L-R: Rudy, Larry, Steve Gatlin (Photo courtesy of the Press Office)
It’s been 17 years since Larry Gatlin and brothers Steve and Rudy have been together in any noteworthy manner, though Larry, songwriter and singer of such classic 1970s and ’80s country music hits as “Broken Lady,” “All the Gold In California” and “Houston (Means I‘m One Day Closer To You),” notes that the trio (known variously as the Gatlins and Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers when not just solely as Larry Gatlin) has “never really been apart.”
“We saw our recording career going down,” Larry says. “We weren’t selling as many records or getting them played on the radio, and fewer people were showing up at our concerts and we were getting less money per show. It looked like the beginning of the end.”
So the brothers made a “collective decision,” Larry says, “after searching our hearts and souls.”
“I looked around Nashville and saw that my fellow entertainers kept hanging on and hanging on and hanging on after their time was really over and it was very sad,” he continues. “They had become has-beens. That didn’t mean they couldn’t still sing or entertain a crowd, but that their time in the spotlight as viable entertainers and concert draws with No. 1 records and radio play was over. And I decided that it was better to leave 10 years too early than five minutes too late and hang on like an old baseball player who’s lost a step and gets sent back down to the minors.”
So Larry chose to “leave with some dignity and on my terms,” he says. He and the brothers retired from the road, until six years ago, when they were offered plenty to perform together again.
“That started us back a little,” he says, counting 50 to 60 “hit-and-miss hodgepodge” weekend and Branson, Missouri dates a year—“part-time at best, but quality shows that for the most part drew our money.”
Then five years ago Larry’s son Josh Gatlin, who had served on President Bush’s advance staff for five years, sensed the potential for a Gatlins comeback.
“He said, ‘Daddy, I’ve been the road manager for the world’s largest rock ‘n’ roll show and can handle your deal and we can do it right,’” Larry recalls.
Returning to his father’s Austin home base, Josh Gatlin examined his father's creative and business situation.
“I said, ‘You take care of the music and I’ll take care of everything else, and let’s see if I can help you out,’” says Josh. “He met with [young Nashville songwriters] Leslie Satcher and Jon Randall Stewart and co-wrote with them, and they both said, ‘Larry, there are young writers in Nashville who would chop off an arm if it meant they could sit in a room and write songs with you.’ And he got excited and started putting some music together to shop around.”
Then one day when Larry was in New York to perform at Carnegie Hall, he found himself standing in front of the renowned concert venue.
“I’d just done a 30-minute run in Central Park--one of my favorite places—and I was smoking a cigar,” Larry recalls. “I lifted my hands toward heaven and was thanking God for the blessings of my family and health and music—and to be able to sing in that incredible hall where every musician in the world wants to perform—and out of the blue my cell phone rang and it was my friend Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas. And he said, ‘Gatlin. What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘Governor, I’m in front of Carnegie Hall thanking God for my blessings.’ And he asked if I knew Mike Curb--that Mike wanted to talk to me.”
Former California lieutenant governor and longtime music business operator Curb heads Curb Records in Nashville, and wanted Gatlin’s participation on behalf of the University of Texas. But when they got together to discuss it, Larry brought up his new music.
“I said, ‘Mike, if I was 25 years old and you heard these 12 songs my brothers and I just recorded, you’d give me a record deal.’ And he said, ‘Gatlin, I don’t care how old you are. I love your songs and the brothers’ harmonies and want to hear everything you’ve ever written!’ So I said, ‘Put that in writing!’ And he did!”
The Pilgrimage comes out on Curb on Sept. 15. It’s the first Gatlin album on a major label since Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers Band’s aptly named Adios in 1991, and brings Larry’s career around “full circle,” he notes, in that his 1973 debut album was entitled The Pilgrim. And where that album had liner notes by Johnny Cash--who called Gatlin “Pilgrim”--The Pilgrimage has liner notes by Cash’s son John Carter Cash, who also produced the album's updated versions of two songs from The Pilgrim that his father singled out in his notes, “Penny Annie” and “Sweet Becky Walker.” (Cash’s Highwaymen cohort Kris Kristofferson sang harmony with his former wife Rita Coolidge on the original “Sweet Becky Walker”; Gatlin’s daughter Kristin, who was named in honor of Kristofferson, sings harmony on the new version.)
The album’s first single, “Johnny Cash is Dead And His House Burned Down,” is a tribute to his late friend and mentor and has garnered attention for its bold title and video.
“Nashville’s opened its arms to us,” Larry concludes, “and the Gatlin boys are back in business!”
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