Successful Musician Podcast Episode 64
Interviewee: Don Cusic
Interviewer: Jason Tonioli
Jason Tonioli
Welcome to the podcast today. My special guest is Dr. Don Cusic. You’re in Nashville right now, right, Don? I got to admit, I am very, very excited about just chatting with you today. I think the more I’ve learned about your story and your history, the more I think the amazing insights you’re going to have. It’s very rare that I get somebody that has a two-page bio, and as I read through that, it was actually more than warranted, which was just like, oh, my goodness, this person has… You’ve just worked with so many amazing people and just crossed… You’ve got 30 books that you’ve published. You’ve done, I think, over 500 articles. It’s just one of those where your take on musicians in general is going to be really interesting. So I think people are in for a real treat to learn from today. So thank you so much for being here.
Don Cusic
Well, thank you. And the fact that I’ve written all those books and articles shows you that I am not a successful musician. But as we talked before, going on the air, there’s a lot more to the music business than just the music.
Jason Tonioli
Absolutely. Well, and I think what’s interesting with the music is that end product that comes out, but there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes. There’s that journey, that struggle, the final song that kicks out. That’s what everybody hears, but the stories that happen along the way or how somebody got to where they were, the struggle they went through is really, I think, the more special thing if you dive into it, right?
Don Cusic
Yeah, but I teach at a place called Belmont University, and it’s got a music business program right at the head of Music Row. We attract students, a lot of them whose parents are in the music industry, as well as students who, once they get here, they may have been discouraged at home. Well, you should be a doctor, you should be a lawyer, this, that, and the other. But they get here and there’s a whole support group. I remember there’s this one girl who was in my office one day, and she was crying. She said, You know where I grew up, nobody else played the guitar. I played the guitar. Nobody else wrote songs. I wrote songs. She felt very special. She got to Nashville, and she said, And everybody plays the guitar, and everybody writes songs. Unfortunately, in her case, the songs weren’t very good. But that’s what you see. It’s the good and the bad. You’ve got this whole support group here. But also, I know in my days when I was a musician or when I played baseball, every time you moved up, you got a little bit better until you got to the point, Well, you ain’t going to get no better.
But the music will tell you that. The music business will tell you that. The other thing is the music business is the music, the business, and the technology all roll together. When you look at the industry from the outside, there’s a a lot of desk jobs. There’s a lot of concert promotion. There’s a lot of jobs that aren’t playing music but are part of the music business. A lot of people figure out early on, they wouldn’t mind being a star if it wasn’t so much trouble. It’s a lot of trouble but it’s a self-weeding process you get down here. You have the opportunity to succeed, and people do. I’ve had six former students who’ve had a number one country record.
Jason Tonioli
You’re in the business side of music, and I think as you look at a lot of these musicians that come in, I know the creative brain or that creative, write songs type of person, oftentimes doesn’t want to do business. They almost look at that as the bad or evil side of things. What’s funny is, my story. I’m a piano player, I lasted two days at the music program at my university out here in Utah, where I’m at. I dropped out at the end of the second day, and I went over to the business school. Frankly, for my music career, going into marketing was probably the best decision I ever made for my music career. I had no idea it would be the case back then.
Don Cusic
The people who succeed, number one, they have unbounded energy, and they’re extroverts. Those are key factors. But also they learn enough. Because we have courses here. They’re going to teach you copyright, they’re going to teach you marketing, they’re going to teach all of those things. That makes you just savvy enough to know what’s going on. Because if you have no clue whatsoever, that’s when you’re in trouble. You see that with musicians who it’s like, All I want to be is be I don’t care about the business side. Then a pile of money gets on the table and all of a sudden, they’re ripped off. They say, So and so ripped me off, or this ripped me off. It’s not the case. It’s just that part of that music business, part of you being a performer. The successful ones do know at least the basics of business. They don’t have to wear a suit and tie every day, but they need to know what copyright is, what control composition clause is, and a few things like that because it affects them directly.
Jason Tonioli
One thing I think has really been a game changer over the last 10 years, I really feel like it’s changed, but you used to have to sign with a record label. And there’s pros and cons, I think, to both, to signing. But as an independent artist, I mean, it’s almost become, in order to be successful with a label, I almost feel like a lot of artists need to make it as an indie artist before sometimes they go even consider doing a label because there’s all of that organic social media and just building your fan base that is really the thing that matters most. The label can’t do that for you. It’s either you’re likable and you want to put yourself out there or you’re not, right?
