The Stark Truth—Hard Fought Chart Victories Can Be The Most Rewarding…And Memorable

As we head toward next month’s Country Radio Seminar, where every record promotion exec in town will be working like mad to get radio’s attention focused on their artists and singles, it seems like an appropriate time for some inspiration to those in the trenches.

To that end, I reached out to a group of country promotion VPs and asked them to share their best stories about eventual hit records that were hard fought all the way up the charts. Nearly everyone, it seems, has a stable full of such tales. They shared stories of slow starters, stories about records they “lost” multiple times on the chart, ones that had some key radio holdouts who needed extra convincing, and stories about records that were white knucklers right up to the end.

They shared so many stories, in fact, that we’ll make this a two parter, with another batch of these tales of victory in next week’s column.

“It’s funny, as I think back to all the tough records I’ve worked in my career, none of them seem as hard as the current records I’m working right now,” says Lyric Street VP of promotion Kevin Herring. “I guess it’s human nature to block the pain.”

Still, he says, “there is nothing more gratifying as a promotion person than when you really hook one.

“If I had to pick a song that was extra special, it was ‘Where’ve You Been’ by Kathy Mattea,” Herring continues. “Nobody thought we would get that record and [thought] we were nuts for releasing it. Taking that record to the [top 10] and watching it win song of the year at the CMAs was a great moment.”

MCA Nashville VP of promotion Bruce Shindler has a very current story about Gary Allan’s “Watching Airplanes,” which, he says, was “no easy effort for us to get to No. 1, but was extremely satisfying since it had been four years since his last No. 1.

“The whole staff was on their computers looking at Mediabase on a Saturday biting their fingernails hoping we would get in before a very strong and younger song from Rodney Atkins got in,” Shindler says. “While we were ahead most of the time, there were some scary moments when the difference in points got really narrow. When the final tally came in at midnight and we snagged the No. 1 slot, we knew we had a much better weekend planned ahead of us. Carson James from Curb is a close personal friend of mine, so I’m glad I didn’t have to kill him.”

UMG Nashville senior VP of promotion Royce Risser’s favorite success story was Josh Turner’s “Long Black Train.”

“There were a few believers early in the life of the single, all of whom had immediate success and big impact with the song,” Risser says. “That was what drove us through the 40-some odd weeks. We knew, 100%, that if a station played it, they would call back a couple of weeks later saying it was a smash. We literally laid our credibility on the line with programmers [saying] ‘If it doesn’t work for you, I’ll stop calling for the rest of the year.’ It was a safe bet.

“Luckily, enough programmers took us up on that one…I think they may have wanted it to fail so as not to hear from us for a while. The sales story gave us the final ammo to get the song into the low teens. That’s as far as it could go given how long it was out there.”

But the song, Risser says, “sparked Josh’s career and created instant recognition for a new act. That immediate artist recognition is something people struggle through their entire careers to get. Josh attained it with one song. Since then, he has delivered hit after hit.”

Lyric Street VP of promotion administration Dale Tuner remembers working Martina McBride’s top 15 hit, “Independence Day,” during his time with RCA. “You would not believe the resistance we encountered on that song,” he says. “Many programmers thought it promoted violence and didn’t feel the need to address spouse abuse in a musical way.

“At one point, we had Martina fly into Tulsa to speak at a radio station sponsored domestic violence center for abused women and promised many other radio stations the same approach if they played the song and received any negative reaction. We had some shaky weeks on the charts, but ultimately succeeded with the song.”

Another “work” record from Tuner’s RCA days was Aaron Tippin’s first single, “You’ve Got To Stand For Something,” which went top 10 but “not without numerous naysayers at country radio,” he recalls. “He was proclaimed too country for country radio in many regions. We struggled weekly to build station count. Then Bob Hope invited Aaron to entertain the troops during the Gulf War in Iraq and the [higher] profile and ‘success by association’ Aaron received was tremendous. It really became an anthem for radio during that period.”

Sometimes, events conspire to make a record even more difficult to work, as happened with singles from Brooks & Dunn and Ty Herndon, although the events in question couldn’t have been more different.

Teddi Bonadies, now VP of promotion at Universal South, recalls working Brooks & Dunn’s “Only In America” in 2001 during her previous stint with Arista Nashville.

It had been a successful single, peaking top 10 in the week before 9/11, which, of course, changed everything. “During that very emotional, upsetting week, radio waved the American flag and their love of our country and put that song back in rotation in heavy,” Bonadies recalls. “Listeners wanted to hear it, and radio wanted to play it.

“The song, which didn’t have a bullet and was falling down the charts, shot straight up to the top for a multiple week No. 1,” she continues.

“[But] Kix Brooks called Bobby Kraig, the head of promotion, to ensure our team did not work that single or ask radio to play or even mention it as he did not want to appear opportunistic or benefit from a tragic event, and we didn’t. Radio and listeners [just] wanted to hear a song about our great country. What a bittersweet feeling. The class that Brooks & Dunn showed, and the patriotism radio and listeners showed still gives me goose bumps every time I hear that song.”

For Herndon, it was a different set of circumstances recalls former Epic VP of promotion Rob Dalton, now a partner in New Revolution and head of promotion at Midas Records.

As the then newly-named national director at Epic, Dalton’s first task was to create a launch plan for Herndon under the direction of his boss, Jack Lameier. First single, “What Mattered Most,” started off “explosive and never let up, becoming Ty’s first No. 1 single,” Dalton recalls. “By the time we shipped his second single, ‘I Want My Goodbye Back,’ you just knew the trajectory was unlike anything we had seen before. This was big. There was about 95% of the panel on the second single in week two. End of chapter one.

“It was a fateful Tuesday night in June when I heard the news,” Dalton continues. “It was about nine or 10 p.m. when I got the call about Ty’s arrest. The irony is that he was headed to play a show for the Fort Worth police department. The charge I was made aware of that night was a possession charge. It wasn’t until I read the AP wire the next morning that the weight of what just happened set in. You could actually feel the air sucked out of the room. There were five or six of us that spent several hours trying to get a grasp on what just happened and what we were going to do.

“Then, the most amazing thing happened. I was fortunate enough to witness and be a part of something I’ll never, ever forget—a small group of people reaching down inside themselves to a place that many never experience and becoming bound and determined to fight against extraordinary odds,” Dalton says (as the background music swells to crescendo). It wasn’t that we were told to. We wanted to. We burned to fight for this. Although it didn’t feel like it at the time, it was awesome.”

“By noon, it was chart anarchy,” Dalton remembers. “Keep in mind, this was a time that you would lose your single if you had only a couple of drops, and getting a bullet back was the exception, not the norm as it is today. By Monday, the third week of the single, we had turned about 80 drops into about 30, and we were pretty happy with that. Of course we lost our bullet, but we were on a mission that, for me, was deeply inspiring. Our mission statement was, ‘I Want My Bullet Back.’

“We eventually stopped the bleeding and one by one started to get stations back. It was a slow process and the trajectory had changed significantly, but we managed to pull a [top 10] single out of it. It really was extraordinary.”

With stories like this, you might wonder if promotion pros think it’s all worth it. The answer is absolutely yes, according to Herring. “We are always three and a half minutes from breaking the next big thing,” he says. “That’s a high better than any drug I can imagine.”

In next week’s column, we’ll have more stories, including some from Equity’s David Haley, Mercury’s Damon Moberly and an oldie from Shindler about working Queen’s nearly seven minute long “Bohemian Rhapsody” during his pop promotion days.