It's All About Him (6 page)

Looking back, I can't help but see God's hand in providing this quiet time for Alan, as well as giving me the airline job. Becoming a flight attendant gave me opportunities to literally try my wings, to grow in independence in ways that I wouldn't have down on the ground at Atkinson Elementary School. It also provided the doorway, oddly enough, for Alan's big break, career-wise.

One day, after I'd completed my training and was flying regular routes, I was in the Atlanta airport. As I walked toward the gate, I saw a man standing in the boarding area. It was country superstar Glen Campbell.He was dressed casually, traveling with several guys, probably his tour manager and band. I recognized him immediately; he looked just as I remembered him from
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
on TV when I was a child. He'd also been on
Hee Haw
and was one of the best-known singers in the world. Songs like “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” started running through my head. All this took about a second, and then I knew what I had to do.

I wasn't the kind of person who felt comfortable approach- ing celebrities, but I knew this opportunity wasn't going to come by again anytime soon. I took a deep breath and went over to him. He was chewing gum and smiled when I approached. I assumed that was because he was getting ready to laugh and tell me to go away.

“Mr. Campbell,” I said, “may I talk with you for a minute?”

There was plenty of time before his plane.

“Sure,” he said. I told him that my husband wanted to get into the country music business, and asked what advice he might have.

He paused a moment, then asked if my husband wrote songs.

I thought of Alan, sitting up late every night with his guitar, making memories into music, and love into lyrics.

But all I said was, “Well, yes, he does.”

Glen said, “That's good.”He gave me a business card with the name “Marty Gamblin” on it. “This is the man who runs my music publishing company. Have your husband send his songs to Marty to see what he thinks.”

I held on to the card like it was a passkey to our future.

Years later, when Glen wrote his autobiography—
Rhinestone Cowboy
—he said that he gave that same advice to plenty of others. For whatever reason, most of them never followed through—or if they did, the songs were just plain unusable.

But, as Glen put it in his book, “[Denise's] husband wasn't like most songwriters.”

Within two weeks of my “chance” meeting with Glen Campbell in the Atlanta airport, Alan was standing in Marty Gamblin's office.

After listening to Alan's plea,Marty graciously committed to help him and act as his manager, even though he continued to work full-time running Glen Campbell's music publishing company. Alan returned to Newnan. We packed up all our possessions (which didn't even fill a small U-Haul), and away we went, driving toward our dreams in Music City.

Our first-ever home away from Newnan was an apartment complex near the Nashville airport, which made sense, given my flying schedule. What didn't make sense when we arrived was the dirty parking lot with rusty cars up on concrete blocks, the wild kids running around, and the swimming pool that was just a dry concrete bowl, empty except for a puddle of scummy water and a dead rat lying in the bottom.

So began our grand new life in Nashville.

Chapter 7
DAUNTING DISAPPOINTMENTS

I've played for empty tables and chairs
For drunks that don't listen and crowds that don't care
Been told countless times Boy you ain't goin' nowhere
To do what I do

Tim Johnson, “To Do What I Do”

T
here's usually a big difference between what you imagine will happen when you go off to pursue your grand dreams and what actually takes place. Alan and I both knew that Nashville wouldn't exactly welcome us with open arms and a key to the city, but still, our early days there were pretty depressing.

We stayed in that dank little apartment for two months, which was exactly two months too long. Drug deals were going down in the hallways; strange men came and went at all hours of the night. I wasn't comfortable going to the laundry room if Alan wasn't home. There was a fire in one of the apartments, and then a domestic shooting in another.

After that, I was by the front door when Alan got home: “I love you to pieces, honey,” I told him, “but I am
not
staying here.”

Thankfully, God had prepared a place for us. A little notice had just gone up on the bulletin board in the employee workroom at the Nashville Network, of a cozy basement apartment in a quiet, nice neighborhood, for $350 a month. We jumped at it. On our moving day, when we stopped at a 7-11 store on our way to the new place, a man saw our truck loaded with our old, battered furniture.

I WAS BY THE FRONT DOOR WHEN ALAN GOT HOME: “I LOVE YOU TO PIECES, HONEY,” I TOLD HIM, “BUT I AM
NOT
STAYING HERE.”

“Hey!” he shouted. “You just come from a yard sale?”

We hauled our hand-me-down furniture into the little apartment. It had brown shag carpeting that blended just fine with our old brown and orange patchwork sofa. In our bedroom, our mattress had belonged to Alan's older sister. We could see why she'd decided to give it away: it had a trench worn into the middle, and Alan's feet hung off the end. But at that time we were glad to get anything.

Alan, who is six foot four, had to sleep on it diagonally. Since he was heavy, I spent half the night trying to claw my way out of the “Alan trench,” and the other half curled into a little triangle of space.

Busy Airports and a Lumpy Mattress

In order to have a regular flight schedule and not be on call, I had to be based in Washington D.C., which meant that I had to start and end my trips there. While other flight attendants bid for layovers in the most exciting cities, I just tried to get schedules that allowed me to spend as much time in Nashville with Alan as possible.

So I was getting up very early in the morning, flying to Charlotte, North Carolina, to make a connection, then to D.C., just to begin my scheduled flights. On the way home I'd run through airports to catch the late flight home to Nashville, Alan, and that lumpy mattress.

Alan would pick me up at the airport. Since this was before the tightening of airport security, he could just idle at the curb outside Piedmont arrivals, waiting for me to emerge. Our only vehicle at the time—a Dodge Transvan—happened to look a lot like the shuttle vans that transported travelers to and from their parked cars. One night Alan was waiting for me at our usual curb when a businessman opened the van's door and hopped into the front seat.

