Maverick's story
Jan 4, 2018 18:54:31 GMT -5
FearlesslySpeakNow, fearlessreputations, and 1 more like this
Post by theedad on Jan 4, 2018 18:54:31 GMT -5
This is not MY meet and greet story ..
This was the best M&G story posted on old TC.. IMO
Also; I've never met Taylor
Also; Years ago I asked Maverick for permission to reprint this on Taycon so I think it's ok to reprint here.
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HOW TAYLOR SWIFT CHANGED MY LIFE, BY A 42 YEAR OLD MAN
It's actually happened a few times over the last 23 years of my radio career. The little kids start to call. Not just a few, or a room full calling one after the other over and over. I mean wall-to-wall, a virtual deluge of calls for something that I had no idea what it was. I've learned to find out. I remember distinctly in 1991 when they started to blanket us with calls for something called "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Back then, I didn't bother to go chase down what they were talking about. It was only later, when its popularity forced me to deal with it, that I got hip. Boy, did I miss the signals on that one. Not like it changed the face of modern music or pop culture or anything. Since then, I try not to miss the signals. Sometimes it turns out to be Soulja Boy, or some other derelict flash-in-the-pan, sometimes it turns out to be another culture-changing, meaningful artist in the making. So, in late summer 2006, when the calls were literally to the point of annoying, I decided to look into this song called "Tim McGraw" all these kids were swooning for...
A New Phase
I had been out of rock radio, my first love, for about a year when I accidentally scored some part-time work at the sister, Country station. I had a little boy, then 4 and a half. I was pushing 40, looking for a professional home. I took what hours I could get, regardless of the fact that the music really wasn't my bag. Wasn't the first time I'd worked a format that played stuff I could do without, but a good jock can work any format. I had grown up around country music, had worked my first 3 years in radio at a little bitty country AM. I had a lot of friends working there, knew it was a winning operation, so I went with it.
What I found when I got there was not just a radio station, but a group of people that really were like family. The listeners had a regard for this station as if it were a member of their own families. The family/community relationship between the station and its music and its listeners rivaled any I had seen before. The open emotion that was shown, encouraged, and accepted in this community was also unprecedented. How uncool in rock or pop radio that sort of thing is, unless you're an angry rocker, a self-loathing goth, or you just can't resist how cute that pop idol is. That's perfectly reasonable in those places, and expected. These country people were crying about their mamas, lamenting the aging of their children, musically expressing regrets over bad choices or missed opportunities in their lives. The sort of stuff that can really get to you if you face it and try to deal with it. Honestly, sometimes, it's downright depressing. I mean life is tough enough day to day without having to be transported via song to someone else's emotions, and without having emotions evoked from me without my prior consent. Honestly, it was starting to get to me. I wondered how long I'd be able to tough it out to continue in the medium that I loved.
Lesson Learned
So, "Tim McGraw", huh? Well, there were quite a few little girls singing country music in 2006. Seemed to kinda be the trend....Miley Cyrus, Michelle Branch and others. I'd seen these kids on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, but now they were breaking out into mainstream, adult charts. At first, "Tim McGraw" just seemed like a sweet little song about a summer romance from my teenage years, possibly just a music biz attempt to capitalize on the current trend with a catchy hook and a cute girl. Cool. Then I noticed it was sticking in my head. "When you think happiness, I hope you think of that little black dress"....you know, there was something more to this song. It really was well-done from top to bottom. What could possibly be more universal than young, innocent love? She was cute, for sure, but she had the chops, too. Not just as a singer, either. She actually wrote it. I wondered if she'd be able to pull it off again. This is the problem with a lot of new artists. I think almost everyone has at least one good song in them. The trick is to keep them coming. There are only just so many George Straits, ya know. Love him or hate him, he has over 50 number one singles. People struggle their whole lives just trying to get the first one.
The songs just kept coming and hitting heavy rotation. Teardrops On My Guitar. Our Song. By this point, it was already the summer of 2007. I was working quite a bit at the radio station, and had my son with me for many many shifts. He grew to like a lot of the music we played, including those Taylor Swift songs.
The whole country music thing all of a sudden seemed to fit with where I was in my life. It was all about family and country and God and it seemed old-fashioned in a way, reminded me of my Grandma. I was a late Dad. Crazy about my only child, born when I was 35, constantly indulging his every whim. Bending over backwards to provide him a fairytale childhood at every turn. I knew he liked those songs and knew some of the words, so when I heard Taylor was in town and would be doing an interview from the radio station"s party deck at the amphitheater, I thought it would be cool for him to meet someone in person whose songs he knew from the radio. Off to the venue we went early in the afternoon before the gates opened.
Taylor was in the "opening for the opening band" slot on the bill with the Brad Paisley tour. For those not familiar, it's customary for the last 10 years or so in country music to have 2 opening acts, not just 1. The first, upstart act gets 25 minutes. The middle, more established act gets more like 45 minutes. Then, the headliner. These opening acts are generally more willing to do interviews before the show, especially with an influential country station that is playing their song. The radio station was
broadcasting live from the amphitheater that day, and I also work as a stagehand (local roadie) for concerts there and had set up the show earlier that morning. I tried to contribute to these broadcasts when possible by bringing in some unknown backstage detail about the show like how many pounds of confetti Rascal Flatts was going to shoot, how Toby Keith would have a pickup truck on stage, or details about the one of Kenny Chesney's 18-wheelers that was setup backstage in the loading area as a tiki bar. So, that day I had my (then) five and a half year old boy with me, and we headed up to the deck to hang out a while.
