Hillbilly Heart (30 page)

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

PART IV

Left-handed

CHAPTER 27

“She’s Hannah Montana”

H
OME WAS PERFECT
. How lucky was I to be able to say that?
Home was perfect.
It was. After
Doc
wrapped, I felt welcomed back to the farm by my family and even more so, it seemed, by the land itself. My dirt bike and ATV four-wheelers were lined up waiting for me, as were my horses. Whenever I had a chance, I saddled up one of my Tennessee Walkers and reacquainted myself with the trails.

Out there I saw deer, a handful of giant bucks that believed they had as much if not more claim to this land as me, a flock of wild turkeys, and various birds, including a hawk that would sit on a hay bail and train its penetrating eyes on me. Our cow always made me laugh. He hung out with the horses… and probably thought he was one.

To understand me, you have to understand my relationship to this land, to the feeling I had when I first arrived on this property and said to myself, “Cyrus, you’re home.” I was fortunate to understand that about myself. It allowed me to mature as a man without losing the boy inside me. I identified with philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who famously said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if
I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

There, at home, I could pull my family around me and take care of them. I wasn’t a perfect parent. I wasn’t perfect in any situation. But God had allowed me a wonderful space that reminded me of the woods I used to play in when I was a little boy. The land taught me important lessons about the basics of life, reminded me of the inevitable cycles of change and renewal, and let me feel closer to God.

I think it did the same for the rest of the family. The kids had favorite trees, they rode horses, and chased butterflies. They loved the outdoors.

So I was thrilled to enter, or re-enter, this Jeremiah Johnson phase. I didn’t care what I looked like. Without cameras pointed at me every day, that stuff didn’t matter anymore. For me, it was just about being at home with my family, playing with the kids, watching the grass grow, the leaves change, riding horses, being one with my Heavenly Father, my Mother Earth, writing songs, and working on
Left-handed
.

Some music writers had criticized me for chasing trends. I disagreed. Except for the one album where I gave in to the record label, I felt like the only music I’d chased was the music in me. It was an imprecise science where the goal was to first please myself, then hopefully other people.

As I wrote more songs, I felt good about
Left-handed.
It had the promise of being something special. Then something else happened, something unexpected, something special in its own right that took all of us in a different direction altogether.

Tish and Miley were in California for some casting calls when agent Mitchell Gossett gave them a script for a new Disney Channel TV series called
Hannah Montana.
It was about a girl who lives a double life as an ordinary teenager by day and a pop star by night. Miley was going to read for the second lead, Lilly. She and Tish brought the script home. They were both excited.

One day I picked it up, only intending to read a few pages. They’d
gone through Lilly’s part with a pink highlighter. I read all the way through to the end because something obvious jumped out at me: The main character had two names. One was Hannah Montana. The other was Kiley Stewart.

I didn’t pretend to know much about TV or Hollywood. As my dad liked to say, I was just a boy from Kentucky. But before I finished the script, I knew Miley wasn’t Lilly. No way. She was Kiley. More than that, she was Hannah Montana.

I found Tish.

“Did you say all this stuff underlined in pink here? I mean, was Miley reading for the part of Lilly?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Tish, Miley is Hannah Montana,” I said. “She’s reading for the wrong part.”

“I don’t think Miley’s got the experience to carry it,” Tish said. “And Disney feels the same way.”

“Hell, man, have they heard her sing?” I asked.

“No, she hasn’t sung for them,” Tish said.

“Oh my God. We have got to get her on tape,” I said. “Just let them hear her sing.”

A song called “Goin’ to the Beach This Weekend” had been floating around as a demo, and Tish and I took Miley to a studio and put her on the track. We sent it to Disney, and their reaction was exactly as I expected.
Holy crap! Let’s get her back out here.
Tish and Miley returned to L.A., where she read for Kiley. They loved her. There was just one problem. They said she sings great, but she’s too little. They said the girl had to be about fifteen. Miley was only twelve.

Tish and Miley returned home feeling defeated. I told them not to sweat it.

“Just you wait,” I said. “If Disney doesn’t change their mind, they’re making a huge mistake. Miley is Hannah Montana. I know it like I know the sky is blue and the grass is green. Some things just are, and this is one of them. I can feel it. Just wait. It’s meant to be.”

They weren’t as sure.

Time passed. Three months. Six months. Then the agent called Tish and told her that Disney hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Miley. In fact, they were considering rewriting the show so Kiley Stewart / Hannah Montana could be a little bit younger. Assuming Miley had probably matured some since they’d seen her, they asked if Tish would bring her back out to L.A. for another look.

