INTERVIEW: Jesse Frasure and Dan Huff Join Thomas Rhett

I was extremely fortunate. Luck had something to do with it. I was extremely well prepared. And my story, the trajectory was rather quick. I moved out and there was an opening, there was a great guitar player named Steve Lukather who had just abdicated a major seat. And it was open. And immediately I was playing on A to Z and it was a blur. I got play in a lot of Motown Records, Smokey Robinson, Temptations, Chaka Khan, and then a lot of the pop artists of the day, the big ones during that time were Madonna, Michael Jackson. And again, if you were in the hot seat, you got to sit with all those artists. And then in the rock idiom, White Snake was a big name, and I started to get to play on their record. And then Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand. It was from A to Z. What I found out later in life, the greatest university for learning how to be a record producer.

Probably the biggest hit that I played on was “Man in the Mirror.” So I mean, it was all an experience to be honest working for Quincy Jones. I was obviously blown away to be in a room with Michael Jackson, he was such a star at that point, but Quincy Jones was a quintessential record producer. Just being invited to that party was great. I do remember those sessions. It was an elevated sense of music. The expectations were high and it was ultimately very professional.

JESSE FRASURE: There was like this little community of misfit toys forming in Nashville. Guys like Shay Mooney who was signed to T-Pain, a girl named Meghan Trainor, moved down from Nantucket. She was 17 years old and super shy. My wife introduced me to Chris Stapleton, who at the time had some stuff as a writer, but his artist career kind of hadn’t taken off. We’d get together at night and we’d write some songs. And all of us were kind of just doing this creative work, but not purposefully working on country music or anything. And a guy named TobyMac is a huge Christian artist. He was in a group called DC Talk, and then obviously a huge solo career. He was kind of the shepherd of the misfit toys. He took guys like David Garcia, who now produces Carrie Underwood, gave David his first shot. A guy named Cary Barlow who just recently wrote “Famous Friends.” Jamie Moore who writes over at Big Loud. And he gave me my first cut too. So he-

THOMAS RHETT: And the name of that song was what?

JESSE FRASURE: It’s called “Hold On.”

THOMAS RHETT: “Hold On,” yeah.

JESSE FRASURE: And he kind of saw all this pop writing people in town. It was like, “Man, these are some creative people. I don’t need to go to LA. Come work on my records.” And for a lot of us, it was our first opportunity to have any placement in the music industry.

THOMAS RHETT: Who would’ve been your first, “Okay, this is kind of like, this is a big deal. I can’t mess this up artist.”

DANN HUFF: It was Faith Hill, who I recently played on two or three of her records. She was changing producers, and it was Mutt and Shania, who were together then, who recommended me. She hadn’t thought about that, because she just thought of me as a player. So I got that gig. I was actually in the studio at the same time producing a band called Megadeth, which, so it was an interesting time going from Megadeth sessions to Faith Hill sessions.

THOMAS RHETT: Was it the ‘Breathe’ record? What record was it?

DANN HUFF: No, it was the one that had ‘Faith,’ and my first hit was a song called, “Let Me Let Go.”

THOMAS RHETT: Oh yeah. That was your first number one as a producer.

DANN HUFF: I think so, yeah, yeah. And then, and that led to kind of that year I had three albums offered to me at the same time, probably because of that Faith Hill. One was Lonestar and the other was SHeDAISY, and Shane Minor. And I didn’t think that much about Lonestar. It was the most country. I knew the least about it.

THOMAS RHETT: Man, I love that record.

DANN HUFF: And they had a little song called “Amazed” on that record. And so all of a sudden I was a genius. At least that’s what everybody thought. And that’s what led me to the meeting of Keith.

THOMAS RHETT: You’re just like all of a sudden, you’re just the guy.

DANN HUFF: It just happens when it happens. And again, luck, preparation, all that kind of stuff.

I was writing with Chris Stapleton under the cover of darkness. We’d get into the studio at night, and at the time, we were like, “Oh man, we should try to pitch some songs with this Bruno Mars guy.” And we were doing all these kind of Motown-feeling songs. But we had this one that kind of came together, and Gary Allan put it on hold. And I was a huge Gary Allan fan, and Mom was the biggest Gary Allan fan. So I thought if I got a Gary Allan cut, finally, I’d be worth something in her eyes. No, just kidding. So I remember somehow this little EP of Chris Stapleton tunes was circulating and made it onto your [Thomas Rhett’s] bus, I think, or your business manager at the time passed it on to you. And you called and said, “Hey, I don’t know if I can pull this song off. It’s very different than this first album I just did, but I’m really passionate about it. And I really want to try, and I would like you to produce it with Dann Huff.” So I remember hanging up the phone. We pulled the song from Gary Allan, and we got in the studio. And one of the first things that really impressed me about Dann was how much he liked of the original that he didn’t want to just replace. Even some of my stupid guitar parts or whatever else it was, Dann was like, “Let’s leave that.” I always say that to young producers that work with him now. That’s the most impressive part about Dann. He doesn’t bring his ego into it.

JESSE FRASURE: I was down in 30A, it’s a little beach strip that we all go down to, and I was with Hillary Lindsey and a friend of ours, Steph Jones, and Ashley Gorley, and Kelsea Ballerini was down with us. And we had been overserved at one of the local watering holes.

THOMAS RHETT: Yeah. Watering holes.

JESSE FRASURE: And came back around 2:00 AM. And it’s definitely not a track I would’ve played for Kelsea sober. It just was way countrier than most of her material. But I started playing it, and we had definitely put a few holes in bottles that weekend, and were drinking way too much. And it just sort of came out, this kind of retro feel. But I’m a huge fan, as a producer, of taking styles and blending them together. So it reminded me of a Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins kind of guitar meets J-Kwon, everybody in the club getting tipsy. And these kind of two worlds colliding together, and we wrote this kind of traditional drinking song on it. Brad Paisley ended up hearing the final version and was kind of doing these guitar challenges over the solo, and it kind of just became its own little thing, raising its hand, to where Kelsea decided to make it a single. And then we were fortunate enough to be able to put Shania Twain, who’s come up a couple times in this episode. She’s like the Kevin Bacon. Shania jumped on as a feature. So that’s a cool moment. Basically sharing the creation all the way to… Fortunate enough to see it go to number one.

It’s weird, a couple of our favorite songs that the three of us had a hand in, started off as disasters. I remember “Die Happy Man” was a very stressful day. And “Where We Started,” it just was trying to find how does this song live while introducing some organic elements to it. And also giving it life so it wasn’t just this linear kind sitting there song. Kind of going back to some of the original elements of the track, but then the string section and watching that evolve your voice on it. And just the melody. To me, it’s a perfect album title because it summarizes to me where your career is right now. It circles back pre-country again, and gives you a little bit of the old school TR but it’s got all these organic elements and it’s kind of your origin story in a way.