Here's Where It Gets Deeper
She arrived on a golf cart full of people, one of whom was her mother. Tentative, a little awkward, still seeming a little unsure that any of this was really happening, and obviously grateful for everyone's nice words. She was a sweet, gracious, and beautiful girl who made the extra effort to spend some time with the kids of station staffers on the deck. One of them, of course, was mine. She really did a number on him. No, that's not fair that makes it sound like she operated some nefarious scheme. All she really did was be herself for a few minutes around some people she didn't know. She was just a child herself, and I think she felt more comfortable with them than with the rest of us. I chatted with her mom for a minute or two, she gave us a couple of guitar picks, I congratulated her on the success her family was enjoying, and they were gone again after just 15 minutes or so. I didn't realize the monster I had created that day...
Before long, the boy was singing the songs without hearing them on the radio, comparing other cute girls to her ("yeah, she's cute. But she's no Taylor Swift...). Sweet, I thought, he's got a little crush on Taylor Swift. Soon, I had to burn him a cd with all her songs from the radio station on it. By now, that would include Picture to Burn, and Shoulda Said No. We saw Taylor on TV, getting newcomer awards, being cute, worshipping her fans, taking country music by storm. His crush grew. We listened to the cd on the way to football practice 3 nights a week. He began to change the words as he sang, declaring that he'd never make her cry or treat her bad and that she didn't need all those boys in her songs. ..
BOOM. Suddenly, I cared about what he was listening to, and who he was looking up to. It's mid 2008 by now, the boy is 6 and a half. Taylor has become a much larger property. We're on her 5th top ten single now, she's won a bunch of awards. Seems she'll be hanging around for a little while at least. She's still under 18 though, and despite the best efforts of her parents, when she hits 18 she can do as she pleases. So many times we've all witnessed it before. At that time, we were all witnessing
Lindsay Lohan, recent-adult/former-teen-DisneyChannel-star. It was difficult to imagine how a 12 year old might deal with having her idol suffer such a terrible downfall, how her parents must have struggled to explain the whole thing, and how I hoped my son would never have to go there. Oh, he'll have to come to grips with people being people eventually, but 8 or 10 or 12 just seems too soon. I started to think ahead, all the while hoping that the sweet little girl I had met a year before and who had treated my little boy with gentle kindness would stay that way.
This Is Starting To Get Serious
By the summer of 2008, she started popping up in WalMart with her exclusive EP being sold there, and her ads for LEI jeans all over the place. There was this big standup in the store, near the front door, and the boy would actually run over to hug it when we would go in the store. Now I knew, when it was announced that she was opening for Rascal Flatts, and in the middle position, that she was here to stay. That year I had this acoustic guitar I had bought at a pawn shop that I was dragging around everywhere I went, just to see who I could get to sign it over the course of a year. The ultimate goal was to auction it on eBay and give the proceeds to a fundraiser held by a dear friend in memory of her baby girl, a victim of Leukemia. I dragged the guitar with me that day, with the dual purpose in mind of getting Taylor and Kellie Pickler to sign the guitar, and getting the boy close to Taylor again.
Again she arrived in a flurry of energy on a golf cart, just the absolute picture of beauty and freshness and youth. My son, along with the twin daughters of a fellow station staffer and the daughter of another were on the deck at the time. The little girls were enchanted with the real-life princess who had appeared in front of them from the off cover of a cd booklet. The boy was unable to look away from her. He had grabbed a big seashell from our most recent beach trip just before we left the house, and had written "To Taylor Swift, From G" with a marker on the inside. As she floated up the few steps from the lawn to the deck with signature bouncy blond curls all over and wearing an innocent little sundress and strappy sandals, there was a sense of relief amongst the adults/jocks on the air that she had arrived at exactly the right time. We were just coming out of a song or commercial break, we thought her arrival would allow for her to step right up and knock out the interview right away.
What nobody counted on, however, was what Taylor thought. She thought that the adults could wait. She thought that the children were more important, and that's who she paid attention to. Not her father, not the record company guy, not the air staff. She proceeded to ignore everyone of legal drinking age and spent a leisurely few minutes talking to the kids, hugging them, laughing with them, telling them how cute they were, and accepting their gifts and love with genuine gratitude. When she decided they'd been taken care of, she stood up and again gave her attention to the
needs of the appearance. She gave an extremely comfortable few minutes to the radio listeners, displaying a poise and self-confidence that was rivaled only by the accompanying humility and thankfulness that emanated from her even when Billy threw a "so, who are you dating these days?" question at her. This was no longer a slightly out of place awkward little girl. She had realized what she was now, and was getting a handle on accepting it. I guess she didn't really have much of a choice, but I remember thinking that she had matured greatly in just that short year, and it reminded me of the innocence in her songs, her teenage life, and mine. There's a huge difference between 16 and 17. Such is not the essence of being 41 or 42. I caught myself silently thanking her for reminding me of it.
