{"id":2280,"date":"2014-05-01T13:15:28","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T13:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2014-10-21T16:15:50","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T16:15:50","slug":"music-makers-and-dreamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2014\/05\/01\/music-makers-and-dreamers\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Makers and Dreamers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dan<\/a>
Dan Couch \u201989, playing guitar during an interview for Wabash Magazine in Nashville.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014Last Friday Dan Couch \u201989 was showing me around Nashville\u2019s Music Row in the black pickup he bought with some of the money he\u2019d earned from \u201cSomethin\u2019 \u2018bout a Truck,\u201d the first of two #1 Country hits he wrote with singer\/songwriter Kip Moore. We\u2019d just pulled out of the parking lot of BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) at the intersection of Music Circle North and Music Circle East and were merging with traffic around the Buddy Killen Roundabout.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot exactly what you expected to see on Music Row?\u201d Dan asked good-naturedly as we circled\u00a0Musica,<\/em>\u00a0a sculpture of nude dancers that is the roundabout\u2019s centerpiece.<\/p>\n

Two hours earlier in a posh reception room BMI provided (thanks to Dan) for our interview for the next issue of\u00a0Wabash Magazine,<\/em>\u00a0the former Wabash psych major and catcher for the Little Giants told me part of what has become one of the favorite \u201cgood guy finishes first\u201d stories in Music City: How Dan left his lucrative job as a medical supplies salesman in Seattle in the early 1990s and moved to Nashville (via a long stay back in his hometown of Logansport, IN) to chase his dream of becoming \u201cthe next Garth Brooks,\u201d an aspiration that changed to a focus on songwriting and has taken more than 10 years of hard work and faith to achieve.<\/p>\n

Dan talked about his wife, Tina Marie, the sacrifices she made, how she continued to believe in him, even during a crucial moment when he doubted himself. And he spoke of friends who kept believing, too\u2014guys like Wabash classmate Bill McManus, who he still talks with every morning (and called during our interview!).<\/p>\n

But driving down Music Row, our conversation turned to potato chips.<\/p>\n

More precisely, to his old job supplying a potato chip route in the Nashville area (at various times to make ends meet he also worked construction and tended bar, while Tina Marie works as a nurse.) He\u2019d met a fellow aspiring writer on that chip route. Dan would finish around noon, clear the chips out of the car, pick up his friend, and drive to a songwriter\u2019s circle to play his songs and listen to others\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was overwhelmed by this place when I first came here,\u201d Dan admitted. Driving up and down Music Row, it\u2019s easy to see why: Nashville may be the most competitive music market in the world right now, with the largest concentration of songwriters in the country. The Tin Pan Alley of our day. Don\u2019t let the modest two story homes converted to office space and the relative scarcity of multi-story corporate buildings on Music Row fool you; behind those quaint doors are some of the biggest labels and names in music, not to mention all the people who support this industry. Jobs (song pitchers and pluggers?) I\u2019d never heard of.<\/p>\n

Statistically speaking, the former Little Giant baseball player would have had a better shot at making the major leagues than being paid full-time as a songwriter in Nashville.<\/p>\n

He knows that. But there\u2019s gratitude, not boasting, in his voice. He\u2019s thankful to do what he loves for a living (he\u2019s old school, too\u2014eschewing computers for the feel of pencil and paper, and his song notebooks read like a journal of each year’s work.)<\/p>\n

He\u2019s grateful for those who helped him learn his craft and those who write alongside him now. He counts the trust he and Moore have in each other as a great gift that gives both the freedom to be their most creative.<\/p>\n

Most of all, there\u2019s Tina Marie.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll meet her some day,\u201d Dan promised during our interview as he fretted to find the words to do her justice.<\/p>\n

Not unlike the way he struggled a couple of years ago on the sixth-floor terrace of the BMI building, when he and Moore were being celebrated for hitting #1 with\u00a0\u201cSomethin\u2019 \u2018Bout a Truck.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

CMT News saw it this way:\u00a0Couch was so overwhelmed at having finally achieved success as a songwriter, he could hardly get through his comments to the crowd.<\/em><\/p>\n

“My wife and I always believed I could get here,” he said looking out toward his family standing near the front of the stage. “She gave me three wonderful kids. Life is good.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The lyrics to his second\u00a0 #1 hit with Moore,\u00a0\u201cHey Pretty Girl,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0get to the heart of it. Lines like:<\/p>\n

Life’s a lonely, winding ride
\n<\/em>Better have the right one by your side.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI like to say that song is about who I found, and the kind of person Kip hopes to find someday,\u201d Dan said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century poem titled \u201cOde\u201d inscribed in large letters in the BMI lobby. I photographed Dan in front of it because I read the opening lines\u2014\u201cWe are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.\u201d When I was reviewing those photos after I left Nashville, I realized that in several, Dan is walking toward these words:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne man with a dream, shall go forth and conquer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDirt Road,\u201d another song that Dan wrote with Moore (and Westin Davis), debuted Monday as a single from Moore\u2019s upcoming second album with MCA. The song has been a fan favorite at Moore\u2019s live shows, the young singer\/songwriter was a nominee this year for the Academy of Country Music\u2019s New Artist of the Year, and he\u2019ll be playing that song a lot when he tours in May with Tim McGraw.<\/p>\n

None of this guarantees that \u201cDirt Road\u201d will hit #1 or even climb the charts. But, as we like to say, Wabash always fights.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nashville was my second stop photographing and interviewing Wabash alumni for the upcoming music issue of\u00a0Wabash Magazine<\/em>. A week earlier we were backstage with Ben Kitterman \u201906, the classically trained musician and steel guitar\/dobro player turned tour bus driver turned musical sideman turn bandleader for Aaron Lewis. (Watch Ben’s arrangement for Lewis and the band of Sheryl Crowe’s\u00a0“Strong Enough.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Saturday we spent a late night photographing luthier and violinist Dan Gillespie \u201908 at the Galway Arms in Chicago, where he was playing fiddle with his band Can I Get an Amen as part of a raucous folk collective called Old Lazarus\u2019 Harp (Listen to their amazing music at:\u00a0https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/can-i-get-an-amen<\/a><\/p>\n

On my way there stopped by campus to cover chemistry\/music major Taylor Neal \u201914 at his remarkable composition recital, and topped it all off with Beethoven at Sunday\u2019s Chamber Orchestra Concert.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a photo album from several of those visits:\u00a0http:\/\/www.wabash.edu\/photo_album\/home.cfm?photo_album_id=3836<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles\u2014Last Friday Dan Couch \u201989 was showing me around Nashville\u2019s Music Row in the black pickup he bought with some of the money he\u2019d earned from \u201cSomethin\u2019 \u2018bout a Truck,\u201d the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2014\/05\/couch-portrait-8-1loresa.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}