On The Record

"A Soft Place to Fall"

Jul 30, 2021

This series, “On the Record,” will be a weekly Substack exclusive in which I’ll go through my recorded catalog song by song starting with my first album, Alabama Song, which was released on MCA Records in 1998. Photos will be attached if available and tolerable.

I don’t remember how the title came to me, but it was all I had when I went over to Gwil Owen’s house one day to write a song. I think it was late 1996. We’d never written together before and barely knew each other, but such is the way things get done in Nashville sometimes. Gwil and I lived in the same neighborhood in those days and guess what? We still do.

Yes, I think it was fall 1996 (he’ll correct me if I’m wrong). I was so young and so new to songwriting — I knew I had a lot to learn despite my excess of immature confidence and wanted to get all the experience I could — and Gwil was seasoned. When I walked into his writing room that day, one of the first things I noticed was his amazing Guild acoustic that had obviously seen a few miles. He was such a pro. I recall getting to his house, having a cup of coffee, and a little get to know you talk, then we settled in in his writing room. We toyed around with a few ideas and didn’t land on anything that was very inspiring, but just as I was about to leave I said, “Well, I do have this one thing…” and played him the melody and structure I’d dreamed up to go with my title, “A Soft Place to Fall.” He liked it. He said he’d play with it. A week or so later, he called me with the verses he’d written, which I loved in all of their unpredictability. I loved his take on the idea. We decided it needed a bridge and I think we wrote that part over the phone. I was over the moon about the song. I loved it. Gwil doesn’t get overly enthusiastic about much, but he liked it too. It didn’t hit us over the head as an obvious anything, but when I played it for people they always loved it. A few said it was my best song. It went in the pile for my first record, Alabama Song.

However, we had no idea the life our song would live.

Now here’s something funny: While I was in the development deal with Tony Brown and MCA Records, Tony was in talks with Disney/Buena Vista about doing the soundtrack for a movie that was set to start filming that summer called “The Horse Whisperer,” based on a novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans, with Robert Redford starring and directing. He was thinking about pitching “Call My Name,” for the soundtrack (one of the four songs I’d cut as demos to audition for the label), thinking it would be an ideal project to introduce me to the world. After I performed the showcase that would seal my record deal with MCA in June 1997 — and Tony literally said to me, “We’ve got a deal,” after I played the six-song set — and then added, “I think I have a spot for you on the soundtrack to the new Robert Redford movie and there may even be a part for you in the actual film.”

I about swallowed my tongue. Huh? Apparently, when Mr. Redford and the producers heard my voice they asked, “What does she look like?”

So, the producers had heard “Call My Name,” and my voice. Maybe someone showed them a photograph of me as well, though I can’t imagine which one it would’ve been as I hadn’t even done a proper photo shoot yet. Meanwhile, my publisher had played the music supervisor and producer of the film the demo we’d made of “A Soft Place to Fall.” Tony hadn’t even heard it! But when he did, he agreed that it was the perfect song for the movie and Mr. Redford, the music supervisor, and the producer of the film did too. Sometimes the stars do line up through whatever route. Suffice to say the cosmos was working hard to get “A Soft Place to Fall,” in this movie.

The record deal was in the works. A recording session for “A Soft Place to Fall,” was arranged. Kenny Greenberg would produce and Tony Brown would be the executive producer. We set up at Javelina, one of my favorite rooms in this town, on a hot, summer day and found our magic. Kenny had already come up with that tasty intro lick. Glenn Worf played upright bass. My great friend Rick Plant played electric. Joe Spivey played that gorgeous fiddle solo that gave me chills then and still does now. John Wesley Ryles sang the perfect harmony part. I love everything about this recording.

Personnel:

Kenny Greenberg: Acoustic and baritone guitars

Rick Plant: Electric guitar

Glenn Worf: Upright bass

Chad Cromwell: drums

Dan Dugmore: pedal steel

Joe Spivey: fiddle

John Wesley Ryles: background vocal

Engineered by Greg Droman, mixed by Richard Dodd

One thing I’ll tell you about this record is that this is one instance in which the mix made a big difference. The track was magic from the beginning, but Richard Dodd dug that magic out, shined it and polished it, and made it dance an even sweeter dance than it did before he got his hands on it. That’s not always the case with mixing — sometimes the mix doesn’t matter and spit and polish does nothing — but in the case of “A Soft Place to Fall,” it did matter. Again, the stars lined up on this one.

