Marcus Hummon: Songs,Stories, and his journey from L.A. to Nashville

My career in the entertainment industry

has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent.

“Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects”

industry professionals, whether famous stars, or behind-the-scenes staff have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stores. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information

on how they evolved into their chosen career. We will delve into the journey to start them, discuss their struggles and successes and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment.

[ Music ] Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville.

Joining us today is Mark Assamon, a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter

whose words and melodies have shaped the soul of country music for decades. He's chased his drain from the stages of L.A. in the mid-80s. He traded the West Coast L.A. to the stages of Nashville. There, he honed his craft at iconic spots like the Bluebird Cap A.

Eventually, landing a songwriting deal that launched a career of chart-breaking songs. He has gifted the world songs that capture love, window lust, and the unbreakable human spirit. He's not just a hitmaker. He's a multi-instrumentalist composer, storyteller, scoring films,

penning operas, and even weaving musicals that have graced off Broadway stages. His journey here in Nashville has been nothing short of fantastic. So before we dive into our episode, we'll be right back with an uninterrupted show right after he word for my sponsors. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure.

“Let's kick it off this way. What are you working on now?”

What's your current project? Ash, what am I doing now? Well, I'm still writing for a small company. You know, I'm still doing some of that work. A couple of times a week I'll work with artists and kind of my main thing with this group that I'm with now,

sound during entertainment is I just asked them, you know, after all these years. I mean, I still like to write in the kind of conventional Nashville culture of co-writing, but pretty much only with artists or writers who are kind of nerdy. There's different things because I can play a few different instruments

and have a few different influences, at least the way that I approach music. I can't sit in every room, but I can sit in quite a few. I just want the artists or the writers and/or writers to be all sort of all about it. So like recently some folks that I've had, you know, nowadays you'll have streaming singles.

It's a very different world than of course when I got there in 1986. And a lot of the artists that I work with even major label acts.

“They're not even that concerned with trust or radio.”

Their feelings aren't heard if they put out four singles in a year and none of them go to radio. Yeah, I know. I hear that a lot. They don't care about radio any longer. Give me a good example.

One of the more talented groups that I work with is the band Lula, you know, they're on Warner Brothers and they're tremendous singers and they've been out on the road with Dirk Spanley and, you know, big rooms and like Carnegie Hall and had a couple of songs co-written with them that were singles and did videos and, you know,

that would be an example of how things have changed. You know, they're really going to trust or radio. So it's harder to make money in that kind of world, but it's still the same world of, want to try to write great and kind of groovy music.

Yeah, so I've got that going on. That's fun. You know, I do a lot of work in theater. I have for the last 25 years. I kind of branched out into theater writing musical theater,

but also writing some opera technically opera. It's been produced a couple pieces that Nashville opera and then last year I had a show and was developed at the Welsh Academy of Arts with Belmont and then we did a production and then PBS picked it up,

PBS locally and PR television. But nonetheless, that's, you know, great fun. Yeah, the world of theater can be great fun. And the world of theater is so prohibited because it's so expensive. You know, regional theater now is in the millions.

Yeah, that's tough. Everything right now in a production cost is just getting so very expensive. The show I've had for about a decade called American Prophet, Frederick Douglass in his own words and co-written with Motown Director, Charles Randolph-Ride was a director.

You know, we did it at the arena stage in DC, which is one of the really large regional theaters nationally. And gosh, I mean, that was so expensive. You know, to move on to Broadway is your times as it averages

anywhere from $15 to $20 million is how you capitalize.

You know, that's rough. Yeah, it is.

You know, I mean, it's really tough on intellectual property writers.

Yeah, you're right. It is very tough.

“The production cost, the advertising cost,”

just everything is so expensive. It's very good for those that have the big name and the big draw. For those that are trying to learn the business, learn their craft, develop themselves. It is a lot tougher than what people think.

Yeah, it's tougher. You know, I have three sons and they're all artists. Different kinds of artists. Gallery painter just has the other open in Clark School at the Custom House Museum. Just extraordinary course on his dad,

but he's an extraordinary old painter. And the youngest is a digital, really fine digital artist who works with my wife's center for contemplative justice

and does all kinds of designs.

