"You were in Sha Na Na, and you're a songwriter in Nashville. That's enough." Those words launched a whirlwind mini-tour of England for Nashville singer/ songwriter/producer, Bryan Cumming, and a whole new era in his career.
Cumming is a Georgia native with a happy-go-lucky smile. Behind the smile is a good-natured man with a flair for production and instrumentation. After a stint in the army, he toured and recorded with Martin Mull; and later, after a move to LA, with John Hall and Libby Titus. While in L.A., he started Studio 23 as a production company; and he recorded, toured and appeared in videos with artists Al Jarreau, Maria Muldaur, The Ohio Players, David Soul, Supertramp, Anne Murray, Al Kooper, and the Pointer Sisters.
Later, as a member of Billy and the Beaters, he played on the number one single "At This Moment," and followed that by playing lead guitar for ShaNaNa for four years. With Jason Blume, he co-wrote "I Had A Heart," #2 on the Cashbox Independent Country singles chart in 1987. The following year he moved to Nashville and toured with K.T. Oslin and Cleve Francis.
Finally — after years of singing and engineering other songwriters' music at Studio 23, Nashville, — Cumming is working on a project of his own, a CD titled A Song is a Dangerous Thing.
Cumming's adventure began last summer when Paul & Margaret Hamilton came to Nashville to stay in a small apt that he and his wife rent to visiting artists. They have converted two bedrooms of their home into guestrooms for songwriters. People come from all over the world and the usual stay is anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. More information is available at www.thewritersroom.net. You do not have to record at Studio 23 to be a Writer’s Room guest.
KC: You have converted two bedrooms of your home into guestrooms for songwriters. How has this affected you personally? BC: Probably the most dramatic example of how that affected us personally was last summer, when Paul Hamilton, the English songwriter, came to stay, bringing along his wife Margaret and guitarist friend Steve Hadley. They offered me a place to stay if I ever went to England. Paul put together a pub tour that earned me enough money to pay for the trip – to say nothing of the great benefits beyond that.
So I started work on producing a solo CD. That was a great adventure in itself. It meant over a month of furious self-imposed studio work, song-by-song, day-by-day, recording, mixing, extracting old parts from old versions of some songs, beginning others from scratch, building up a collection of 14 songs. Then setting up a photo session, finding a designer, getting the whole thing mastered and assembled, and doing it all on a limited budget. I decided to include two sax instrumental pieces at the end of the CD as a change-of-pace and promotional plug for the “cool jazz” CD I am working on.
KC: How did you incorporate cool jazz into your act? BC: By remembering those days of Billy & the Beaters, when the horn players wandered throughout the bar playing to individual patrons while the rest of the band kept the groove going back on stage — a well-established blues tradition. I thought of making a track on CD that I could play along with, which would naturally make the room become a groove machine, everyone snapping their fingers, which would allow me to switch to guitar and lead into the opening song in the same key.
Billy & The Beaters, aka Billy Vera & The Beaters, are best known for their song, “At This Moment.” Many of us know the song better by its lyrics:
What did you think
I would do at this moment
When you're standing before me
With tears in your eyes
Trying to tell me
that you have found you another
and you just don't love me no more.
KC: How did the early experience of playing with Billy & The Beaters and Sha Na Na influence your music? BC: Billy & the Beaters was/is a wonderfully cohesive and powerful band modeled on some of the great R&B bands of the past, especially Ray Charles & Little Richard. I love that feel and sound of a band that’s been playing together long enough to get real tight. It's a pleasure that's both cerebral and physical. Billy was like a musical encyclopedia – we all learned a lot in that band. Beyond the musical content, the performance was all about getting a crowd happy, dancing, enjoying themselves. Sha Na Na was different, but certainly powerful as a stage act in its own way, especially by providing such a variety of visual stimulation — choreography, skits, costumes, etc. — along with a fast-paced musical show.
KC: Did you feel like a celebrity? BC: With Sha Na Na, there was a celebrityhood built in. So many people knew the group from its TV show in the '70s that being a member automatically qualified me to be someone whose autograph fans would want. I knew I wasn't famous, but they didn't know that. Billy & the Beaters were pretty much a local L.A. phenomenon. The band was popular, so there may have been a limited and temporary sense of being a celebrity within the context of that particular night, that particular club.
