I'll Buy You a Cadillac: Hanging out with Struggling Country Songwriter Danny Boy Brothers...

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I'll Buy You a Cadillac: Hanging out with Struggling Country Songwriter Danny Boy Brothers...

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Part One of an Interview with Country Songwriter Danny Boy Brothers.  

Never do an interview on the spur of the moment -unless you absolutely have to. I had to.

I had to do this now, because it’s hard to catch up with Danny Boy Brothers. He’s a writing, driving, dreaming kind of Southern guy... with the wildest hair you have ever seen on a human being. I’ve heard women begging him to let them cut it... but to no avail. That hair, along with an Elvis like drawl... is part of who he is: A Truck Driving, struggling Country Songwriter... a man always dreaming of the Country Music Big Time... and always working like hell to make it come true.

And a man with a surprising goal of what he’d do with all the big money.

I first became interested in Danny’s story when he told me this crazy, cockamamie story about meeting Lisa Marie Presley at a gas station in a small town in Alabama near the Georgia border. And giving her his phone number! I didn’t know if he was lying or not, and never had the time to pin him down on it, to get the truth. All I knew was that he was definitely serious about being a songwriter... and meeting Lisa Marie, if it was true... was just one of the many off the wall things that happened to him on his continuing journey to make the big sale to some big country name that will sing his song and make it pay off like an achy braky slot machine gone haywire.

Today it looked like we might have the chance to sit down together for awhile so I took it. But the light was fading fast and since no interview is complete without a photo I quickly went to my truck to get my digital camera and came back and asked him to pose in front of the truck he drives.

I hadn’t used the camera in months and got off one lonely shot before the battery went dead and I cursed like the sailor I once was. I went inside and looked for more batteries, but naturally they were all the wrong size. Sometimes you get one shot at something, and you’ve got to give it all you got, and hope it comes off well.

Much like a songwriter has to do.

Danny took my failed photo work all in stride. I gave up on that part of the deal and we went in and sat down in a break room. We both had just gotten off work and both were 100 percent saturated in genuine American South humidity. I stood up, put a dollar in the coke machine, and down fell a Dr. Pepper. Shook up from the fall, it spewed on the table when I opened it, but not as bad as it could have.

I looked over at Danny who was just waiting on me, thumbing through a magazine about important events of a week now long past, and I said , "This is a high class interview, isn’t it Danny?"

He laughed, and I sat down at the end of the table, not having a high tech tape recorder to catch his words with, just some plain old fashioned paper and a pen... and a sore elbow. 

Looking at him, Danny - who is very mild mannered and polite -  reminded me of what I’d heard of what Elvis’ first interview had been like. He had shown up at Dewey Phillip’s radio station and the two had just started talking like they were old friends. Then Elvis had said, "Well, when are we going to do this interview thing," and Dewey told him, "We just did." They had been on the radio the whole time.

I wiped up the Dr. Pepper foam and wondered where to begin in Danny’s own story, to find out what life is like, for someone like him, struggling daily to be a successful country songwriter.

So... I just asked him. "What is like, Danny? What you are trying to do, I mean."

He said, "Well, I’ve sent songs to Hank Williams, Jr. and many others, with no results. I get encouragement... but that’s about it."

"So how did you get started in all this?"

"I started out writing poems, maybe 10 to 14 a day. Love poems, that kind of thing. I shared a room with my brother and I’d just write them and stick them in a grocery bag and when it was full I’d roll the top down tight, and stick it under my bed. Well after a while I had close to 2,000 poems in about 3 bags under my bed."

"Well my brother wanted to be like me so he started writing songs as well. But he wanted to be in a rock and roll band as well, so he started doing that. And he started playing music and I started wanting to write songs... and my first songs came from the poems I had written."

"Then I got a guitar for Christmas. And I didn’t want anybody to hear me play cause I couldn’t play, and I didn’t think anybody would want to hear all that noise, so I set up a tent out in the back yard and I’d go out there and in that tent, that’s where I taught myself to play the guitar.

"But I didn’t believe in myself, and my dad had a burn barrel out back and I was telling myself I’m not gonna do any good, I can’t make it - and so I burned it all. All the poems I had ever written."

"I told myself I needed to get on with my life. But in high school poems would still come - and I’d stuff them in the dash of my car."

Just as he was telling me this his wife calledon his cell. He spoke to her a moment and hung up and told me, "She wants something to eat."