She was getting to me. She had the boy for sure, but now she was chinking the armor of a crusty old cynical rocker. Unfamiliar territory to say the least.[/quote]
OK, This Part Is Probably Just My Hangup
While she was doing the interview, and in the few more minutes she spent signing the charity items for me and for the station's annual Children's Hospital fundraiser, the boy became intent on staying in front of her, so he was always looking at her face. He jockeyed for position without regard for bumping into others, or what anyone else was doing. He was going to stay where he could see her, and that was that. So now it was on. She was more than just a passing cute girl and catchy song on the radio. As a father, one of the more difficult things I've found that I have to deal with is accepting things that affect my child that are totally out of my control. Parents can relate to the heartbreak of having your baby cry because someone else was mean to them, or because they're out of whatever Transformers toy that he had his heart set on. What I began to fear was the future. I had done all this Taylor Swifting, and if something bad happened, I'd feel as if I had done it to him myself. Should I try to get him interested in something else, just in case? How would I explain to a 7 year old why she went all Britney Spears, and what that meant? Would he lose trust in me and in the people he looked up to in general? I don't know, I'm new to this Dad thing. This is the kind of stuff I worry about. On the other hand, I think parents are the key to this story. More later.
The Next Two Years
Oh, yeah. She's still here, and he still loves her, more than ever in fact. These days, though, he knows the words to the new Taylor song before I've even played it on the radio. He knows the words to songs we've never played on the radio. We now have two copies of our homemade Greatest Hits CD, one for each car so he can listen no matter who's driving him around. He was disappointed she didn't play here last summer. Don't worry, boy, she'll be back and we'll go. This time around, however, she's an even huger property than the last time we ran into her. She's got an entire showcase full of awards now. She's headlining the tour, sold out 52 shows in a row, and promo tickets and meet and greets are MUCH harder to come by. When word got around that staff tickets would be almost nonexistent, I knew I'd have to jump into the trenches and try to buy them online when they went onsale. Shut out of the media presale on Thursday. Shut out of the regular presale on Friday. Shut out of the general onsale on Saturday. Ugh. The show was still several months away, so I put the word out at the station: if anybody who bought a pair winds up not being able to go, please sell them to me. Nothing. I had finally resorted to putting up a pleading note in the studio asking if anyone had a pair to sell. Stress. Then, as if they knew I needed a pair, the tour released another small batch of tickets on a Thursday afternoon at 5pm about 10 days before the show. SCORE! I hadn't even mentioned the show to the boy before that, so that he wouldn't be disappointed if I couldn't get us in. Now I knew I"d have to go about trying to get someone from the station to get him into the meet and greet. He"d be crushed if he didn"t get to see her this time. Forget about me, just take him. He's a sweet, well-mannered boy, he'll be okay with why'all for 15 minutes. Because we have now been a part of this radio family for over 5 years, and the people here have seen him grow up loving her, they agreed to take care of him.
Time For A Little Backstory Fill-In
The first year I met Taylor, she was still only 16, and her parents traveled with here everywhere. In 2007, she had her Mom with her. In 2008, it was her dad. While Taylor fulfilled her appearance obligations, I stepped over to chat with him Dad to Dad. I asked him how it felt to have a little girl with such talent that she wrote 5 huge hits off her first album before she was barely 16. "Amazing" he said. "We're very blessed". I asked him what he did as her father to foster this. Heavy parent involvement every step of the way? How had they noticed her talent and encouraged it? Give me something I can use, it's obvious you did something right. "It's all her, really. All we did when she was a little girl was tell her she could change the world". The words hung in the air loudly to my ear, drowning out all the surrounding activity. Wow. Seems so simple, but how often do parents say stuff like that to their kids? After that day, I began to say it quite often to my son. "You can change the world, boy". "How?" was his most common response. "I don't know, boy, however you feel like it needs to be changed. Maybe you"ll go to Mars. Maybe you"ll entertain people and make them happy that way like Taylor Swift does. Or maybe you"ll just touch someone else's life and make it better..."
In 2010, surprisingly, Taylor still had her mom along for the ride. They share a bus, just the two of them. Mom had also gotten more comfortable with the whole situation, and during the meet and greet spent a lot of time talking about how Taylor did things with regard to her career. She has no manager. She oversees her own website, designs her own sets and shows so that people see the songs the way she wants them to be seen. She doesn't have a fan club because she doesn't ever want to charge anyone for access to her. She believes everyone should have equal, free access. She has a room set up for after the show, and during the show she has her people go through the crowd and just pick fans for the after-show meet and greet based on their homemade shirts and signs, or how they're dancing their butts off in the upper level. She spends 15-20 minutes of the show walking through the crowd hugging people, leaving a wake of crying little girls, moms and dads, and even a few teenage boys behind her. She's 20 now, a full-grown adult, fully in charge of her own thing, and does things exactly the way she thinks they should be done regardless of tradition or precedent or the wise advice of music industry veterans.
Way to go Mr and Mrs Swift! As much as I had cherished the nugget of parenting advice I had gotten from her father two years earlier, I realized that I needed to make sure I said it more. On the way to the show, I asked the boy when the last time I told him he could change the world was. "I don't know" he replied. I flinched slightly, realizing that I had fallen down on the job somewhat, and said "Well, you can."
Didn't See That Coming
As it turns out, Taylor had requested that there be a radio only meet and greet before the regular one with listeners. She said she wanted the radio people and their loved ones to gather so that she could spend a few intimate minutes with each of us, and to thank us all for what radio had done for her. Lisa and Billy (the program director and music director) would be alone. They had 10 spots, and only 6 people. I can only imagine how many people approached them before the show, asking for tickets and backstage, pleading with heart-tugging stories about their daughters and how much it would mean to them. Can I buy them from you? Can I do something crazy to win them? I've got this big client, and his little girl wants.... I don't envy them, being in that position all the time. I've been there just as a jock, but on a much smaller level. I was only half-joking when I asked Lisa to adopt the boy for a few minutes to get him in. She knows that I rarely ask for freebies and tickets, almost never for meet and greets, and usually if I do ask it's for something plentiful and that I will take the boy to. I was stunned when she told me they were taking us both in.
