The Writers Round with Marv Green

Welcome to the Writers Round, a monthly column where Sounds Like Nashville sits down with Nashville-based songwriters and learns about each writer’s journey to Music City. This month, Marv Green sheds some light into his life as a songwriter as well as shares the stories behind some of his many hits including Lonestar’s “Amazed,” Carrie Underwood’s “Wasted” and George Strait’s “True.”

Marv Green was surrounded by country music from a young age. Early memories growing up in Southern California include car trips with his dad while listening to Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Family get-togethers often involved an uncle pulling out his guitar, which always intrigued Green and his brother. Before long, they had guitars of their own and were writing songs for their band.

“It starts with wanting to learn a John Denver song or a Hank Williams song and then it gravitates to, ‘Why don’t we make up one of our own?'” Green says, settling into a chair in his writers room at THiS Music. “That happened early on. In high school, I had a composition teacher who let me write lyrics instead of composition and it was very nurturing. I still have some of those lyrics.”

In high school, Green would often skip break and head to the jazz room where he’d jam with his friends. He and his brother eventually started a band and they’d make money playing weddings, private parties and the bars that would let them in. By the time he attended college, he knew he wanted to be a music major. While at Santa Barbara City College, a professor’s words stuck with him. His instructor asked him what he really wanted to do in life, noticing his passion for songwriting, and said, “Well, if you stay here you’re going to become a music teacher.”

Shocked and thankful for his honesty, Green took those words to heart. While he had encouragement from many people to move to a music center to pursue his passion, the closest city was Los Angeles, which seemed daunting.

“L.A. always felt like a monster. I couldn’t figure it out. It was too big,” Green admits. “I’m from a town that’s about 20,000 people in it and Santa Barbara has only 80,000, maybe 100,000. So, to go there and imagine how to make it work was sort of a feat for someone in their early 20s.”

Green didn’t move anywhere right away. Instead, he stayed put and when Nashville acts would come through town and needed an opening act, he and his brother were there to help. Many of the artists were impressed by his songs and encouraged him to check out Nashville. While he loved his life in California with the beaches and the mountains, he was curious about the scene in Music City and in the early ’90s he made his first trip there.

Inspired by what artists like Foster & Lloyd, Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell were doing, he visited Nashville in January of 1993 and took part in several writers rounds at the Bluebird Cafe and various venues along Broadway. A few publishers were in the room and told him he should move to Nashville, further convincing him it was time. Now 28, and realizing his late 20s were approaching, it was only a short while until he packed his things and moved to Tennessee for good.

“I cut all ties to everything comfortable and waited tables in this now vacant lot next door,” Green says with a smile. “I moved here with — pretty classic — a suitcase, guitar and my life savings with about $2,500 to my name. Waited tables, answered phones for the JC Penney catalog when that was a job.”

After about four months, he recorded six songs and called a deejay friend in California who told him if he ever moved to Nashville he had a contact for him. As it turns out, his friend’s wife’s cousin was producer Scott Hendricks (Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Faith Hill). Green was told to drop off a cassette with his six songs and didn’t expect a fast reply as his friend said Hendricks was very busy. A week later, Green got a call from Hendricks and the two met.

Hendricks said he liked what he had heard and just so happened to be starting a joint venture with Warner/Chappell Music called Big Tractor Music. He told Green he’d like him to be a developing writer with a six month trial. He immediately accepted. Hendricks’ advice to him was to show up every morning, have coffee and meet people and that’s exactly what Green did.

“I feel like I did my homework. It’s luck, it’s preparation, it’s right time, right place. It’s everything — belief,” Green says of his publishing deal. “I’d been writing for years, really, in theory. I had performed and played many, many songs for hours a night. I was ready. I went to school in my own way. That continued at Warner because that turned into a school, too. I would hang out with the more senior writers and be exposed to that. It happened relatively fast and I’m grateful for that.”

Green says being around senior writers was a learning experience. When he got to know them well enough to approach them about writing together, he always came prepared and had a couple things started and concepts to share for when they got in the room together.

“The first time I wrote with Jeff Stevens, Jeff already had success. Back then he was a Warner writer and already had No. 1 songs,” Green explains of Stevens, who now produces Luke Bryan. “I walked in with part of a song called ‘True’ and that became my first No. 1 with George Strait. I had the concept and part of the chorus and I shared that with him. I knew he could help me take it to where it needed to be its best.”

Green and Stevens wrote the song in 1997 and it hit the top of the country charts the following year. As Green explains, he was always interested in one-word song titles. In fact, many of his one-word titled songs became hits for him, including Lonestar’s “Amazed,” Carrie Underwood’s “Wasted” and Eric Church’s “Creepin.'”

“The thing about one-word is that it was an emotion, but it was also, what can you do with that word? ‘True,’ was a love sentiment that was honest but it was also, when I write the word true, what does that word want to make me say after it? That’s how that song became what it was and that’s how it started,” he shares. “I was interested to see . . . where’s your brain, or what’s the emotion that comes after you write ‘true’?”

Years later, he applied this same thought process to “Wasted,” which Green co-wrote with Hillary Lindsey and Troy Verges. The song was released by Underwood in 2007 and Green says that when he first had the title “Wasted” he enjoyed the fact that wasted could mean, I’m wasted like I drank too much or I wasted my time.

