Singer’s Story

By: David Divers
(© 2008-2009 by the author)
Edited by: Madison Cole

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 2

Several years and many revivals passed. Bobby and I had gotten together on subsequent visits to his church. I was now fifteen and, as they say in the country, I was still growing like a weed. My voice had also matured even more, and I was now one of the featured performers. We continued to do revivals and regularly played some county fairs and gospel sings in the surrounding states.

Gospel sings are a southern tradition. A local promoter hired a high school auditorium, National Guard armory, or a church, and organized a show with as many different gospel groups as he could get to come. We had played some of those shows as opening acts and, although we got great response from the crowds, we also got snubbed by the so-called “professional” groups that followed us. The groups were mostly polite, but they also treated us like nothing better than country rubes. We now traveled in a small motor home and they had tour buses. They also had contracts with some of the minor record labels. Most were quartets. These groups performed basic four-part harmony and the bass singers usually cut up and did a few jokes to ingratiate themselves with the audience. Not a lick of difference from one group to the other except for their songs. Daddy said many of them were just in it for the money. As individuals, many of them couldn’t make it in country music so they put together a gospel group instead. They smoked and drank out behind their buses and frequently chased after the women in the audience.

Daddy had been writing simple gospel songs for years but had not really tried to record any of his own. But, as I said, the year I was fifteen he received a phone call from a promoter who was looking for acts to sign to a new gospel record label. He told Daddy that he had heard some of our tapes and that we could have a real future in what he called “Southern Gospel” music.

Up to that time there were only the major record labels and they normally recorded secular music only. If a singer like Elvis, for example, insisted on doing gospel music, they promoted it like a novelty record. Or they might include it as filler music on an album that needed just one more song. The record labels thought there was no money in gospel.

There were a few “vanity” labels that would sell musicians studio time and allow them to record in their rickety studios for a price. They charged the performer by the hour and made all their money from encouraging marginally talented individuals to record. Mostly they were hustlers out for a quick buck. That is why they were called vanity labels. They played on people’s vanity.

While it was obvious to many that there was a market for the music, there was a vacuum in availability. Modern Southern Gospel music was still in its infancy. There were hundreds of gospel radio stations but little new music to focus on. So the stations played anything they could find in the way of music. Usually it was old bluegrass or the four-part harmony quartets. 

So a retired producer from Nashville bought some modern equipment and set up a studio outside the city. Here he would record and promote new groups. We would become the second generation of groups that the studio would take on. The producer had all of the traditional gospel groups he needed. Our group was one of the first ones with what was classified as a modern sound. The producer wanted to try to promote us as a bridge between traditional mountain style bluegrass gospel and the more modern country sound. One of the selling points was the intention to try for cross-over songs that would appeal to both Southern Gospel and country music fans as well. All we needed were the songs and fans.

By that time we had grown physically and musically. Daddy had given up the church he had pastored several years earlier but he hadn’t given up the old home place. It sat on 60 acres in a “holler” (hollow) in Tennessee. In case you don’t know, a holler is a small valley in the mountains. Our land had just about everything a simple man could want—good dirt for plowing, a spring for water, and the most beautiful scenery in several states. Over the years Daddy had accumulated enough money so that we didn’t starve if there were no bookings. By that time he could be more selective in where we went and could ask for a guaranteed minimum on the love offerings. We also had a small motor home so we were no longer reliant on a local church to house and feed us. In other words, we were not just talented beggars any more. We could pull up, plug in, and be somewhat independent outside of church hours. Mamma continued to home school us even though we could have gone to public school. Although we had a calendar with at least weekend bookings nine months out of the year, she wanted some continuity in our education.

So, when the promoter finally came calling, Daddy went to the record label to negotiate from a position of some strength. We were doing all right without them. But shortly, we were going to do better—lots better. In the end, Daddy came home with two contracts:  not just a recording contract, but a management contract as well that would take over our current bookings and begin to handle all of our future bookings. The label would provide national management and would also advance the money needed for equipment, touring, production, and promotions.

The studio booked a block of time for us to record beginning the following month. Mamma and Daddy immediately began reviewing demo tapes from different southern writers. Many songs would be custom written for us by writers who had previously been sent tapes of the Stone Family. They knew both our style and sound and would write songs to suit them. In addition, dozens of my Daddy’s own songs were transcribed from the amateur CDs that he had made as demos and orchestrated for our five instruments with professional arrangements. In the coming month we would be coached over and over by several A&R (artists and repertoire) people in order to select the best music for our first CD.