Paul gets up, and I get to hear him for the first time. A laid-back performer, a pleasant voice, and a song about a civil war soldier carrying a rose to remember his sweetheart – really haunting imagery. It’s as if he’s tuned in to ancient melodies and legends – no sign of music biz marketplace consciousness at work. This is the real deal. Paul tells me later, “I write songs because I have to.” And here I am from Nashville, representing songwriting at its most commercial – and Paul is showing me, through his appreciation of Hank Williams and traditional American music, that there’s a much deeper and older strain of music available back where I come from, in the mountains, back in the woods.
No trip would be complete without some thrills and excitement, and Cumming’s was no exception. From his journal, he writes: That evening, Paul and Margaret took me to an Irish pub, Katie Fitzgerald’s. It was different from the Garibaldi. Some loud and rowdy people occupied the table right in front of the speakers. This was a writer’s night led by Ralph, our part-time Texan. There were a variety of beginner songwriters, and one younger guy who seemed to have a definite sense of style – a small nose ring, matted dreadlocks, severely torn jeans, denim jacket, dark circles under his eyes – whose droney-jangley sound seemed as close to what a record company would sign as anything I heard on the trip. I was introduced as a guest from America, and then got up to do a four song set. I tried to pick some sure-fire winners, some obvious songs that would penetrate the cloudy brains of the crowd at the front table. When I started “Easier Done Than Said,” with its swing groove and nice rich chords, I noticed at the front table that Tony broke into a smile. At least he would get to see some guitar playing he didn’t see every day. Another guy at the front table was randomly yelling out requests throughout the performance, providing a challenge to my concentration.
As I was walking back to the table, the guy who had yelled during my set – came over and asked me if I knew where upper Marlborough was. I guessed England, but I was wrong. He was slurring his words, spit and swear words dropping indiscriminately from his mouth. He wanted to tell me about his time in America, a town in Maryland, and his attitude toward “refugees.” Somehow he felt comfortable to identify with me as an American, saying ‘You’re a redneck like me.’ He was not exactly receptive to logic, so I simply listened to whatever he had to say, and tried to make a sensible conversation from my end. After several minutes, Paul and Margaret rescued me, pretending I had a call on their cell phone. It was a good time to leave.”
KC: Your whirlwind tour of England was the fulfillment of one of your wishes. How do you feel now, looking back at it? BC: It was a great experience in many ways. Just being there and seeing it was enough of a treat, but in addition I got to hang out with my daughter at Oxford, and to stay with our friends Paul & Margaret Hamilton in their tiny country village. Funny thing is, we enjoy going to England and hearing their accents, while they like coming to Tennessee and hearing ours. Wherever you are, there's some other place that's exotic and charming compared to what you're used to.
Then, on the musical level, it was a great opportunity that happened so fast that I couldn’t stop and wonder what to do. As soon as I said yes, every minute was charged with an urgent sense of purpose. It was an amazing discovery to see that my musical identity had market value in England that it never had in Nashville. But that was so encouraging that it broke me out of a rut and basically launched me into this new dimension of my career.
KC: How were you accepted at that first gig in England, The Eagle and Spur? BC: Paul suggested I wear a cowboy hat, as a sign of my being American, but the hat didn’t fit so I was off the hook. Paul also suggested a Tennessee flag, as a decoration, draped from the music stand saying, “It hides a multitude of sins.”
KC: His second appearance was at The Garibaldi, managed by musician Steve Hadley, is one of the few pubs with its own sound system. There Cumming participated in a writer’s night where he heard a variety of artists, but he was most moved by his friend, Paul Hamilton.
KC: What person has been the biggest influence for good in your life? BC: Jesus. And I would credit my parents for a great deal of encouragement and support all along. But now, in the decisions and discoveries of daily life, in emotional, practical, and spiritual areas, my wife Holly is my biggest inspiration.
KC: Where does your creativeness come from? BC: From God, of course, but there were times when I thought it was just the talent that resides in me. That is, I recognized the gift, but not the Giver.
KC: Tell me about your Scottish heritage: How much have those Scottish genes influenced your music? BC: It’s hard to know what’s a genuine genetic influence versus what I think of as Scottish. I was raised with stories about family history. Cumming is an ancient [highland] clan. Our ancestors came to America after the Scottish defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. They brought with them a romantic view of fighting for a lost cause, which fed naturally into an attitude about the mystical nobility of the Confederacy. We had several relatives who fought and were wounded or imprisoned during the Civil War. In early adulthood, as I attempted to earn a living as a musician, learning how to make a little money go a long way, I became “Scot” in the stereotypical sense of being frugal. Only later did I come to appreciate the actual musical heritage of Celtic sounds, the lonely distant wail of droning pipes, pennywhistles, and drums.
