Big Kenny Interview
(CSC) 1. Why don't we start off with your new label, GloTown! Tell us a little bit about this.
(Big Kenny)
Yeah! GloTown! It's spelled like Motown, but it's GloTown. Man, I just, I kind of got to that point in my life where I felt like the best thing to do for my creativity was to give it every chance in the world, and to do that in these times, I kind of came to the conclusion that the best way to do it was to form our own label, and to partner with all the greatest people out there for each release that we do. So, we’re starting that today. We're going to be releasing a song a week. The label used to put out a couple of songs a year, but I think my fans want to hear a lot more than that. The first song has kind of pushed us into getting this done because of the experiences that are happening. The release of the song “Cry With You” was a song I wrote on January 3rd. I woke up on a Sunday morning with this great amount of emotion. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started messing around with the melody and I went to take a shower and get ready for the day. By the time I got out of the shower, the entire song was written in my head. When the next week came around on a Monday, I was talking to a good friend and mentor of mine named Walt Ratterman who was working down in
(CSC) 2. How long were you down in Haiti?
(Big Kenny)
I'd guess about 5 days.
(CSC) 3. Where can people find the song that you wrote titled “Cry With You?"
(Big Kenny)
It's on my website www.BigKenny.tv. You can get to it directly through that site.
You can also get to it through LoveEverybody.com, which is my foundation, or you can get it through GloTown.com
(CSC) 4. So you've made it really easy for people to get a hold of it?
(Big Kenny)
Made it really easy, and we've built the flash-page that's going up at noon today, and it tells the story of the song, and it has the pictures, it has the video that we've recorded. We used phones and whatever other devices that we could get our hands on. We were able to do it, and I think this will give people a real great picture of what we experienced there on the ground and what the continuing needs are that are there. I've had so many people Scott, come up and ask me, “What can I do? How can I help? I felt paralyzed and I don't know what I can do.” and the best thing that I can come up with is you can give. And if you can give to our fund, to our Love Everybody fund, or the Community Foundation in Middle Tennessee, then I will steward those funds and make as much good happen as I possibly can. That's the best thing that I can do. I don't know what else to offer to people. I go, I show up, and I make things happen.
You know in the past years I've been able to get a school built in the middle of Sudan in the middle of a war zone. 550 girls registered, they have never had an opportunity to get an education before. When I was in Haiti we were able to feed a nursing home, we were able to coordinate efforts to help find people's loved ones while we were there. We're giving away scholarships, putting doctors in the Appalachians right now where we're ruining our drinking water from exhuming the coal, it's killing the children and that just doesn't work. So the funds basically just, wherever I've seen the greatest need, I try to put as much help there as I possibly can. I think that the community is ready for people to help, and to know that were pro-active. My fans, my group of fans, I know that they're all sweet-hearted people. I call them “The Ambassadors of Love”. They all want to help, and this is a great way that they can do it, and they can spread the word. They can send other people to the site. We put the track up there for a buck. The video's up there. You can have everything. The pictures, the video, the music, you can have it all!
What we did is we've made the price go from $1, to $5, to $10, to $20, to $50, to $100. So if you want to give, you can buy the track and everything over a $1 goes right into the fund. We've made it real easy to where people don't have to enter their credit card information a dozen times. We're just trying to make it real simple. The music shows what we're doing and tells a story, and if you want to give and you've got a couple extra bucks, you can do it.
(CSC) 5. Now, do you think that you'll do any kind of benefit concert or anything, due to everything that has happened down in Haiti? Try to put a concert together?
(Big Kenny)
Actually, I got asked to perform and host a benefit concert here in Nashville, which I'm going to be doing at the home of the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium. Alison Krauss will be playing along with myself and many other great musicians here in Nashville, for Compassion International. It's happening on Saturday the 27th [of February] I believe, at the Ryman Auditorium here in Nashville. So, that's already lined up. On the 25th of next month, I'll be performing at the World Music Awards in L.A., and we'll be performing the song. The song has happened so organically. I'm just putting it out on the website. It's not going to be released on the radio. I've got a single coming out that's 'To Find A Heart' off my new album “The Quiet Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Farm Boy”. So, I'm trying to keep the two separate so it don't confuse people. This music is so important right now, I need to make it accessible to my fans.
(CSC) 6. Right. Well, what are your CMA Fest plans coming up? Do you have anything going on with it that you're trying to get lined up?
(Big Kenny)
That's a little far out for me to tell ya'll from off of my head, sittin' here in my car. I know that I'll be performing during the CRS. The Country Radio Seminar is this coming week. I'll be performing. I'll be a big part of the picture that's going on there. I'm doing interviews and performing today. I started this morning on the House Foundation Show here in Nashville. I'll go through 900 e-mails a night and I'll get a little time with my family and get a chance to catch back up. It's just one day at a time man. I would hope that we're planning an event for our fans and for The Ambassadors of Love during the CMA Festival this year. I'm hoping that I can pull it all off. I kind of want take things one day at a time, and see where life leads me. And if something happens like this again, then I'm gone, and I don't know what else to do. Nothing's more important to me than keeping things going in a good way. My friend Walt Ratterman was one of the most shining examples of that, which I've ever seen in my life.
(CSC) It's very sad, what happened. Hopefully some good can come out of it, something positive.
