG: Yes.
[00:30:15] ST: Oh, you do. Well, play that one –
[00:30:16] KM: Oh. Is there another one? No, there's another one you want to do.
[00:30:18] ST: Well that's – we've got some other little rock songs. But if you want to play Chattanooga –
[00:30:21] KM: No, no. Let's do one you want to.
[00:30:23] ST: All right.
[00:30:23] DG: Sure. Well, tell us.
[00:30:24] ST: Oh, no. When we came down for the very first time that we came down, we came down for a weekend, and we asked my dad if we could write his story. My dad got into the Navy in 1946. He was too young for World War II, and so he – the Navy made him the man he is today that he likes the fact that he was in the Navy, and he got to go to college on the GI Bill.
Growing up my whole life, now you'll relate to this, in my house, we listen to a lot of music in my house. My mom was a musician and a singer and a musician. Dad loved music. So we had lots of music in the house. I heard a lot of big band music, too. He loved big band music, still does. As a matter of fact, that is the only music. I know you're listening, Dad.
Anyway, so I knew that. He told me that was the music, that was the beat, everything. When the Beatles came out and I was a kid, I said, “Well, what about this, Dad? This has got a great beat, too.” He goes, “Yes, it's got a good beat.” I said, “Even their name has beat in the title, The Beatles.” He goes, “Yes, they're good, but they don't have the beat.” So the challenge in my life was, and this is awesome, I'm so glad that we were able to do this, we kind of had the hog time to write the song. But he went ahead and agreed to do it, and we wrote the song, and we put it in the big band flavor.
[00:31:56] KM: Awesome. Let's hear it.
[00:31:58] ST: It's called The Navy in Me.
[00:32:00] KM: The Navy in Me.
[SONG PLAYING]
[00:35:41] KM: Wow. Love that. We are dancing in here. Let me just tell everybody. You're listening to Up In Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and I'm speaking today with a Grammy Award-winning song – no, Grammy-nominated songwriters, Mr. Steve Dean and Mr. Don Goodman from Nashville, Tennessee, who today have found a new passion lending their songwriting talents to veterans in a cathartic creative program called Operation Song. That was so much fun, and it was written by Steve Dean for his father.
[00:36:13] ST: And Don Goodman.
[00:36:14] KM: And Don Goodman. Yes, because he said Steven and Don. Then I learned in that song your mother's passed and –
[00:36:19] ST: That’s right.
[00:36:21] KM: It was just a lovely song, such a nice upbeat, although you did try to yank our chain when you talked about him standing at the grave with his mother. They can't quit but making us a tear-jerker over there.
[00:36:32] ST: Shakespeare over here.
[00:36:33] DG: Like I said, you got to have the truth in there.
[00:36:35] KM: Don, you are a country writer because that's always got to be crying somewhere in there.
[00:36:42] DG: Well, you know what? I learned. When I learned what the value of a song or what a song could do. Becky Hobbs and I wrote Angels Among Us for Alabama, and it became the theme song to the St. Jude’s Children's Hospital Special Olympics. I'd go down to St. Jude's and see those mamas holding those little baldheaded babies and praying. Then we go back the next year, and those babies were still there, and you just go, “Thank you, God. Thank you, God.” It’s when the truth hit home on what you can do with a song.
[00:37:14] KM: You've got these guys in the room. Let's tell our listeners how they can get involved in the process. You can go to operationsong.org and find out where the retreats are.
[00:37:28] DG: Yes, ma'am.
[00:37:28] ST: Yes.
[00:37:29] KM: You have to – can you go to the Veterans Administration and learn about how to sign up or –
[00:37:34] DG: Yes, you can.
[00:37:35] KM: Or you send – tell our listeners. Do they go to your website? Do they go to the Veterans Administration? Where should they go? If you'll give me a link, I probably got you all's emails. If somebody wants to – do you care if I put your email out there?
[00:37:48] DG: No.
[00:37:49] KM: I'll put you all’s emails on FlagandBanner.com’s page about you all. Then they can just email you direct, and you can send them information. There are one a month about.
[00:38:01] DG: Probably once every two months I would say.
[00:38:03] KM: There's seven writers with seven in a class.
[00:38:05] DG: Yes, yes. There’s female veterans. It can be family members. We would like to pick the ones that need it the most, not just someone who wants to write a song, be a singer.
[00:38:19] KM: Let’s talk about how they pay it forward after that because you can't just – you're going to run out of enough songwriters it would seem like to me. Do the – is it kind of like AA where once you learn it, you pass it for and you sponsor somebody else? Or do you write a song, and then you learn to sponsor somebody else on writes a song? Or how do you –
[00:38:37] DG: We're going to have like an alumni program for those that have gone through the program, and we'll have a couple local writers there, and we'll put a new veteran in that chair every week, and we'll write a story. The local writers are going to start writing, and we're going to try and help those local writers raise the level or the bar to where the songs are.