And then the eldest is Levi Hammond, who is a recording artist, writer, touring artist, also now kind of hosting a show in TikTok. You know, his generation, the last 10 years, his coming up was the advent of streaming and the sort of the, and it was just such a different model because when I got to town in Asheville

in the in 86 and into that era of the late 80s and under the big tsunami

“that became country music and the late 80s and 90s.”

You know, there wasn't enough money floating around that if you had some talent, people would, they'd laugh you up, you'd get a publishing deal. It would be plenty of money if you were a young guy just getting started. You know, you could get a small $20,000 deal. You know, which in 1986 would be, you could, you know, get a little place

and you start your life, you know. Now, boy, I tell you, it is really tough to get a publishing deal and the nature of those publishing deals is, you know, you have things like 12 or 12s and it's like poverty line stuff. Yeah, the music business has changed so drastically over the last several years.

Streaming has been a double-edged sword. It's helped on one side and hurt on the other. It has given the ability for people to listen to new music that they would not have heard on Terrestrial Radio. The other side of that sword is that it's hurt the songwriter because now

the streaming only pays fractions of pennies. So it's been good and it's been bad. That's exactly right. That's my exact perspective is that the, yeah, we've taken, there's no money in publishing

and the intellectual property of the writer itself. But by virtue of that sort of democratization of the process, you have things that emerge that are not part of a corporate five year plan. You know, there's suddenly this guy and he's like Billy Strings

“and you're like, well, where the hell did he come from?”

He's selling out the rhyme and for four nights in a row. And that's exciting. That's the positive side. It is. The only unfortunate part of that is now you have the major labels

that have dried up as far as development goes. They don't put the money into it. They want everything brought to them completely 100% finish that way they don't have to do any development. Whereas in the past, you had development deals

and it took time and they would build it. And then all of a sudden you could get a star out of that development process. That's right. Well, they want to see the evidence in your socials.

And those aren't always correct.

I have friends of mine that have thousands and thousands of people that follow them. If they were to put out a post, it says, hey, I'll be a Belmont tomorrow at 6 o'clock. You might only have 25 people there.

Well, that's true. The other thing that I ended up doing just to keep myself interested is I went ahead and did a record this year. My son started a label with the producer right or very successful producer right in Eric Arges.

And the two of them started a label called 3686 records. They signed a TikTok kind of sensation out of L.A. and I'm cure, at least. And then a young guy at Belmont, who's very talented, folk singer, Eva Claire.

I decided to, again, you know, I do a lot of wacky stuff. I do theater, I do choral work, I do different kinds of things. And I decided to do a record taking my favorite Emily Dickinson poems and setting them to music in my own fashion.

And also to use my just technique on guitar and piano, particularly piano in this record. And so that was really great. So I did an album called "Songs for Emily." And we got some love and, you know,

a little bit of Spotify love. But, you know, quite a few people wrote about it. And I got to do a do-up with Mary Chape and Carpenter. Such a joy and Darrell Scott is my longtime musical buddy and Sarah Evans as well.

So I really had fun. And I hadn't really done a record. I mean, in a sense, if you do recordings for a theater piece, by you're doing a double album. Say two shows ago,

a national opera did a show called "Favorite Sun." And that was about an 85 minute through compose. So technically opera, all music, that took me, you know, a year or two to not only write it, but also to record all the pieces.

Played you've done albums and albums and albums and it's also obviously very expressive.

“But honestly, there is something about setting out to do a record”

as a singer songwriter and, you know, instrumentalist. Yeah, I have to agree with you. There is nothing better than working on a new record that's your own. I have to say, I just, I was telling Levi the other day 'cause we got it on the first battle of the Grammys, you know.

And I always tell him, I said, "Listen, Brad,

I actually get nominated, you know, she used to be knighted because never can weigh." And I don't want you feeling bad because I have had a blast and working with you, my son, full circle

having my, you know, 34 year old son be my, effectively, my label was. Yeah. Shooting videos and doing, I went to, you know, I went on a, a haze, a pilgrimage

to Amherst, Massachusetts. I wanted to be, you know, where Emily was. And I wanted to sit in her room, walk in those gardens, you know. Mostly in the neighborhood,

I thought she was a gardener. They thought she was a botanist. But he virtually no one knew she was a literary figure. And it was great, like the whole journey of it and the journey is kind of continuing.