Don Cusic
Yeah, there’s two things happening here. One is that the major labels are looking for acts who have a lot of streams, who have proven themselves in the market. The other side is we have a lot of artists who have a lot of streams who don’t want to be on a major label because they have a lot of freedom like it is. Really an independent label because of social media, they can succeed, but it takes constant self-promotion. It really does. You talk about it being a business, it’s a job. You’ve got to look at it as a job, too. It’s a creative side, but it’s a job of getting all these things done and establishing a career. Taylor Swift taught Nashville about social media because she was 14, 15. You remember MySpace?
Jason Tonioli
I do.
Don Cusic
She was on MySpace. Then, of course, Facebook comes in on the next level. She was there all the time, sitting in her bedroom or whatever, gathering friends, establishing that base, staying in touch, getting that. She’s a textbook case of how to do it. Now, she’s at the level now that she doesn’t have to be sitting on the side of a bedroom texting everybody or emailing everybody. But that was the key to her success. She’s certainly a talented writer. People have always been saying she couldn’t sing. She sings well enough. But that’s key, building that. She has managed to bring that audience along with her. That’s rare. I mean, outside of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and a few acts like that.
Jason Tonioli
They drop off. So I had the opportunity to sit down with Rick Barker, who was Taylor Swift’s manager for several years, and just listen to his story. We were just sitting out on a patio, actually, in Orlando one night. It was interesting to listen to him just talk about some of the stories of how Taylor did come up and how he’d coached her along. But one of my big takeaways from hearing about that story is that she was able, and I still think she does a really good job with this, she was able to be human and relatable. I think a lot of times these superstars or the idea of being a rock star type of person is now you’re untouchable and you’re too good for other people. I think in a lot of cases, when that happens to some of these artists, they have to have some space because you do get some crazy fans out there. But if you look at what Taylor has been able to do where she does pull people Lynn, and she’s very likable and very human.
That, I think, has been a big difference. That’s not an easy thing to do day in and day out and be on. Essentially, you’re on stage because everybody’s watching for you to do something dumb and criticize you. That’s a difficult place to be.
Don Cusic
Mental health is a big problem in this country today, obviously, but we’re seeing an effect artist. You’ve got to have your act together. You’ve got to have some emotional grounding. You’ve got to have some people around you. Sometimes people criticize somebody who still got their old friends, the Elvis, Memphis Mafia. But that keeps you saying, keeps you grounded. Tom T. Hall once said that whenever he felt he had a big head, he stood in front of a mirror and put a tennis shoe on top of his head and just looked into the mirror. That humbled him down just a bit. But you need that. I remember Mike Kerb told me one time, said, with Axe, You can talk to them on the way up, and you can talk to them on the way down, but you can’t talk to them when they’re on top. You just can’t get there.
Jason Tonioli
Interesting. Well, so you’ve been around the industry in Nashville, really for almost the last 50 years or so. But in learning more about Nashville and where things have gone, It’s interesting. Nashville wasn’t country music, or just wasn’t even really even a music town for a long time. I think Chicago was that center of all of the country music back around World War II time. And then what was the difference, I guess, that brought and made Nashville into what it is today?
Don Cusic
It’s interesting. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Nashville did not have a single recording studio or a record company in town. A guy named Jim Boulet, who looked like bullets, started bullet records, and he also started a distribution system, which you had to have in a pressing plant in the vinyl days or Black days at that time. That established the groundwork. Owen Bradley, who’s one of the founders of Music Row, said that Ernest Tub was a person. Ernest Tub was a big, big seller for Dekar. Dekar had several big acts, Red Foley and Ernest Tub on the roster. He said that they asked him if he wouldn’t mind recording in Nashville. The big hit had come out of Nashville, a pop hit called Near You. Ernest said, Yes. Owen Bradley always said that if Owen had not said yes, they wouldn’t have been able to become a recording center. The other thing that played into that was the Musicians Union. The union at that time kept a lot of country guys and blues guys out of the union. They didn’t want to be geared for big bands. They were geared for music literacy.
You had to take a literacy test to get in. The guy here named Cooper led in the country boys. With that, that opened up network television. The musicians could make a living. It’s not like, Are you going to order dessert? I’ve got a session. In that bargaining, I’ll do it for $10. Will you do it for $8? Took away all of that stuff. Those are key. The other thing was you had a business structure. Grandol Opry was owned by an insurance company. Those insurance executives who knew the business side, who weren’t musicians, who didn’t want to be musicians, they established that structure, that business structure, which let music grow. All of those factors go into that.
