Exclusive Interview With Ira Dean

Hey guys, it's Gail with Everything Nash here with the fantabulous Ira Dean

So good to see you. Good to see you, Gail. How's life treating you

We have a lot to talk about, which I'm really excited about. Your album, I Got Rhodes, out April 11th

Dude. I mean, seriously, talk about the whole project. Well, I don't know how you want to get into this thing

I got approached by Noah Gordon, who I've known forever. and I just got done producing Aaron Lewis's second album

I did Frayed at Both Ends and I did The Hill. And Noah called me and said

when are you going to do a record on you? And I kind of, are you sure

And we met and he's like, I really think it's time for you to say

you know, you got a lot to say. And then he was, you know, he was right

I do have a lot to say, but I didn't think anybody would give me the opportunity to say it

So I went in with my guys I always write with, Aaron Barker, David Lee Murphy, Chris Wallen, Dave Turnbull, Jeffrey Steele, the kind of guys I always write with

And for once, we started writing songs for me. And I wanted this album, every song, to be as real as possible in a chapter of my life

Good, bad, fun, not fun, whatever. I wanted to show all the scars and make people tap their toes at the same time so

you know every every track is a is a chapter of my life you know so when did you have the idea

okay I'm gonna do this album of me and I'm gonna invite all my friends to sing on it talk about

that process well I I kind of every time I do anything now I always approach it like it this

could be my last hurrah you know in the music business you don't retire for the music business

the music business retires you and sometimes you don't know you're retired yet and so they they

gave me the opportunity to an album and my the concept of this album I wanted to record with

everybody who influenced me musically along this musical journey I had when I first moved to town

as a young puppy and you know anybody that i always wanted to record with that that really

like the vince gill changed the path of my life musically i remember the first time i heard him

play was off a vhs tape when i before i moved to town it was a vhs tape of him singing on austin

city limits he was singing oklahoma borderline he was playing guitar and i i was like one day i'm

gonna record with that guy and i called him all the time trying to get him on some of my projects

you know and Ronnie Dunn the first time I heard Brooks and Dunn was the year I moved to town and

I was driving my little Chevette with no floorboard and no heat down Gallatin Road and I heard

Brand New Man and I think that was their first single and I was just like oh my god who's that

singing you know and so I wanted to do an album with everybody that just either a musically changed

my trajectory or be you know that were my friends that i never recorded with like gary allen he was

one of the first cats to cut one of my outs you know one of my songs outside of trick pony

he was one of the first guys and we became diehard friends you know i don't know if it's

um we're both kind of have a dark side and a light side and we tend to battle that from time

to time i think we're both you know just kindred spirits so i knew i was going to record with him

and Ted Nugent. Growing up, my dad only listened to Merle Haggard, Mac Davis, Jerry Reed, and Chet Atkins

That's all we listened to. My brother brought home the Double Live Gonzo album

My brother's a rocker, and he played Ted Nugent. Back then, you looked at the album

I was a little kid. I was probably five or six. Seeing him shooting a bow and arrow and riding a buffalo

and then you know seeing all this footage of him and he was such an entertainer and larger than

life that changed me to be wanting to be larger than life and and uh it changed kind of how i

approach shows so i knew i wanted to record with there's a handful of guys i was like before before

i die i gotta record with them and i might as well do it on this record and and just everybody

who influenced me and so I did you know Ronnie Dunn Vince Gill Brent Mason Ted Nugent Uncle Cracker Gary Allen David Lee Murphy Gretchen Wilson And the last one to come was Steve Ferroni the drummer from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

And I was a huge Tom Petty fan. Became friends with Steve Ferroni

He was in L.A. I called him up and said, hey, we always talked about recording together

And I don't know if I can afford you, but I'm getting ready to cut six more sides for my album

He's like, how about a plane ticket and a place to stay? And he flew in and signed the card

And man, just making this album, there's so many great memories and so many check off the bucket list

I mean, I was just going down the list going, done. Done that now

Done that now. So this album, it's incredible for me. Anybody that you wanted that couldn't be on this album that might come on a future album

Yes. there's a couple that couldn't do it just for timing wise

So if I get to make another album, it'll be volume two. We've already been writing

I've been writing with those artists and recording with those artists a

little bit. And so, yeah, there's a, there's a few more, there's enough for another album. Yeah

Stay tuned for part two. Do you have a favorite track? I mean, all of them

it's so hard to pick a favorite track because all of them have a memory tied to them. Not only the memory of what I wrote about, but also the recording memory. I think

the most heartfelt one was probably Missing How It Used to Be, that I wrote with Dave Turnbull

about my mom. We wrote that right after my mom passed. My mom was just an amazing woman

