The Legend-News

What We Got Here in this edition of The Legend-News.

• C.W. McCall Tour 2002
• Meanwhile, Back At The Critter Ranch
• How To C.B.
• Old Home Café
• Song A’ Th’ Week: "Mountains On My Mind".

[T. Tommy] C.W., I wanna find out more about your family. 'Course, R.J. is your little wife, and how many children do you all have?

[C.W.] We have three. And they're all, they're grown up pretty well now. We got a daughter, 17, Nancy; and my oldest son, Bill Junior, and my other son, Mark. And they're 19 and 22.

[T. Tommy] [You] must have some sort of hobbies that you do, or do you have time nowadays to indulge in any hobbies?

[C.W.] Well, my hobbies are fishin', and fishin', and more fishin'. I'm a trout fisherman. Flies and all that, y'know dry flies and some screamers.

[T. Tommy] Well up in your part of the country they say they got some great streams up there.

[C.W.] Yeah, we do. There are trout streams in Nebraska, but we're so close to Colorado that that's where we go. And we get up there real high on those little lakes and streams up there early in the mornin' and dump that little fly out there on the still, calm lake, you know. About twelve thousand feet.

[T. Tommy] I'm assuming that since you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle that your family loves to go along with you on these camp-outs?

[C.W.] Oh, yeah, they've always been with us and love the mountains. We're just mountain-crazy. Yeah, we just love 'em.

[T. Tommy] Love to get out there and wet that ol' line.

[C.W.] Yeah. I won't turn down a nice bass, though. Large-mouth, that'd be alright.

[T. Tommy] Oh, yeah. Ever fished out here?

[C.W.] That's great bass country out there.

[T. Tommy] It is. Fantastic bass country here in Tennessee. Up at Center Hill Lake, for instance. We don't have too many here. For some reason, we have some bass at Old Hickory Lake here in Nashville, but they're not as many as there are say, in Center Hill Lake or, what is the lake over toward Memphis? Gene? Can't think of it now. You know, that the earthquake a hundred years ago formed over there. Well, we shouldn't even mention those things. [Note: Gene is the show's producer, sitting in the control booth.]

[C.W.] An earthquake, in this country?

[T. Tommy] Yeah, that's what I read someplace in history. They had an earthquake over up — Paris Landing; what is Paris Landing on? Gene? Ordinarily, you'd know all these things. Today you're a dum-dum.

[Gene] Center Hill.

[T. Tommy] No, Center Hill's up towards Sparta.

[Gene] Good guess.

[T. Tommy] Bad guess, Gene. Wrong direction, right state. That's the only thing I can say for it. But anyway, when you get a chance, try to do some fishing here in Tennessee.

[C.W.] I'd love to. I've got some poppers, and bass bugs, and all those things. I'd like to try them out.

[The next C.W. McCall song to be played was "Black Bear Road". Here are Bill's comments about it from Wednesday's show. "Black Bear Road" was the Song A’ Th’ Week in the issue of November 5. — Ed.]

[T. Tommy] C.W. McCall with us. C.W., we'd better do this song again.

[C.W.] I'd appreciate it.

[T. Tommy] We did it the first day. But it's such a funny song and of course, your current release.

[C.W.] It is a mouthful of words.

[T. Tommy] It is for a fact. Do you ever have a problem when you're doing these things live?

[C.W.] Well, you know, I'm gonna tell you a little story about the first time we recorded that. Usually, we'd do about a dozen takes on a song, and then we'll pick out the one that we like the best, or we just keep going until we get it, you know. But on "Black Bear Road" I braced myself and ran through that thing the first take and I went into the control room to listen to it and everybody says, "Well, what do you think?" and I said, "We ought to try it one more time, anyway." And I did, and came back in an listened to it but it didn't have quite the same spontineity, you know, as the first take did. So we decided to go with the very first one that we ever recorded; the very first version of it. There are a couple of mistakes in it, but only knownst to me.

[Later, in that same show…]

[T. Tommy] C.W., you must have some ambitions in the music industry, or in what directions do you ambitions sort of lie?

[C.W.] Well, you know, at this point in my life, you know, I really got into this business at kind a' an awkward time. Usually, you start much younger than me; I'm in my mid-40s now.

[T. Tommy] You don't look it.

[C.W.] Well, thank you. But I am, and you know I've been in a career and I thought I'd gotten to the point where maybe in ten years or so I could retire and maybe move out to the mountains and so on. But along comes this whole thing. It's changed my life about a hundred-and-eight degrees. I find myself pointed in a whole new direction now, see. So, I'm going to give it all I've got. And I've got to do what I'm told by people who know their way around and I'm gonna try real hard and try to keep comin' up with new material.

[T. Tommy] Now when you first started recording these stories like you do, did you produce these yourself, in Omaha?

[C.W.] Yes, and we still do. Not too many people know it, but we have one of the finest recording studios in Omaha. Now we're not going to be any competition to Nashville as the Music Capital of The World, but we do have it up there and that's where we do all of our work. And we're very proud of the fact that we do it there right in our home town.

[T. Tommy] You get a great sound.

[C.W.] It is a good sound. We've often been told by hi-fi people and the record industry that they're using our records as demo records for sound demonstrations because they are so clean.

[T. Tommy] Now who manages you?

[C.W.] That's Don Sears, who owns the studio where we do our recording. And really, it was his idea that we get into this thing in the first place. And then a young fella named Chip Davis writes with me; he does the instrumental music and the arrangements and I do all the lyrics. The three of us together, we call ourselves "The McCall Group".

[T. Tommy] "The McCall Group"? That's a great story, too. Let's do a song. This is "Mountains On My Mind". This pretty much tells a story about you, doesn't it?

[C.W.] It sure does.

Rollin' down the runway
Thinkin' 'bout the one-way of my life
With another cup of coffee
And another lonesome city far behind

This old 747 will be flyin' over Heaven
One more time
And the tears begin to fallin'
When I think about the mountains on my mind

But now the skies above are sunny
And it's time to say it's funny
How I never thought I'd ever fly this high
But maybe someday when it's over
When I'm just a little older
I can go back to the mountains on my mind

Flyin' through the night time
To a far off city skyline in the dawn
And a thousand lights below me
Are like fireflies tryin' to tell me that I'm wrong

So I try to find a reason
To forget the changin' seasons in my mind
But the winds of time are blowin'
And I've gotta go on knowin' that I tried

'Cause now I hear a different drummer
And I've used up all my summers
Chasin' rainbows that I really didn't wanna find
But maybe someday when it's over
When I'm just a little older
I can go back to the mountains on my mind

[T. Tommy] C.W., what was it — last month? — when they had the disc jockey convention here in Nashville and when I first met you was at the SESAC banquet that night. Now what are you affiliated with, SESAC, or ASCAP…?

[C.W.] We're with SESAC. Everything we've done is on SESAC, in fact. And our publishing company's called "American Gramaphone".

[T. Tommy] You won several awards, too, and I was very proud of you.

[C.W.] We did. In fact, they gave us the Country Music Writers of the Year award, Chip Davis and I, that we are very, very, proud and pleased to get. Very nice.