Jason Tonioli
You’ve done these 30 books. I know you’ve done some of them biographies or just stories, but I’m looking at the list of your books like Willy Nelson, Johnny Cash, Jean Autry, Riba. You’ve dove in to get to know some of these really, really super successful people or musicians well. I’m curious to know, is there some specific behaviors or habits or things or just mindset that these individuals… I mean, can you isolate any specific thing that you’re like, Okay, if you could build the perfect musician, these are traits that that person is going to do or that they’ll look at the world?
Don Cusic
Persistence. Persistence is key. Ambition. You know, a lot of people that succeed have a driving ambition, and a lot of times, they really can’t do anything else. But I think that work ethic is so, so important. Luck plays a part in it, but luck is generally the last 5% because there’s people that are equally talented and one becomes a star and one doesn’t. But I think you can make a living in the business today, the way it is with your basic talent, you can make a living. You make a living by that persistence, by staying on social media, by working on your songs. One of the things that I think is good for our aspiring musicians, and they hate it, is to do cover songs, new cover songs just like the record, because that’s going to show you some other licks. The other thing, that’s how you get paid for performing in the bars. You’re either going to go towards the bars or to the churches, depending upon where you’re at there. There’s people down on Lower Broadway in Nashville making a good living playing cover songs. They have all of these brides coming into town to have one last blowout.
Every weekend, they’re singing and dancing down on Lower Broadway. I think it’s valuable. The other thing, when somebody goes out… Now, Nashville, you can get away with it a little better, a little more often. But people sitting in a crowd to listen to a singer-songwriter, you need to give that audience something that they’re familiar with to keep them interested. Yeah, you can do your own songs, but remember, there’s two parts. There’s a songwriter and there’s the artist. The songwriter wants self-expression. They want people to know how they feel about this or that. The artist wants to attract the crowd. I tell the students that I ask, I said, You’re playing bars. Remember, you’re in the food and drink business. They were saying, Oh, so and so, I like my songs. Yeah, okay. But the reason he’s hired you is to pull in a crowd because he pulls in a crowd. An easy way to do that is go to a bar on a Monday or Tuesday night and say, Would you like some entertainment? Because it’s their day of night. If you can pull in a crowd who will buy food and drinks, you’ve got yourself a money-making picture there.
Of course, then you circle outside. You’ve got a hometown. I’m talking about before they get to Nashville, they’ll have a hometown. You play around there and then you widen that circle a bit and keep widening it. That’s basically how Texas has it down to a science where you got guys down there who just played Texas. There’s a Texas chart and everything. But they get to Nashville by broadening that circle. That’s what you do. It’s something they really want to do. It’s living the dream, really. It can’t just be a dream. It’s got to be work. It’s got to be work.
Jason Tonioli
If you’ve got a kid in one of these classes that wants to make it in the music business, one of the things I see, and I feel like this is a recurring theme with younger artists, but also even more experienced people that have even made it, is they sometimes call it imposter syndrome. Where people feel like they’re not good enough or they’re not confident enough, and they second guess themselves. What advice do you have for people is when you get that moment where you’re like, Oh, I’m not as good as that person, or I’m not. They put in the work and the time, but for whatever reason, we just second guess our ability to… I’m sure even sometimes with you, you’re like, Man, I’ve done 30 books, but who am I to write 31 books? I just think it’s one of those that until you’ve lived long enough and been mature enough, I still think it’s easy to second guess our abilities and ask why me, right?
Don Cusic
Yeah, I’ve seen that. I’ve talked to… In fact, I was talking to Eddie Arnold one time. I said, Do you ever wonder why you were the one picked, or whether you were the big star? And he says, Yeah. He didn’t want to talk about it much, but he did. As Chris Christoffer said, Why me, Lord? That imposter syndrome. But you just got to plow through. You just got to plow through it. That’s all I can say. Stay busy or something like that. But if you dwell on that too much, you lose your seat at the table. You’re not going to stick around. So you have to somehow figure out how to. It helps if you have a wife or husband who’s supportive, who can tell you the truth, pull you in line, and that you’ll listen to them rather than run off and get a different husband or wife. But I don’t have an answer to that question. I mean, I see it. I’ve been around it, but most people keep it down. The successful ones keep it down. It’s not that they’re denying this. They just don’t want to talk about it.
Jason Tonioli
Yeah.
Don Cusic
It’s just, Well, I got a lucky draw, so I’ll try to give back. That’s a way that they can alleviate that by giving back, by doing a charity concert, by volunteering for something, or that whole idea of helping other people, not just playing a song for them, but helping other people help you. I think that’s key right there.