Around 6 o"clock the day of the show, we gathered at the broadcast position outside the arena and waited. Anticipation grew, as not only were staff waiting anxiously for the Vibe Room Meet and Greet, we had listeners who had won their way into the pre-show meet and greet whose nerves were also on edge standing with us.
Eventually, the guy from the record company walked out, gave the word, and lead our small group in. We were lead through the concourse, down the steps to the floor, walking past everyone only to disappear into the catacomb of hallways beneath the arena, finally arriving at one of many nondescript red doors along the seemingly endless hallway. When it opened, it was like in the movies when you step through a doorway into a totally different place and time. It was the T Party Room, the one set aside for the after show get-together. Decorated by Taylor, she personally selected the fabrics, furniture, foosball table, big screen TV, personally applied her own pictures to a collage in the center of the room, provided food and drink while we waited. Usually, they told us, there are 60-75 people in here. Right then, there were about 12 of us. We'd get a chance to actually talk to her for a minute or two, instead of the hurried 10 or 15 seconds of the larger, "cattle-call" meet and greet that would follow. This is great, I thought. We'll get a chance to explain the picture we brought, taken at our last meeting in 2008. It was a picture of Taylor sitting with the station kids who had been on the deck. Taylor and the three little princesses all faced forward and smiled for the camera. Really a cute shot. The boy was on the end of the row, two people away from Taylor. He was looking at Taylor, an unmistakable look of enchantment and love on his face. We had shown the picture off to everyone we knew for 2 years. Rather than being embarrassed by it, he was proud. When we found out he might be able to meet her again, I thought it would be great to print out an 8 x 10 of it and have her sign it. He thought it would be a better idea if we made two copies so he could autograph one to her. I agreed.
She came in with the same beauty and energy and youthfulness she had appeared with each time we'd seen her before. The feeling in the room was instantly electric. There's just something about some people that makes others gravitate towards them, hoping just to be near them. She's one of those people. We were on the far side of the room, I told the boy we need to wait our turn, let her talk to Lisa and Billy and the others first. Both of us fidgeted nervously as she made her way through the room. He had his picture in hand ready to give to her when she approached us....
Ok, I've been in radio for close to 25 years now. I've met and interviewed so many celebrities I have almost lost count. From Ray Manzarek to Aerosmith, from Jesse Helms to Elizabeth Dole, Nancy Grace to Chris Rock, from a guy who can predict weather by looking at a pig's spleen to the guy who invented Butt Paste. While I'm still a "fan" in general, I've developed a cool, disassociated demeanor for times like this. The unwritten rule in the media is: You Don't Cheer From Press Row. In other words, you got in because you're doing a job, not because you're special or more deserving than someone else. You act like a tourist, and it's likely to be the last time they let you in there. I did my best to calm the boy, to explain that she's just a person like any of the rest of us. Don't be nervous, boy. We"ll get our turn.
When she stepped up to us, I think I remember introducing ourselves. I have no explanation for what happened next. I didn't expect it in my wildest dreams. In an instant I was Fifteen, trying to tell someone that I loved them, and hoping she was gonna believe me. I opened my mouth to speak, but before any words came out I welled up with tears. Touching the boy's head, I said "Thank you so much for being such a pure and positive influence on them..." As my voice cracked before I could finish the sentence, she stepped towards me. The perky smile dropped from her face slightly as her jaw fell open, her piercing blue eyes as wide open as I"ve ever seen them. She stared intently at my face and eyes, seemingly searching them for some sort of clue. She reached out and touched my arm... I had to turn away to keep from bawling. "God, I feel like such an idiot. I'm a 42 year old man and I'm standing here crying. I'm sorry, it's just that as a Dad..." and with that she threw both arms around my neck and gave me the kind of hug Daddy gets when a top wishlist item appears under the tree on Christmas morning: tight squeeze, a quiet cooing thank you in the ear, lingering for a moment, adding one more level of squish before finally letting go. She stepped back, one hand still on my shoulder, looking me directly in the eye with slight amazement, and in the sweetest most genuine tone said, "Oh, my God, you're so sincere! I can't believe how sweet you are...thank you so much for saying that!" And the tears fell. Again, I had to turn away from her while she spent the next minute or two with the boy, accepting his gift, returning the favor. I don't know what they said to each other. It was all I could do to compose myself.
It was then that I realized that the boy was not the only one who loved this little girl. I loved her, too, almost as if she were my own daughter. I had been praying for her continued good fortune, thankful for every day that went by that she didn't appear on the cover of the National Inquirer in some sordid Hollywood late night controversy, proud that she was the one my boy chose to love and look up to and learn from. But I had failed to realize how invested in this I was emotionally. Taylor Swift had just made me cry like a little girl.
So, How Exactly Has Taylor Swift Changed My Life?
The answer is: Immeasurably.
How do you state succinctly the feeling of seeing your child made happy simply due to the graciousness of others, who expect nothing in return? Who can put into words the impact of just a single piece of fatherly advice that could very well "change the world"?
Where is there anything more precious in life than in something that causes you to cry unexpected tears of joy?
Nowhere.
Taylor Swift pointed that out to me the other day.[/quote]She gives us the innocence of her music, the pureness of her self, her time, her love, her gratitude. She reminds me of what it was like to be innocent of heart, and to believe in the simple purity of fairytale love. My boy will learn life and love lessons from the simple emotions she evokes in her messages.
