The Fraternity Connection

In the winter of 2005 I got an email from a fraternity brother whom I hadn't seen in a couple of decades. Rick Bridge was just joining Sigma Chi at Oklahoma State University when I was a graduate student, and we had some common interests, both studying advertising in the school of journalism. (By the way, we got the same OSU degree that Garth did.) So here, after all this time, it turned out that our marketing careers had led us back to our first love, music. We agreed that we'd look for a project to work on together.

The in the spring of 2006 Rick met Oklahoma artist and cousin of Gene, Charlotte Autry. He asked if I was interested in producing her dream project. So Charlotte came to Nashville, we met, and we were underway.

INFO AND ORDERING

At my website you can get lots more information about the album, and you can order it.

19 SONGS!

$18, plus $3 shipping

album order

Long before we started doing any recording, there was a lot of planning and strategizing to do. A lot of that began at the Hippie Chick Twang Records office on Music Row in Nashville. To inspire us, I bought a life-size cutout of Gene, and was carrying it under my arm into the office for one of our first meetings. A young lady, about 30-ish, far too young to be a Gene Autry fan, I thought, was walking by and said, "Who's that under your arm?" I said, "Well, let's see if you know who this is," and turned the cutout around so she could see his face. "Why, that's Gene Autry!" she exclaimed. "How do you know about Gene?" I asked, and she said, "Oh, I'm from Oklahoma, and everybody in Oklahoma knows about Gene Autry!"

The making of "Boots Too Big To Fill"

Here it is, the inside story, the secret stuff, the behind the scenes drama. The production of this historic masterpiece took a full year, and it was full of twists, turns, fences to jump, and the pure joy of making great music with some of America's finest artists. All in tribute to a true pioneer, Gene Autry.