Danny Myrick Writes His Own Tunes

Danny Myrick

Songwriter, Producer, Performer and Music Lover

What makes you feel like a grown-up?

It's really my kids who are now grown. On a serious note, their mom passed away a few years ago and suddenly, I mean, they're grown, but I still had this single parent thing. That and dealing with the music business as a business. The older I get, I really have to think, “Do I have enough money to survive if I don't have any more hits?” That stuff's real, but it's a very short list of things that made me feel grown-up.

What song changed your life? 

There are actually two songs—both by The Eagles. When we were on vacation, my parents would let a little country slip in with the gospel music we listened to, and the Eagles had this tight harmony. My brothers and I grew up singing harmony. When I heard “Tequila Sunrise,” it occurred to me that you could still have these harmonies singing about things beyond the super Christian world I lived in. The other is “Desperado.” I was on the fence about remarrying after my divorce, but for some reason one day, the line “you better let somebody love you before it’s too late” hit me hard. I knew I better not let my then-girlfriend slip away–I needed to make her my wife.

What's the best gift you've received?

My brother and I got guitars for Christmas when we were 9 and 10. We had these little amps and my Mom had already taught us to play piano by ear. We would get home from school and we'd turn the radio on and just try to play with the radio and learn chords. And within three months we were playing every service at church.

On writing his own soundtrack.

Who or what drew you to music?

I don't remember any moments in my family without music. I was born in 1964 and grew up in a very rural Mississippi town. We had a black and white TV with one channel. After watching the local news, we would tune in WSM radio out of Nashville to hear the Grand Ole Opry, or my grandfather would play what he called a flat top guitar and sing old country gospel songs. And we’d harmonize with it. My mom sang and played piano; we grew up singing around her. 

We made our first gospel album when I was seven. We dove into it professionally because my dad was a preacher and he had this singing family. We began traveling all over the Southeast. He would preach these revival services and we would play. It brought him a lot of notoriety because he had these little kids who could all sing harmony. It was like the Partridge Family with a Bible on a bus.

Is music an innate talent or something you work at?

I think it's both. If you’re thinking about doing it professionally, I think there has to be some innate talent. However, the business has changed a lot in that you can have an ear for music, not necessarily be a musician, but be great at tech. There are so many plugins with pro tools and logic. I've heard some amazing tracks that young producers have created where they know enough theory, but they don't have to play anything.

But still there's a lot of nuance to it. It's like learning to hit a baseball. There's a songwriter in town whose roommate played in the pros—he was a teammate of Barry Bonds. And pre- or post-steroids, Barry Bonds was a gifted player from the time he was a child. This guy actually played in the majors for 12 years, but he said the difference between us going out and hitting a baseball and Barry Bonds hitting a baseball—you're just never going to be that. I think anybody can go to school and maybe you can learn it, but there are levels.

Are you more of a John (where you receive a flash of inspiration) or more of a Paul (you work constantly) when writing?

No question, I am a Paul. I've been lead singer of a few different bands, and I'm definitely the guy who is saying, “Yes, we're letting the muse hit.” But at some point, we’ve got to go to work. We have a deadline, we have things to do. And watching the Beatles documentary, I always knew that about Paul McCartney. I grew up on commercial FM radio music so I have always appreciated the pop sensibilities of his writing, and the marriage of that with the deeper songs. And I think you’re not going to get those great songs without the juxtaposition of the two. 

But John, he was a serious guy and said Paul just writes silly love songs, and Paul has the sense of humor to write a song called “Silly Love Songs,” which becomes a worldwide number one. He just was the guy who was meant to do what he does. He's fantastic leading a band. And he comes back after the Beatles with another band and breaks all of their records for attendance and sales. And his solo records are great. It's just beyond.

What is the songwriting process like—do you have an artist in mind or are you just focused on the song itself?

I know it sounds like maybe a cop-out answer, but I think it's a little of both. I think we all try to get in tune with a spirit or a muse. Sometimes you see a bumper sticker or hear a line in a song, something that could be funny or poignant, something you can build a hook around. I tend to try to serve the room. If I'm co-writing with someone and an idea hits, we'll have a conversation about who we might know is going to be recording in the next few weeks. Do we have anything? 

We do occasionally build relationships where we can send a song straight through to an artist or their producer. But you have to be careful about having the artist too much in mind because then if they pass on it, it won’t work for other people. I had a big hit with Jason Aldeen called “She's Country,” and then we wrote another song for Jason that one of the people on the road with him thought he would like. But he passed on it, so we started pitching it around town. And literally the first six or seven pitch meetings my publisher had, she said the first comment was, this is not really right for our artist but this is perfect for Jason Aldeen. Have you played it for him? 

When you write something like”She’s Country” or  "I Love This Life" by Locash--do you have a good sense that it's going to be a hit? Is there a feeling you get in the room?

I think once you've had a couple of hits, you can begin to feel okay, this is a hit song—this checks all the boxes and operates like a hit song. I think the harder part is just the nature of the business, all the hoops you've got to jump that song through. Your publisher has to feel the same way so they’ll want to pitch it. An A&R guy or producer feels the same way so they will take it to the artist. That the artist feels the same way so that they take it to the label. Then they've got nine or ten other songs on a record. There's just a lot of opinions that matter. 

The music and entertainment business is notoriously tough. Do you have a particular strategy for dealing with rejection?

I don't know that I have a specific way of dealing with rejection, other than I grew up in a pretty thick-skinned world of recognizing that life's not easy. Especially when you decide you're writing for an assignment—whether you're pitching a screenplay, an article or song, something that you have to get past an editor or a wall. I think it sharpens you. You have to be teachable and willing to learn. With songs, you have to let your babies go. You have to stop being so precious about them. The reality is, I've had a publishing deal pretty nonstop since I was in my mid-twenties. If there's 100 songs a year, you just do the math and hardcore country fans might know four or five of them.

Ultimately my mindset is that if as a teenager I could have seen 20 or 30 years down the road that I am making a living in some aspect of music, I have won. I try to constantly remind myself of that. I also play a lot of writer's shows, just for the purpose of getting immediate feedback. Especially if I’ve had a week where every door has been shut in my face, I get on a stage at a coffee shop or a songwriter festival. And some 25-year-old comes up to me and says, I've never liked country music at all, but you were fucking great. 

Who would be your dream person to work with?

Setting aside Paul McCartney, it would be Don Henley. How many kids from the seventies would say that Eagles were the soundtrack of their life? For me, growing up in a really tight knit conservative family of pretty much gospel music only with a little country sprinkled in, The Eagles allowed me to turn up on the radio without my parents shouting, turn off that rock and roll music. The songs were fairly safe and I could sing along and practice harmonies. Henley’s been in and around country music a good bit over the last 20 years, and I've never just found myself in contact with him. I’ve never pushed it because he's a bit of a cantankerous guy. I feel like if I ran into him on the wrong day, it might be really, really disappointing.