10 Questions with ... Rob Simbeck

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

Rob Simbeck is the Nashville Bureau Chief for "Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40" nationally syndicated countdown radio show. He is a noted writer and editor who has served as author, ghostwriter, and editor for more than 20 published books in addition to authoring hundreds of artist bios. Simbeck's work has appeared also in "The Washington Post," "Country Weekly," "Field & Stream," and many other publications. The always-likable Simbeck moved to Nashville in 1982 to pursue songwriting before finding his way into the business side of Music Row, and he has since formed friendships, partnerships, and business connections to fill many volumes of great stories. Simbeck recently sat down with All Access Nashville to chat about his time in the industry, his interview style, and his legendary boss.

1. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us! You have such a diverse background that we could spend hours talking about, but we'll start with 1982; that's when you came to Nashville. When you first moved here, you came as a songwriter, is that correct? Where did the passion for songwriting come from, and how did it lead you to Nashville?

The day after "The Ed Sullivan Show" had The Beatles on it, I had a guitar. I was in a band one year later - I was twelve years old and played in bands all the way through college. I had a band in Rochester, New York, and I played the Finger Lakes area, but I knew I had to move to Nashville, Los Angeles, or New York, because I was doing okay. My sister lived in Los Angeles, so I moved there. I ended up working for a magazine called "Music Connection" for three years; I was managing editor covering the music business, kept a band up, wrote songs, and when Urban Cowboy hit, Combine Music - with Bob Beckham - opened an office in Los Angeles. The guy's name was Bill Anthony, and he was a bottle-in-the-bottom-drawer kind of guy. I loved him, so I started bringing him songs, and he started sending them in the mail to Bob Morrison and Johnny MacRae, who, between them, had written "Lookin' For Love," "Don't Call Him A Cowboy," and "I'd Be Better Off (In A Pine Box)," and just a million hits, including two songs on Kenny Rogers' "Greatest Hits" album. I was writing with them through the mail, getting stuff published left and right, and they started saying, "You need to think about getting here." So, in December of 1982, I loaded my car up. My life savings was $1,500, and I blew it before I even got [to Nashville], but I wrote at Combine for the first couple years. Bob DiPiero was there, Dennis Linde was there, John Scott Sherrill, Tony Joe White was a writer over there, Larry Gatlin - you'd see every now and then, and he was the Monument connection from the old days with Dolly [Parton] and Kris [Kristofferson] and all that. And, Kris had basically founded the place as a writer, and he still hung heavily as a presence. You'd see Steve Earl wander through with somebody - it was like a frat house! There was a guy named Don Devaney who lived in the attic, and every quarter, he'd get a big check for some Charley Pride stuff he'd written. When I walked in the first day, there was a chili pot of Bloody Marys on the stove, and I thought, "Man, I am home!" It was just a great place to be. In writing, my main melody influence is John Prine; just make sure the words are pretty and stay on pitch as best as you can with something singable. Bob Morrison was always primarily a melody guy, and he was a great song doctor. A guy named Frank Michels, whom I've written with since Los Angeles - we still write together and get cuts every now and then - I've always looked for people who were great at melodies. [I stopped focusing on songwriting because] I just wasn't making a living with it. I mean, I'd get holds and occasional cuts with mostly Indie stuff, and at some point, you realize that you want to accumulate more bills than I can pay right now with this. So, I started writing bios in the late 80s, and eventually over the next few years, I decided I wanted to be a freelance writer. I had been a newspaper reporter, a newspaper editor, and a magazine editor. I didn't want one boss anymore, so I started freelancing in a lot of directions, but it grew out of Music Row. I mean, I've done hundreds of bios. It was always great fun; it kept my hand in, and I could still pitch songs.

2. Let's talk about Bob Kingsley. Obviously, the songwriting connections led to some great work, such as writing biographies to working with Bob Kingsley. How exactly did the connection with Kingsley happen?

