INTERVIEW: John Michael Montgomery on His Career and Biggest Hits

My dad played guitar and sang on the stage, and my mom played the drums for him and sang. They were weekend warriors, you know? They went different places, played little different parties, VFWs, this and that, and they would drag me and Eddie along. You know, we were five, six, seven years old, get us up on stage, let us sing an Elvis song or whatever, you know? And “Blue Suede Shoes,” things like that.

My dad asked me, he needed a rhythm guitar player and I sang background vocals too. And his guitar player had quit, so I knew enough chords. I said, “Sure.” It paid 25 bucks. And so we played this little bowling alley and there was these young girls that happened to be there with her parents. And they just like screamed and yelled. And I was like, “Hey, I like this.”

Me and my brother’s dream was to be able to play music, just not on the weekends, but full-time, five nights a week. And to us, that was like, “Man, we got a full time gig.” It was a house band. We didn’t have to move our equipment anywhere. We didn’t have to U-Haul it here and U-Haul it there. And we could just literally walk in and play from nine to 1:00 AM, just turn on our amplifiers and start playing four sets a night. It was a dream gig. We were making 150 bucks a week. We didn’t pay that much, but it didn’t take much for us to live. And so we did that for about four years.

We didn’t have a real big crowd that night, I remember that. All of a sudden, this guy come in. I could tell you, he was an out-of-towner. He come in and sit and listen to me do a set, and he introduced himself. He said, “Yeah, I was down the street down there. I’m from Atlantic Records. We were listening to this guy.” He said, “This waitress came up to me and said the best singer in town’s up the road. She mentioned your name.” He said, “I thought I’d come check you out.” He said, “She’s right.” He said, “I’ve already told the other guys, called them and told them to come on over and listen to you.”

For me, it was just untouchable. For me, I just wanted to be the best singer, best entertainer, best guitar player in Lexington. For me to be able to sing in Lexington and draw a crowd in, for me, that was a huge achievement. And I know there’s guys out there that they have this mindset, well, wait until they get a load of me. I’m the next best thing since bread. When they hear my song… I mean, I never had that kind of confidence. When it did happen for me, I always had that insecurity of thinking, “Well, what if I can’t pull it off in the studio?”

“Life’s a Dance” was this mid tempo philosophical song about life. And I’m thinking, “Well, that’s a good song, but what’s the big deal about it? Ain’t a good country song. Ain’t good beer drinking song, or it ain’t a good love song.” And they were like, “Trust me, this is the song we need to come out with.”

I was like, “Man.” I said, “That’s a really good song.” I said, “I got a new producer for this next album coming up. His name is Scott Hendricks.” He [Frank Myers] said, “Oh, I know Scott. I’ve already sent it to him.”

I wasn’t even going to play it because I didn’t want to embarrass myself by playing him a song and him looking at me going, “Why did they get you to produce me if you brought me a song this pop?” And we were just sitting around talking and I don’t know what got into me. I said, “Well, I do have one more song that I love. I’m scared to play it for y’all. I’ll play it if you promise not to laugh at me and make fun of me for playing you this song.” So I played him this song and they go, “You know what? I like that.” And I said, “That’s not too pop, that didn’t scare you?” And he goes, “No, I like it. Let’s try it.” And that was the level of excitement.

As soon as we recorded it, I knew immediately. Immediately, I called Rick Blackburn, the president of Atlantic. I said, “You need to come out here. You need to hear this because I think we may have pretty big fish on the end of the line here.” That’s when he came and heard “I Swear.”

The ’90s obviously was a magical moment. I remember some artists getting dropped from their labels because they only sold a half a million albums back then. If you weren’t selling a million-plus albums, you were like, “I don’t know if we can keep him or not.” I’m thinking, “Hey.” It definitely spoiled us. There’s no doubt about it. But it was a lot of fun and I was fortunate enough to be able to hit it right in full swing.

I love Buck Owens and those guys, watching Hee Haw, and stuff. So, I love little tongue twister stuff like that, too. And I remember, I played this song, when I wanted to cut it on the album, some folks at the label, they thought it was stupid. They thought that was the silliest stupid song. I really think they thought I was going to ruin my career if I cut it because it was so silly sounding, to them. And I was like I said, “You all don’t know where I grew up.” I said, “These kind of songs, people love them. They’re tongue-in-cheek, but they’re tongue twister.” And I said, “It shows a lighter side of personality.” I said, for myself, I was like, “And I love the song. I think it’s cool.”

I’ve always told people, you know, “It’s my ship. If I’m going to sink it, I want to at least have part of my hand on the steering wheel if it’s going to crash,” you know? Which irritates a lot of people in the music business, I found out. They’d rather an artist just sit back and shut up. “We’ll find you hit songs. You just go sing and do what we tell you to do.”

We all sitting around talking and we’re talking about music stuff and everything and all that. And they were in the studio cutting. And I was in the studio cutting. And I was cutting, “I Can Love You Like That.” And we got to talking and I remember bringing it up to one of the guys I said, “Yeah, man, I’ll just cut this kick butt ballad, man called ‘I Can Love You Like That.’” They went, “We just cut that too.” I went like, “You mean like, I can love you?” and he’s like, “Yeah, we just cut that too.” Well, come find out the publishing company got smart. They pitched it to both me and them. And we both were in the studio cutting my version and their version.

“Sold” has… Actually now, I’ve got this whole new young generation of fans that come to my concerts. They’re coming to hear me sing “Sold.” That’s it. That’s pretty much it. I mean, they really want to hear me just sing that song. I’ll throw all these other hits like “I Swear” and all that stuff on them. They’re going, “We just going to sing “Sold,” though.” I mean, it’s become my biggest hit, I guess, overall. I don’t know why, but I was like, if people don’t like this song, then they just don’t know how to have fun.