I wish everybody had the relationship I had with my mother. I wish they had that relationship

with their mother. But when she passed, I canceled all rights. You know, I didn't want to write. I

didn't want to do anything musical. I wanted to grieve. And Dave Turnbull called me up and

played dumb like he always does and says, hey, I see we got a writing appointment in the books

coming up. You coming? I said, man, I'm kind of going through some stuff. That's the perfect time

to write. Come on. And I love him for it. I love him. We sat down and we wrote Missing How It Used

to be. And it's all about my mom and growing up as that kid in that time period. I think we wrote

a great song and a great tribute to my mother. And lo and behold, you know, a month later

Turnbull's, well, a few months later, Turnbull's mom passed and he called me up and he said

Missing How It Used to Be, the meaning of that song has totally turned around on him and he's

been listening to it and it's helped him. So it's amazing how these things work. So I think

Missing how it used to be is one of my top memories. What would Charlie Daniels do with Ted Nugent

That's the funniest thing ever. We've lived up to the title of I've Got Roads

Nugent heard a song I wrote and went and called everybody trying to find my phone number

He wanted to know who wrote this thing. And he loves, it was Aaron Lewis's Am I the Only One

And I'm in a Bass Pro Shop. I'd never met Ted. I don't know him other than looking at his album covers

My phone rings. I pick it up, and I'm in a Bass Pro of all places

And he's like, is this Ira Dean? I was like, yeah. This is Ted Nugent. I was like, what

And I was looking around in the Bass Pro, wanting to tell somebody I'm talking to Ted Nugent

And he's like, you wrote one of the top three songs I wish I would have wrote

And we need to write. And we became friends. We started throwing ideas back and forth over the phone

and when I wrote what would Charlie Daniels do with Jeffrey Steele I put his name in the second

verse I'm one of them don't give a damn Ted Nugent fans and uh I sent it to Ted and Ted called me up

right away and goes I want to play on that I want to play I will give you the best solo of your life

and you know it was hilarious and I was like okay so when I called him to do it he's like it's

hunting season I can't do it till March I said Ted I got to get this thing done well I'm sorry man

I don't know what to do. And so I said, well, when I hunt, I get up in the tree stand before sunup

And then about 10 o'clock, I climb down, go have lunch, take a nap

And then I'm back in the trees about two o'clock till sundown. And he goes, yeah, same here

And I was like, so you got a four hour period that you're not going to be, you know

And he's like, yeah. I said what your address in Waco Texas And he gave it to me I said I see you tomorrow And he like and he thought I was joking And I called the producer Nora Gordon And I said Hey Noah pack a Pro Tools rig

I'm going to pick you up and we're going to drive to Waco right now. You didn't fly. You drove

We drove 13 hours. We had too much gear to fly. So I drove us all the way to Waco

we got there I think it was like 5 30 in the morning we rid of the hotel room took a nap till

nine drove to Ted Nugent's house and he was in full camo just came out of the trees and he thought

he's like you you guys weren't kidding were you I was like no let's record and so we set up

everything he recorded played two great guitar he didn't he could have done it once and been done

plays his butt off in full camo we hung out shemaine his wife cooked us lunch and hugged

their necks by jumped in a car and i drove home it was 26 hours round trip and you got a hotel

room for three hours yeah yeah i would see it the road was turning purple by the time i got home but

i was running on such adrenaline and after hanging with ted and and like i said he changed he changed

my life musically to just be a wild man and and I was a wild man and uh but Ted played his butt off

on that record well it's phenomenal do you have a I don't know how to say this do you have a goal

or with this album I would like to do what with this album I'd like to introduce myself

to everybody because everybody knows me as the songwriter or from Trick Pony the bass player

and yeah I wrote a lot of songs for Trick Pony I've written a lot of songs for everybody else

but this is the first time I've written songs for me for my project and I want to somebody to put the

put my album on and let it go from start to finish like a train ride and not jump off

and I think once they do that they'll understand who I am and what I got to say and this is

basically just an introduction to the world saying you've known me but you haven't known me

this is me does it come from i don't mean this to be a polarizing but was there any

frustration at earlier parts in your career that you weren't doing what you wanted to do

always always i mean i think that's way with any band i mean yeah with trick pony you're in a

three-way marriage you know and yet there was times i wanted to there were songs i wanted us

to cut that didn't get cut that somebody else would cut and it'd be go number one for them