My first real bio was with Warner Brothers, and Janis Azrack was heading the PR department, and she hired me. The very first [biography] was Billy Hill with Bob DiPiero and John Scott Sherrill and some other guys as a band, then right away she gave me Emmylou Harris, Hank Jr., Randy Travis, and Kenny Rogers, right in a row. So, I went back to other labels to tell them I wanted some work, and it expanded. Ronna Rubin, who had been on staff at Warner Brothers, had gone off by herself to open up her own PR shop. She was hiring me to do bios here and there, and one day she called and asked, "Would you like to do Bob Kingsley's bio?" And, I said, "I'd love to! That'd be great." So, I met him at CRS in 1995; he was late, because Bob Kingsley cannot walk across the foyer without being stopped 300 times, and I realized that's just part of the magic. So, we did the interview, and my theory about life is work to do the best you've got with the job in front of you. So, I just did the best bio I could, shipped it off to them, they used it, and a few months later, he called, and said, "You know, a guy who's been with me for 17 years just left, and I thought back to our interview. I liked the interview, and I liked the bio. Do you want to try radio?" I had never done radio - except for a few broadcasts when I was in newspaper reporting, and we owned a radio station. I'd phone in and do a live thing with the on-air people. So, I said, "Sure," and my first radio job was doing interviews for, and writing for, Bob Kingsley.

3. Let's back up a moment to the bios, because that's a bit of a talent. When you're writing a bio for an artist - especially new ones or someone who's established - there's a narrative that you either have to create or continue. Can you tell us about your preparation for writing an artist bio?

For a while, it was like every singer who came to town grew up in suburban Atlanta, sang in church, then did this - it was all the same guy coming through, so you had to make that same guy interesting. For me, there was a formula for writing a song, which you break when you're good enough to do the formula, and there's a formula for writing bios: Hook somebody with a great quote or a great fact, do a little background, talk about the new product, and so on. You go through it like that, so once I had that down, I felt very comfortable, and my interview skills seemed to be okay. The bottom line has always been to research your brains out. I do not ever want to have anybody else in the room when we're doing interviews to know more about the artist than I do. I want them to say at some point, "Where did you find that out?" Before the ages of social media, it was tougher, and now, of course, everybody's entire life is out there. If you come unprepared, shame on you.

4. When you connected with Bob, he was already well-established. Was there a learning curve to writing copy for his countdown show? Can you talk about finding that comfort zone with him?

It was harder on the guy who was training me than on me, because rule number one for writing for radio is no more than one comma per sentence. That's what you have to remember; we do not do semi colons or dashes. When you are doing radio, you have a listener to think about. You do more repetition than you do with strait prose that's written down, and you don't complicate the sentences. So, once I got that, a lot of it was the way Bob wanted to make everything interesting. I had to bring sparkle, even to the dullest quotes. Once you've done your 314th Tim McGraw piece, there is no new information; you'd better be able to make an ordinary quote sparkle. So, Pat Shields - who essentially developed that show with Bob - he was his right-hand guy. He knew everything and everybody, and was a great writer. He could make you care about a little feature piece. He would look over everything that I sent out there, and he'd send back the stuff he didn't like, and I picked up from what he said and what he didn't say - simple, sparkly, and there were certain words you couldn't use. Pat didn't want you to start with "th" - he didn't want "the" or "there" - he just didn't like the way it sounded. Other than that, you listen to Bob, and well-spoken prose is musical. Bob's music is conversational, emotive, and it draws you in. I just got to hear his voice in my head. If there's one skill I've developed through the years, it's anticipating the way some people speak or think. And, we still work together on that. As a writer for him, I want to help him craft the best way to do this stuff. He's a brilliant man. He knows everybody, he knows how to tell a story, and all I'm really there for is to help provide that structure and those words. Bob is - above everything - humble. He does not like to spend a lot of time at a podium; if he's got something to say or someone to introduce, he wants his heart out there in the fewest minutes and in the fewest amount of words that it takes to state the matter at hand. When I work with him on that, it's usually just a matter of us sitting around and talking about it and me taking what's in his heart and making sure it's crafted as well as I can help him craft it. Bob is a pretty open book; he's the same guy off microphone as he is on. He's the easiest tear ducts in the human history - I mean, he just is. It's endearing, and it's wonderful! He leads with his heart, which is why the show works, because I think people get that he cares about the people who make the music and the songs. He's still glad to be a part of it and loves being in front of the microphone.

