Like Me (15 page)

I
met Brad Paisley in the spring of 1999. It was during a week-long industry event in Nashville called Country Radio Seminar. We were each making our rounds with radio stations, doing back-to-back interviews early one morning at the Union Station Hotel. All of the artists in country music make their way
to the different locations in Nashville where these stations are broadcasting via satellite to their listeners back home.

Brad Paisley and I shared the stage every chance we got. 2000
. (Ron Newcomer)

Brad was a new artist. In fact, I’d just become aware of him the night before. I had been watching country videos on TV, and they debuted a video from this new guy, Brad Paisley. I’d heard his first single, “Who Needs Pictures,” and liked it, but when I saw the video from “He Didn’t Have to Be” it blew me away. When I saw him the next morning, I told him that I loved his new record.

A week or so after that, I got a message from him. He told me that he and Tim Nichols, a writer in town, had started a song, and they wondered if I’d be interested in getting together with them to finish it. We met at my office at MCA Music and the three of us completed a song called “Not as in Love (as I’d Like to Be).”

I found Brad to be different than I’d anticipated. He was not some redneck cowboy with a simple mind. He was funny and had a certain wit that I enjoyed. We hit it off immediately, and I was pleased to find a new collaborator whom I could enjoy. Most professional songwriters will tell you that the days spent with other writers whom you don’t really click with can be a form of torture.

During the next couple of months, Brad and I continued to share song ideas. There was one point at which I felt that he was getting the wrong idea about our friendship. His behavior and the things he’d say started to feel romantic in nature.

Julia and I were still trying to figure out how to make our individual lives and our relationship harmonious. Spending time with Brad was pleasant and would have been a much easier choice for me, but Julia was the one I loved.

I didn’t want to lead Brad on, so I did what I’ve always had to do in situations like that—I pushed him away. I failed to return a couple of his calls, and finally he got the message. Another innocent person fell victim to my hiding. It was a cruel practice that I felt forced to use time and again.

I
n the summer of 1999, I was as busy as ever. “Single White Female” was slowly but steadily climbing the charts, and according to my manager and label we had a hit on our hands. The progress of a record is a day-to-day experience. It’s like watching a long sporting event. Just as a football game takes
strategy, luck, and a period of time to unfold, and there is no definite winner until the very end, a record climbing the charts is dramatic. I was on the road most of the time that summer, and the excitement was like nothing I’d ever known in my career. “Single White Female” was my tenth single to be released to radio, and the only hit I’d ever had was a Top 10 single called “Shut Up and Drive,” from a previous album. We knew we had something bigger happening with “SWF.”

The cover of my fourth album
, Single White Female,
released in 1999
.

T
he band and crew especially deserved this. I’m not kidding when I say I was happier for my band, my crew, my managers, and my support people than I was for myself. My drummer, Preston, had been with me since my first record and is still with me today. Many of these guys had hung in there with me, enduring endless tours, not much sleep, not a lot of money, only to see most of my singles not make it past #20 on the charts. So when it started to happen, it belonged to all of us and it felt great.

I remember the day that “SWF” went to #1 on the first of three charts. (At that time our industry acknowledged three charts—Gavin, Billboard, and R&R.) The Gavin chart was the first to announce “SWF” at the #1 position.

I was on the road. We were playing a big outdoor festival show with multiple acts. On days like that, we didn’t really have much to do, as our sound checks typically took only thirty minutes. The band had done a morning sound check, and a few of us were on our way to a golf course to kill some time.

The golfing foursome that day was Preston, my keyboard player Jay (now in a band called Rascal Flatts), Joe Don (Rascal Flatts as well), and me. We had a great round of golf, a lot of laughs, and it was a gorgeous day. The runner van came to get us to take us back to the venue, and we were dropped off by the door of the tour bus behind the stage. As I stepped up onto the
bus, I took a quick peek out at the crowd and saw a sea of people having fun and enjoying the band that was onstage at the time. After the guys loaded the golf clubs into the storage bays below, they made their way to the front lounge of the forty-five-foot Prevost tour bus that we called home.

With Rascal Flatts backstage in 2001. Jay (on my right) and Joe Don (on my left) met each other playing in my band. We share so many good memories
.

One of my managers, Mark, called for everyone to listen up. I knew that it wasn’t going to be bad news, because he would’ve given that to me privately. Plus he was smiling. Then I thought he was going to tell us something about the show, perhaps that we’d be going on an hour late or something.

