Bluegrass Beginnings: The Tammy Rogers King Story Episode 48

When family stories and musical chords intertwine, the result is a legacy as rich as the one Tammy Rogers King brings from her East Tennessee roots. Our special guest, a founding member of the celebrated bluegrass ensemble The SteelDrivers, takes us on a melodic journey through her life, sharing how her upbringing and family band experiences shaped her artistry. We thread together the influences of her childhood, her family’s musical migration to Texas, and the vibrant return to Tennessee that ultimately led her to Belmont's esteemed music program. Tammy's personal tales resonate with warmth, highlighting the intimate connections between her family history and her musical voyage—a narrative that even touches one of our own hosts in a profound way.

This episode promises not just a walk down memory lane but also an insightful look into the serendipitous formation of The SteelDrivers. Listen to how a simple call from Mike Henderson and a jam session with Chris Stapleton swirled into the birth of a band known for its soul-stirring bluegrass tunes. We delve into the dynamics of parenting in the context of fostering musical talent, as seen through the lens of children like Delana, who found her calling in music, Gina, who made her mark as an editor and writer, and Sarah, who transformed her career from hospitality to something entirely new. The stories behind songs like "Where Rainbows Never Die" reveal the alchemy of authentic songwriting and vocal harmony, capturing the essence of musical family legacies. Join us as we celebrate the harmony of heritage and melody with Tammy Rogers King.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hello again, everyone and welcome to Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan. It's these old radio guys telling old radio stories again. We thank you so much for downloading our podcast and we try to say hi to some of our listeners along the way and we just really appreciate you doing that. Dave hogan, how in?

Speaker 2: 0:33

the world? Are you better and snuff and not nearly as dusty, as my grandmother used to say I don't I don't know exactly what that means, but that was one of her favorite expressions oh, that, that uh on our previous podcast, I think we talked about my plan to visit to the world war ii museum down in new orleans I've been dying to know how that went it was, it was great, I, I was. You know, sometimes you plan something and it does not live up to your expectations yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:03

In this case it did. The World War II Museum is so well done Five different buildings, five pavilions. Each pavilion features a certain part of World War II and we recommend to our podcast listeners. If you're planning a vacation and you're not sure where to go, this would be great to put on your schedule. Hey, we're going to do a little Ken folks thing on the program today.

Speaker 1: 1:33

I'm anxious, you know, I thought for a long time that I didn't think he was telling me the truth about this, but you've got a famous Ken. I do, I do.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Tammy Rogers King got a famous kin. I do, I do tammy rogers king, and you know margo. Now margo is known as margaret to the her family. Somehow a little over three decades ago now, I gave her the nickname of margo and it kind of stuck. So anybody that's known Margo since about 1990 knows her as Margo pre-1990. It's Margaret and Margo, or Margaret's dad and Tammy Rogers King's dad were brothers and so Tammy is Margo's first cousin. And we are happy to have her on the podcast today from Nashville.

Speaker 1: 2:33

We are Tammy, how are you?

Speaker 3: 2:37

I am great. Good morning everybody. We're delighted to have you with us, Tammy, and there's so much that we can talk about.

Speaker 2: 2:40

We're delighted to have you with us, tammy, and there's so much that we can talk about, and I was just thinking, as I drove over here to the studio, about where to begin a conversation, and there's no better place to begin a conversation than East Tennessee, and that's where you were born. But early on you moved to Texas. Tell us how that came about. But early on you moved to Texas.

Speaker 3: 3:05

Tell us how that came about. Well, as you mentioned, my cousin Margaret, as I call her, margo I haven't been around much evidently in the past few years because I didn't realize that that was her nickname. I like it. But we were all born up in East Tennessee and I was born in Rogersville, hawkins County there. My parents had moved there at the time and we lived there until I was almost five and my dad decided that he was going to strike out. He's the only member at that point of the family of his generation. He had two brothers, cousin Margaret's dad, claude, and then there was MC and then a sister, elizabeth or Libby as we called her. All there and he was the only one that left the area. And he decided that he needed to go out to Texas and find work and he did. He'd had another friend from East Tennessee that had moved out that way and got him a job. My dad had worked at Kingsport Press, had been in the printing industry, so he moved us out there to a suburb of Dallas, irving, and I was out there, as I like to to say, for my formative years, from five to about twenty, and went to.