5. Part of what Bob does - with CRS, especially - is the songwriters' night and his "Acoustic Alley." With your songwriting background, did you have anything to do with the development of that?

That's pure Bob. He knows how the industry works, and he knows that the best artist out there - who's not a writer - is at the mercy of the people who find them songs. Jeffrey Steele sang at Bob's wedding. He's known him since Boy Howdy, and he knew that the magic was in those songs. What's in front of us and Bob every week as we do the show isn't just the name of the artist and the song, but we know who's behind them. Bob loves the chance that he has to take those songwriting friends of his and fly them in for charity events and the like. The songwriters mean just as much to him as the artists do, and he wants to connect people. "Acoustic Alley" is his way of doing that every year, and the place is electric. To hear the people who have written those songs in four different sets for the evening is, as we all know, a great evening.

6. After all of this time with Bob, you're almost like his conscience. Obviously, you have to be true to Bob and what he does, but you can sort of inject that influence. What are some of the challenges you face with remaining true to what Bob delivers?

We do 16 story pieces out of the Top 40 every week. Five or six or those are him narrating into a voice actuality of an interview that we've done. Then, the others are simply Bob narrating a story. He's the one who will push back, during our weekly writers meeting, and look at everything that's coming through. He reads them out loud, and when it isn't singing to him, he'll say, "More this, less of that," or that something doesn't work for him. I'm trying to think of a place where I would push him in one direction or another, and I'm not sure there is, because at this point, he trusts my judgement. If we do a special, he will trust me to craft that and have a general direction going. He would just tell me if we need to push it in a certain direction. There are times when things don't work, but everybody on his staff in key positions has been with him as long as I have. I've been with him for 22 years now, and there are others with 26 or 28, and 40 in the case of Matt [Wilson]. It's a team! I've done 5,000 hours of radio with Bob. At that point, you'd better be thinking as a unit, and I think we do. My role here is to represent him as well as I can. I want to be somebody who's known for being prepared and who's easy to work with, because that's what Bob is, and there's nothing I'm pulling or pushing against in that relationship. I simply want to be the best 'Bob plenipotentiary' - to borrow the old Catholic term - that I can be!

7. You mentioned earlier how difficult it is to get Bob through a room without him being stopped countless times. What is the magic behind the man who you say is exactly what you get?

Bob was an ordinary guy from California, who had a childhood illness, spent a year in bed in quarantine, and fell in love with radio. He liked hot cars as a teenager; joined the military; was promised Hawaii; and at the last minute, they sent him to Keflavik, Iceland; and he kind of accidentally wound up doing radio. He will tell you that he was terrible the first few times he did it, but he went back and started studying. He is a guy who knows that he has earned a great position in American culture, and he has not forgotten who he is underneath the guy in that place. Every relationship he has is an equal back-and-forth. Even when he's telling a story down at The Palm or some place, it's a group, and you're drawn in. I think anybody who's dealt with him knows that's special, and he treats people well. He's brought in guest hosts and has made great relationships all across the country. People just want to say hi to him, so once you try to drag him through any room, you're going to have two-thirds of everybody there wanting a little piece, and it's lovely. His wife, Nan, who keeps him on course and holds a lot of the business stuff together, knows what challenge she's going to face when she is with him walking through those rooms. It's part of the magic that is this show and is him. He is one of five different Countdown shows, and he is Bob Kingsley. I don't know how many times I've heard people say that when they go to church, they have to go in by song number 38, and we always hope we're out by number 12, because that's on every Sunday morning when they go to church. Bob always says that he can picture the person; it's one woman in the kitchen with her cup of coffee during the few minutes she has before her family gets up, and she turns the Countdown on, and she loves Country music, and he wants her to know who these people are while she enjoys the music.

8. Shifting gears, you've been so closely associated with Bob in Country music in this town for so many years, and you've always struck me as someone who's very observant. Keeping that in mind, could you share your perspective on Country music? Do you still feel connected to the newer artists and changing sounds of the format?

