HEEEHAW!!
Willie McCulloch

Congratulations..you've been at this a while and you had this coming !

Ain't life grand ?!!!!

God bless ya and good fortune to ya laddio!

That is so....wonderful.....!!!!!!

Congratulations........

Great news Willie. Here's hoping that "Buffalo Grass" becomes Chris' biggest song.

All the Best,
Mike

Heh, I know you're out in the woods! Used to live in Cheshire myself...

Really, really great news! It don't get much better than that!!! Congratulations Willie!

Dewa,

"Uncle" Chuck Crowe

How Buffalo Grass Was Born
by Andrea Crimmins

There is a VERY long convoluted tale associated with the 'cut' on the Buffalo
Grass...It was a poem that I had written, 5 stanzas, and one day after Willie and I had done the Glade together, our first, I sent it to him to read. He loved it and said, 'If you'll write a chorus for this, I'll turn it into a song'. So I did and he did. I was scheduled to go to Nashville in Nov., by which

time and Willie and I had just received a CD publishing offer from Scot-Tex. He asked me to take the songs we'd done to Nashville with me, for one last shot before signing them with Scot-Tex. I brought the lyrics and 1 CD with the songs on them.

Through a series of events, God's hand was on it, I met Clay Canfield, who was performing at the Legend's Corner. I gave him a demo CD of MY songs that I had brought and went back the next day to see what he thought. He said that he had liked the songs but that they weren't really his style which was cool.

He went up on stage to play his gig and we sat there chatting with his manager/fiance, Polly Waters. I remembered the other CD which I'd brought that had mine and Willie's songs on them and ran to get it out of the car. She graciously took the CD and listened to the songs on her Walkman, in the corner. I had also given her the lyrics to read. She came back to the table and shook her head, 'Good songs, but the style and arrangements aren't western enough for Clay. But..I do LOVE the lyrics to this one song, the Buffalo Grass, and so would Clay' She handed me back the CD and lyrics folder, and we sat there and watched the rest of Clay's set. When he was done, my friend Rhonda and I invited them out to dinner. Prior to leaving Polly told him about her listening to the other songs and that they weren't his style, but she told him about the lyrics to Buffalo Grass. He asked to read them, I handed them over and he said, "Is this song copyrighted?" I swallowed and said, 'No, not yet...but we have a CD publishing offer' He asked if he could have a shot at writing the music for them, and I said,' Well, I guess you can'. That was a hard thing for me to do, sigh, and I felt like I had betrayed Willie somehow, but figured I could always bow out if it came to that.

A few weeks later, when I received the MP3 with Clay's version on it, my mouth fell open...he had come up wit the same feel, tempo, and basic chord structure as Willie had, but the arrangement was more sparse and definitely more Western. I told him that since it was so similar to Willie's I had to keep the co-write with Wille and he said that he understood. (Note - Clay had NEVER heard Willie's version)

The friend who recorded Clay's version of Buffalo Grass at his studio added further instrumentation, as a surprise to Clay, and brought the CD's of this enhanced version to Clay and Polly at the annual Nashville Christmas party. A very good friend of theirs, KW, walked over and took the headphones off of Polly's ears so he could see what she was listening to...It turns out that KW Turnbow was Chris LeDoux's drummer. He took the CD outta the Walkman and said, 'I'm bringing this to Chris'...the rest, as they say, is history. I had never said anything to Willie about me giving Clay a shot at the melody, and when the song got picked up, I had to go through the story with him. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, and it says Gobs about Willie's character that he was understanding and agreed to split the music with Clay, since his arrangement got the cut, but Willie's the one who turned it into a song in the first place. So, there y'all have it, in black-n-white. I will never give out lyrics to a song that is deemed 'finished', by the composer AND me again, without notifying the original composer...that caused a lot of sleepless nights for me!

I'm very blessed that God has placed good-hearted folks in my life, like Willie McCulloch! And a special thanks to Clay Canfield for seeing something in
my lyrics. But MOST OF ALL, thanks to God for making it into a 'happy ending' ...sigh.