[00:38:59] KM: The local writers don't have to be veterans, do they?
[00:39:01] DG: No, no. We're not veterans.
[00:39:02] ST: We're not veterans either.
[00:39:04] KM: What you told me earlier you thought was a asset.
[00:39:06] DG: Oh, absolutely.
[00:39:07] ST: That we’re not veterans.
[00:39:08] KM: Yes. Why is that?
[00:39:09] DG: Well, it’s – go on, Steve.
[00:39:11] ST: I was just going to say they've got – we don't – we're not going to be getting our story mixed up with the veteran story. You know what I'm saying. If something, we were veterans and we got in a situation that was similar to this, whose story are they going to be writing? Just being a songwriter like we are, then we can just –
[00:39:29] DG: Tell them.
[00:39:30] ST: Yes. We can just tell their story.
[00:39:31] KM: I know a lot of songwriters that I think would – they're amateurs. Does that matter?
[00:39:36] ST: We got to keep that level up because you –
[00:39:39] KM: Got to be good ones.
[00:39:40] ST: Well, yes. Because you got some guy's story there and it means the world to it. I would like to know that when it's done, it's a song he's going to love. I gave a veteran a copy of his song once. And after we'd finish the class – and I saw him about 2 weeks later, I said, "Well, what do you think about that song?" He said, "Well, I'll tell you, brother. I put that CD in my truck and I bet I've listened to it a hundred times." I said, "Well, what do you think?" He says, I think you listened." That's what it's got to be.
[00:40:13] KM: The songwriters that are helping you do this are professionals. They are not amateurs.
[00:40:17] DG: All hit songwriters from Nashville that are coming this week have all written number one songs.
[00:40:23] KM: It's not hard to get people to participate, is it?
[00:40:25] DG: No. [inaudible 00:40:29]. Now, if we ask them to go to Iraq, they might hang up on us.
[00:40:35] SD: [inaudible 00:40:35] retreats in the near future.
[00:40:37] KM: What have you yet – you're not going to go do any shows over in Iraq. But they'll come and help you write songs. What do you think this is going to go? How far do you think this can go?
[00:40:49] SD: Sky's the limit in my book. I'm thinking that we need to keep this thing moving even. After Don and I are not able to do this anymore, we need someone who can carry it forward. Because we don't want it to die.
[00:41:00] DG: We're bringing the young kids on. Every retreat we can now, we're trying to get those 25, 20-year-old writers. But kids are just knocking it out of the park. Because when you tell your story, man, I want everyone you play it for to go, "Where on earth did you get that? Because I want it to be that good."
[00:41:18] KM: Well, songwriting is about digging deep into your emotions. Anyway, even if it's a love song. Even if it's not about war. It's about a broken heart. I mean, I've heard artists say all the time, "I don't want to be an artist." Because that means I have to be hurting all the time to get the good stuff.
[00:41:34] DG: Like I said earlier, every time we write with a sailor, they want to talk about girls. I ain't figured it out yet. Marines want to talk about how tough they are. Yeah.
[00:41:43] KM: They have a theme depending on what service you're in probably.
[00:41:47] SD: Yeah, which branch they were in. Yeah.
[00:41:48] KM: What do you think you guys get out of it?
[00:41:50] SD: Oh, listen. It has been a life-changer for me. I mean, totally changed my life over and over and over again. Like I said, in the first class that I went to, I was pretty nervous because I didn't know what to expect. And getting to know these veterans, I always knew there was a war going on when I was growing up. But I didn't know what they went through. I didn't have any idea really. I saw some news clips on TV maybe. But it was nothing like what I've learned from just talking to these guys. And they'll make a comment like, "Yeah, we were in the cut every day." And I go, "Well, what's the cut?" "Well, we had a dodger and we just went right through the jungle." I went, "You did?" I said, "How many dodgers?" He's, "Oh, about 20 lined up across and we went right straight through the jungle."
[00:42:32] KM: What's a dodger?
[00:42:33] SD: A bulldozer. Yeah. A dodger. Whatever you want to call it. I said, "Why were you doing that?" He goes, "Well, we were trying to expose the enemy and we were trying to also let the villagers escape the tyranny they were under." And I'm just like, "Wow, man." And just things like that. But anyway, these guys are in my heart big time and I consider them lifelong friends. I've not known them my whole life, but I consider them to be lifelong friends.
[00:43:01] KM: Close friends, for sure. What about you, Don? What have you gotten out of it?
[00:43:05] DG: My phone rings. First thing I do at every class, I give them my phone number. My phone rings all night, all day. If I'm sleeping, as soon as I get up, I check the messages. Some of those guys desperately need someone to talk to, because they wake up screaming. They say they can smell the blood in the cordite. They can feel their buddy's broken bone that was driven into their arm. That's how real their dreams are.
[00:43:32] KM: We've got one more song to play before the time's up. What's this one about?