Mark said, “Lady and Gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. Today is a day to celebrate. I received a phone call from Clarence about two hours ago that our girl, Chely Wright, officially has the number one record in the nation today. ‘Single White Female’ is officially a number one record. We’re number ONE!” Although I had a non-drinking policy on my bus, Mark had sprung for a bottle of Dom Pérignon and a dozen plastic
champagne glasses. We toasted, sipped, hugged, high-fived, and laughed. I will never forget my hug with Preston, though, because it was a long, solid hug and we both cried. We had a great show, and it was a thrill for me to get to announce to the crowd of thirty thousand people that “Single White Female” had just gone to #1.

I went back to my hotel room that night to shower before getting on the bus to go to sleep. As usual, I called Julia on the phone to talk to her for a couple of minutes before she got into bed. We talked for a little bit, and then I told her that “Single White Female” had made it to #1. I said it casually because I knew what her reaction would be, and I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment. I’d learned a long time before not to expect her to show any excitement over my successes. Her response was, as I anticipated, “Oh, I didn’t know it was still climbing.” It was as if I’d told her that it had rained that day. Why couldn’t she just be happy for me? I wanted her to have all that she wanted out of her career—why couldn’t she just want the same for me?

She knew I was an artist when she met me. It’s not like she thought she was getting involved with a schoolteacher who suddenly decided to try to become a famous country music singer. She knew who I was and what my ambitions were. Every mark of success that I enjoyed pulled us further and further apart. The hiding, the compartmentalizing, the non-acknowledgment of my partner were surely killing us.

Radio, magazines, and newspapers—they all wanted a few minutes of my time, and I was more than pleased to oblige. My cell phone rang off the hook the day we went #1 on the Billboard chart.

I had just arrived back in Nashville that morning from a show in the Northeast. The bus rolled into town about 7 a.m., and I got out of my bunk about 7:30. I gathered my things, as we had a couple of days off and I needed to do my laundry. I piled my
stuff into my car, which was sitting in the Kroger parking lot just outside of downtown Nashville. I was in my pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and slippers, standing in front of the dairy products in Kroger when my cell phone rang. It was my record label calling. The MCA radio promotion team was yelling and whistling, calling to tell me that we had just gone to #1 on the Billboard chart. This was a big deal. I squealed with delight and told them that I was in the grocery store and that I’d call them back the minute I got to my house.

I grabbed my creamer and headed to the check-out aisle. The store had virtually no customers in it. As I approached the front of the store, I cut through the potato chip aisle. There was a young man, maybe twenty-one years old, stocking the supply of chips. He had on a work shirt that said
FRITO-LAY
on it. He had tattoos up and down both forearms and piercings in his nose, ears, lip, and eyebrow. I stopped right next to him. He looked up and made eye contact with me, and I said, “I’m number one.” To which he replied, “Huh?” I said, “My record just went to number one on the Billboard chart!” He paused, then said, “Cool.” Before he knew it, I had thrown my arms around his shoulders, still clutching a cell phone in one hand and Coffee-mate Fat Free Hazelnut Creamer in the other, and hugged him.

My phone started to ring a couple of hours later and just didn’t stop. Voice mail after voice mail, conversation after conversation filled with words of congratulations. I heard from the heads of other record labels, other artists’ managers, publishers, producers with whom I’d previously worked, songwriters, publicists, musicians, and radio people. I will never forget those calls.

The best, however, were from other artists. They were the most important to me because I knew that they, and only they, knew exactly what it felt like to have something you’ve dreamed about your whole life come true. I heard from Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, Brett Favre, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney, Martina McBride, Loretta Lynn, Trisha Yearwood, Kix Brooks, and
Garth Brooks, and I even got a basket of flowers delivered to my house from Alan and Denise Jackson. It was truly one of the most memorable days of my life.

And to top it all off, my best friend, Chuck, was flying into Nashville that day for a visit that we’d planned several weeks earlier. We decided to do something crazy—well, crazy for me. We rented a limo and rode around Nashville dialing up my band and crew. We had an impromptu gathering at a Mexican restaurant just off Music Row. The Iguana had a big outdoor deck and was an ideal spot for twenty of us to eat and drink until our bellies and our hearts were ready to explode. It was the perfect night—except for the fact that Julia wasn’t there. I’d invited her, but she didn’t come.

About a month later, MCA Records and the publishers of “Single White Female” arranged an official #1 party. These parties to celebrate #1 records are commonly scheduled during office hours on Music Row to ensure that everyone involved in the record’s success is able to attend. The artist and writers get to invite anyone they want, and it’s not unusual for family members and close friends to fly in from out of state to be there for this special event.

I invited everyone. The night before the party, Chuck, Julia, another friend, and I were at my house in Kingston Springs, just outside of Nashville. Chuck asked Julia where she thought we should meet on Music Row the next day before the party so we could go over together. That’s when she told him that she wasn’t sure if she was going. It was the first I’d heard of it—I had just assumed that she’d be there.