I missed the CMA Awards show last night. We were going to go work out and watch the show on the cardio theater TVs, but my knees started hurting and I didn’t feel up to it. Now that I’m reading the press release about it, I’m so bummed to have missed Randy Travis singing “Sunday Morning Coming Down” in a tribute to Kris Kristofferson. That is one of my favorite songs of all time, and Randy Travis has the perfect voice for it.
On the other hand, I’m a little glad I missed “Live Like You Were Dying” winning song of the year. I’m thrilled for Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman, who write incredible songs and truly deserve this kind of recognition, but if I’d seen them winning, I’d have lost it. In this press release, Tim McGraw is quoted as saying backstage, “The song came to me around Thanksgiving. That’s when we sort of learned that Tug [Kate’s note: that’s his late father] didn’t have a chance. We cut the song three weeks later and it wasn’t sad. It was something special.” I have a hard enough time listening to that song without crying; now it’ll be waterworks every time I hear it.
The real upside to having missed the show is that by staying home I was able to focus on writing, and I wrote not one, but two songs. One of them was kind of a throw-away piece of dreck, but as soon as I finished it I started on the second one and it was much sharper for having sort of “warmed up” on the first one. I read the second one to Karsten when I was done, and he said it had real presence. So yay! That makes five songs total this month, and at least two of them are real possibilities for serious development.
Five down, 25 to go.