“I hadn’t heard it as a title so, again, I wanted to explore what you could do with the word. When I started, before I had it to music, I was thinking the focus of that song was on, ‘If I don’t get out of my little town my life could be wasted.’ That’s where my head was,” he recalls. “I didn’t tell Hillary Lindsey or Troy [Verges] that’s where my head was and I remember Hillary said, ‘I would love to write a song called ‘Wasted.’ She actually took off with the first verse and I instantly realized she was taking it as a love song that went wrong. I thought, ‘Huh, she thinks that’s what that is? That’s cool.’ That’s the fun thing about co-writing, you don’t want to show all your cards because your co-writer could be thinking it’s coming from a whole different place and suddenly you have a different song and a better song.”

Another one-word title that became an eight-week No. 1 hit for Green was Lonestar’s “Amazed.” While he and his co-writers, Aimee Mayo and Chris Lindsey, didn’t decide on the title until they were finished writing the song, it is no less meaningful. He admits that they liked the title “Maybe I’m Amazed,” but that was already taken by Paul McCartney.

As Green recalls, one night Mayo called him wanting to write a love song. He said in those days he had nothing better to do than write songs all day and all night. He had just met his wife and having a close friendship with Mayo, she knew that he met somebody that was getting under his skin in a good way. He told Mayo to come over and shortly after Lindsey joined them.

“We talked for a minute and I didn’t realize that Chris and Amy were falling in love. That was the part I didn’t know,” he admits. “Anyway, we wrote this song and that was a true, honest, heartfelt love song ’cause we were all falling in love. The only thing I learned recently was she was motivated to write that night because she had a recording session the next day and she needed one more song. Which is funny — the motivations to write songs sometimes. I’m glad we wrote that. We wrote most of it that night and finished it the next day at the recording session. We finally landed on the ol’ one-word, ‘Amazed.'”

Soon after, the three writers teamed up with friend Bill Luther, who sang on the demo for “Amazed,” to form a songwriting collective called The March Project. For one month (in March), the four writers exclusively penned songs together. Three tracks featured on Tim McGraw’s 2001 album Set This Circus Down as well as his duet “Let’s Make Love” with Faith Hill came from this collaboration.

“We actually got a record deal but we turned it down,” Green says, getting nostalgic. “We started to sign it and then we walked away from it. We weren’t really artists, we were songwriters. We would kill each other on the bus.”

This was far from Green’s only opportunity to become part of a band. Around 1999, he recalls frequent collaborator Jeff Stevens calling him to see if he was interested in becoming a duo. The plan fell through once both realized they didn’t want to be artists.

“By then it was like, ‘No. I just need to write.’ Once you realize you get to do music all day and then go home and not have to hop on a bus and travel, it’s a pretty good job,” he admits. “For the most part, things happen the way they’re supposed to.”

The walls of Green’s writing room are covered in plaques, representing many of the hits he’s had over the years. Getting up from his chair to find a cherished CD, he says his proudest moment is having a cut on Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s final collaborative album, Django and Jimmie in 2015. Pointing to the faces of Nelson and Haggard on the album’s cover, his excitement is evident.

“I mean, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded one of my songs!” he marvels. “That’s one of probably the greatest accomplishments and something I’m most proud of, although it’ll never be on the radio.”

Green wrote “Live This Long” with Shawn Camp and he remembers sitting in the very room we are in, thinking they should try to write a song for George Strait before the focus changed to creating one for the two legends.

“Somewhere early in the conversation he goes, ‘Oh, by the way I’m going to play acoustic guitar for Willie and Merle on their new record. They’re going to do a record like Pancho & Lefty again,'” Green recalls Camp saying. “I was like, ‘You’re going to go play on Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s record? We have to write for that. We have to try.'”

While Camp was hesitant at first, as he had already sent several songs to the country greats which they passed on, Green said he had an idea that wasn’t relevant for a contemporary artist. If they wrote it right, it might be something Nelson and Haggard would want to say he reasoned.

“There was an actor at one point that said, ‘If I would have known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.’ I thought that concept would be a great idea for them to say if we wrote it right,” Green says.

They wrote the song that day, recorded it live in the same room and sent it to producer Buddy Cannon. That afternoon Nelson got the song and liked it, later sending it to Haggard. By the time Camp was in Texas ready to play on the album they still weren’t sure if their song made the final cut. The night before rehearsals began, Camp was in the room while Nelson and Haggard were being interviewed by Dan Rather. When the journalist asked what songs they planned to record they mentioned “Live This Long.”

“Shawn was there and was like, ‘They’re gonna do it!’ We were freaking out. I got to hang on Merle’s bus a good half hour before he left us and had a great conversation. If I could have anybody record one of my songs it was you or you,” he says, pointing to each artist on the CD cover. “And I got both of them on the same record.”

Nearly two decades after his first No. 1 hit, Green credits his longevity to being interested in where music is headed as well as being aware of what’s happening in both the pop and country genres. He says he’s always curious to see who the fresh talent is within the genre, frequently hangs out with the up-and-coming songwriters, and is open to learning what they have to offer.

“There are writers my age who would not go write with a track guy that’s 22. Well, maybe the track guy is going to bring some music that you need,” he asserts. “I think that’s key — to open it up to the youth and the energy that is coming in too. You always can learn. You can learn from younger writers, you can learn from older writers.”