And that was frustrating to me. Maybe I don't play well with others. I don't know. But that is frustrating. I never had to bend and please other people's musical tastes. And I think it helped me mature a lot because I never had to do that

and we trick pony made some great music but there was always a part of me that wanted to say more

and wanted to do more and so by the time we had our run i didn't know if i was ever going to get

an opportunity to actually do a record on my own and i want noah gordon called up and he's known me

for 25 years and he said it's time for you to say something about you and and and yeah i remember

calling my friends. I remember talking to Ronnie Dunn about it. And I was like, you know, this guy

wants me to do an album. And he's like, you should do it. I was like, really? And I talked to Phil

O'Donnell, another songwriter, but you should do it, man. What's taking you so long? And so part of

me was afraid to jump in. But other part, I had some great friends going, dude, it's your time

Do it. Do it. And so it came out great. This is the first thing I've been part of that I, you know

I put the album in, and for the first time in my life, I don't hit fast forward because every track resonates with me

Neil Capolino mixed it. It's not all in your face. It's not a modern rock and roll mix that I've made a lot of demos that way

But I wanted something more organic, something more real. There's not a loop on this thing

Every instrument's actually played. We made a record like old school Cats Make Records

We went in a room and we hashed it out and the arrangement needs to go like this and let's do it

And and sonically it great Neil Capolino he a Grammy award winning engineer He most most known for Alison Krauss stuff So it was a very organic sounding mix that not all up in your face the album came out great i mean i listened to it all the

way through and i'll be honest i very rarely do that i usually do like first chorus next first

course but i didn't with yours so thank you um i want to switch gears real quick before i let you

go because you are also touring with brooks and done yeah what about that what about that

that says a lot about your musicianship because you know they could pick anybody that they wanted

well you know I used to be a session guy in this business there's there's artists and there's

writers and there's session musicians and there's live musicians with me you know at a young age

watching Paul McCartney Wings on tv I realized you could do all that and so I play multiple

instruments I was a session guy I'm a live guy I'm a songwriter I'm a producer I entertain I

I try to spin a lot of plates. I just love making music. I love it

And so Ronnie called me a week before rehearsal started. And he's like, I'll never forget

He goes, I said, what are you up to? And he goes, I might be making your day or breaking your day

And I was like, what's going on? He goes, I know our song's sitting at 23 in the chart

and you're probably booked up on tour already. And I was like, yeah

And he said, how booked up are you? And it just so happened that I was in transition trying to find a new agent this year

And so all my stuff's on the back end of the year. I start touring in the fall and winter, so I've got the summer off

I said, actually, it's pretty bare, to be honest with you. I'll probably be just sitting here writing

He goes, okay, that answers my question. I was like, what? And he goes, you're going to come out and write with us anyway

Why don't you just – I need a monster bass player that sings

and I want you to come out and play. And I was like, I don't know if I'm a monster bass player

but send me the dates. He goes, there's only 33 shows, which is easy breezy

but it's all arenas and stadiums. And so I said, send me the dates

And I wanted to make sure that none of my dates I had conflicted because I hated committing to it and then going

oh, I can't do this date. I can't do this one. And they deserve somebody's full commitment

because the band and Kix and Ronnie are just great people. and I looked at the dates, and there was just one show I couldn't make, just one

And so I called Ronnie and said, this one show I can't do, but I can do the rest

I can do the whole tour. And he said, cool, rehearsals start next week

That's it. Okay, I have to let you go, but I can't let this go

So take me back to the young man who was driving his, was it Chevelle without floorboards

No, a Chevette. Chevette, sorry. with no floorboard now playing with brooks and dunn yeah it's crazy and i you know and trick

pony was on that brooks and dunn tour in 2003 we were opening act and i would sit there on the

side of the stage in 03 and watch that band play and watch kicks and ronnie because i like at the

end of the day i'm still a huge country music fan you know and i think you know in my lifetime i

came to town you know after the merle haggard and keith whitley passed and i came to town then

since i come to town ronnie dunn is the best country singer that i've ever heard in my life

ever and so i'm a huge fan and now i get to sit back there and watch kicks and ronnie and they

have the most magical chemistry ever and there's a reason after watching them all these shows

there's a reason why they're still on top of their game they're just both of them are just

incredible entertainers incredible musicians incredible singers writers they're just they're really good but I get to sit back stand on my little riser and listen to to uh Ronnie Dunn

sing I Believe every night which is one of my favorite songs and and I've heard the song a

thousand times but I get goosebumps every time I hear it and he sings flawlessly and and Kix is a

hell of a singer too and but they haven't let it go to their heads and they're just good people and

And they're great friends. And they're very complimentary of me. And so, yeah, I'm there

I'm having a, you know, the 12-year-old me is up there going, who would have thunk it

Who would have thunk that? Well, that's awesome. I'm really happy for you

And I'm really glad we got to connect again because you're fabulous. Oh, well, you're fabulous too

Thanks. Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you. You have a great day

You too