I actually think that what's happening lately is as big of a change as when the heads of labels went from being Cash and Haggard guys to being Eagles and Beatles guys, and that happened around 1980. It wasn't always good. We struggled until we got our roots back with Randy Travis and Ricky Skaggs in the mid-80s. I remember Buddy Killen saying that a specific artist was having #1s every time out, and he's not selling 30,000 albums, and that we can't keep the electric bill paid if this keeps up. That was after Urban Cowboy died down. We went through a big sea of change then, and we have to remember that Country music got taken over in the late 50s by Rock n' Roll; they thought it was over, because Elvis and Jerry Lee and everybody were on the Country charts, as well. There were times when what's been considered foreign has taken over. Waylon and Willie were not always appreciated early on. Eddy Arnold and the Countrypolitan sound of the early 60s took a lot of flak. I mean, there have been big sea changes like that. This is the first generation that I didn't grow up listening to all the influences that the newer artists have. I was not much of a Hip-hop guy - I had some familiarity, but I wasn't immersed like I was in everything from my early days up to right now. But, the trick is, at bottom, there is Devin Dawson over at Warner Brothers, who was in a Metal band, but writes solid Country music. Music is music, and if you can understand the basics, and can put your heart in knowing this is the sound you get over here - Sam Hunt can write a down and dirty Country song and sing it, but he knows who his crowd is. He knows his road to his own expression and success. What's the definition of Country music? It's what Country radio is playing at the time and what ends up on the Top 40; that's what Country music is at the time, like it or lump it. If my sweet spot happens to be 80s Haggard, that's a great thing for me, but it's gonna keep evolving. I love what Taylor Swift did to our demographic. I don't always love everything that every part of the demographic loves, but overall, the kids making the music are as delightful to sit down and talk to - probably even more delightful than those in the Hall Of Fame. I won't name a name here, but I've encountered an artist sneaking out for what I should say was a medicinal run; you saw everything in those days. In general - behaviors beside the point - are you delivering to audiences, and how are you monetizing it? No one's exactly who they are on their bio sheet. As somebody who's seen it on the inside, I'm just as happy with the people making Country music now. It's still got the same pitfalls, and it can still be a brutal business. If you're on the outs, then people don't return your calls anymore. At the same time, what works is what works, and the people - in general - get along with each other well and root for each other in a way that I don't think other genres have. Back at CRS this year, Midland came in and played in our suite, and we got that it was terrific - the single they were releasing at the time has just gone #1. The album is California Country. I think Gram Parsons would like the album Midland's releasing right now, and they're going on tour with [Jon] Pardi and Runaway June, which is a show I'm going to, because it's modern and sounds great. It also touches one of my sweet spots, which is California Country from the 60s. Once you hear that Fender and that nice, dry, crisp sound, you've got me hooked. It's been great to watch them make it work. This is on another topic, but the fact that we can't break women through is just one of the harsh realities of what's going on right now, and we have to encourage it and hope for the best. There are a few places known for breaking artists in the last two or three years, and those are the key people to pin down and ask, "What percentage of female artists are you putting out there, and can you show us the push back you're getting from listeners and from people in radio?" We all know the classic arguments, but there are new places breaking artists with some regularity, and that's the choke point we need to think about and ask about.

9. With you typically being the interviewer, you've said you always come to an interview prepared. How do you do that so well, especially during a time when the information is out there for everyone to see?

