A country way of life, Episode 47 (Joe Chemay, Scooter Carusoe & Travis Meadows)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Player: Joe Chemay
There have been documentary films made that shine a spotlight on the kind of backroom figures who supported the Motown, Laurel Canyon and Nashville music scenes. The CV of bassist and backing singer Joe Chemay make him a perfect talking head for all three movies.
He contributed vocals to two songs on the album Blue Moves by Elton John and four tracks on The Wall by Pink Floyd, while also enlisted for Leon Russell’s band. As a measure of his eclecticism, in 1982 alone Chemay played on albums by Laura Branigan, Tom Jones, Juice Newton, Eddie Rabbitt, Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers.
With a young family, he wanted to do less touring and more session work, which was useful in 1990s Nashville where a strong bass part could punch up a track. Chemay played on hits songs and albums by country artists including George Strait, Collin Raye, Pam Tillis, Martina McBride, Deana Carter and Reba McEntire.
Chemay plays bass on two monster-selling albums of the last part of the decade: Wide Open Spaces by the band then known as the Dixie Chicks, and Come On Over by Shania Twain, where on drums was the same man he told one interviewer he had ‘played with almost every day for about ten years’: Paul Leim, whom we profiled in the last episode.
Leim also played drums on The Riper The Finer, an album released in 1981 and credited to The Joe Chemay Band.
Songwriters: Scooter Carusoe and Travis Meadows
The man born Travis Hill uses the penname Scooter Carusoe, with which he has had several hits.
Kenny Chesney took Anything but Mine, which Carusoe wrote himself, to number one, and did the same with Better as a Memory. He also wrote two number ones with and for Brett Eldredge, Mean to Me and Wanna Be That Song. Chesney enlisted Carusoe for his song We Do, while Eldredge brought him back for tracks on his album Sunday Drive including the excellent Magnolia.
Carusoe also helped Sugarland write their songs Fall Into Me, We Run and Wishing. His copyrights have also been cut by Darius Rucker (For the First Time), Chris Janson (Drunk Girl) and David Nail (The Sound of a Million Dreams).
Born in Mississippi, Travis Meadows has released four albums of his own but has had huge success as a songwriter for other artists, including bands who operate on the border of rock and country. He wrote the hopeful While You Still Can with Brothers Osborne, and four of his co-writes appear on the Blackberry Smoke album The Whippoorwill.
After having his leg amputated after a teenage bout with bone cancer, he was in the grip of addiction for several years, which informed a song called Riser which was cut by Dierks Bentley. He also wrote the title track of Cody Johnson’s album Human, as well as What We Ain’t Got for Jake Owen and Better Boat for Kenny Chesney, which Meadows recorded for his 2017 album First Cigarette.
Eric Church cut both Dark Side and Knives of New Orleans, and he and Meadows co-wrote The Snake, the atmospheric opening track of his album Desperate Man. In 2021 Meadows had surgery which affected his neck and throat but seems to have heeded his own advice to people who struggle as he does: ‘keep breathing till you wake up in a better place’.
All Episodes can be found here
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