The first thing to arrive in the holler was a tour bus. Part of the management contract required them to provide a late-model leased tour bus. About a week after Daddy got back from the meeting, a metallic red Silver Eagle coach pulled into the lane and parked out beside our barn. When we looked inside, it was outfitted with a stateroom in the rear for Mamma and Daddy, a full bathroom, a lounge/living space in front with an entertainment center, and six curtained bunks, each of which had small TV. It also had a kitchen/dinette area with a full-sized refrigerator, a pantry, stove, and a microwave. In other words, for a small-time family band we were pickin’ in tall cotton. As we would soon find out, we could comfortably live in the bus for months at a time. Although we had plenty of storage space inside, we could also access the lower storage compartments in the basement of the bus from the inside so storage was never a problem. We could store summer clothes, winter clothes, and all of our stage clothes down there until we needed them.

Next to arrive was a state-of-the-art professional sound system. The system was set up for us out in the barn where we had always practiced. The technicians explained the whole system to us and constructed a “snake” with all of the color coded wires contained in a big cable with branch cables leading to different speakers. The system could be expanded to be as large or as small as necessary depending upon the size of the venue where we would perform. There was also a 32-channel sound board that could be operated remotely from the stage or platform. The remote console housed the vocal microphones and was on a rack over Mamma’s keyboards so she could control everything from her position. The sound the system produced was huge. It had presence without being too loud. It created a sound and vibration that seemed to be absorbed through your skin, not just through the ears. I fell in love with it from the first time I heard it. For the first month a technician would accompany us to all dates to set up and operate the board until we were comfortable with operating it. We were grateful that we had the extra bunks to accommodate him.

We continued to perform at medium-sized churches off and on in a small number of surrounding states and we fulfilled the handful of show commitments that we had, because that was normally our off season with not many obligations. You should have heard the stir when we showed up in a real tour bus with Daddy sitting proud behind the wheel! He cranked the air horn a few times to let everybody know the Stone Family had arrived.

They all jokingly said, “The Family has gone uptown ...” We didn’t have any hits yet, so I am sure they thought that we were kind of pretentious showing up in a Silver Eagle, but it didn’t bother us. We were confident that the “Blessed Hope” that Daddy had preached about all his life was behind us all the way.

As time approached to go into the studio, the arrangements for Daddy’s songs arrived and we began rehearsing them out in the barn. Daddy had written the lead vocal part of four of the songs for me, and on several others I shared lead with my Mamma and him. All the songs were knockouts and the orchestration called for lead guitar on some parts. I practiced diligently until I could play them all flawlessly. On some, Daddy and I played dual leads. By the time we fired up the Silver Eagle and drove to the studio, we had every one of them tightly arranged and we thought all we had to do was walk in and get them on tape. We were wrong.

It was a different world when we went into the studio. The studio had 64 tracks on which they recorded each track individually. Every instrument was separately recorded. Each voice was also recorded on individual tracks one at a time. When we performed the instrumental parts we were each placed in separate booths and could only hear each other over head phones. Even when we were singing as a group, only one voice was being recorded on each take ... and there were many takes. In that way, all of the voices could be later blended electronically into a finished track. My brothers and sister had to repeat their parts so many times that they often cried in frustration. But the sound engineers were creating a professional sound and hopefully a hit record. It took over a week just to record Daddy’s songs. Afterwards, we had to record a dozen other songs written by the professionals from Nashville.

In all we had twenty four songs—enough for two CDs. The reason for the extra songs was because the producer thought that Daddy’s songs were too good to put them all on just one CD. They planned to release one CD containing five of Daddy’s songs, and the Nashville writer’s songs would round out the disc. Then we would go on tour promoting that CD. Meanwhile, the studio would have the other disc ready for release without us having to come back to do more recording. If the first CD became a hit, the second would be then easier to promote. The studio was investing a lot of money and wanted us on the road—not in the recording booth.

After the studio work was completed, we drove the Eagle back to the farm. Immediately the management team sent a show producer to design set shows around us. Although there is not too much “show” in gospel music, every word we would say on stage was rehearsed, and every step was choreographed so that there were no surprises. For interviews, we each had set questions we would be asked and we had rehearsed answers; if we were doing guest appearances, we had 10-minute routines with single songs. We had half-hour sets when we were scheduled as an opening act; and a complete hour-long show if we were the featured performers. Each show had variations just in case we were playing the same location for multiple nights. Depending on the venue, Daddy would also be given time to preach a rehearsed message. For our first tour we would do a package show that would cover churches, fairs, and various other venues.

Secretly, I also had my own private times carefully rehearsed. Except for Bobby, there had been no further gay episodes. I thought maybe I had outgrown it. Mentally I still jacked off to those hot times with him but sometimes I also thought about the girls that I met on the road. Although nothing physical ever happened, I had some hot make-out sessions whenever I had the opportunity. There was even a hot female lead singer that tried to get in my pants one time but Daddy caught on and it was quickly broken up. But while memories were one thing, the reality was that I simply had no privacy living on the bus. And in the hollow, privacy was nonexistent unless I could somehow get away.

To be continued...

Posted: 06/19/09