Now onto the rest of the story.

Everyone agreed that we’d nailed the track, and sometime in August 1997 I ended up in Livingston, Montana for a week to shoot the part of “barn dance singer.” I was a very green twenty-five years old and every part of the process blew me away from staying in the Sam Peckinpah Suite at the grand old hotel in the middle of town to meeting, talking to, and working with Mr. Redford, to riding around the mountains with the music supervisor listening to the songs that had been turned in for the soundtrack and hearing “Me and the Eagle,” for the first time, to being witness to what it is to make a film on that scale. The collaborative process I observed was something to behold — all of those people working together to create just one shot at a time, and knowing all of those shots would be put together into something that would be artistic and moving — I fell in love with the idea of the creative team. The set was a real barn in the middle of a working ranch and I got to have my very first trailer, which was no more than a tiny room in a row of them fitted into a vehicle that hooks onto a flatbed trailer — you’ve seen them if you’ve walked around New York City for any extended length of time. I really didn’t know what had happened to me but I was happy that it had. I reckon I figured my life had been so crazy that this was just another anomaly that would sort itself out.

If didn’t. Fast forward eighteen months to me driving home from having breakfast with a friend and my cell phone ringing.

It was the record label and Universal was in the middle of a bloodletting — artists were getting dropped and executives were being let go left and right. There was a merger going on.

“Hello?”

“Hey Allison — this is Bruce and Tony.”

(Bruce Hinton, Chairman of MCA Records and Tony Brown, President of MCA Records)

“Hey. How are y’all this morning?”

“We’re good. We’re just calling to let you know that ‘A Soft Place to Fall’ has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.”

“…”

“Are you there?”

“Yes. What? Oh my God. What?”

“Yes! Congratulations! We’re so excited! And we think they’re going to want you to sing on the show!”

“I’m so glad you weren’t calling to drop me!”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Damn.

And the rest of that day was a whirlwind. I sat in the label publicist’s office for the better part of that day — all of a sudden there was a battle between the networks — who would get me on their show first? Leno or Letterman? Leno got me.

It was confirmed that I would indeed play the song on the Oscars. What would I wear? Vera Wang. Who would help me? The publicist for the label — I couldn’t afford a stylist and they wouldn’t pay for one. I called Kenny. He, of course, said he’d be there with me. You get the drift. It was a whirlwind. The show was six weeks away. I somehow had the foresight to start visualizing how I wanted the performance to go because I knew I’d never done anything close to that huge and probably never would again. I began to picture myself on that stage at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion pulling off a flawless performance of the song I’d written with Gwil.

It wasn’t flawless, but it was damn good, even if they did put me in a birdcage far, far away from the audience. Renee Zellweger introduced me, Whoopi Goldberg sighed when I was finished, and Gwil and I lost to another song. But we celebrated at the Governor’s Ball after a whirlwind week of Hollywood fantasies I never dreamed I’d actually live.

One funny thing y’all should know: when we went into Capitol Studios in Hollywood (yes, that Capitol Studios) to do the pre-record for the show (you always have to pre-record the song in case something goes wrong during the live show), the chart had been written incorrectly. I was in the vocal booth doing my part when Kenny and I both realized (he was there playing the acoustic guitar part along with the orchestra and leading the session) they’d written my D chord as an E. We had to stop the session, tell the great Bill Conti (he was conducting the orchestra) that they’d gotten it wrong (I don’t think they understood country chord changes), and it was like an act of Congress to get the chord changed to what it was supposed to be — it had to go down the line from him to the copyist to the whoever to the whoever. Those string sessions are done by the book out there! But wow — what a moment. And the funniest thing — Mr. Conti kept telling me to make a dramatic pause between “place,” and “to fall.” I accepted his advice and did it my way as you know I did.

What a thing. What a song. What an experience. And it peaked on the chart at #73. I still love singing “A Soft Place to Fall,” — it’s like an old friend I’m happy to see every single time.

Allison Moorer: The Autotelic

Discussion about this post