Recording - April 2010 - 45

Continued from page 43 No, I’m fine with that. But cut me off, because I tend to get carried away. Shall I go over there now? [applause] [He goes over to the piano.] It’s a little different than mine. I’m just looking for a straight piano sound. There we go. Romantic piano Let’s see how that sounds. They weren’t kidding. That’s another thing, too. I’m kinda not much of a gear sort of geek like some people are. I don’t know if any of you guys out there are. You know, in the last three years—and this is really not an impressive thing—I taught myself how to run my Pro Tools rig, instead of bringing a guy in to do it. I just do it all myself, and now I’m 10 times smarter when I go work on a record. I am 10 times more aware of what’s going on with everything I do in the studio. So I think, too, the other thing is to just keep learning all this stuff. You have to keep evolving and learning. And if you don’t, then you need to be really good at doing the one thing that you do. I’m not saying that as a joke. I mean, if you have the one certain thing that you do, then you find out how to be the best one at that. I was at the Durango Songwriters Festival a few years ago. A girl named Alissa Moreno who I’ve been seeing there every year playing her music, and I was just really blown away by her. I was going to do a show one night for the festival, and she was in the back room behind the kitchen playing this on the piano. [he plays the melody] She’s in this dark room next to the kitchen. And I say, “What are you playin’ there? What’s that?” And she says, “Oh, just something I’m doing. It’s some exercise.” I think that’s what she said; something like that. So I said, “I’ve got the lyric for that. I really do. Hang on one second; let me get my book.” Sorry, Michael, I’m talking so much. I like to set these things up. So, flashback three years before, I’m at this Second Harvest Food Bank fundraiser in Nashville—big concert fundraiser. I go to this dinner and I see this friend of mine, a girl named Sarah Buxton—a great singer/songwriter, haven’t seen her in a while— and she comes up and she hugs me and we say our hellos. Then another car pulls up and this other girl gets out and it’s her roommate. She says, “Oh, Jeff, I want you to meet my roommate. I swear this girl… every day she saves my life.” I think, “Hmm, every day you save my life.” I got out of there; never made the dinner; gonna write a hit song that night, and I didn’t. I just wrote it down and I just put it away. I thought I had the genius title of the century. At that moment it was all in my head, and I didn’t write it until a couple years later when saw Alissa playin’ this on the piano. The lyric came to me through that melody I was hearing. I could start hearing how it would go, and this is what came out. Rascal Flatts recorded it a couple years ago. [He goes to the keyboard on stage and performs “Every Day You Save My Life.”] [He picks up guitar and plays a few bars from “Ring of Fire.”] What a great song. That’s the thing—there are songs like that you look at and go, “God, I want to write something that’s that great.” Then you try to copy that style and that form, and then you realize you’re never gonna write that song, dude. You’ve got to figure out your own deal. By the way, Michael, thank you for everything, buddy. I appreciate you, I do. I love ya. Here’s the song he was talkin’ about which started with me takin’ out my guitar and tuning it up and my co-writer going, “What are you playin’ there?” Every time I take out my guitar I always do this open E to just make sure my guitar is in tune. And he says, “What are you playin’? That’s a cool intro.” “It is? I’ve been doin’ it for 20 years and never realized.” [For the next 20 minutes, everyone in the main ballroom at the Road Rally was riveted to their seats watching Jeffrey light up the stage, playing hit after hit, after hit!]

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Recording - April 2010

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