FANCLUB

FROM BILL

Hi Gang:

Do you sometimes feel as though we’re all actors in the movie, “Ground Hog Day?”

I sure do…one day after another with very few changes. Oh well, it is what it is, and we just have to stay strong, hang onto our faith, and believe it will all be behind us someday soon.

Actually, life is marching on, and some good things are happening all around us. The Country Music Hall of Fame is reopening Sept. 10th and that’s good news. Even better news broke today that the Opry is considering some limited audience shows later this month. Jeannie Seely’s new album, on which we sing “When Two Worlds Collide” together, is receiving rave reviews. We recorded a Zoom session the other day with Jeannie, Willie Nelson, Steve Wariner, Rhonda Vincent and myself which you should be able to see and hear sometime soon. Moe Bandy’s new record was released on Aug. 28th, and I’m honored to have written or co-written three of the songs in his package. He told me he recorded “City Lights,” because his son asked him to. It’s his son’s favorite song.

And speaking of “City Lights,” on the night of August 27th, the 63rd anniversary of my writing that song on top of the little hotel in Commerce, Georgia, I sat outside on my deck in Nashville teaching my 12-year old granddaughter, Hallie, how to make a few chords on her guitar. My life was changed forever on August 27th all those years ago. I wonder if she’ll look back someday and say her life was changed on that exact same date in 2020. Stranger things have happened.

But back to recordings: We’ve continued to receive several outstanding reviews and many very positive comments on our “Hits Re-Imagined” project, and I thank all of you who have added it to your collection. It’s part of a 2-CD special we’re offering our fan club members this month, and if you haven’t ordered your copy yet, now might be a great time. A reminder that any item you order from us online comes to you personally autographed.

I’ve been approached recently by some folks…including a couple from overseas…asking me to record some new material either with them or for them. I can’t go into the details just yet, but some interesting things might be about to happen. If we can just get the recording studios back open, maybe I can get inside and start whispering again!

On the personal side of things, my oldest granddaughter, Rae Robeson, had a bad fire at her apartment in Chicago last month, and she’s been living in a hotel for the past couple of weeks. Fortunately, she was not at home when the fire…supposedly caused by an electrical malfunction…broke out. Her fiance, Zach, was not at home either, but their beloved English bulldog, Winston, was in the apartment alone. Fortunately, a neighbor alerted the firefighters, and they broke down the door and rescued him. The apartment was a total loss, but it could have been so much worse.

I got a lot of great responses to the story last month of my attempting to peel a peach only to drop it into my garbage disposal and having to remove it by hand. One fan even went so far as to mail me a disposal cover which has already come in handy. Well, if you think the peach story was funny, wait ’til you hear what else I have done.

A friend was visiting late one afternoon when I said I needed to go outside and water my plants and flowers. My friend went out on the deck with me, and as I turned the hose toward a pretty blue-green plant and began to wet it down she asked, “Why are you watering that?” “Because it’s thirsty,” I replied.

“No it’s not,” she laughed. “That’s an artificial plant.” I bent forward and looked more closely. “You’re right,” I answered, totally embarrassed. I had spent the last six months watering an artificial plant! No wonder it didn’t grow!

Join us back here again next month for another chapter in the continuing saga of why a hillbilly singer/songwriter should never be quarantined at home!

Thanks a BILL-ion….

LATEST NEWS

Bill Anderson Drops 73rd Album, Zoom-Writes With Brad Paisley | American Songwriter

Bill Anderson Revisits 60+ Years of Country Music on ‘The Hits Reimagined’| Wide Open Country

Whisperin’ Bill Anderson Releases 73rd Album, ‘The Hits Re-Imagined,’ Available Today | The Country Note

ASK BILL

1) I have been a fan of yours for many years, and I know you have an Opry ring. I have always been curious to see what it looks like up close. Is there any way you could show a picture of it?

When the Grand Ole Opry celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1975, they had a custom ring designed for all the male members of the cast and a special 50th Anniversary bracelet designed for the ladies. Our initials were engraved inside and on the back, and we were told that the molds were destroyed shortly after they were manufactured. That was to insure that these items could never be duplicated. I don’t have a lot of material things that are very important to me, but I treasure my Opry ring. We’ve printed a picture of it in the photo section of the newsletter.