I'm working with Belmont with their orchestral department. We're going to kind of develop an even end up transcribing this work. I've got the work scored the way I recorded it, but then they have a, a PhD for orchestration. And so it'll be fun to work with some younger people

who would just have, you know, free reign, you know, be creative as possible. I was, it'll be fun. I saw that I think the journey continues. Whenever you have good work, the journey continues.

Absolutely. I agree. Now for those that don't know,

“you were inducted into the national song”

right as Hall of Fame, correct? Yeah. 2019. Yeah. I think that's just great.

Now for people that don't know, they just need to Google your name because that's the beauty of Google now. You can find out so much about things that you might not have ever known about.

So what people need to do, they need to Google your name. You've had many songs that you'd be either written or co-written that if hit charts and done so well.

You're a journey here in Nashville has really been outstanding. Yeah, and I've been, I've been fortunate. You know, it's funny too because and this is kind of a good thing.

I think for a young writer, writer artist types to consider is that, you know, when I got to town, I had a real specific vision of what I thought was going to happen for me.

And what it would be who I thought I was. Well, it was who I thought I was, but what I wasn't, is it turns out going to be was a big star. A different reasons for that.

And I had several record deals.

It was always about writing.

My own stuff saying, my own stuff was always about playing instruments. You know, my instruments on records that the way that I was brought up,

you know, brought up a child of the 70s of where people's writing was intrinsically tied to how they played an instrument. And these were my heroes, you know,

“and I figured I'd have a sort of a country version of that.”

And it didn't really work out. That's not uncommon for a lot of singers songwriters that come here in Nashville. How did that affect you? I remember pretty early in my 30s

thinking I was sort of a failure and I had a number one record at that point. My first number one was I'm loved by why not? I had to play guitar on because,

you know, I used an open tuning and they weren't sure what the chords were exactly because they could shape the chords

but they weren't ringing because I was using a a D major with a, you know, major third D-F-R-B-D

and it was also written in kind of two harmonics signatures. The little different, you know, the lyric was co-written

with Roger Murrow. I did have a hit, but I felt like such a dismal failure. You did get on a major labelled right after that, didn't you?

I got on a major labelled, you know, and I think I'd be like, that was a record that had less the broken road.

The first actual really piano version

the way it was written and it also had the song, one of these days, which both of those songs would go on to be,

you know, big hits. There were other songs and it was like the most expensive demo session ever because, like,

more than half that record eventually got caught and released, but honestly at the right when it was all going down

and so many records was dropping me. I remember having a, you know, I had to have a real kind of

come to Jesus moment because I was like, man, you know, what have I done?

It's easy to question yourself after something like that. My parents, which state department people who lived overseas,

I got to see the world. I got to go to this wonderful college and had a great experience, you know, everything kind of going

for me and here I am. I just thought, man, you know, it's,

it's all going to hell in a hand basket. But it was kind of my friend Darrell Scott was a great help

in that time because he, two had been through a lot of, a people as an artist

and he had started to do what was American before there was America. Where he was self-producing

and just sort of defining his own world and that album is called a low-hot from Nashville,

which is a masterpiece and it's my opinion. He said, you know, this is a great time

Marcus, you get to find out. Now you get to find out.

how much you love this thing.

You got to find out now what you really are about. Yeah, he had the right attitude. Perfect advice.

And I remember

“him when he said that I was like, you know,”

that's the damn truth. I did want to be famous. You know, there was that drive, you know,

what I did realize was it wasn't number one. And I can honestly say that. I mean,

you know, I'm just as easy you go driven as the next person. But I realize it wasn't

the number one thing. The number one thing was I wanted to make great music as redirected.

I decided, okay. All right. Well, people are cutting my songs

instead of why don't I accept that as being a really fortunate thing it'd be grateful.

And then if I want to make whatever my wacky shit is, it wasn't long after that I'm like, you know,

what I'm going to do? I'm going to try reading a musical about painting of Garenica by Picasso.

Why? Because I want to. Yeah. Perfect attitude. That has been my journey

is that I think it's

a lot of it is about learning

to be, obviously, in reality, I'm very, very lucky.

And a lot of people, I've seen a lot of really talented people, things go wrong. And they bail.