Speaker 3: 4:31

I think we moved back to East Tennessee. One year, when my oldest brother, scott, went to Vanderbilt, my parents decided they would give East Tennessee a try again. So I moved back and you know, dad, just the pay wasn't quite the same as what he could make out in Texas. So they didn't stay long. I did a year at Swagrangeville Elementary School, fourth grade, and then moved back to Texas and that's when I started playing the violin, or the fiddle as we all call it. It was violin in school because it was a classical string orchestra program. It was violin in school because it was a classical string orchestra program and started playing out there. My dad he really hadn't played much, although he bought my brother an acoustic guitar during his high school years.

Speaker 3: 5:19

Scott, my older brother, but about that time, you know, dad kind of piqued his interest in music again and bought a bass and a guitar and of course I was on the fiddle and started a family band. And then at that point we started coming back to East Tennessee. We'd come back for summer vacations anyway, but we came back and started playing, usually a summer show down at Rogersville High School at the football stadium, and then later on he started a bluegrass festival at Laurel Run Park. And when I decided that I wanted to get to Nashville, I had gone to Southern Methodist University there in Dallas for two years and decided that I needed to get to Nashville and transferred and finished my college education at Belmont it was college at the time Then they moved back to East Tennessee for good at that point, so we all came back. That was in 1985. So I have been back in the beautiful state of Tennessee for good grief, almost 40 years now.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Wow.

Speaker 2: 6:27

Tammy is one of the founding members of the Steel Drivers and we'll get to the Steel Drivers here in just a few minutes. But at the beginning of our conversation we need to mention that, for those of you who are fans of the Steel Drivers, tammy was or is a founding member of the group. But I remember I don't know if you remember this or not, tammy, but you and I go back farther than you probably remember I remember introducing you and Adam Steffi and I don't know if you had a full band or you and Adam were doing uh duo work at the time down in Jonesboro and at uh we used to have what we call the old time radio reunion every year and do you remember being on that stage?

Speaker 3: 7:20

I do, yeah, I think that was with Dusty Miller, oh yeah when you had the band Dusty Miller. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:28

And do you remember Richard Blaustein?

Speaker 3: 7:32

Yes, I do Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 7:34

Richard died about, I guess, three or four years ago.

Speaker 3: 7:38

I think I recall reading about that as well, dr.

Speaker 2: 7:41

Blaustein was a professor at East Tennessee State University and he was from New York. I used to introduce him as the from the mountains of Manhattan, dr Richard Blaustein, who played the fiddle, and he came to our radio station, the radio station I was working for, and he said yeah, I'd like to put together an old-time music radio program like they used to do. And so we got together and we came up with the idea of doing the old-time radio reunion and for several years we did that during the summer and I remember introducing you on one of those, or maybe several of those programs back in the 1980s.

Speaker 3: 8:31

I do remember that. Yeah, yeah for sure. You know there's such a long tradition of great traditional music. You know, and it stands to reason. You know it's the heart of the Appalachians up there, with ETSU being so active all these years.

Speaker 2: 8:47

By the way, I hear your daughter just graduated from East Tennessee State University.

Speaker 3: 8:54

She will be graduating, yes, this spring, may 4th. So we're very, very proud she decided. And, of course, my husband, jeff King, is an alum and you know mine and Margaret's grandmother was a very early graduate of when ETSU was Tennessee Normal Teachers College, right, so we've always been very, very proud of that connection and then, of course, so many cousins and my sister and brother-in-law. You know we just have a long, a real legacy with ETSU. So so we were very excited when Delaina chose that as her university experience.

Speaker 2: 9:40

And her name is.

Speaker 3: 9:42

Delaina, Delaina King.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Is Delaina, musical Is she?

Speaker 3: 9:48

following in your footsteps.

Speaker 3: 9:50

You know she's kept it on the down low. I kept encouraging her to, you know, try out for one of the bands at ETSU or sing. And you know she just kind of wasn't quite ready to do that yet. But she started songwriting and I am one proud mama. She has written some incredible songs just right out of the box and she has a beautiful singing voice which, as you know, runs in the Rogers family. So we're excited to see what she decides to do with it. You know, jeff and I have always been supportive. She's had guitars and pianos and any instrument you know you could imagine around. But being two professional musicians, we know the importance of, you know, letting her decide for herself if she wants to pursue that, because it's a crazy life.

Speaker 3: 10:40

It's a crazy life.

Speaker 2: 10:42

I have a first cousin once removed who is in the business, Christian Scott Benton, who plays banjo for the Grascals.

Speaker 3: 10:52

I didn't know you guys were cousins. She's fabulous.

Speaker 2: 10:55

Yeah, she's my first cousin once removed, and Kristen and her husband. He plays.

Speaker 3: 11:04

Wayne.

Speaker 2: 11:05

Yeah, Wayne Benson. He plays for a different band. Yeah yeah, and I'm trying to think of the name of the band. He uh, third time out he plays. Yeah, he plays for third time out and they have a son and they name their son hogan.