2) What is a normal day like in your life? When does it start and end? And do you always sit around with pen and paper in hand?

Back before COVID-19 and the quarantine came along, I used to joke and tell people there was no such thing as a “normal day” in my life. One day I’d be co-writing a song with a friend, the next day I might be in the recording studio or doing a television or radio show, and the next I’d be packing a suitcase for a road trip. Recently, for me and for most of you, things have been quite different and much more routine. These days I usually get up around seven or eight o’clock, have my coffee and my quiet time, check my e-mail and my messages, and take care of as many of my business and household chores as I can before noon. I don’t walk around with a pen and paper in hand, but I do keep a guitar handy, and I often write in the early afternoon and evening. I get on my treadmill and exercise before dinner, watch a ball game or a movie or read for awhile, and try to turn my light off between ten and eleven. Exciting stuff, huh? I miss the crazy, unpredictable days I used to have, and hope we can get back to them again soon.

3) When the backup players…like Jimmy Capps…play on a record do they just get a one-time fee or do they get another percent if it becomes a hit?

That’s a great question, and the answer today is different from the one I might have given just a few years ago. In the early days, musicians only got paid union scale for recording sessions, and they did not participate in the success of the recordings they played on. That changed back in the early 2000’s. According to Dave Pomeroy, head of the Nashville Association of Musicians, 5% of the monies earned by a digital recording today goes into an Intellectual Royalty Fund to be divided among the back-up musicians and background singers who performed on that particular recording. In 2019, a total of 62-million dollars was distributed among these musicians and singers, not exactly an insignificant amount, and well deserved.

Quickies: 1) I am wondering if you get residuals for your appearances on the older game shows like Match Game, Password Plus, etc. Yes, but it’s not very much. I think my last check was for $19.00. 2) On the original recording of “World Of Make Believe” who is the male background singer? It sounds just like Freddie Hart. I don’t recall, but it was not Freddie. 3) What was the song you used to sing at your shows where you told the fans to put their arms around the person next to them? That was my country-disco song, “I Can’t Wait Any Longer.” We used to have a lot of fun with that one.

Thanks for all your questions, and don’t stop sending them in. Our address is askbill@billanderson.com or P.O. Box 888, Hermitage, TN. 37076. Stay curious…and we’ll see you back here next time.

LATEST PHOTOS

“The top picture is a close-up of the Grand Ole Opry ring I wrote about in the Ask Bill section of our newsletter. You can see the year “1925” embossed on one side of the ring. That’s the year the Opry began. I couldn’t fit both sides into the picture, but on the other side is “1975,” date of the Opry’s 50th Anniversary and the year the rings were presented to us. While the ring doesn’t have a lot of monetary value, it’s very sentimental to me and something I really care about. The middle picture is of someONE I really care about, my grandson, Gabe. We are socially distancing here while celebrating his 16th birthday on August 6th. Gabe continues to battle cancer, and we continue to appreciate your positive thoughts and prayers on his behalf. The bottom picture was taken last week when my longtime buddy, Steve Wariner, and I got together on Zoom and wrote a new song. I couldn’t help but think how far it is from writing a song on a hotel rooftop in Commerce, Georgia, to writing on Zoom in 2020. I think we put together a pretty good song. Hopefully, somebody will think enough of it to record it somewhere down the road. If they do, you’ll be the first to know.”

LATEST JOURNAL

I have always prided myself on being…or at least trying to be…a glass-half-full kind of guy.

I try to look for the best in people, in places, and in situations, I find myself in, regardless of how negative they might seem at the time. But I’ll admit…I’ve struggled just like many of you in trying to find something good inside this crazy Coronavirus pandemic and the stay-at-home, social distancing rules that we’ve been forced to follow for the past several months. It hasn’t been easy, but I was sitting around this past Sunday afternoon looking at life through my rose-colored glasses, and I’ve decided that something good is going to come out of all this by the time it’s finally over. Maybe it already has.