And I'm not even saying they're wrong for doing it. But if you survive this industry as I have

you know, own a house, you know, it's not like, as I say it's not like

baseball money, but it's like I can live and I can write. And if I want to do a record on Emily

Dickinson, do it. Yeah. You're right. There's been a lot of

people that have done very well here in Nashville. Then there's a lot of people that are very talented that have

given up and gone away or they did not look at it the proper way. Like just like you, you figured it out.

You wanted to be this singer-songwriter, you know, known as an artist. And then it wasn't

happened in the way you wanted to, but then all of a sudden the songwriting worked out.

Other people are cutting you songs. You're making money that way. You got the best

of both worlds in the fact that you get to be an artist that you want to be, but you get to make the money off the music

from others that are like and what you're doing. So I think I think it's the right way, but you're right.

There's a lot of people that's given up. Sometimes I'll see people that I think they're right on the cusp of

doing something big and they'll leave. And it's kind of like I give that analogy of the guy that has this broken down car.

He fixes it. And every month he fixes something new. And then he finally gets to the point of

where he's put so much money in that car. One other thing goes. He sells it. That was a one last thing.

Going to make that car last for 10 years. I've seen so many people here in Nashville do that same thing.

They'll get to that point where they're so close. And then that stumbling block or that last bump in the road will hit

and then they leave. So you've you've gridded it out. I mean that's that's you know,

kudos to you and not only that, but you've had a lot of hit records that done really well. You know,

so nothing wrong with that at all. Well, I'm very like I say I'm grateful.

It's also an interesting the perspective of being 64.

It's such an interesting industry with regards to your skill set. The grow, if unless you're not pushing yourself, and I'm definitely a person, I can honestly say that I push myself instrumentally, and but you get to certain point in your, you know, your 604 years old and the reality is that the industry, the popular music industry,

be it country, urban, top, whatever. It's directed towards roughly 15 to 25, 67 year old.

And it's so it has it's always been

and there are adjustments that have to be made.

“I've also noticed that the writer artists and writers of my generations, some of them have kind of bailed, you know, they've kind of, it's sort of over like you retire.”

People retire from various businesses that they do. But for me, it's not a business. It's, you know, it's a lifestyle.

Yeah. Absolutely. As long as you keep writing, you keep working. There's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, you know Bobby Braddock. Yeah. Of course. I mean,

Bobby's in his 80s. He's still writing. So it doesn't matter how old you are. You can still write a great song. Yeah.

I've heard Bobby, by the way, is one of the greatest icons for anybody who's listening. And he's also for a lot of us to this almost. Taintly quality to his existence. You know,

he's reached a level of these, like the body side from out there. Yeah. He's a great guy. I've known him for a long time.

I also feel, though, I don't want to be judgmental, because I also know that there are some really, really,

I won't say names specifically, but really, really famous older writers who have said to me, more than one have said to me, you know,

I don't write anymore, because people don't want what I have to say. Wow. It's just out of two painful. In my life,

one of the things, which has made this kind of pain, if you will,

“you put it may have prior to dramatically.”

But it's part of the fun of when you have theatre, not to tell everyone to go into theatre, because it's like a terrible business. It's a great art form, but it's the worst business in the world.

But as a writer, I have to tell you what is great is that, you know, I have so many characters. Characters, historical characters,

but also characters have created.

They have all kinds of impediments and tragedies

and great triumphs and their lives. And there's so much to write about.

“There's so many different kinds of things to write about”

that I wouldn't ordinarily get to write about. That has been a great help to me, and just keeping my mind in it. Like if you do that kind of work, then if you're lucky enough to sit down with some new group

or 20 something year olds, they've got their thing going on and they're very expressive. And for whatever reason they want you there, you know, whatever your age is they want you there, then it becomes this very exciting thing.

I don't do it as much as I used to, and I love it, you know, but it's because I'm being fed elsewhere too. If I had to completely commit myself to like as a writer, I still got to keep talking about what I was thinking about

as a 17 year old. Yeah, I get that 100%. Yet a lot of that is mindset. You've been willing to compromise on things that you want to do, and you've done them,

and that's allowed you to be creative to do other things. Where some people are so rigid that they're only going to do this, but they're not willing to open up to do something else. And those are the ones sometimes that will find themselves falling away, because when a younger person comes up and say,

"Hey, I like this, this is kind of cool, but can we do it this way?" And if you go, "No, it's my way of the highway." Then of course they're going to leave. You know, but if you go, "Oh, hey, let's look in what it can be," then it's opened up to collaboration,

and then you never know what can happen from there.