This was the best M&G story posted on old TC.. IMO
Also; I've never met Taylor
Also; Years ago I asked Maverick for permission to reprint this on Taycon so I think it's ok to reprint here.
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HOW TAYLOR SWIFT CHANGED MY LIFE, BY A 42 YEAR OLD MAN
It's actually happened a few times over the last 23 years of my radio career. The little kids start to call. Not just a few, or a room full calling one after the other over and over. I mean wall-to-wall, a virtual deluge of calls for something that I had no idea what it was. I've learned to find out. I remember distinctly in 1991 when they started to blanket us with calls for something called "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Back then, I didn't bother to go chase down what they were talking about. It was only later, when its popularity forced me to deal with it, that I got hip. Boy, did I miss the signals on that one. Not like it changed the face of modern music or pop culture or anything. Since then, I try not to miss the signals. Sometimes it turns out to be Soulja Boy, or some other derelict flash-in-the-pan, sometimes it turns out to be another culture-changing, meaningful artist in the making. So, in late summer 2006, when the calls were literally to the point of annoying, I decided to look into this song called "Tim McGraw" all these kids were swooning for...
A New Phase
I had been out of rock radio, my first love, for about a year when I accidentally scored some part-time work at the sister, Country station. I had a little boy, then 4 and a half. I was pushing 40, looking for a professional home. I took what hours I could get, regardless of the fact that the music really wasn't my bag. Wasn't the first time I'd worked a format that played stuff I could do without, but a good jock can work any format. I had grown up around country music, had worked my first 3 years in radio at a little bitty country AM. I had a lot of friends working there, knew it was a winning operation, so I went with it.
What I found when I got there was not just a radio station, but a group of people that really were like family. The listeners had a regard for this station as if it were a member of their own families. The family/community relationship between the station and its music and its listeners rivaled any I had seen before. The open emotion that was shown, encouraged, and accepted in this community was also unprecedented. How uncool in rock or pop radio that sort of thing is, unless you're an angry rocker, a self-loathing goth, or you just can't resist how cute that pop idol is. That's perfectly reasonable in those places, and expected. These country people were crying about their mamas, lamenting the aging of their children, musically expressing regrets over bad choices or missed opportunities in their lives. The sort of stuff that can really get to you if you face it and try to deal with it. Honestly, sometimes, it's downright depressing. I mean life is tough enough day to day without having to be transported via song to someone else's emotions, and without having emotions evoked from me without my prior consent. Honestly, it was starting to get to me. I wondered how long I'd be able to tough it out to continue in the medium that I loved.
Lesson Learned
So, "Tim McGraw", huh? Well, there were quite a few little girls singing country music in 2006. Seemed to kinda be the trend....Miley Cyrus, Michelle Branch and others. I'd seen these kids on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, but now they were breaking out into mainstream, adult charts. At first, "Tim McGraw" just seemed like a sweet little song about a summer romance from my teenage years, possibly just a music biz attempt to capitalize on the current trend with a catchy hook and a cute girl. Cool. Then I noticed it was sticking in my head. "When you think happiness, I hope you think of that little black dress"....you know, there was something more to this song. It really was well-done from top to bottom. What could possibly be more universal than young, innocent love? She was cute, for sure, but she had the chops, too. Not just as a singer, either. She actually wrote it. I wondered if she'd be able to pull it off again. This is the problem with a lot of new artists. I think almost everyone has at least one good song in them. The trick is to keep them coming. There are only just so many George Straits, ya know. Love him or hate him, he has over 50 number one singles. People struggle their whole lives just trying to get the first one.
The songs just kept coming and hitting heavy rotation. Teardrops On My Guitar. Our Song. By this point, it was already the summer of 2007. I was working quite a bit at the radio station, and had my son with me for many many shifts. He grew to like a lot of the music we played, including those Taylor Swift songs.
The whole country music thing all of a sudden seemed to fit with where I was in my life. It was all about family and country and God and it seemed old-fashioned in a way, reminded me of my Grandma. I was a late Dad. Crazy about my only child, born when I was 35, constantly indulging his every whim. Bending over backwards to provide him a fairytale childhood at every turn. I knew he liked those songs and knew some of the words, so when I heard Taylor was in town and would be doing an interview from the radio station"s party deck at the amphitheater, I thought it would be cool for him to meet someone in person whose songs he knew from the radio. Off to the venue we went early in the afternoon before the gates opened.
Taylor was in the "opening for the opening band" slot on the bill with the Brad Paisley tour. For those not familiar, it's customary for the last 10 years or so in country music to have 2 opening acts, not just 1. The first, upstart act gets 25 minutes. The middle, more established act gets more like 45 minutes. Then, the headliner. These opening acts are generally more willing to do interviews before the show, especially with an influential country station that is playing their song. The radio station was
broadcasting live from the amphitheater that day, and I also work as a stagehand (local roadie) for concerts there and had set up the show earlier that morning. I tried to contribute to these broadcasts when possible by bringing in some unknown backstage detail about the show like how many pounds of confetti Rascal Flatts was going to shoot, how Toby Keith would have a pickup truck on stage, or details about the one of Kenny Chesney's 18-wheelers that was setup backstage in the loading area as a tiki bar. So, that day I had my (then) five and a half year old boy with me, and we headed up to the deck to hang out a while.