Jason Tonioli
Speaking of the business And especially, I guess, with the school you’re at, right there with all the recording studios all around, the relationships is something that I feel like is so, so important in this industry. When you have these kids coming into your classes or just these younger musicians that want to come into Nashville, how do you convince some young kid that doesn’t feel like they’re good enough to speak up and try to build relationships? How do you get somebody to just get over that? Because I feel like that imposter syndrome they have for those younger generations probably is a little more pervasive, especially in Nashville, because everybody’s really good on the guitar and singing. What advice do you give those kids to let them know, Hey, you put your pants on the same way as everybody else. Come on, get out there. I really don’t give much advice because they’re not going to pay attention to it anyway.
Don Cusic
That’s not my gift, the empathy and the sympathy and all that. The one answer I give over and over again is get in front of a crowd because the crowd will tell you. If you’re wanting to be an artist, get in front of a crowd. The crowd will tell you and tell you pretty quick. Now, if they tell you no, and you fold up your tent, you go home, it doesn’t matter how talented you are. You weren’t made for the business. You have to have a thick skin in a lot of ways. But that’s my answer a lot. You get in front of a crowd and they’re stomping, and yelling, and clapping. It means you got something. It means you can do something. That’s the way I do it. I’m not very good… I would never make a minister, let’s put it. Tell them how it is, right?
Jason Tonioli
The business can be pretty harsh sometimes.
Don Cusic
It’ll break your heart.
Jason Tonioli
Yep, it can. You’ve got a brand new book coming out about a pretty good guitarist that I think a lot of people probably heard of. Tell me a little bit about that book and how did you end up deciding to write that specific book as well?
Don Cusic
Well, Ken Atkins, of course, is a legend. He was the most famous guitar player in the 20th century. When we got to the 21st century, there’s a lot of people who probably heard the name but didn’t really know who he was. But he developed the style of guitar playing that nobody had done before. Most people play with a pick where they strum or the pick plucks out the notes. He heard a guy named Merle Travis. Merle Travis played what he called thumb picking, and the thumb gets on that tonic note. If you’re in C, it’ll hit C, or maybe hit C and G. Then he played the melody on the high strings with a finger. What Chet did was he alternated with those bottom strings, and he would play, I’ll give you the name of the strings, E. No, he would give you A, D, E, D. A, D, E, D, over and over. Try and just try it. It’s hard to do. He was influential by being so famous. Of course, Chet could play anything. But a lot of people don’t play in that style. They do the finger style, which is a thumb and one finger, or maybe a thumb and two fingers, and it’s slower.
Chet could play up-tempo songs like that. He’s an interesting story because he wasn’t just a guitar player. He was an executive with RCA, head of RCA in Nashville. He was a producer, produced all these great songs, Eddie Arnold and Jim Reeves and Wayland Jennings and Willie Nelson and a whole slew of people. The thing as a musician that I always thought was interesting about him, you know a lot of guitar players, and they’re really good and they’re really accomplished, but they don’t practice. They have to pick up a guitar maybe every night or something, or they’re playing a gig or they’re doing sessions or whatever, but they don’t really practice, running the scales and all that. And Chet always practices. Even when he was very successful, he made himself sit down and practice every day. So that’s a lesson for musicians right there. No matter how good you are, keep practicing.
Jason Tonioli
Interesting. And with his story, he was all the way up until about 2000, I think. He was still playing and doing things, right?
Don Cusic
Well, last year, he would sit on his couch and hold his guitar. But yeah, he was up till that last year. Yeah, he still played. He had to have that audience. He needed that audience. He couldn’t play as well as he used and he always complained about that. But he kept playing. That was his purpose. He gave him a purpose. Like I said, up to last year when he had all his cancers, he had brain cancer and all his operations and all those things. So that took a toll. But, yeah, way up to the end.
Jason Tonioli
So with that book, are there any big lessons that you glean from him that would help others? What’s that big, the two or three bullet point things, major lessons that musicians ought to take away from his life and what he was able to accomplish, other than practicing, I guess.
Don Cusic
Yeah. Chet said that if you have to make someone practice, they’re not going to make it. That you’re looking for people who play, who play a lot. I’m familiar with Tommy Emmanuel, but Tommy Emmanuel never puts down a guitar. You’re talking to him, and he’s still playing the guitar. The first line in the book, I think, sums up Chet, and it said, This is the story of a boy who fell in love with a guitar. If you want to sum up Chet’s life, that’s it. This is the story of the boy who fell in love with a guitar, and he stayed in love with the guitar up till the end. Like I said, particularly those last six months or so, he lost it. He just, well, he was dying. That’s what ‘s happening. I think that’s good advice for a musician. He said one time that he used to sleep with his guitar, and that all great musicians would sleep with their guitar. It’s just a Well, it’s a habit, but it’s just a passion for somebody. You hear people say, I’ve got a passion for this, or this is my passion. But he proved it.
