From Left: Steve Glassmeyer, Gene Golden, Rick Harper, Edgar Struble, Randy Dorman, Bobby Daniels, Chuck Jacobs
“But you get to travel the world and do what you love!”
My dad heard this anytime someone caught the slightest whiff of the notion that playing music on the road was something short of paradise. Like any other job that takes a decade’s effort to be prepared for, touring can be rewarding. But despite the surface glamour, the hard work remains after the novelty is gone. It makes relationships and parenting tough. It requires serious social stamina, patience and savvy. Nobody makes a touring musician do what they do, no more than a welder or a dentist. They keep going partly because they’ve already put in the time to be good at it.
There is a group of Nashville musicians who are masters of this, with few peers in terms of longevity. In 1976, my dad Steve Glassmeyer was playing keys with two of his friends in the house band at the Starlite Club on Dickerson Pike. Kenny Rogers came in and offered them a road gig. Kenny had no money. His band The First Edition was beat, and he was scraping to salvage his career. My father took a risk and a cut in pay to tour with the group, which named itself Bloodline — no small consideration, since he had three kids.
Ultimately, Kenny’s gamble — and my dad’s — paid off. For 41 years, Steve Glassmeyer has toured with Kenny without interruption. Chuck Jacobs and Randy Dorman joined the band later in the ’70s, and they’re still with the group today. Other veterans of Bloodline include Gene Golden, Bobby Daniels, Rick Harper, Edgar Struble, Warren Hartman, Gene Sisk, Brian Franklin, Mike Zimmerman and Amber Randall. Many of these musicians spent 20 years or more with Bloodline. This isn’t a rotating cast of hired guns. It’s a real band, participating in a collective career whose endurance is all but unheard of in the music business.
Rogers’ official retirement concert at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena in October — the marquee event in a run of shows that continues through California’s Stagecoach Festival in April — made a sizable buzz, and brought a wealth of star power. Idina Menzel was introduced to Don Henley. The Flaming Lips were there. Dolly Parton appeared for an emotionally charged finale. But this was a high-profile production for film and television, and the producers had their own band and musical director lined up. Bloodline humbly watched from the audience. If The Gambler has earned all the recent “of all time” proclamations, then his band of 41 years deserves a spot in the pantheon alongside The E Street Band, The Wailers, The Heartbreakers and The Miracles.
It was a good gig in the 1980s, but there were long rough patches in the 1990s. When first-class flights gave way to bunks on a bus, Bloodline was there. Thanks to Lebowski and Santa Claus — the annual Christmas tour has been key — Kenny rallied in the 2000s. It has been up and down for the duration: arena tours, accountant problems, hit records, travel budget revamps, successful Christmas tours, less-than-hit records. When the press took stabs at Kenny’s chain of chicken restaurants — or made more personal attacks — Bloodline was there. Through Broadway, Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, a thousand casino buffets, another round of Christmas shows in ass-cold Wisconsin and a seemingly endless world farewell tour, Bloodline was always there. Again, no one was making them do it. People want the star and the songs they remember from their youth. They like the consistency, and it seems like Rogers does, too. His show hasn’t changed that much over the past 25 years, banter included. Bloodline sold the jokes and played a perfect “Islands in the Stream” every time.
At age 10, I sat in the pit at Middle Tennessee State University’s Murphy Center and learned what live music is from the inside. When I was in college, I saw drummer Lynn Hammann play his parts precisely, no mistakes, every show. The band makes the star flawless, with their impeccable feel and pitch. They tell the frontman what comes next. They write the hit Christmas show, come up with arrangements and work on lyrics. I grew up hearing my dad searching for songs for Kenny’s show, watching him sing Kenny’s scratch parts in the studio, deciding the best key, writing out number charts, calling in the band.
My dad first missed a Bloodline gig to come to my wedding in 1999, probably somewhere around the 3,000-show mark. The three other shows he’s missed were due to my brother’s wedding and a short hospital stay. He attended my sister’s graduation and still made it to West Virginia for the last four songs of a show. “Is your dad still playing with Kenny?” Yes. By next year, he’ll have played 5,600 shows with Kenny.
These people are my family and my heroes. They’re excellent people who are great at their work. I’m talking about quiet legends of a craft that is so much more than just strumming a guitar. These are the kind of professionals our city’s reputation is built on. Musicians feed on music itself, on their relationship with the instruments and the songs, on the teamwork and the hang and the travel. Applause is not the main ingredient. They ask for too little, and in Nashville, they serve the song and the star — maybe to a fault sometimes.
Kenny is a good man and will thank the band in his own way before the long farewell ends. But the coolest people in the arena at Kenny’s farewell show back in October were the ones who know the songs inside and out, who quietly watched everyone else have some fun. As I write this, they are Kenny Rogers’ band in Buffalo, N.Y. And for the first time since the ’80s, they’ll wake up at home on Christmas Eve.
Email music@nashvillescene.com