Here's Where It Gets Deeper
She arrived on a golf cart full of people, one of whom was her mother. Tentative, a little awkward, still seeming a little unsure that any of this was really happening, and obviously grateful for everyone's nice words. She was a sweet, gracious, and beautiful girl who made the extra effort to spend some time with the kids of station staffers on the deck. One of them, of course, was mine. She really did a number on him. No, that's not fair that makes it sound like she operated some nefarious scheme. All she really did was be herself for a few minutes around some people she didn't know. She was just a child herself, and I think she felt more comfortable with them than with the rest of us. I chatted with her mom for a minute or two, she gave us a couple of guitar picks, I congratulated her on the success her family was enjoying, and they were gone again after just 15 minutes or so. I didn't realize the monster I had created that day...
Before long, the boy was singing the songs without hearing them on the radio, comparing other cute girls to her ("yeah, she's cute. But she's no Taylor Swift...). Sweet, I thought, he's got a little crush on Taylor Swift. Soon, I had to burn him a cd with all her songs from the radio station on it. By now, that would include Picture to Burn, and Shoulda Said No. We saw Taylor on TV, getting newcomer awards, being cute, worshipping her fans, taking country music by storm. His crush grew. We listened to the cd on the way to football practice 3 nights a week. He began to change the words as he sang, declaring that he'd never make her cry or treat her bad and that she didn't need all those boys in her songs. ..
BOOM. Suddenly, I cared about what he was listening to, and who he was looking up to. It's mid 2008 by now, the boy is 6 and a half. Taylor has become a much larger property. We're on her 5th top ten single now, she's won a bunch of awards. Seems she'll be hanging around for a little while at least. She's still under 18 though, and despite the best efforts of her parents, when she hits 18 she can do as she pleases. So many times we've all witnessed it before. At that time, we were all witnessing
Lindsay Lohan, recent-adult/former-teen-DisneyChannel-star. It was difficult to imagine how a 12 year old might deal with having her idol suffer such a terrible downfall, how her parents must have struggled to explain the whole thing, and how I hoped my son would never have to go there. Oh, he'll have to come to grips with people being people eventually, but 8 or 10 or 12 just seems too soon. I started to think ahead, all the while hoping that the sweet little girl I had met a year before and who had treated my little boy with gentle kindness would stay that way.
This Is Starting To Get Serious
By the summer of 2008, she started popping up in WalMart with her exclusive EP being sold there, and her ads for LEI jeans all over the place. There was this big standup in the store, near the front door, and the boy would actually run over to hug it when we would go in the store. Now I knew, when it was announced that she was opening for Rascal Flatts, and in the middle position, that she was here to stay. That year I had this acoustic guitar I had bought at a pawn shop that I was dragging around everywhere I went, just to see who I could get to sign it over the course of a year. The ultimate goal was to auction it on eBay and give the proceeds to a fundraiser held by a dear friend in memory of her baby girl, a victim of Leukemia. I dragged the guitar with me that day, with the dual purpose in mind of getting Taylor and Kellie Pickler to sign the guitar, and getting the boy close to Taylor again.
Again she arrived in a flurry of energy on a golf cart, just the absolute picture of beauty and freshness and youth. My son, along with the twin daughters of a fellow station staffer and the daughter of another were on the deck at the time. The little girls were enchanted with the real-life princess who had appeared in front of them from the off cover of a cd booklet. The boy was unable to look away from her. He had grabbed a big seashell from our most recent beach trip just before we left the house, and had written "To Taylor Swift, From G" with a marker on the inside. As she floated up the few steps from the lawn to the deck with signature bouncy blond curls all over and wearing an innocent little sundress and strappy sandals, there was a sense of relief amongst the adults/jocks on the air that she had arrived at exactly the right time. We were just coming out of a song or commercial break, we thought her arrival would allow for her to step right up and knock out the interview right away.
What nobody counted on, however, was what Taylor thought. She thought that the adults could wait. She thought that the children were more important, and that's who she paid attention to. Not her father, not the record company guy, not the air staff. She proceeded to ignore everyone of legal drinking age and spent a leisurely few minutes talking to the kids, hugging them, laughing with them, telling them how cute they were, and accepting their gifts and love with genuine gratitude. When she decided they'd been taken care of, she stood up and again gave her attention to the
needs of the appearance. She gave an extremely comfortable few minutes to the radio listeners, displaying a poise and self-confidence that was rivaled only by the accompanying humility and thankfulness that emanated from her even when Billy threw a "so, who are you dating these days?" question at her. This was no longer a slightly out of place awkward little girl. She had realized what she was now, and was getting a handle on accepting it. I guess she didn't really have much of a choice, but I remember thinking that she had matured greatly in just that short year, and it reminded me of the innocence in her songs, her teenage life, and mine. There's a huge difference between 16 and 17. Such is not the essence of being 41 or 42. I caught myself silently thanking her for reminding me of it.
She was getting to me. She had the boy for sure, but now she was chinking the armor of a crusty old cynical rocker. Unfamiliar territory to say the least.[/quote]
OK, This Part Is Probably Just My Hangup
While she was doing the interview, and in the few more minutes she spent signing the charity items for me and for the station's annual Children's Hospital fundraiser, the boy became intent on staying in front of her, so he was always looking at her face. He jockeyed for position without regard for bumping into others, or what anyone else was doing. He was going to stay where he could see her, and that was that. So now it was on. She was more than just a passing cute girl and catchy song on the radio. As a father, one of the more difficult things I've found that I have to deal with is accepting things that affect my child that are totally out of my control. Parents can relate to the heartbreak of having your baby cry because someone else was mean to them, or because they're out of whatever Transformers toy that he had his heart set on. What I began to fear was the future. I had done all this Taylor Swifting, and if something bad happened, I'd feel as if I had done it to him myself. Should I try to get him interested in something else, just in case? How would I explain to a 7 year old why she went all Britney Spears, and what that meant? Would he lose trust in me and in the people he looked up to in general? I don't know, I'm new to this Dad thing. This is the kind of stuff I worry about. On the other hand, I think parents are the key to this story. More later.