Speaker 2: 11:18

His first name is hogan hogan benson and hogan is now 16 years old and I went to to one of Kristen's shows in Asheville not too long ago and I asked her about Hogan and is Hogan musical? Is he following in your footsteps? She says absolutely not. He will not have anything to do with music. He's into bass fishing and he's already going around the country fishing in bass tournaments. So sometimes a kid has to find their own direction.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Well, and that's you know, Delaina was so into volleyball. She played volleyball for a year at ETSU and you know it just, she always loved music. But we had to beg her to get up on stage and sing with us. So you know, I just kind of had let it, let it lay there, and then, out of the blue, this spring she started writing and who knows, you know, again she's got the talent if she chooses to pursue it. But you know, it has to be, she has to be motivated herself for it.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Randy has a daughter named Sarah, and I have a daughter named Gina, and in Gina's case, she worked in the corporate world for a long time and then went out on her own as an editor and writer. And Randy's daughter is in the hospitality business and has been for a number of years and then she morphed into another profession. Yeah, and and so it.

Speaker 2: 13:01

there's an old saying you never get through raising your kids and that's true, that's exactly true, randy's such a big fan of the steel drivers, I'm going to let Randy talk a little bit about the steel drivers and Chris Stapleton.

Speaker 3: 13:22

And tell us about the. Let's begin with.

Speaker 2: 13:23

How did the steel drivers originate?

Speaker 3: 13:24

How did they come about. Well, I had worked back in the mid to late 90s with a group of guys called the dead reckoners, which was an independent label that we started here, and that was kieran kane, kevin welch, harry stinson, myself and a guy named mike henderson. And um, mike was a wonderful electric guitarist and songwriter singer. So we had worked together five or six years with that group and had always, you know, really enjoyed playing, and he knew that I grew up playing bluegrass, that I grew up playing bluegrass and his kind of alter ego, in addition to being kind of a country honky-tonker and also an incredible blues guitarist, was playing Bill Monroe-style mandolin.

Speaker 3: 14:22

So, out of the blue, in the summer of 2005, I got a call from Mike Henderson and um hadn't, I think I'd run into him a couple of times around town Nashville is kind of a big, small town, or it was then and um, you know, he just said, hey, how you doing? And I said, good, I've been out touring with Reba at that point for a couple of years. He said, well, would you be into getting together and playing a little bluegrass? At that point I hadn't really played any serious bluegrass in about 15 years. I thought, why not? That might be kind of fun.

Speaker 3: 15:03

He said well, I've got some guys that are coming over next Sunday night eight o'clock my house and I was like, ok, let me see if I can get a babysitter. Make sure Jeff's OK with watching our daughter. She was about four at the time and, sure enough, he said, yeah, you go have fun, that'll be good for you. And I went over there and I walked in to Mike's and I knew Richard Bailey. We had grown up kind of out in the Texas, oklahoma, arkansas area, traveling the same bluegrass circles, and he was there on banjo. I had not met Mike Fleming yet, the bass player, but he and Mike Henderson had been college buddies, college roommates out in Missouri, so he was there on bass. And then there was this younger fellow sitting there at the table, long hair and kind of a beard, kind of quiet, and he said Mrs Chris Stapleton. And at that point I'd never met Chris. I had definitely heard his name around town. I'm kind of a budding songwriter but hadn't heard him sing, didn't really know anything about him.

Speaker 3: 16:12

And we sat there and, you know, just started initially playing just some old standards and you know, of course, when you hear that voice come out of you know that person, it's just uncanny and we were all knocked out by what we were hearing. And then come to find out Mike and Chris had been writing together for four or five years at that point. So they very quickly, as we got, you know, kind of warmed up, playing these standards, pulled out some of their original songs. And I remember thinking, wow, is this an old Stanley Brothers song that I somehow have missed? You know, I mean I was pretty well versed in the Bluegrass catalog. You know I was like this is this is amazing, where did this come from? And then when they were like, well, yeah, we've been writing this stuff, it was just on, you know, it was unreal, it was just unbelievably remarkable that they were able to write this stuff and it was so authentic sounding.

Speaker 3: 17:34

So you know, we kind of wrapped up that night and we all went home and, and I remember Henderson called me the next day or day after and was kind of like, well, what'd you think? And I was like, well, that was really fun, that was really great. And he just kind of casually said, well, you want to get together again? And I said, well, sure, so a week or two later kind of same thing we went to Mike's house Sunday night about eight o'clock and it just kind of organically grew into this thing that we very quickly realized was really unique and we all enjoyed and loved and was very kind of remarkable. So I mean, we always joke that it was Mike Henderson's fault and he's the one that kind of handpicked everybody, but we all very quickly realized that it was something very special and very unique.