Tish told Miley the happy news, and she burst into my office like a bolt of lightning.

“Daddy, I got a callback!” she exclaimed. “They want to see me for Hannah Montana!”

I gave her a hug and said, “That is so cool, baby.” I saw Tish over her shoulder. She was smiling. I gave her a hug, too.

“I’ll stay here with Braison and Noah,” I said. “You guys go do your thing.”

Even with Disney stuck on her, Miley read with another dozen or two girls. In the next round, that number was reduced to eight or ten. Then one day I was out in the woods when my cell phone rang. It was Tish. She said that Disney Channel president Gary Marsh was really taken with Miley. She was green as grass, he said, but he saw something in her eyes that made him think she had big potential. He had used the word
star.
According to Tish, though, he also wanted to know if I’d consider playing the dad, Robbie, if Miley was Hannah Montana.

I could hear the eagerness in Tish’s voice. I wish I could say I shared it.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I’d told myself I wasn’t going to do another series. I wanted to play music.

“You don’t know?” she asked.

“This thing is going to be big,” I said. “I can feel it. And I don’t know if I want to tie into something like that again.”

I had other concerns, too. Finally, I told Tish that I’d call her back later that evening. Then I did my usual thing. I rode my horse up to the top of the hill, sat by the fire, and prayed. When I spoke
to Tish again, I felt much clearer. I explained: “You have to tell them that it ain’t fair to Miley or to none of those other girls to put my name in the sentence right now. As it stands, my answer is no. The first thing they have to do is decide who is Hannah Montana. I never want Miley to look back and say she did or didn’t get the part on account of me. If Miley ends up being Hannah, certainly, I’ll consider the other role. But for right now, at this moment, my answer is no.”

After more than ten years of marriage, Tish knew short answers weren’t in my repertoire. Nor were they in God’s.

She told the producers how I operated, that I played everything by ear, and eventually we’d know if it was meant to be. The casting of Hannah Montana came down to two girls—Miley and another girl with more television experience. Folks at Disney were split, but finally Gary Marsh chose Miley. Later, in an interview with
The Hollywood Reporter,
the Disney executive recalled sending an e-mail that said, “Our job is not to make shows. It’s to build franchises and stars. We may have a drink a few years from now and talk about whether we made the right choice, but I’m saying to you that we’re going to hire Miley.”

Then they focused on me. They wanted me to read for the part of Robbie, Miley’s daddy. I was hesitant. I agreed to fly out, but I said, “I’ll come on out, but let’s play it by ear and see how it feels.” I wanted to follow protocol. What if I wasn’t good? What if Miley and I didn’t have the right chemistry? What if there was someone better? In fact, when I showed up, some handsome dude was just walking out of an audition, and I flat out told Gary Marsh they didn’t need to see me anymore. “Her father just walked out of here,” I said. “Put my child with that guy and y’all got a hit TV show.”

Gary and the other producers laughed. They continued to laugh as I ran a couple of scenes from the pilot with Miley. Our chemistry was unmistakable, as you might expect. We were father and daughter. There was some type of magic in our realism, I guess. A fun
energy filled the room. Then Miley threw a curve ball. “Dad, you’ve got to sing them the song ‘I Want My Mullet Back.’”

“What’s ‘I Want My Mullet Back’?” one of them asked.

“Oh, it’s just this song I recorded,” I said. “It’s going to be on my new album.”

“Dad, let’s sing it,” Miley said.

Before I could say yes or no, she began snapping her fingers and started to sing the words. I had no choice but to join in. And it’s hard to describe what happened in that room, but everyone clapped when we finished. It was a special moment. It was magic.

We left and went to a studio where Miley was going to sing a song for the show. Possibly the theme song. But I really don’t remember. My agent, Mitchell Gossett, had called me on the way and said, “They loved ya!” I wasn’t sure, but I nonchalantly said, “Well, if it’s meant to be, then it’ll happen. If it ain’t, it won’t.”

I was at the studio only about ten minutes when I saw a nice, shiny car pull up. The door opened and none other than Gary Marsh got out. He was all smiles when he found me. He stretched out his hand and said, “Let’s make a hit TV show.”

“Are you serious?”

He was.

“Can you stay out here?” he asked. “We’re shooting the pilot in a week.”

We stayed, and during that week we rehearsed the show, and two significant changes were made. One, Robbie inherited a middle name, Ray. He became Robbie Ray. And two, I kept calling Kiley Miley, until finally someone threw up their hands and said, “From now on, everything that is Kiley is going to be Miley.” And the rest, as the say in Hollywood, is history.

CHAPTER 28