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By Denise Schoppe
THE BATTALION
■ There is a song by Alabama that says, “If you’re gonna play in
Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.” The truth is, you need
more than a fiddle. Try a fiddle, two guitarists, a bass player, a
drummer and a keyboardist to be more exact.
I Joe Cook on guitar, Alex DePue on fiddle, Craig Mattox on
keyboard, John Stacey on drums, Michael Tarabay on bass and
Brian Wooten on guitar, make up the band that tours with Chris
Cagle, a country singer/songwriter, for over 100 shows every year
across the United States.
I “It’s a great job, but it’s not for everybody,” Stacey said. “A lot
ol local people play two or three nights a week for about 500 peo
ple, but if you want to play for bigger crowds, travel around and
be on TV on occasion, then yeah.”
I Before getting to travel, though, the band members had to get
an audition for their place in the band.
I “It’s a lot about who you know,” Mattox said. “You know a guy
who plays for another artist and learn about job openings. In my
ejase, a guitar player in this band told me they were looking for a
keyboard player. I had to audition. I learned six songs off the
album and there were about six other keyboardists trying out at
the same time.”
j However, Mattox explained it’s not only how well you play
that gets you into the band.
“In Nashville, pretty much everybody plays well,” Mattox
said. “It’s also about personalities.”
; Those personalities mesh well within the band. Cook describes
the relationships within the band as a brotherhood. He said all the
members get to know each other personally and in depth.
I “We get along really well,” Stacey said. “You become like a
family. There are little things that you like and dislike about each
other. That’s just human nature, but you deal with it. We’re
always helping each other out, like reminding each other about
bus call (the time the band has to report at the bus when it’s time
to travel to the next town).”
Cagle is currently part of the Brooks & Dunn Neon Circus
■Tour. An average day on the tour consists of the band arriving at
their hotel near the venue in the morning and getting up at around
9:30 a.m. The band goes to the hotel and showers, gets extra sleep
or does whatever else it needs to while its bus goes to the venue
to be unloaded.
R Around 3 p.m., the band goes to the venue via shuttle bus to
set up their equipment and have a sound check. It takes the stage
■around 5:30 or 6 p.m. and plays for half an hour. After the per
formance, it has five minutes to get the equipment off stage
before the next act comes on. The band packs up the trailer and
watches the rest of the acts until the merchandise guy, who sells
T-shirts and CD’s, is free to pack up and leave.
“All the hours and hours of time you spend practicing, all the
money you spend on equipment, it all narrows down to that time you
spend on stage performing,” Mattox said. “That’s the big pay off.”
Stacey said a lot of people don’t understand there is an
exchange between the artist, the band and the audience. It’s that
exchange that makes his favorite part of his job just getting to play.
“It’s kind of a personal thing, but you don’t know these peo
ple,” Stacey said. “You can tell that they dig what you’re doing.
This exchange between audience, artist and the band just feeds
the whole fire.”
However, with the good comes the bad. The worst is having to
be away from family and friends.
“My least favorite [part of the job] is missing events at home,”
Cook said. “You miss out on that experience.”
Some of the band members have been missing those experi
ences longer than others. Cook made music his career at an early
age, moving from Texas to Nashville at age 19.
“It’s all I’ve ever done,” Cook said. “I used to work for Terri Clark
and Billy Joe Royal. It’s just something I’ve done for a long time.”
Stacey has worked as a musician for 10 years and has found
that even as much as he enjoys his job, it begins to wear on him.
“It’s a job like anything else,” Stacey said. “I see the same peo
ple so often and get asked the same questions. ‘Where have you
been?’ We just travel. That’s what we do. But you get to be on TV
on occasion, and that’s cool. It’s not all bad, but it’s not as glam
orous as people think.”
The band has appeared on television with Cagle on various
occasions. Most recently, it appeared during Fan Fair Week on
CMT’s Most Wanted Live. The band is also in Cagle’s new music
video “Country By The Grace of God.”
“It’s pretty fun to get a phone call from a friend or a family
member saying, ‘I saw you on blah blah,’ like I’m a celebrity. But
I’m not,” Stacey said. “If I were to quit today, I could go back to
Texas and nobody would know anything about it.”
Until the time comes that each member does give up the busi
ness, the job provides memories never forgotten.
“One of my favorite shows was this time last year. We played
the World Trade Center,” Mattox said. “We had a stage set up in
front of Tower Two. That was a great day. Getting to see those tow
ers; I’d never seen those before. I get to have that memory forever.”
Getting to have those memories takes a lot of work. Cagle
requires the performance on stage to match that found on his
album. Play it Loud.
“That’s one of the things stressed to us when we first started,”
Mattox said. “Play exactly what’s on the album, and play it per
fectly every night. It requires a lot of practice. I’ve been on the
tour for two years, but sometimes I have, to go back and listen to
the album to make sure I’m playing everything correctly.”
All the work pays off in the end as the members of the band
take the stage with Cagle and perform for thousands of country
music fans.
“It’s a cool lifestyle,” Stacey said. “You’re always going. My
girlfriend can’t understand. She’s like, ‘How do you do what you
do?’ It’s definitely a lot more work than what people think.”
The Brooks & Dunn Neon Circus Tour, featuring Cletus T.
Judd, Chris Cagle, Trick Pony, Gary Allen, Dwight Yoakum and
Brooks & Dunn, will be at Smirnoff Music Center in Dallas on
July 13, and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands
on July 14.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CAPITOL RECORDS
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