“To parking lot G, please!” he commanded.

Alan sat at the steering wheel, pondering whether he should take this guy for a little ride around the airport or let him go. In the end he informed the businessman that he needed to catch the
airport
shuttle, that Alan in fact was a private citizen waiting to pick up his wife. The man reluctantly got out. For our part at least we knew that if Alan's music career never took off, he could always get a job at the airport, driving a shuttle bus.

I loved flying. I enjoyed making passengers feel welcome and comfortable; I liked taking care of their needs. I loved getting to know the other crew members; there was a fun camaraderie between the flight attendants and the pilots. Though some of them partied together, I wasn't interested in getting together with anyone. I just enjoyed the meals out as a group, the laughter, sightseeing in places I'd never been (which weren't difficult to find, since I'd hardly been anywhere), and shopping (even though I browsed a lot more than I bought, since we didn't have much money).

Paying His Dues

In the flying world I felt competent and connected with others . . . but then I'd come home to Nashville and feel a bit disconnected from what Alan was experiencing in the music world. Much of it was pretty depressing anyway. One time I flew up to Canada to meet him at a gig somewhere. Alan's band was playing at a bar that was connected to a hotel. The floor was sticky with old beer and who knows what else. The patrons were drunk and rude, and most of them could not have cared less about Alan, the band, or music in general. They just kept downing drinks and coming and going from the strip joint that was next door to the bar.

In the music business, playing in these kinds of places to crowds that don't listen is called “paying your dues,” and if anybody paid his dues, Alan did. He'd drive to a gig maybe six, ten, fourteen hours away,with the heavy music equipment loaded into a trailer he pulled behind the Dodge Transvan, which we jokingly called the “Country and Western Showbus.” (Saying “country and western” is like saying “stewardess” instead of “flight attendant.”)

IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS, PLAYING IN THESE KINDS OF PLACES TO CROWDS THAT DON'T LISTEN IS CALLED “PAYING YOUR DUES,” AND IF ANYBODY PAID HIS DUES, ALAN DID.

Alan would unload all his stuff, do a sound check, play from 8 PM to 1 or 2 in the morning, inhaling dense clouds of smoke, then crash in a cheap hotel, get up the next morning, head for the next destination, and do it all over again. Even worse than that was having to play at the same dreary place for more than one night—at least going to a new place gave Alan some slight hope that conditions might be better at the next stop.

By the time he paid his band and the expenses, there wasn't much—if anything—left. Sometimes he even
lost
money. But even back then, he knew that murky gigs on the road would give him the experience that he needed for the bright future he was determined to reach. Meanwhile, he was writing songs for Glen Campbell's production company—for the grand sum of $100 a week.

The lonely nights of dark bars, stale pretzels, and sticky floors were so different from my earliest musical memories. I remember my mother's family reunions when I was a little girl. As I said earlier, Mother was one of thirteen siblings. All the Browns, large and small, would gather at an old Methodist church in the country, where earlier generations of Browns were tucked under warm, gray stones in the old cemetery.

Everyone brought picnic baskets full of crispy fried chicken and creamy deviled eggs. There were vegetables fresh from the garden, a rosy ham, sweet cornbread, baked beans, a snowy coconut cake, and crunchy pecan pies.

After we were full from the feast, we'd all gather around the old piano in the church fellowship hall. One of my aunts would play, and everyone would sing,with wonderful harmony, the great old hymns that were part of the ties that bound us together.

That rich fellowship was a far cry from Alan's drab life on the road and my hectic commutes from airport to airport. But nothing in our experience is wasted, and I know that God used that time in our lives in a variety of ways . . . ways I couldn't appreciate until many years had gone by, when I could see God's purposes in the rearview mirror.

At the time it was just plain hard. I remember paying our bills only to discover that there was nothing left, except two more weeks before the next paycheck would come. Each time I cried, Alan tried to cheer me up. He kept saying that it wouldn't be this way forever. But that didn't magically change our finances.

Sometimes we'd wonder what in the world we were doing . . . why we were putting ourselves in such dismal situations when we had families and friends who loved us and would have welcomed us back home with open arms. We often thought about all the warm fellowship and wonderful Sunday dinners we were missing at Alan's mother's house. Maybe all the stress and cold rejection just wasn't worth it.

But Alan never gave up. All the disappointments and challenges that we faced just made him more determined to reach his goal.

Hoping for the Best

We had given ourselves five years to make it in Nashville. If things didn't work out, then we really would go back home. Life there
would be different from our big dreams, but it would still be good.

Thankfully, Marty introduced Alan to many people in the music business, like Gary Overton, Keith Stegall, and Barry Coburn. Like Marty, these guys played instrumental roles in Alan's career. I couldn't even begin to name all the wonderful people who did so much to help and promote Alan in those early days. We are forever in their debt.

ONE EXECUTIVE LISTENED TO ALAN'S TAPE AND SIGHED. THEN SHE TOLD ALAN THAT HE JUST DIDN'T HAVE STAR QUALITY AND THAT HE SHOULD GO BACK TO GEORGIA AND GET A JOB DOING SOMETHING ELSE.

For more than three years Marty did everything he could to spark record label interest in Alan. Time after time he solicited producers to record demo tapes that he would then pitch to executives . . . in fact, every record label in town rejected Alan at least once. Some turned him down twice. One executive listened to Alan's demo and sighed. Then she told Alan that he just didn't have star quality and that he should go back to Georgia and get a job doing something else. Later, one label decision-maker actually agreed—verbally—to sign Alan. Marty, his wife Cherie, and Alan and I were so thrilled that we went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate. But the deal never materialized . . . and it was all so discouraging, to say the least.