Don’t get me wrong…the illnesses and the deaths and the losses we’ve all suffered are not taken lightly. I’ve lost friends to the virus. I have others who have been extremely sick, including my own manager. Even more, are struggling financially. I’ve gone to bed at night fearful that the virus might strike me and my family. I’ve washed my hands more in the past five months than I did in the previous five years. I’ve worn the mask and the gloves on the rare occasions when I have dared to venture out, and I know we’re not out of the woods yet by any means. But maybe there are lessons to be learned from what we’ve had to endure. And maybe…just maybe…when this is all in our rearview mirrors, we will have become better, stronger, kinder people who will have learned some valuable life lessons along the way.

Take my house, for example. I have lived in the same place for a little over twenty years, longer than I’ve lived any one place in my life. But I have discovered during these past few months that as much as I love it, it’s probably really never been my “home.”

“Home” for most of my life has been the back of a tour bus, a seat on an airplane, a strange hotel in a strange town somewhere, backstage and onstage at a performance venue full of friendly but often unfamiliar faces. My house was the place I left from and the place I came back to, but was it ever really home? Not like it has been lately for sure.

I have three outdoor seating areas attached to my house…one facing east toward the morning sun, one facing south, and one facing west toward the sunset. I love those decks and patios…and I’ve loved times in the past when I’ve been able to entertain friends and family there, standing outside gazing at the lake in my back yard. But in my hectic, always-something-to-do lifestyle, I have never just sat out on one of the decks and watched the world go by….listening to the birds sing, watching the squirrels play, laughing at the ducks and geese who wander up to bathe in the pond beside my little waterfall.

Until now.

I was walking from my front deck out into my yard the other day when the postman drove by. He stopped, we waved, and suddenly he leaned out the door of his little truck. “I’m really lucky,” he said. “I get to deliver mail to the greatest singer/songwriter who’s ever lived.”

I started to ask him if Willie Nelson had moved to town, but I didn’t. I could tell he was sincere, so I just smiled and said, “Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.” And he drove away.

Late on Easter morning, I had gone out to retrieve the Sunday newspaper from my driveway when a neighbor drove by, stopped, rolled down his car window, and wished me a Happy Easter. I wished him the same, and keeping my distance, moved closer so we could talk. I picked up the smell of hot food coming from inside his car. “Wow, somebody has gotten some good-smelling take-out,” I offered, and he told me where he had purchased it.

“I bought more than we’ll ever eat,” he said. “If you’re gonna be home, I’ll bring you some.” Sure enough, a few minutes later he was at my door with ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and all the trimmings. Plus, his small kids had asked him to also deliver to “Mr. Bill” a couple of their brightly-colored Easter eggs and some Easter candy. I was blown away.

And here’s the ironic part: Had we not been in our current stay-at-home situation, I would have not been home the day the mailman stopped, and I’d have been in the back of a tour bus returning from some shows in Texas on Easter Sunday.

A couple of mornings later, my next-door neighbor phoned and told me she was going to the grocery store. “Can I get anything for you?” she asked. And then, before I could give her my shortlist, she said, “I’ve finished reading a couple of books you might enjoy. I’ll leave them in your mailbox.” And she did.

So what am I trying to say here? Not much other than I have actually enjoyed some of the downtime that I’ve been forced into taking. I have enjoyed sitting out on my decks staring at the natural, God-given beauty all around me. I’ve enjoyed getting to know and experience my neighbors in a whole new way.

Oh sure, I’ve been inside the house strumming on a guitar trying to write some new songs. I’ve been answering fan mail and business mail just like I always do. I’ve had bills to pay just like everybody else. I’ve missed going into the recording studio, missed going out to see my friends, and performing at the Grand Ole Opry, and I’ve missed driving into town to eat lunch and hang out with my buddies. I’ve missed being out on tour and visiting with you. And, sadly, I’ve been unable to go and say goodbye to some very close friends who have, unfortunately, passed away during this time. That’s been especially tough.

But I’ve also had time to put some chicken into the slow cooker (Thanks, Gus Arrendale!), talk and text with my kids and grandkids without having to go take care of something “important.” I’ve even let my whiskers grow out a bit on days when I simply didn’t feel like shaving. And you know what? The world hasn’t ended because of it.

In fact, I may just be appreciating the beautiful things, the natural things, the simple things, and the special people this ol’ world has to offer more right now than ever before.

I guess it all depends on how you look at the glass.