Speaker 1: 18:40

Well, it really is, tammy. I've been listening to your music a long time and, uh, somehow, uh, I came across uh one of the songs that uh just really spoke to be called where rainbows never die oh yeah, that's that song is, and the way you come in with chris on the chorus of that song is just hair raising um incredible. Where, where did you that tell us about that song?

Speaker 3: 19:15

well, after the first record came out, um, which was, you know, arguably in the bluegrass world, a huge hit, it made a huge splash. We were nominated for a Grammy right out of the box and IBMA awards. You know, it just made a big, big impression right out of the shoot. You know we started talking about doing the second record and you know, by that point we had a lot of songs because we had been playing together since 05. The first record came out I think it was january of 08, and then the second one came out sometime in 2010, and so you know there were a lot of songs to pick from, which is a great problem to have. But you know we had stacked that first record pretty deep with incredible songs. Just, you know, still to this day, if you come to see us, we're probably going to do five or six songs from that first album because they're just, they've become iconic in our canon.

Speaker 3: 20:26

You know it's it's hard to do a show without doing um hadn't been for love and um drinking dark whiskey, and I mean it's just blue side of the mountain. It's just so deep with songs that you know are are super important to the band um. So you know they always talk about sophomore slump. You know how difficult it is to come up with a follow-up album. So mike and chris wrote when Rainbows Never Die and that was one of the iconic pieces for the second album. And really I found out later from Mike's wife, Janet, that Mike had written that about his own father.

Speaker 1: 21:19

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3: 21:20

And that that's how that piece I mean, I mean, he wrote it with Chris, of course, but that's how that song came to be and then we recorded it for that second album. And then that second album was nominated for two Grammys, both a country Grammy and a bluegrass Grammy, which we didn't win any of those Grammy, which we didn't win any of those. But you know, it has since become, you know, even after well, that was 2010,. You know, 14 years still, I would venture to guess, our most requested song.

Speaker 1: 21:55

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 21:57

I understand. Talk a little bit about your songwriting. Songwriting you wrote a song with Dean Miller that Terry Clark recorded called A Little Gasoline. Talk about your songwriting.

Speaker 3: 22:12

Well, I started writing when I was a teenager. You know, growing up in Bluegrass it was kind of a common thing. I mean, I was very well aware that Bill Monroe had written a lot of his songs. You know, lester Platt had written a lot of his songs, you know. So I just started trying to write at a very, you know, young, 14, 15 years old, and it was nice, with, you know, a family band. I had enough courage to show my dad, hey, here's something I wrote. He was like, well, let's do it. He was great about allowing me that outlet of, hey, you wrote it, let's do it in the band. So I had a couple of songs that we, that we did as the you know, as a teenager in the band. So it was great to have that outlet and that support. And then, you know, I I wrote some for the band Dusty Miller. We did a few of my songs at that point.

Speaker 3: 23:21

And again that at that time I was just only writing by myself. All those songs were solo writes. But once I moved to Nashville, I was still writing by myself but kind of quickly understood that Nashville is a songwriting town and it's a co-writing town. So I met Dean through playing on demo sessions for people and we became buddies and started writing together and we've written a ton of songs through the years and that was one that we wrote one day and I had a publishing deal by that point and my publisher I, I think we were. We actually wrote it with Leanne Womack in mind and I I don't know if she passed on it or we didn't get it to her in time. But next thing I know it's pitched to Terry Clark and she loved it and cut it and became her first single off her fearless album, so that was that was a big big deal for me.

Speaker 3: 24:23

That was in about 20,. First single off her Fearless album. So that was a big big deal for me. That was in about 20, I think it was 2000,. Either 1999 or 2000, right about there when that came out.

Speaker 2: 24:35

Well, randy, you know we had Bill Anderson here on one of our podcast programs and Bill was telling us about. You know just what Tammy said. He had never written co-wrote songs with anybody until recently. He'd always written by himself.

Speaker 3: 24:51

But like you say it's a songwriting town. That's right.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Well, guys, is this a good time to take a break? Come back and talk about life now on the road with steel drivers and, uh, pick up there. So, uh, thank you so much, tammy, for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us. Tammy rogers of the steel drivers, I am such a fan. We're going to take a break and be back in uh. Chapter number two on hot mike with Houston and Hogan. Be sure to click the subscribe button for another episode of Hot Mike with Randy Houston and Dave Hogan.