A year and a half ago, Moe Bandy–one of country music`s hottest traditional-styled stars in the 1970s–found he had been dropped by CBS Records. Not that any CBS executive ever called and gave him the official word, but none really had to. The news was all over the streets of Nashville. With his performance price dropping and his business going slack, he spent more time in his home state of Texas ”bad-mouthing the business,” he recalls.
”You know how you`ve seen movies about how stars` careers go down, and they lose it?” he asks.
”Well, I didn`t lose my family or my health or anything, but it was the most depressing period. A lot of people in the music business that I had known for years were shying away from me. They wouldn`t return my calls.”
Sitting in Texas, he remembered the mid-1970s, a pop-inclined era in which a series of clever drinkin` and cheatin` songs made this ex-sheet metal worker widely acclaimed as the savior of traditional country music.
He also remembered the opinion of a Nashville record producer who told him, during the twilight of his CBS contract, that he had had a lot of good records, ”a good run,” and that maybe his day in the sun was over.
He also recalled his response to that: ”I`ll be damned if I`ve had my run.”
Few observers would have bet on it, but Bandy, turns out to have been right. A magnificent new album on MCA Records–highlighted by the haunting recent single, ” `Til I`m Too Old To Die Young”–has dramatically resurrected his stardom.
As a result, he has signed with a premiere country booking agency, the Jim Halsey Co. in Tulsa, Okla.; has performances booked with reigning Country Music Association male vocalist of the year George Strait; and, brimming with restored confidence, has begun writing songs again.
These things didn`t happen overnight, though. The softspoken, deceptively tough, ex-rodeo cowboy has reconstructed his career in a way that is a tribute to the power of positive thinking, musically and otherwise.
”Basically, if you want to win, you have to surround yourself with winners,” he says. ”That`s an old saying, but it`s true.”
Realizing that griping about Nashville from Texas wasn`t advancing his career, he telephoned Nashville talent manager Woody Bowles. Bowles` first job in the music business had been handling Bandy`s public relations, and he had gone on to become the first manager of the Judds.
Bandy asked him for help.
”Woody said, `You need to roll up your sleeves and get up here with us, instead of being down there talking against us,` ” Bandy recalls.
”He said, `We`re gonna have to get a team together and get you some good records and get this thing headed back in the right direction again.` ”
As Bandy recalls it, Bowles then:
— Found him a good attorney.
— Put him with the great, if under-recognized, producer Jerry Kennedy, who not only works on the records of the Statler Brothers but also supervised the making of those that brought Reba McEntire to stardom.
— Got him a contract with Dick Whitehouse of the Curb production company, which in turn placed him with MCA Records.
”I had a little inside deal there,” Bandy confesses. ”Woody had taken the Judds to Dick.”
This ”team” got together to plan strategy and agreed, Bandy recalls, that what he needed to do was ”cut an album that will make people say, `I didn`t know you could do that.` ”
They spent six months putting this album together. Around November of last year, Kennedy found the first three songs–”I Forgot That I Don`t Live Here Anymore,” ”Sunny Side Of You” and Bandy`s first MCA single, a clever wedding-ring song titled ”One-Man Band.”
Bandy says they knew ”One-Man Band” wasn`t ”that song, but we figured it at least would get us back into radio a little bit and introduce the next one.” That ”next one” turned up from an unexpected source: folk-country singer Michael Johnson.
”I saw Michael one day, and he said he had a song that he felt would fit me,” Bandy recalls. ”It was `Til I`m Too Old To Die Young.`
”I took it on the road with me and played the (demonstration recording)
of it, a very rough demo, on the bus. The band said, `Boy, what a song.` Then we got some guitars out one night–I never will forget, it was after a gig
–and we were sitting in the bus picking acoustic guitars, and I started singing the thing and everybody in the band looked at each other like, `Wait a minute here. This thing is strong.`
”I taped it then and sent it to Woody. We knew then that we had the song. When it came out, phones started lighting up all over the country.”
The reason ”Til I`m Too Old To Die Young” had such impact is that it was a new, thoughtful tack for Bandy.
Instead of being a sad song about a blue-collar life, or a funny one about getting drunk or cheating on the wife or being glad to be rid of the ex, it was a compellingly serious one about trying to enjoy deeper things to the fullest while they can be enjoyed.
”The first time I played the demo on the bus, one of the guys in the band said, `Maybe it`s a little negative, though, talking about death like that,` ” Bandy recalls. ”I said, `If you listen to it, it`s really talking about life.` ”
The irony here is that Bandy had been trying to become a serious artist for years, but his past–the drinkin` and cheatin` songs, plus a latter-day project with fellow country star Joe Stampley to create the raucous ”Moe & Joe” duo–kept CBS from having any part of it.
When he tried to record more serious material, Bandy recalls, he was indignantly asked at the record company if he thought he was pop-country stylist ”Lee Greenwood or somebody?” The unnamed record executive who asked him that added: ”This isn`t you. Moe Bandy is drinkin`, cheatin` and hell-raisin`.”
”I said, `Why? Why am I that?` ”
The reason he asked was, he isn`t that. Oh, he can tell a joke now and then, and he used to drink, but he`s basically a quiet and rather private man who is much more serious than his former image–one who in the last few years has come to treasure the deeper feelings ” `Til I`m Too Old To Die Young”
talks about.
As a result of ”a bout with the booze,” he ”quit drinking over three years ago.” He and Margaret, his wife of 24 years, ”got through” some shaky times he attributes to the fact that when you`re riding hits, ”everybody`s bragging on you and telling you how good you are and you forget where you come from.”
He notes with quiet pride that a 24-year marriage is ”unusual in our business,” adding that Margaret and their youngest daughter–Lisa, 11–have started accompanying him on the road.
At 43, he recently has become a grandfather, another role he takes seriously. When he recorded ” `Til I`m Too Old To Die Young,” he also recorded a private version mentioning ”grandkids” for his older daughter, Laura, who had informed him she was pregnant with her first child.
The real Moe Bandy is neither the booze-soaked, bar-flying loser portrayed in his cheatin` and drinkin` songs nor the wild and crazy rube he became with Moe & Joe. He has long since tired of being cast as a loser or a laughingstock.
”I loved the Moe & Joe project,” he says. ”I went into it as a fun, novelty thing, to do a couple of duets and then go back to being myself. But I got into it and couldn`t get out, and so did Joe.
”I don`t blame CBS–I had a good run with them, and they did all they could do for me–but in their eyes I became one-half of a comedy team. It got to where I`d walk in the office, and everybody would start laughing, like I was supposed to tell a joke.”
He`s glad now to have finally been permitted the luxury of adding another dimension to his music: himself.