It's mostly just a matter of time. CRS Week is vacation for me, because of the work I do preping in the couple of weeks leading up to it. I'm doing thirty interviews that week, and I want to be just as prepared for those as I am in July when I only have three interviews in a week. To do that, I have to dedicate the time to it, and it's all about following leads; it's knowing that sometimes people change their last names and finding that Devin [Dawson]'s last name was different when he was in the Metal band. It's also about being able to look for the fact that they were playing on a flatbed trailer in their hometown when they were 15 and now they're 27 - to look for that when you Google it. You're Googling their name, in their hometown, and adding another key word that allows you to find this stuff that isn't on their one-sheet. When the mic is on, it's all fun, and it's my buzz. It's my favorite thing. Maybe even more than hanging with Bob - as much as I love that - is when that microphone goes on and I'm talking with somebody whose music I've listened to enough and cared about enough to want to have a conversation. To make sure they know that I appreciate what they're doing, and now for our readers, I want to talk about your home life, your kids, your parents, all that sort of thing. That stuff is all the fun. I'm sitting there with sheets of questions that I've already done; I don't have to work anymore, I just have to draw them out during CRS. There are people who have had great six- to ten-year, great careers who are still bad at interviewing. There aren't many, but there are a few. All you do is take what you can get. You ask the same question three different ways; you sneak it in the back door, hoping to get some expansion on it. There's always the addendum - if you ask somebody about writing a song, and he or she gives you a four-word answer, you go, "Lyrically, did you...?" Sometimes, it really doesn't work. There are times when everybody in the process slaps his or her forehead over that one interview, and you just are glad there's only a handful of those out of the hundreds of interviews we do.

10. Wrapping up, you've authored a lot of books, as well as ghost-written for a lot of people. When you take on a project like ghostwriting, what's the main task of it? Is that like pulling teeth?

My job is to get inside the head of the man or woman who's book I'm ghosting; to think like them enough to write a book in their voice. I did Eddie George, who was the Running Back for the [Tennessee] Titans, and his wife, [Tamara] 'Taj' George, who is an R&B Singer - we did a book together. I ghosted a book for the two of them, together, and I had to write a main narrative of both of their voices, then his voice, then her voice. So, there was them, plus the editors at the publishing company, and the trick is that they were so likable, and she's such a force of nature, that I knew I was gonna enjoy the process. Whatever needed tweaking, we could do in a friendly atmosphere. It was "I'm trying to channel you." The first thing I ghostwrote was for Reba [McEntire], a piece for Guidepost Magazine, and she and I had talked for 90 minutes about a key episode in her life that faith had helped her get through. I guess I just kinda have a knack for it, and I'll put in the hours. The challenge is picking someone wisely; it has to be someone I like and can work with. With a book - I've been working with Cal Turner, the former Dollar General CEO - off-and-on for about eight years for his book. We're still friends, we're still good - it's published next May - it's just a matter of trying to speak in his voice, rather than Eddie's or Taj's voices. My best on-the-job training was with Barry Landis, who was at Warner Alliance, the Warner Christian label back in the 80s. He later took over as President of Word Records, and I used to sit in his office as he wrote a letter, a release, a brochure, or video. He'd pace in his office, and I'd sit in his office, taking notes. When he'd leave, I'd have an hour and a half to be his voice, and for some reason - I guess it was all of those years at the newspaper, because I covered so many different kinds of people - I sort of got a feel for quoting people in the way they style their prose as it comes out of their mouths. If you do it enough, you get a feel for how to do it, and if you pick somebody you want to work with, it becomes easier. You have to be likeable, too. Anybody on Music Row knows that we weed out the buttheads, unless they're so talented that we can't deny them. Then, we just put up with them, and we complain about them! But, most people that go through the early stages are good and fun to work with, so I try to be agreeable. Sometimes, you have to push people you're ghosting to talk about painful episodes, or your readers are going to be disappointed if you leave that episode out, as painful as it is. It's not about forcing something you don't want to do for no reason; it's about crafting the best lessons that you learned during that painful time in your life, and you better be easy to get along with if you're going to push people in that way. As soon as the book is done, or if I do a media interview for a book I've written, I have to go back and re-read before I go on, because I've got a new book in my head. They're not as easy to hold in my head in my 60s as they were in my 40s, but I've been around long enough that I'm like an old fox who's got some tricks that help me expand and help me work around that. It's not that easy to hold an entire book. I've got to remember what they did when they were eight, because it affected the decisions they make when they're 60, and it's got to be in there somewhere. I can't go looking and hoping - I have to have it in my head. It's labor intensive, but I've worked in factories, I've driven cabs... This is better!