BYRON HILL: The Tortoise Who Always Wins the Race

By PHIL SWEETLAND

Country music and radio contributor, The New York Times

When North Carolina native Byron Hill moved to Nashville, he shared every songwriter’s dream of seeing one of his songs recorded. Now, 26 years later, Hill has accomplished that difficult feat an astounding 483 times, and has contributed classic hits like Tracy Byrd’s “Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich And Famous,” George Jones’ “High-Tech Redneck,” George Strait’s “Fool Hearted Memory,” and Gary Allan’s “Nothing On But The Radio” to the language of modern country music.

It hasn’t happened by accident. Hill’s superb musical gifts are matched by an incredible work ethic, enabling him to deal with the often laborious details required to promote and administer song catalogs in these days of massive consolidation. That extremely rare combination of talents and has helped key Hill’s unique success.

“Dedicated, disciplined, heart-felt, with integrity to the craft of songwriting is Byron Hill,” says veteran Nashville music publisher Tom Collins. “There is also not a finer person.”     

Here’s a description of a typical Nashville day for Hill. “I like to write in the mornings. Used to be, I’d write about 9 a.m. but now I can’t find anyone to write with at that hour,” he says. “So I end up writing about 10 a.m. . . . I like to write in co-writing situations. Three or four of those a week is all I can handle. I’m a big believer in the business of songwriting too. I spend my entire afternoons, sometimes whole days, either making sure the administrative stuff is going well or pitching my own songs. I’ve gotten dragged into that by necessity. The bigger publishers get, the more things they miss. It’s really important for a writer to stay up on that part of the business.”

He hails from Winston-Salem, N.C., a city with deep roots both in country and bluegrass. Byron’s parents bought him his first guitar at age 10, and his father taught him the music of the Carter Family, Flatt & Scruggs, and Merle Haggard while his mother gave him a love for pop and jazz from George Gershwin, Ray Charles, and Perry Como. He studied woodwinds for six years in school and violin for three – an unusual upbringing for a future country songwriter.

“I showed up at my first violin lesson wanting to learn bluegrass fiddle, but they stuck an Italian scale book in front of me and I enjoyed it,” he says with a smile.

Hill studied music at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., and in 1972 formed a bluegrass duo with Gene Wooten, now one of Nashville’s top Dobro players. The next year, he and his father were driving one day when Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl” came on the car radio.

“Like any young man, you sometimes get alienated with your Dad along the way, but we really connected on that song,” Hill says. “We both reached for the radio at the same time to turn it up. Dad’s always been a big influence on me with respect to great songs. I had never heard a song like `The Most Beautiful Girl’ before on country radio, with the lushness of the production, the chord structure, and the subtle key changes. It sent chills down me.”

Songs that influence composers tell a great deal about them, and Hill’s instant, boyhood attraction to the Charlie Rich record and earlier to Petula Clark’s British Invasion classic “Downtown” help demonstrate the abiding love for melody that so often is the hallmark of Byron’s own writing.

By 1975, Hill had begun to seriously pursue a move to Nashville as a songwriter. His early contacts and supporters read like a Who’s Who of Music Row: Jonathan Stone, now the head of Windswept Pacific; fellow North Carolinian Tony Brown, now co-head of Universal South; Mae Axton, David Conrad, Dianne Petty, and Merlin Littlefield. On one trip to Nashville, Byron visited Stone at ATV Music. “Come behind my desk. There’s my Byron Hill catalog,” Stone said, opening up the drawer. The cassettes of Hill’s demos were neatly arranged in a row. It was a transforming moment.

“Jonathan was one of the top songpluggers in town,” Hill says. “That just opened up my eyes.”

In April of 1978, Hill made the big move to Music City. He worked at ATV first as a volunteer and then in the tape room, but within a few months huge management shakeups required him to become a songplugger. All the while, he passionately worked on his songwriting as his contacts expanded exponentially.

Roger Bowling (“Lucille,” “Coward Of The County”) became a stern, early mentor. “I wanted to write songs that were commercial, but I saw quickly that I didn’t have a total grasp of it,” Hill says. “Roger put a lot of tough love on me and shamed me into writing better songs.”

A new MCA artist at the time needed a song for a movie. “Blake Mevis and I sat down to write a song. Our mission was to try to come up with a tune that would fit a bar scene in a movie,” Hill said. The year was 1982, the movie was The Soldier, the new artist was George Strait, and the song Hill and Mevis wrote was “Fool Hearted Memory.” It was the first No. 1 of Strait’s brilliant career.

When ATV went on the block in 1984, Hill left with mixed emotions but with a remarkable track record. He would go on to co-write 500 songs with Tony Hiller, a former ATV staff songwriter. Hill also got into the production side of music at ATV, landing Kathy Mattea her record deal and producing her first Mercury LP.

He worked as an independent songwriter and publisher the next four years, composing Ed Bruce’s Top 5 “Nights” and many other cuts for Kenny Rogers and Anne Murray, among others. By 1988 he’d sold his publishing concern and joined Tom Collins Music as a writer, further perfecting his craft under a stern tutor. One of his compositions at Collins was Alabama’s classic “Born Country” (1992), which Byron wrote with John Schweers.

“One day I happened to be at Collins Music working with another writer, and he said, `Hey, there’s Teddy Gentry of Alabama in the parking lot! ’ ” Hill says. “So I grabbed a cassette of `Born Country’ out of my car and handed it to him. Two weeks later, they called back and said they were gonna record it. It ended up being No. 1. It sounds easy, but I’m sure it wasn’t.”

Hill signed with MCA Music Nashville in 1992, crafting such classics as Byrd’s “Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich And Famous” and Sammy Kershaw’s “Politics, Religion, And Her.” Six years later, he inked a deal with Starstruck Writers Group, which in 2000 was acquired by Warner/Chappell; in early 2003, Hill signed with Almo/Irving, which soon thereafter was closed and absorbed into Universal Music Publishing. Byron now writes for Universal.

The success of Allan’s “Nothing On But The Radio,” a No. 1 record that Hill had written five years ago with Odie Blackman and Brice Long, is typical of Hill’s amazing persistence. “Gary liked it a lot and put it on the back burner,” he says. “Through the years, it kept coming up.”

Byron Hill also keeps coming up with wonderful songs through the years. Whether they’re album cuts or hit singles, they all have the Hill magic in them. He was asked about his ability to sustain a Row career at the highest level for over a quarter century.

“First of all, I’ve always considered myself a songwriter. I’m not genre-specific,” Hill says. “I just like to write songs. In some ways, that enables me not to be discouraged with the way the market is going. I just try to write things that feel good and sound good. Writing a hit is sort of an acquired craft, and it sometimes takes precedence over art. It hasn’t affected me that way. I just keep on writing. I also sometimes refer to myself as the tortoise in the race with the hare. I just keep staying in it. You just keep doing what you love, and something will come out of it.”

For over years and nearly 500 cuts, Byron Hill has given us all music to love. And guess what? He’s just getting started.

December 3, 2004

[PHIL SWEETLAND has written 37 stories on music and radio for The New York Times,

and is a contributing editor of American Songwriter magazine.]