Then he went on with his story. "I studied electronics for 12 months, then auto mechanics - but I still had the desire to be a songwriter in me, and I’d send out 2 or 3 songs a year. They’d write back and say, something like You have the talent, but you’re not published, you’re a nobody, so we can’t help you. But I never quit writing."

At that time I would go into a Quick Shop kind of often and there was a woman there and she had a daughter that would be there with her everyday, and one day when I was leaving, the daughter - Cathy is her name - asked me where I was going.

I told her I was going home to try to write a song. And she said, Oh, you’re a songwriter. And I told her yeah, but I’m not very good at it."

"Then she said, Well my uncle is a song writer," and that turned out to be Jim Compton, who had a gold record in 1969 called "Raining in Denver."

"I told her I’d like to meet him some time, and one day we rode down to Birmingham together. And when we went in to meet Jim, she said, "This is my boyfriend. He’s a songwriter too."

"Now Jim was a big man, maybe 6' 7" or 6' 8" and when he said, So you write songs, his voice sounded just like Johnnie Cash.

"Come in here," he told me, "and look at this." And he showed me his gold record. And I asked him, "How could I get you to sing some of my songs?"

And he said, " I can do a few of them. Pick out six to give me, and pick out the ones you think Johnnie Cash would sing."

"I asked him Why?"

And he said "because that’s what I sound like."

Now at that time I had a red Z28 and got - it was loaded, had everything - got hit head on in it - totaled it. Cathy’s head hit the windshield and busted it out. Knocked her out. She was in the hospital a couple of days.

And I’m slowly putting it back together. I love that car. It was an 86 Z and the wreck was in 93. Probably never have it done. I’ve got a new motor in it. Needs painting. It was my dream car. I got it, but it didn’t come easy. Had to work and pay for it myself. "

"So I gave Jim the six songs and he took them to a studio in Birmingham and recorded them and in a couple of weeks Cathy called me and said, he’s got your songs ready."

Now Jim also did jingles for a living, for car dealerships and things like that. And his brother was a writer of Western Novels. Can’t remember his name.

So I went down and Jim wasn’t there, but the family gave me the tape. Well we sat there talking for four hours... and I had that tape in my hands and was dying to listen to it. But I didn’t want to interfere with their family life by asking if I could use their tape player. But I finally heard it when I got home after more than an hour drive. Then I sent out those six songs. But most nothing came of it. Some did ask who was singing on the tape, but they didn’t really like them, didn’t go for the songs.

But I kept writing.

Then I heard that David Allan Coe was going to be at the Green Valley Speedway, so we went, me and Cathy - who is now my wife - just to see if I could give him my songs.

I was driving an old car, an old beat up piece of junk, no headlights, no shocks - just a car to get you where you were going. When we pulled off into the speedway, we got behind a big, red Dooley truck. (The kind with back tires sticking out as wide as an elephants ass) And this guy was trying to turn around. I guessed cause the parking lot was full. I let him turn around and he waved to me as he left. But the windows were tinted I couldn’t tell his face, just a wave. Well, the parking lot was full, so we turned around and followed the truck, thinking he might be going to a new place to park. But the truck was hauling. I couldn’t keep up.

Then we saw Coe’s bus on the right and 25 people or so were lined up waiting to get autographs it looked like. So I decided to ask another guy if we could get an autographed picture of Coe. He was standing buy an equipment truck that had musical equipment on a ramp. He was near the same read truck we had seen so I guess he had been driving it.

Now this guy had his back to us and was up to about 6'7" with hair braided all the way down to his back, and a gun at his side. And I said, thinking he might cold help, "Hey, we came to see David Allen Coe, and I sure would like to get his autograph while I’m here."

And he looked around and said, "Have you got a pen?" and it was HIM.

Well I had a tape box of his music and he signed it. I asked him, "You aren’t gonna sing tonight?" and he said, Nah, looks like it’s gonna rain," and turned away..

I said, "Oh, Well," and then, "Hey, I’m a songwriter."

He turned back to look at me again, and I said, "If you got a cassette player in your car would you take this and listen to it on the way back to Texas?" He took it and I thanked him, and he drove off.

"I never heard from him again...

But I kept on going."

End of Part One.

Coming up Next in Part Two of "I’ll Buy You a Cadillac:" "Don't Tease Me Texas."

Contact information for Danny Boy Brothers: dannyboymusic@maxhub.com