KC: What about your career would you have done differently? BC: Well, the perfectionist in me would say not to procrastinate.
KC: What’s still on your wish list to do? BC: To continue from this point in the same direction – more songs, more CDs, more gigs, getting out there in a natural way, at a natural pace. I'd love to go back to England, especially if I can do it while my daughter is still there, by June, so she can sing with me.
KC: How do you see yourself when you’re 80 years old? BC: Still playing, of course. There are many good examples like Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Carter – or Willie Nelson for that matter – who prove that music just gets better with time. It’s not like being an athlete where you lose your edge in your 30’s.
Hotel California Revisited:
The next gig was 20 miles away in Ludlow, across the Shropshire countryside, where the hills begin to rise, on the way to the mountains that mark the boundary of Wales. The owner of the pub had requested a late start — 10 pm, rather than 9 pm. Because the pub is out in the country, the people tend to stay out later, and the rules about stopping at 11 pm are less likely to be observed or enforced. So we hadn’t even left the house at 9 pm, when the phone rang and the owner, Liz, told us that no one had showed up yet — because of high winds & bad weather, a tree had been blown down in the road and prevented cars from passing, only half a mile from her pub. She wasn’t sure if anyone could get there at all, but would be talking to local authorities etc. and calling us back. It was nearly 10 pm when we heard from her that an alternate road was available to the pub.
We took a westerly route, through ancient towns, under spooky moonlight, roads getting smaller and more remote, till we found the small lane that was blocked by a tree, at which point we turned around and took the alternate route to our destination: The Penny Black.
I started about 10:45, and for a while the crowd was quiet and attentive. Then, as more people came in and started talking with others, the room never quieted down again. It was as if I wasn’t there at all. I told stories, sang songs, and my fans — Paul, Margaret, Cain, Ralph and his wife — sat there at the front table, listening loyally.
There were only about twenty people in the room, including a relatively elegant foursome over by the fireplace. At the table near the door was a young man in a wheelchair who, at one point in the evening, started biting his own forearm to express his anger! Another customer was a blonde German woman, there with her boyfriend, who happily requested the song “Hotel California.” The odd weather and the remote location created an atmosphere of mystical seclusion.”
Sunday, the big event was the jam session in Birmingham at The Drum, an arts center devoted to African, Asian and Caribbean cultures. The building was formerly The Hippodrome, a major stop on the vaudeville circuit where Charlie Chaplain once performed. Large photos on the wall are devoted to the Black Power and Rastafarian movements of the sixties. There’s a dressing room backstage, actually a large classroom with blackboards on the wall, and I meet some other players. A bearded black man named Ted is playing alto sax, sheet music propped on his case, “How High the Moon.” A pair of white men playing alto and soprano (Vince and Tony) also warm up. There’s a lively female singer, who’s lived in New York for years, Maria Patrick. She expressed an admiration for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, which I also admired, although I was unfamiliar with their version of “Flim Flam Man.” The soprano player, Tony Beet, told me about his tour of the U.S. as a member of the group International Beat – formed from members of English Beat and Style Council, who toured California in the early 90’s. Several of the clubs he mentioned I had also played with Billy & the Beaters – The Belly Up outside San Diego, and Coach House at San Juan Capistrano.”
Andy Peate is the chord wizard. Turns out he also plays piano. He told a story about Bunny Berigan, whose solo on “I Can’t Get Started” electrified listeners in the swing era. Legend has it that three people in the studio physically held him upright during the recording of that solo. When asked why he was drunk when he played, Berrigan reportedly answered, “I’m drunk when I practice.”
On Cumming’s final evening of the England mini-tour, he participated in a rehearsal of the Oxford Bach Choir, a large, mixed-voice chorus of which his daughter Anna is a member. As a result, Cumming was allowed to sit next to her, singing the bass line while Anna sang her alto part.
Cumming wrote in his journal: We are in the Sheldonian Theater, built in 1669, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The sound of 200 voices rises up among columns and paintings and bounces around the room, bringing to our ears and hearts a sense of inspiration at the beauty of Bruckner’s Mass, and another piece by Mendelssohn. It was a fitting farewell to England. Back to music, back to family, back to history, back to home and Holly greeting me at the airport, wearing a shirt she’d made with the cover of my new CD emblazoned on the front.