The Next Two Years
Oh, yeah. She's still here, and he still loves her, more than ever in fact. These days, though, he knows the words to the new Taylor song before I've even played it on the radio. He knows the words to songs we've never played on the radio. We now have two copies of our homemade Greatest Hits CD, one for each car so he can listen no matter who's driving him around. He was disappointed she didn't play here last summer. Don't worry, boy, she'll be back and we'll go. This time around, however, she's an even huger property than the last time we ran into her. She's got an entire showcase full of awards now. She's headlining the tour, sold out 52 shows in a row, and promo tickets and meet and greets are MUCH harder to come by. When word got around that staff tickets would be almost nonexistent, I knew I'd have to jump into the trenches and try to buy them online when they went onsale. Shut out of the media presale on Thursday. Shut out of the regular presale on Friday. Shut out of the general onsale on Saturday. Ugh. The show was still several months away, so I put the word out at the station: if anybody who bought a pair winds up not being able to go, please sell them to me. Nothing. I had finally resorted to putting up a pleading note in the studio asking if anyone had a pair to sell. Stress. Then, as if they knew I needed a pair, the tour released another small batch of tickets on a Thursday afternoon at 5pm about 10 days before the show. SCORE! I hadn't even mentioned the show to the boy before that, so that he wouldn't be disappointed if I couldn't get us in. Now I knew I"d have to go about trying to get someone from the station to get him into the meet and greet. He"d be crushed if he didn"t get to see her this time. Forget about me, just take him. He's a sweet, well-mannered boy, he'll be okay with why'all for 15 minutes. Because we have now been a part of this radio family for over 5 years, and the people here have seen him grow up loving her, they agreed to take care of him.
Time For A Little Backstory Fill-In
The first year I met Taylor, she was still only 16, and her parents traveled with here everywhere. In 2007, she had her Mom with her. In 2008, it was her dad. While Taylor fulfilled her appearance obligations, I stepped over to chat with him Dad to Dad. I asked him how it felt to have a little girl with such talent that she wrote 5 huge hits off her first album before she was barely 16. "Amazing" he said. "We're very blessed". I asked him what he did as her father to foster this. Heavy parent involvement every step of the way? How had they noticed her talent and encouraged it? Give me something I can use, it's obvious you did something right. "It's all her, really. All we did when she was a little girl was tell her she could change the world". The words hung in the air loudly to my ear, drowning out all the surrounding activity. Wow. Seems so simple, but how often do parents say stuff like that to their kids? After that day, I began to say it quite often to my son. "You can change the world, boy". "How?" was his most common response. "I don't know, boy, however you feel like it needs to be changed. Maybe you"ll go to Mars. Maybe you"ll entertain people and make them happy that way like Taylor Swift does. Or maybe you"ll just touch someone else's life and make it better..."
In 2010, surprisingly, Taylor still had her mom along for the ride. They share a bus, just the two of them. Mom had also gotten more comfortable with the whole situation, and during the meet and greet spent a lot of time talking about how Taylor did things with regard to her career. She has no manager. She oversees her own website, designs her own sets and shows so that people see the songs the way she wants them to be seen. She doesn't have a fan club because she doesn't ever want to charge anyone for access to her. She believes everyone should have equal, free access. She has a room set up for after the show, and during the show she has her people go through the crowd and just pick fans for the after-show meet and greet based on their homemade shirts and signs, or how they're dancing their butts off in the upper level. She spends 15-20 minutes of the show walking through the crowd hugging people, leaving a wake of crying little girls, moms and dads, and even a few teenage boys behind her. She's 20 now, a full-grown adult, fully in charge of her own thing, and does things exactly the way she thinks they should be done regardless of tradition or precedent or the wise advice of music industry veterans.
Way to go Mr and Mrs Swift! As much as I had cherished the nugget of parenting advice I had gotten from her father two years earlier, I realized that I needed to make sure I said it more. On the way to the show, I asked the boy when the last time I told him he could change the world was. "I don't know" he replied. I flinched slightly, realizing that I had fallen down on the job somewhat, and said "Well, you can."
Didn't See That Coming
As it turns out, Taylor had requested that there be a radio only meet and greet before the regular one with listeners. She said she wanted the radio people and their loved ones to gather so that she could spend a few intimate minutes with each of us, and to thank us all for what radio had done for her. Lisa and Billy (the program director and music director) would be alone. They had 10 spots, and only 6 people. I can only imagine how many people approached them before the show, asking for tickets and backstage, pleading with heart-tugging stories about their daughters and how much it would mean to them. Can I buy them from you? Can I do something crazy to win them? I've got this big client, and his little girl wants.... I don't envy them, being in that position all the time. I've been there just as a jock, but on a much smaller level. I was only half-joking when I asked Lisa to adopt the boy for a few minutes to get him in. She knows that I rarely ask for freebies and tickets, almost never for meet and greets, and usually if I do ask it's for something plentiful and that I will take the boy to. I was stunned when she told me they were taking us both in.