Of course, he had to be on the road to go to business meetings in New York and stuff like that. He always took a guitar. Always took a guitar. It was a funny story. He went on a cruise, and he and his wife and another guy watched him. He said, Well, you know, he loved that story.
Jason Tonioli
Awesome. So the book is available now or it’s coming out real soon, right?
Don Cusic
Coming out June first. June first.
Jason Tonioli
So if people want to go find that, where’s the best place for them to go to find that book?
Don Cusic
Well, right now it’s Amazon. It’s on pre-order. You can pre-order it.
Jason Tonioli
Okay.
Don Cusic
And of course, as soon as it comes out, then you get the book. I haven’t even gotten a copy of it. I haven’t seen the copy of it yet. They’re still printing it up or working on pictures, or I can’t remember what they’re doing now, but they should be winding it up pretty soon. But it’s pre-ordered. You can pre-order on Amazon.
Jason Tonioli
Got you. Will people be able to order it on your website as well, or is that likely? Not today.
Don Cusic
My website is getting worked on. I hesitate for anybody to go to the website. I’m supposed to meet with the webmaster at the end of the week. I have a website and all of that, but it needed updating and all of that. We’re supposed to meet on Wednesday to find out how that can happen or when it will happen.
Jason Tonioli
Well, fantastic. Well, Dawn, I appreciate you taking time to just chat with us. I think just your insights, as many people as you’ve been around, you’ve just got a very unique perspective. It’s rare that you find somebody who’s been into the Western Music Hall of Fame and just been so influential in just helping tell artists stories over the years. Yeah. I’ve got one last question for you. So as you’re diving in and researching these individuals, and some of them are alive, some aren’t anymore, what’s your process to go dive in and help uncover those really good stories as you’re putting a book together? Have you got any secrets? What do you do?
Don Cusic
Well, you asked me how I decided on the Chet book or any book. It’s not so much you pick them or you pick it, whatever the topic is, is that they pick you. And with Chet, because I knew Chet, I didn’t know him well, but I knew him, and I’d interviewed him a couple of times. Not long in-depth interviewing. Then I’d run around, people would talk about him, and then I’d write an article about him. I’d read, Next thing you know, you’ve done a little more and done a little more. You haven’t really made a commitment then, but then you see, it’s like rolling along and you’re rolling with it. Then the process is you talk to people that knew him, and you get with the internet today, you can get so much stuff that you couldn’t get before. You can pick up newspaper stories from Cincinnati and Minneapolis or something that you couldn’t do before. All of that, we’ve got some good archives down here. Country Music Foundation. It has a good archive. You go where they grew up. I went over to East Tennessee to where he was born and walked the area. Then I went down to Columbus, Georgia, which is where he went to school and where he developed that Chet Acken style of playing.
You breathe in the air, you absorb the artist, and then you listen to what he did. He had a bunch of albums. It’s hard to say exactly how many because it’ll be one cut on an album or they’ll repackage an album, a best out or something like that. But He actually did about 100 albums to listen to, and listen not just as background, but what is he doing? What is he saying? Interviews, all of those kinds of things. It’s just a matter of the same thing with becoming an artist. It’s a matter of persistence to keep going with it. Then you hit that stage when you’re trying to finish it up, when you hate the guy because you run out of energy. But we’ll keep that part quiet.
Jason Tonioli
Well, I just appreciate it. I’m going to take away persistence. That’s going to be my keyword I think, I walk away with today, it is just sticking at it and showing up every day and practicing and doing it over and over and over again, just because it’s almost like who you are. You almost can’t help it, I think, with these artists that really go big. And like you said, they wouldn’t have anything else that they could do because they were so meant to do that. Well, thank you so much for sharing. For sure, people need to go check out that book. Don Don Cusic. Com is your website. And I know you’ve got a lot of links to all of the books. And so anybody looking to really dive into country music history and just the stories with a lot of these famous people. I don’t think there’s anybody that’s more well-versed and told more stories in that realm than you have. So thank you for everything.
Don Cusic
Thank you, Jason.
Jason Tonioli
Thank you for everything you’ve done for that community and just for making, for helping tell the stories of these great people that have done a whole lot for them, just the world with their music. So thank you.
Don Cusic
Well, I really appreciate our little interview here. It’s been enlightening. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s good talking about this stuff.
Jason Tonioli
Well, thanks so much. We’ll catch you. I may have to have you back on the next one because there’s several other artists that I know you’ve written about that I think could be some very interesting stories. We’ll get those on the next one.
Don Cusic
Okay. I’ll look forward to it.
Jason Tonioli
Awesome.