(Big Kenny)
I know the great higher power has always got his plans or her plans behind everything. You know, a great light has been shined on one of the most oppressed people in the world, and that is the country of Haiti. The storms in Haiti are worse than storms that I've seen in any third world country. It's just horrific that these people have been oppressed to such an extent for so long. You know Scott, from where you are in Florida; you could be in Haiti just as quick as you could be in Nashville. So, to me, these people are just neighbors. When I see a child in despair... there's no border, there's no fence, there's no door, there's no window, there's no anything that can come between me and them even wanting to reach out and help them. So, I know people are just people, children are just children, and parents love their children, and children love and depend on their parents. So, we're all just people. We're all just really brothers and sisters in this world. I think that through great catastrophes like this and natural disasters and the wars of life maybe do come with the greatest gift. That is the realization that we are all just people. We can spend our time just helping each other and being creative and constructive, or the opposite of that which is no good. My heart moves me to try to do things in a good way and to love my neighbor as myself, and to do as much as I can. My gift is music, and everything, all the blessings that relate on me in my life have come from music. So, I know that [music] is the thing that I focus on and permitting it allows me to do other things. I just try to do as best as I can with it. I consider it a stewardship. I know that I ain't takin' none of it with me, and it could all disappear in the blink of an eye.
(CSC) 7. What's the status of Big & Rich right now? Are you both just doing the solo thing completely right now, or do you think that you'll get back together?
(Big Kenny)
The status would be focusing on our individual solo projects right now. It's kind of hard for me to think past that with as much as I've got going on. You know, there's so much music out there already, John and I wrote all these songs in the first 3 years we met each other back in the early 2000's. Out of everything that got put out on an album, almost 90% of it was written before Big & Rich even came out. So, our lives have moved along and seen so much now, John and I got to' find the time to get back together and write before we can even put some new music out! Now he's got a new baby, and I've got a child and stepsons and extended family. I'm trying to do so much with what I've already got going on, it's just uh.... it's just a lot! (he laughs) You know, I've already wrote all these songs and I've kind of spoke to my wife recently through “The Quiet Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Farm Boy” and I'm supposed to write a song. You owe stewardship of the song to make sure that you get it put out. To make sure you get it to your fans where they can hear it. There's constantly stuff happening in the Big & Rich world in our music. It's being put out in new ways, and different ways. There are fans that meet Big & Rich today that never heard of us 5 years ago. So, I've even heard that there's a possibility that they're gonna' release more singles off the albums that were already done. I mean there are huge hits on there that because of the way that the business has been run here in Nashville for so long that they didn't think that you could put out so many songs per album.
In reality that first album we did, “Horse of a Different Color” was like a Greatest Hits album. I mean, it's just song after song that we play in our live shows that people know are on the sets. You can tell they need to hear 'em by the way they sing 'em back to you. There's a song that's a favorite of mine on one of the last albums, “Raising Hell and Amazing Grace” called “Eternity”. There's one lyric that talks about “life, it should be so perfect. We shouldn't know we've made it to the other side when we've made it to the other side.” I realize how important that is, and there's so much we can do that we can make this world so alive and neighborhoods so beautiful, and really so good. We don't know, we're moving through life in such a great way that you almost feel like you're living in heaven before you even get there.
I've had so many radio friends say “Man, you know I want to put that song on, you know you need to put that song out.” All I can do is pass the words along and it seems like it's going to happen. I've kind of had some bigger fish to fry here on my plate here as of recent. You know, I've been engaging with Walt's family and my extended family and so many new friends that I've met. It's a tragedy really, that we're trying to do good things and trying to deal with emergencies needs. We were able to get up water filtration systems in 2 orphanages in the past couple of weeks. We've been getting water to people that had no other way to get it. We've still been recovering American citizens down there, and doing whatever we can to help get them home to their families. You just deal with the most pressing things on your plate, and I know so many others are doing the same things. I could go on, and on, and on Scott, with all the different things I'm working on, but I don't want to give you too much information and confuse you. That's a lot at one time. I've got a lot of stuff going on.
(CSC) 8. It's okay. Do you plan on going back down there?
(Big Kenny)
Yes Sir. We're working on that. I think about it on just about a daily basis. I'd like to just take my guitar and just grab my fingers and I would be there right now. I would think that's the most important thing I can do at the moment. Just hang out and try to play for all these need workers and all these people that have been working down there feverishly to recover all the missing and return them to their families, and it ain't an easy job at all. Since the quake a lot of these people have been working down there since day one. I'd like to just go and play a little music and give them a little sense of normalcy. You know our troops, our American Troops, like the 82nd Airborne, the Corps of Engineers, and the Army Corps, all the troops were arriving down there actually after I arrived down there. I know those guys have been down there the whole time and they're still working. There are people from the State Department working; there are people from Aide groups from all over the world working together! It's still one of the most amazing things I've seen in that it's brought so many people together. On that one site where we camped, you could be in a meeting and hear 8 different languages. The common denominator between all of them was a tap on the heart and a smile.
(CSC) 9. Well, the world AND Country music are both a better place knowing that you're in it, and you're trying to help everybody. You live by what you preach, and that's the cool thing about you.
(Big Kenny)
Well, I'm kind of one of these people that after I got it, I didn't want to have it unless I could do something with it. I just didn't feel right. I kind of balanced them both. You know, being a country star and being a performer for millions of fans, also being a human being and living by the foundation that I was raised by, and by my heart. Not letting anything stop me from being able to walk in that direction. It's a hard job, but I feel good that I'm doing it as best I can. That stuff's the most important thing for me to wake up with everyday.
(CSC) 10. Well, is there anything you would like to tell your fans out there?
(Big Kenny)
Yeah! Love thy neighbor as thyself, and simply love EVERYBODY!