Around 6 o"clock the day of the show, we gathered at the broadcast position outside the arena and waited. Anticipation grew, as not only were staff waiting anxiously for the Vibe Room Meet and Greet, we had listeners who had won their way into the pre-show meet and greet whose nerves were also on edge standing with us.
Eventually, the guy from the record company walked out, gave the word, and lead our small group in. We were lead through the concourse, down the steps to the floor, walking past everyone only to disappear into the catacomb of hallways beneath the arena, finally arriving at one of many nondescript red doors along the seemingly endless hallway. When it opened, it was like in the movies when you step through a doorway into a totally different place and time. It was the T Party Room, the one set aside for the after show get-together. Decorated by Taylor, she personally selected the fabrics, furniture, foosball table, big screen TV, personally applied her own pictures to a collage in the center of the room, provided food and drink while we waited. Usually, they told us, there are 60-75 people in here. Right then, there were about 12 of us. We'd get a chance to actually talk to her for a minute or two, instead of the hurried 10 or 15 seconds of the larger, "cattle-call" meet and greet that would follow. This is great, I thought. We'll get a chance to explain the picture we brought, taken at our last meeting in 2008. It was a picture of Taylor sitting with the station kids who had been on the deck. Taylor and the three little princesses all faced forward and smiled for the camera. Really a cute shot. The boy was on the end of the row, two people away from Taylor. He was looking at Taylor, an unmistakable look of enchantment and love on his face. We had shown the picture off to everyone we knew for 2 years. Rather than being embarrassed by it, he was proud. When we found out he might be able to meet her again, I thought it would be great to print out an 8 x 10 of it and have her sign it. He thought it would be a better idea if we made two copies so he could autograph one to her. I agreed.
She came in with the same beauty and energy and youthfulness she had appeared with each time we'd seen her before. The feeling in the room was instantly electric. There's just something about some people that makes others gravitate towards them, hoping just to be near them. She's one of those people. We were on the far side of the room, I told the boy we need to wait our turn, let her talk to Lisa and Billy and the others first. Both of us fidgeted nervously as she made her way through the room. He had his picture in hand ready to give to her when she approached us....
Ok, I've been in radio for close to 25 years now. I've met and interviewed so many celebrities I have almost lost count. From Ray Manzarek to Aerosmith, from Jesse Helms to Elizabeth Dole, Nancy Grace to Chris Rock, from a guy who can predict weather by looking at a pig's spleen to the guy who invented Butt Paste. While I'm still a "fan" in general, I've developed a cool, disassociated demeanor for times like this. The unwritten rule in the media is: You Don't Cheer From Press Row. In other words, you got in because you're doing a job, not because you're special or more deserving than someone else. You act like a tourist, and it's likely to be the last time they let you in there. I did my best to calm the boy, to explain that she's just a person like any of the rest of us. Don't be nervous, boy. We"ll get our turn.
When she stepped up to us, I think I remember introducing ourselves. I have no explanation for what happened next. I didn't expect it in my wildest dreams. In an instant I was Fifteen, trying to tell someone that I loved them, and hoping she was gonna believe me. I opened my mouth to speak, but before any words came out I welled up with tears. Touching the boy's head, I said "Thank you so much for being such a pure and positive influence on them..." As my voice cracked before I could finish the sentence, she stepped towards me. The perky smile dropped from her face slightly as her jaw fell open, her piercing blue eyes as wide open as I"ve ever seen them. She stared intently at my face and eyes, seemingly searching them for some sort of clue. She reached out and touched my arm... I had to turn away to keep from bawling. "God, I feel like such an idiot. I'm a 42 year old man and I'm standing here crying. I'm sorry, it's just that as a Dad..." and with that she threw both arms around my neck and gave me the kind of hug Daddy gets when a top wishlist item appears under the tree on Christmas morning: tight squeeze, a quiet cooing thank you in the ear, lingering for a moment, adding one more level of squish before finally letting go. She stepped back, one hand still on my shoulder, looking me directly in the eye with slight amazement, and in the sweetest most genuine tone said, "Oh, my God, you're so sincere! I can't believe how sweet you are...thank you so much for saying that!" And the tears fell. Again, I had to turn away from her while she spent the next minute or two with the boy, accepting his gift, returning the favor. I don't know what they said to each other. It was all I could do to compose myself.
It was then that I realized that the boy was not the only one who loved this little girl. I loved her, too, almost as if she were my own daughter. I had been praying for her continued good fortune, thankful for every day that went by that she didn't appear on the cover of the National Inquirer in some sordid Hollywood late night controversy, proud that she was the one my boy chose to love and look up to and learn from. But I had failed to realize how invested in this I was emotionally. Taylor Swift had just made me cry like a little girl.
So, How Exactly Has Taylor Swift Changed My Life?
The answer is: Immeasurably.
How do you state succinctly the feeling of seeing your child made happy simply due to the graciousness of others, who expect nothing in return? Who can put into words the impact of just a single piece of fatherly advice that could very well "change the world"?
Where is there anything more precious in life than in something that causes you to cry unexpected tears of joy?
Nowhere.
Taylor Swift pointed that out to me the other day.[/quote]She gives us the innocence of her music, the pureness of her self, her time, her love, her gratitude. She reminds me of what it was like to be innocent of heart, and to believe in the simple purity of fairytale love. My boy will learn life and love lessons from the simple emotions she evokes in her messages.
