On a new episode of I Miss…90s Country Radio with Nick Hoffman on Apple Music Country, Nick shares more of his conversation with Tracy Lawrence, dives into some of the era’s most identifiable Brent Mason guitar hooks, and plays more of his 90’s favorites. Commentary from Tracy Lawrence, Derek Wells, and Rhett Akins. Tune in and listen to the episode in-full on-demand on Apple Music Country.
Tracy Lawrence on the Class of ‘89
That class of ’89 is the reason that I came to Nashville. So I’d been a kid that grew up in the eighties loving George Strait, Merle Haggard, and Randy Travis, and Hank Williams Jr., and Waylon Jennings. You get the list, all those guys. And when that class of ’89 came out, it was Garth Brooks, Mark Chesnutt, Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Clint Black, Travis Tritt. And when that body of music came out in ’89, I realized that things were changing. And I knew that if I was going to go, I had to go right then. And I played my last club gig and they took a collection up at the door and I had $700 in my pocket and a beat-up old Toyota. And I went back home to Arkansas and I saw my mom and dad. My dad said, “God, I’m ready for you to go to Nashville. Get this out of your system. Come back, I’ll get you on at the mill.”
How Tracy’s career impacted his life
Everything changed. And not only did it change for me, it changed for my whole family. It changed for my mom, my dad, my brothers, my sisters, everybody. It was like being shot out of a cannon. It was. And for the next 10 years, it was wide open.
Tracy Lawrence on his early music videos
When we cut the ‘Alibis’ record, that was where the video stuff started happening for me, where I really connected with the audience. And the “Good Die Young” video at Charlotte Motor Speedway was the very first one that we did. And we leaped into the next one, that was the one that started all of it. It was a huge piece of my career. It was massive.
Tracy Lawrence on Mark Chesnutt
Mark Chesnutt should be as big as Garth Brooks. Mark’s just got that voice, man. Mark is a great country singer and he’s versatile and he’s a great entertainer. When Mark is on, I put him up against anybody. He’s just good, man. I just love his voice.
Tracy Lawrence on how important musicians are to a hit song
The players mean everything. Having the right player that brings the right mental focus and the right skill set in, they mean everything. They can make or break a hit song. You can have the greatest song in the world, but if you put the wrong team together it’s not going to do crap.
Derek Wells on Brent Mason
In the 90s, not only was Brent Mason playing on so many hit records, but for the guys that couldn’t get Brent Mason, they were still hiring guitar players and asking them to try to sound like Brent Mason. Which I think, that’s the real tale of the impact that that guy had on the sound of the entire genre. It was either Brent Mason playing on a record, or most likely someone doing a Brent Mason imitation.
Tracy Lawrence on Brent Mason
I won’t do a session without Brent to this day. He’s a key figure. What makes Brent so special? Brent understands a song. He can play rock and roll, he can play jazz, he can chicken pick. I mean, he’s very well versed. He can play anything. He just does it.
Derek Wells on Alan Jackson’s “Who’s Cheatin’ Who”
That opening bit, the intro that’s just… It’s Brent playing just pocket, just a riff basically. The pocket on the intro, that… That’s as quintessential to me as any chicken picking stuff or any of the… Him just burying the pocket.
Derek Wells on comparing Brent Mason to other guitarists
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all to compare Brent to guitarists in other genres like a Van Halen or like a Les Paul. What I mean by that is that Brent had created this style, all his own, a guy in the right place at the right time that was creating his own thing, and no one had heard anybody play guitar like that. We have terms now. Some people might say telecaster guitar, some people might call it chicken picking. I don’t think those words really existed for Brent.
The fact that that guy in one piece of music that has become iconic is represented in three different solo sections. I mean, just that man, there’s not a lot of dudes that on a day-to-day basis can just show up and out three amazing like landmark influential solos.
Rhett Akins on “That Ain’t My Truck”
It was just a story about a girl I dated in high school, and we never were trying to write a song about it, we were just talking. And I told my co-writers, I said, “Yeah, I drove by our house one day and somebody else’s truck rented was in the driveway.” I never meant it to be a song title, but just from conversation, it came out.
The crazy thing is that they still play it today. I think I’m near five million plays on that song. Who knows why? I don’t know why, other than it was a true story and maybe people just felt my pain in that song. You know? That’s the… Sometimes you can just make up a song out of thin air and then sometimes you write a song about a true experience.
