Producer: Frank Liddell

Frank Liddell’s page on a well-known online encyclopedia has barely 80 words of biography, which is evidence of how well he hides in the shadows and how important this series is to highlight backroom fellas.

Liddell is linked to two ladies of country music. He is married to Lee Ann Womack, and is stepfather to her daughter Aubrie Sellers, and he also produced three of Miranda Lambert’s albums. The singer fell in love with Liddell’s production of an album by her fellow Texan Jack Ingram. Liddell was at the desk for songs like Gunpowder & Lead, White Liar and The House That Built Me.

In the early 1990s he had moved to Music City from Houston, working for Decca Records before launching his own Carnival imprint. Liddell has said Carnival’s success exists on ‘one hit a year’; in 2003, that smash was the Bruce Robison composition Travelin’ Soldier, which the Chicks took to number one.

In an interview with Music Row in 2014, Liddell noted that ‘there’s a lot of music in this town [where], to me, the marketing plan exists and the music is just sort of dropped in it…It’s now a business game.’ Conversely, he advises artists to ‘make something you’ll listen to the rest of your life’.

Player: Jenee Fleenor

In country music, when you’re hot, you’re extremely hot. If you’ve written or played on a number one smash, you will get calls from A-list names. The latest fiddle player to gain prominence is Jenee Fleenor, who took the CMA Award for Musician of the Year in 2019 and retained it the following four years. Rather shamefully, it took until her first nomination for any woman to be on the ballot.

Born in Arkansas, Fleenor has toured in the bands backing Blake Shelton, Martina McBride and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. Viewers of The Voice and visitors to the Grand Ole Opry might have heard her fiddle playing too, which on record has enriched tracks by Jon Pardi (Dirt On My Boots), Cody Johnson (Til You Can’t) and Blake Shelton himself (I’ll Name The Dogs).

Fleenor co-wrote Just Getting Started and Oklahoma Christmas, both of which Shelton has cut, and Big Blue Raindrops, which was recorded by Del McCoury. Fleenor is also a member of Wood Box Heroes, a bluegrass supergroup featuring Josh Martin, Barry Bales, Matt Menefee and Seth Taylor. Their first album Cross The Line, with Fleenor on violin and vocals, came out in 2023.

Songwriter: Aimee Mayo

In the days where people went to a store and bought a song or an album on a physical product, songwriters would get a decent royalty from their work: Chris Stapleton once joked that writing Never Wanted Nothing More for Kenny Chesney bought him a house; Jason White, who wrote Red Rag Top for Tim McGraw, called his cabin Tim McGraw’s Greatest Hits Volume Two.

Amazed, which was taken to number one on the Hot 100 in 2000, might well have bought its three writers – Marv Green, Chris Lindsey and Aimee Mayo – several houses. Mayo grew up in Alabama as the daughter of country songwriter Danny Mayo and was bitten by the bug after seeing The Buddy Holly Story.

Mayo’s other compositions include This One’s For The Girls by Martina McBride, My Best Friend by Tim McGraw and Every Time I Hear That Song, which was eventually recorded by Blake Shelton after he kept placing it on hold. ‘We just write what we love, not what we think people want to hear,’ Mayo told one interviewer about her art. ‘If it doesn’t inspire us, chances are it won’t inspire others.’

In her 2020 memoir Talking to the Sky, Mayo details her disruptive childhood and troublesome first marriage. She and Lindsey have lived happily ever after and the pair now have four children; when Mayo was eight months pregnant with one of them, Dolly Parton advised her to stop jumping up and down in delight at that year’s ACM Awards!

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