That's right, how you put your finger right on it, and there was a time when as a songwriter, this is probably true. I don't want to act like I've got all this wisdom. I have been in it for a while.

A lot of writers who have success, because they kind of have a season of it. Yeah, that's right. And the thing is that season comes, and then you know, you do as much as you can,

and then the season passes too. Right.

“And so you have to be willing to kind of accept one.”

Yeah, absolutely. Just because the season ended, doesn't mean that you can't still practice and still work around, and do a few things that can still be very productive. So that gave me an example, too, like, that things that sort of the blessings of the process.

I think it was, was it last year? I guess this is how I am now. I know the feeling. You know, I've got a call from, I think it was maybe a year and a half ago,

I've got a call from Rhianna. Rhianna getting reached out to me. And she, do you know who that is? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, Caroline attractive to Barrow drops, and then, yeah. There's now as a TV show, such an interesting woman, such an interesting writer and musician. And years, a few years back, like, I don't know, five or six years,

we wrote a couple songs together, and then we became friends. And she was keeping an eye to on this American profit, Frederick Douglass project, and I noted that she was writing a music for a librettist,

and she wanted a Pulitzer for an opera, right? And so she says,

“"Do you remember this song we wrote called Yet To Be?"”

I did, and I, but I hadn't thought of it in a while. She said, "Well, you know, I've got this new band. I've got this great guitar player from the camera room. He's kind of riffing on what you used, something you did on our, when we did our little audio.

And anyway, I got Jason Isabel to sing on it, and any we're going to put out as a single, of course, that's, you know, a streaming single, and she's in America on it. I'm not going to be some massive...

Nothing wrong with that. I cut the cut. She said, "I've done a cartoon." You know, it's just like the gift that kept every, she said, "I've done a cartoon style animated video of it."

And the premise of the song, that's a story song about a chaircropper's donor of an African American black girl, who is like the 40s, 30s and 40s, and she's grown up in Jim Crow, and she wants out.

And she wants to go north as she wants to drown.

You know, she's got to be in the third class,

you know, part of the bus. She's, it's about her. And the second verse comes in, and it's this Irish kid. And this young Irish guy is on the farm,

and he wants to leave, he wants to go to the United States, and he wants to expand his horizon, and so he ends up, I don't know, with Chicago or whatever, and they, in the song,

they followed love. Okay. And we went from, and this is all, and of course she and Jason are singing. And the end, we went out of the four, four time.

They moved into this kind of freaky soundscape, six, eight thing. He's talking about kind of bringing an Irish blessing, you know, the sort of language of me the road rise to me, you may the wind be at your back.

That kind of stuff. And talking about this baby they have. You know, and, and with Rehanna partner for a thing, is that she's of mixed race, parentage, and she's partly native American as well,

and part of what she's done in her life is help to teach, you know, Americans like the story of the banjo, and that it really transitions, as a quote unquote, light instrument,

because of blackface, which is of course awful, but at the same time it brings about, you know, she's just a fascinating person. I thought, you know,

just by virtue of still staying with songwriting as I do, I got that experience,

I don't know, album of the year.

Yeah, that's great. But you know, she didn't win, but that's an example of if you stay with it,

“and you kind of keep doing the kinds of things”

that you believe in and that you want to do,

then you just get like a blessing happens. Yeah, absolutely. So how do people find you? I'm on Instagram. I don't really do Facebook.

Yeah, Instagram just markets him,

and actually on TikTok,

“you know, I part of the funny thing with my son's label,”

is that he, you know, young guy, so he's like, you better believe you're going to do TikTok. He's got me out there, you know, putting out things, and obviously you can find me on Instagram.

That's where I really stay pretty active, maybe more than I should, but I do. Well, this had been great.

“I really appreciate taking the time to come on with this.”

Man, I'm glad he talked to a mainer. Yeah, that's right. You don't get that very often. Now, thank you so much for having me, and I sure appreciate it,

and good luck with your ongoing with your podcasts and all your work. Absolutely. I really appreciate it. Thanks again.

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoy the show. This has been a Tony Mantua Production, for more information, contact [email protected].