[00:43:35] SD: Okay. This is a man that I've known my whole life. Literally, my whole life. And I never knew any of this stuff about him until –
[00:43:45] KM: Veterans don't like to talk about it.
[00:43:48] SD: I just didn't know. Later on, I found out he'd been in World War II. But I didn't know anything what he had done. And, also, he was the Honor Guard for General McArthur and was standing on the deck on the deck –
[00:44:04] DG: On the dock of Missouri.
[00:44:05] SD: On the dock of Missouri when the surrender was signed. And he's the last surviving Honor Guard of the 175 that General MacArthur had chosen.
[00:44:17] KM: From World War II.
[00:44:18] DG: Then he comes home to Little Rock and he's assistant superintendent of school when the nine kids came through the door at Central High School. He was standing honor guard in a hallway.
[00:44:31] SD: The song is called Honor Guard. Dr. Paul Fair.
[SONG PLAYING]
[00:48:18] KM: That is just good. You're listening Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. And I'm speaking today with songwriters Mr. Steve Dean and Mr. Don Goodman from Nashville, Tennessee, who today are lending their cathartic songwriting talents and time to Veterans and their families in a program called Operation Song. You can go and learn more about it at operationsong.org. They have an album out.
[00:48:38] DG: We have the first volume of Little Rock song.
[00:48:42] SD: Which is what we're listening to right now.
[00:48:44] DG: And all money's from them will go cut more songs for the veterans.
[00:48:49] KM: Didn't you have another album released not too long ago that I saw on your Today show? Something about six.
[00:48:56] DG: That's We Got Your Six.
[00:48:57] KM: We Got Your Six.
[00:48:58] DG: Yeah. That's one that's on iTunes.
[00:49:00] KM: Yeah, it's on iTunes.
[00:49:01] SD: That one has Chattanooga Rain on, I do believe.
[00:49:04] KM: And that's about the family and the wife that lost – that one broke me up.
[00:49:08] SD: The terrorist attack down in Chattanooga back in 2015.
[00:49:11] KM: Mm-hmm. These guys are great. Operation.org. Steve Dean, Don Goodman, y'all are – I mean, I can't talk about it. I've got a gift for you.
[00:49:28] SD: Hey. All right.
[00:49:29] KM: Because you are doing this in Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas. That's your three places. You have a flag and a desk set.
[00:49:36] DG: That's awesome.
[00:49:36] SD: Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.
[00:49:37] KM: For both of you. With the US flag Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas flag that y'all can take. And I hope we add many more flags to that.
[00:49:44] SD: I hope so, too.
[00:49:45] DG: My granddaughter says I have a shrine in my bedroom.
[00:49:49] KM: Of flags?
[00:49:49] DG: A shrine. Because I have all the things from all the different events in there. This will go perfect. Thank you.
[00:49:55] SD: Yes, it will. Thank you so much, Kerry.
[00:49:57] KM: You're welcome. Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, operationsong.org. We'll have more information on Arkansas flagandbanner.com. Just click on radio if you want to find some more information. If you have a great entrepreneurial story that you would like to share, contact me. And Jason will tell you how.
[00:50:17] J: Send a brief bio to questions@upyourbusiness.org. Message Kerry on flagandbanner.com's Facebook. Or make a comment on her blog.
[00:50:27] KM: To our listeners, thank you for spending this time with us. Don and Steve has made you cry. I told y'all to get a tissue. If you think this program's been about you, you're right. But it's also been for us. Thank you for letting us fulfill our destiny. We hope that today you heard or you learned something that's been inspiring or enlightening. And that it, whatever it is, will help you up your business, your independence or your life, especially today. I'm Kerry McCoy, and I'll see you next time on Up in Your Business. Until then, be brave and keep it up.
[00:50:56] TW: We've got great news from the Dreamland Ballroom. Dancing Into Dreamland is back for the 11th year. That's right, 11th Annual Dancing into Dreamland happens on February 12th, 2022. They're changing up the formula a bit with a Valentine's Galla right there in the Dreamland Ballroom. Don't worry, all the things you love about the longstanding fundraiser are still in the mix. A real night of revelry in the centenarian structure culminating around a friendly dance competition. Food, drink, a silent auction. Attendees will have the pleasure of viewing several spectacular dances. And varying genres will fill the night. You'll be able to vote for your favorites via text. It's a very fun evening. Dancing Into Dreamland. And not the least important thing is it's a terrific fundraiser for this extraordinary historic venue. A panel of celebrity judges will pick their favorite act and they'll be awarded a special cash prize. Dancing Into Dreamland is back. February 2022.
[00:51:55] J: You've been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. A production of flagandbanner.com. If you missed any part of the show or want to learn more about UIYB, go to flagandbanner.com and click on radio show, like us on Facebook, or subscribe to her weekly podcast wherever you like to listen. All interviews are recorded and posted the following week with links to resources you heard discussed on today's show. Underwriting opportunity is available upon request. Kerry goal is to help you live the American dream.
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